The Project Gutenberg eBook ofEncyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Coucy-le-Château" to "Crocodile"This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Coucy-le-Château" to "Crocodile"Author: VariousRelease date: May 19, 2010 [eBook #32423]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz, Marius Masi, JulietSutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Teamat http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "COUCY-LE-CHÂTEAU" TO "CROCODILE" ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Coucy-le-Château" to "Crocodile"Author: VariousRelease date: May 19, 2010 [eBook #32423]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz, Marius Masi, JulietSutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Teamat http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Coucy-le-Château" to "Crocodile"
Author: Various
Author: Various
Release date: May 19, 2010 [eBook #32423]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz, Marius Masi, JulietSutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Teamat http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "COUCY-LE-CHÂTEAU" TO "CROCODILE" ***
Articles in This Slice
COUCY-LE-CHÂTEAU,a village of northern France, in the department of Aisne, 18 m. W.S.W. of Laon on a branch of the Northern railway. Pop. (1906) 663. It has extensive remains of fortifications of the 13th century, the most remarkable feature of which is the Porte de Laon, a gateway flanked by massive towers and surmounted by a fine apartment. Coucy also has a church of the 15th century, preserving a façade in the Romanesque style. The importance of the place is due, however, to the magnificent ruins of a feudal fortress (seeCastle) crowning the eminence on the slope of which the village is built. The remains, which embrace an area of more than 10,000 sq. yds., form an irregular quadrilateral built round a court-yard and flanked by four huge towers. The nucleus of the stronghold is a donjon over 200 ft. high and over 100 ft. in diameter, standing on the south side of the court. Three large vaulted apartments, one above the other, occupy its interior. The court-yard was surrounded on the ground-floor by storehouses, kitchens, &c., above which on the west and north sides were the great halls known as theSalle des preuxand theSalle des preuses. A chapel projected from the west wing. The bailey or base-court containing other buildings and covering three times the area of the château extended between it and the village. The architectural unity of the fortress is due to the rapidity of its construction, which took place between 1230 and 1242, under Enguerrand III., lord of Coucy. A large part of the buildings was restored or enlarged at the end of the 14th century by Louis d’Orléans, brother of Charles VI., by whom it had been purchased. The place was dismantled in 1652 by order of Cardinal Mazarin. It is now state property. In 1856 researches were carried on upon the spot by Viollet-le-Duc, and measures for the preservation of the ruins were subsequently undertaken.
Sires de Coucy.—Coucy gave its name to the sires de Coucy, a feudal house famous in the history of France. The founder of the family was Enguerrand de Boves, a warlike lord, who, at the end of the 11th century seized the castle of Coucy by force. Towards the close of his life, he had to fight against his own son, Thomas de Marle, who in 1115 succeeded him, subsequently becoming notorious for his deeds of violence in the struggles between the communes of Laon and Amiens. He was subdued by King Louis VI. in 1117, but his son Enguerrand II. continued the struggle against the king. Enguerrand III., the Great, fought at Bouvines under Philip Augustus (1214), but later he was accused of aiming at the crown of France, and he took part in the disturbances which arose during the regency of Blanche of Castile. These early lords of Coucy remained till the 14th century in possession of the land from which they took their name. Enguerrand IV., sire de Coucy, died in 1320 without issue and was succeeded by his nephew Enguerrand, son of Arnold, count of Guines, and Alix de Coucy, from whom is descended the second line of the house of Coucy. Enguerrand VI. had his lands ravaged by the English in 1339 and died at Crécy in 1346. Enguerrand VII., sire de Coucy, count of Soissons and Marle, and chief butler of France, was sent as a hostage to England, where he married Isabel, the eldest daughter of King Edward III. Wishing to remain neutral in the struggle between England and France, he went to fight in Italy. Having made claims upon the domains of the house of Austria, from which he was descended through his mother, he was defeated in battle (1375-1376). He was entrusted with various diplomatic negotiations, and took part in the crusade of Hungary against the Sultan Bayezid, during which he was taken prisoner, and died shortly after the battle of Nicopolis (1397). His daughter Marie sold the fief of Coucy to Louis, duke of Orleans, in 1400. The Châtelain de Coucy (see above) did not belong to the house of the lords of Coucy, but was castellan of the castle of that name.
