Nominalism and Conciliarism: The Case of Jacques Almain

Abstract

Jacques Almain (c. 1480-1515) was a French doctoral student at the University of Paris under John Mair, the Scot who also mentored George Buchanan, Jean Calvin, and John Knox. And after his studies, Almain became a professor of theology at the university. Despite his short career – he died around the age of thirty-five – Almain produced a series of works including three specifically on ecclesiology. In these writings, he argues in defence of conciliarism. In brief, papalists and conciliarists sparred over who has supreme authority in the Church on Earth, the pope or the ecumenical council representing the Church. The conciliarists favoured the council, which, they argued, could depose and/or excommunicate a pope if necessary for the good of the Church; papal defenders, of course, disagreed. Two works in which Almain advances his conciliarist views are Question in Vespers (hereafter Questio) and his Book on the Authority of the Church or Sacred Council (hereafter Libellus); both were written in 1512. Almain became prominent due to the latter in particular, which he was commissioned to write by the University of Paris; effectively, he was tasked with defending the Council of Pisa and its conciliarism. Pisa had been called by nine cardinals in 1511 in opposition, for political and ecclesiastical reasons, to the reigning pope, Julius II. The pope had tasked the Master of the Dominicans (1508-18), Thomas de Vio, known for his later confrontation with Martin Luther, with critiquing Pisa and its conciliarism. He completed the undertaking with his work, On the Comparison of the Authority of Pope and Council in 1511. Almain’s