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The Medieval Church · 9 October 1417
Frequens
The Council of Constance
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What it is
A decree requiring general councils to meet at fixed intervals — five years, then seven, then every ten — so that the church could correct itself without waiting for a crisis.
Why it lasted
An attempt to make the church a constitutional body. Later popes let the intervals lapse, and the experiment ended within a generation.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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