COUES, ELLIOTT(1842-1899), American naturalist, was born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the 9th of September 1842. He graduated at Columbian (now George Washington) University, Washington, D.C., in 1861, and at the Medical school of that institution in 1863. He served as a medical cadet at Washington in 1862-1863, and in 1864 was appointed assistant-surgeon in the regular army. In 1872 he published hisKey to North American Birds, which, revised and rewritten in 1884 and 1901, has done much to promote the systematic study of ornithology in America. In 1873-1876 Coues was attached as surgeon and naturalist to the United States Northern Boundary Commission, and in 1876-1880 was secretary and naturalist to the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, the publications of which he edited. He was lecturer on anatomy in the medical school of the Columbian University in 1877-1882, and professor of anatomy there in 1882-1887. He resigned from the army in 1881 to devote himself entirely to scientific research. He was a founder of the American Ornithologists’ Union, and edited its organ,The Auk, and several other ornithological periodicals. He died at Baltimore, Maryland, on the 25th of December 1899. In addition to ornithology he did valuable work in mammalogy; his bookFur-Bearing Animals(1877) being distinguished by the accuracy and completeness of its description of species, several of which are already becoming rare. In 1887 he became president of the Esoteric Theosophical Society of America. Among the most important of his publications, in several of which he had collaboration, areA Field Ornithology(1874);Birds of the North-west(1874);Monographs on North American Rodentia, with J. A. Allen (1877);Birds of the Colorado Valley(1878);A Bibliography of Ornithology(1878-1880, incomplete);New England Bird Life(1881);A Dictionary and Check List of North American Birds(1882);Biogen, A Speculation on the Origin and Motive of Life(1884);The Daemon of Darwin(1884);Can Matter Think?(1886); andNeuro-Myology(1887). He also contributed numerous articles to the Century Dictionary, wrote for various encyclopaedias, and edited theJournals of Lewis and Clark(1893), andThe Travels of Zebulon M. Pike(1895).
COULISSE(French for “groove,” fromcouler, to slide), a term for a groove in which a gate of a sluice, or the side-scenes in a theatre, slide up and down, hence applied to the space on the stage between the wings, and generally to that part of the theatre “behind the scenes” and out of view of the public. It is also a term of the Paris Bourse, derived from acoulisse, or passage in which transactions were carried on without the authorizedagents de change. The namecoulissierwas thus given to unauthorizedagents de change, or “outside brokers” who, after many attempts at suppression, were finally given a recognized status in 1901. They bring business to theagents de change, and act as intermediaries between them and other parties. (SeeStock Exchange:Paris.)
COULOMB, CHARLES AUGUSTIN(1736-1806), French natural philosopher, was born at Angoulême on the 14th of June 1736. He chose the profession of military engineer, spent three years, to the decided injury of his health, at Fort Bourbon, Martinique, and was employed on his return at Rochelle, the Isle of Aix and Cherbourg. In 1781 he was stationed permanently at Paris, but on the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789 he resigned his appointment asintendant des eaux et fontaines, and retired to a small estate which he possessed at Blois. He was recalled to Paris for a time in order to take part in the new determination of weights and measures, which had been decreed by the Revolutionary government. Of the National Institute he was one of the first members; and he was appointed inspector of public instruction in 1802. But his health was already very feeble, and four years later he died at Paris on the 23rd of August 1806. Coulomb is distinguished in the history alike of mechanics and of electricity and magnetism. In 1779 he published an important investigation of the laws of friction (Théorie des machines simples, en ayant regard au frottement de leurs parties et à la roideur des cordages), which was followed twenty years later by a memoir on fluid resistance. In 1785 appeared hisRecherches théoriques et expérimentales sur la force de torsion et sur l’élasticité des fils de métal, &c. This memoir contained a description of different forms of his torsion balance, an instrument used by him with great success for the experimental investigation of the distribution of electricity on surfaces and of the laws of electrical and magnetic action, of the mathematical theory of which he may also be regarded as the founder. The practical unit of quantity of electricity, thecoulomb, is named after him.
COULOMMIERS,a town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Seine-et-Marne, 45 m. E. of Paris by rail. Pop. (1906) 5217. It is situated in the fertile district of Brie, in a valley watered by the Grand-Morin. The church of St Denis (13th and 16th centuries), and the ruins of a castle built by Catherine of Gonzaga, duchess of Longueville, in the early 17th century, are of little importance. There is a statue to Commandant Beaurepaire, who, in 1792, killed himself rather than surrender Verdun to the Prussians. Coulommiers is the seat of a subprefect, and has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college. Printing is the chief industry, tanning, flour-milling and sugar-making being also carried on. Trade is in agricultural products, and especially in cheeses named after the town.
COUMARIN,C9H6O2, a substance which occurs naturally in sweet woodruff (Asperula odorata), in the tonka bean and in yellow melilot (Melilotus officinalis). It can be obtained from the tonka bean by extraction with alcohol. It is prepared artificially by heating aceto-ortho-coumaric acid (which is formed from sodium salicyl aldehyde) or from the action of acetic anhydride and sodium acetate on salicyl aldehyde (Sir W. H. Perkin,Berichte, 1875, 8, p. 1599). It can also be prepared by heating a mixture of phenol and malic acid with sulphuric acid, or by passing bromine vapour at 107° C. over the anhydride of melilotic acid. It forms rhombic crystals (from ether) melting at 67° C. and boiling at 290° C., which are readily soluble in alcohol, and moderately soluble in hot water. It is applied in perfumery for the preparation of theAsperulaessence. On boiling with concentrated caustic potash it yields the potassium salt of coumaric acid, whilst when fused with potash it is completely decomposed into salicylic and acetic acids. Sodium amalgam reduces it, in aqueous solution, to melilotic acid. It forms addition products with bromine and hydrobromic acid. By the action of phosphorus pentasulphide it is converted into thiocoumarin, which melts at 101° C.; and in alcoholic solution, on the addition of hydroxylamine hydrochloride and soda, it yields coumarin oxime.
