Council
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an assembly met for deliberation, or to give advice. The term specially applies to an assembly of the representatives of independent Churches, convened for deliberation and the enactments of canons or eccleciastical laws. The four general or ecumenical councils recognized by all Churches are: 1, the Council of Nice, in 325, by which the dogma respecting the Son of God was settled; 2, that of Constantinople, 381, by which the doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost was decided; 3, that of Ephesus, 431; and 4, that of Chalcedon, 451; in which two last the doctrine of the union of the divine and human nature in Christ was more precisely determined. Among the principal Latin councils are that of Clermont (1096), in the reign of Urban II., in which the first crusade was resolved upon; the Council of Constance, the most numerous of all the councils, held in 1414, which pronounced the condemnation of John Huss (1415), and of Jerome of Prague (1416); the Council of Basel, in 1431, which intended a reformation, if not in the doctrines, yet in the constitution and discipline of the Church; and the Council of Trent, which began its session in 1545, and labored chiefly to confirm the doctrines of the Catholic Church against the Protestants. On Dec. 8, 1869, an ecumenical council, summoned by a bull of Pope Pius IX., assembled at Rome. This council adopted a dogmatic Decree or Constitutio de Fide, and a Constitutio de Ecclesia, the most important article of which latter declares the infallibility of the Pope when speakthe ing ex cathedra.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's list in 1921 stops with the Roman council of December 1869 and its decree on papal infallibility — an assembly that had in fact been broken off in 1870 as Italian troops entered Rome, and was only formally closed by John XXIII in 1960. Two years later the same pope opened the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the largest such gathering ever held, which permitted Mass in vernacular languages, reshaped Catholic relations with other Churches and with Judaism, and remains the reference point for almost every argument about Catholicism today. On the Protestant and Orthodox side, the World Council of Churches was founded at Amsterdam in 1948, giving the word a permanent institution rather than an occasional assembly. The everyday sense has also grown: since 1945 most readers meeting "council" in a newspaper encounter the UN Security Council or a municipal body, not a synod of bishops.
Written for this edition, 2026.