Ortho-coumaric acid (o-oxycinnamic acid) is obtained from coumarin as shown above, or by boiling coumarin for some time with sodium ethylate. It melts at 208° C. and is easily soluble in hot water and in alcohol. It cannot be converted into coumarin by heating alone, but it is readily transformed on heating with acetic anhydride or acetyl chloride. By the action of sodium amalgam it is readily converted intomelilotic acid, which melts at 81° C., and on distillation furnishes its lactone,hydrocoumarin, melting at 25° C. For the relations of coumaric and coumarinic acid seeAnnalen, 254, p. 181. The homologues of coumarin may be obtained by the action of sulphuric acid on phenol and the higher fatty acids (propionic, butyric and isovaleric anhydrides), substitution taking place at the carbon atom in the α position to the -CO- group, whilst by the condensation of acetoacetic ester and phenols with sulphuric acid the β substituted coumarins are obtained.
Umbelliferoneor 4-oxycoumarin, occurs in the bark ofDaphne mezereumand may be obtained by distilling such resins as galbanum or asafoetida. It may be synthesized from resorcin and malic anhydride or from β resorcyl aldehyde, acetic anhydride and sodium acetate.DaphnetinandAesculetinare dioxycoumarins.
The structural formulae of coumarin and the related substances are:
COUMARONESorBenzofurfuranes, organic compounds containing the ring systemThis ring system may be synthesized in many different ways, the chief methods employed being as follows: by the action of hot alcoholic potash on α-bromcoumarin (R. Fittig,Ann., 1883, 216, p. 162),
from sodium salts of phenols and α-chloracetoacetic ester (A. Hantzsch,Ber., 1886, 19, p. 1292),
or from ortho-oxyaldehydes by condensation with ketones (S. Kostanecki and J. Tambor,Ber., 1896, 29, p. 237), or with chloracetic acid (A. Rossing,Ber., 1884, 17, p. 3000),
The parent substance coumarone, C8H6O, is also obtained by heating ω-chlor-ortho-oxystyrol with concentrated potash solution (G. Komppa,Ber., 1893, 26. p. 2971),
It is a colourless liquid which boils at 171-172° C. and is readily volatile in steam, but is insoluble in water and in potash solution. Concentrated acids convert it into a resin. When heated with sodium and absolute alcohol, it is converted intohydrocoumarone, C8H8O, and ethyl phenol.
COUNCIL(Lat.concilium, fromcum, together, and the root cal, to call), the general word for a convocation, meeting, assembly. The Latin word was frequently confused withconsilium(fromconsulere, to deliberate, cf.consul), advice,i.e.counsel, and thus specifically an advisory assembly. Du Cange (Gloss. Med. Infim. Latin.) quotes the Greek wordsσύνοδος, συνέδριον, συμβούλιονas the equivalent ofconcilium. In French the distinction betweenconseil(fromconsilium), advice, andconcile, council (i.e.ecclesiastical—its only meaning) has survived, but the two English derivatives are much confused. In the New Testament, “council” is the rendering of the Hebrew Sanhedrin, Gr.συνέδριον. The word is generally used in English for all kinds of congregations or convocations assembled for administrative and deliberative purposes.1
The present article is confined to a history of the development of the ecclesiastical council, summoned to adjust matters in dispute with the civil authority or for the settlement of doctrinal and other internal disputes. For details see under separate headings,Nicaea, &c.
From a very early period in the history of the Church, councils or synods have been held to decide on matters of doctrine and discipline. They may be traced back to the second half of the 2nd centuryA.D., when sundry churches in Asia Minor held consultations about the rise of Montanism. Their precise origin is disputed. The common Roman Catholic view is that they are apostolic though not prescribed by divine law, and the apostolic precedent usually cited is the “council” of Jerusalem (Acts xv.; Galatians ii.). Waiving the consideration of vital critical questions and accepting Acts xv. at its face value, the assembly at Jerusalem would scarcely seem to have been a council in the technical sense of the word; it was in essence a meeting of the Jerusalem church at which delegates from Antioch were heard but apparently had no vote, the decision resting solely with the mother church. R. Sohm argues that synods grew from the custom of certain local churches which, when confronted with a serious problem of their own, augmented their numbers by receiving delegates from the churches of the neighbourhood. Hauck, however, holds that these augmented church meetings, which dealt with the affairs of but a single church, are to be distinguished from the synods, which took cognizance of matters of general interest. Older Protestant writers have contented themselves with saying either that synods were of apostolic origin, or that they were the inevitable outcome of the need of the leaders of churches to take counsel together, and that they were perhaps modelled on the secular provincial assemblies (concilia provincialia).
Every important alteration in the constitution of the Church has affected the composition and function of synods; but the changes were neither simultaneous nor precisely alike throughout the Roman empire. The synods of the 2nd century were extraordinary assemblies which met to deliberate upon pressing problems. They had no fixed geographical limits for membership, noex-officiomembers, nor did they possess an authority which did away with the independence of the local church. In the course of the 3rd century came the decisive change, which increased the prestige of the councils: the right to vote was limited to bishops. This was the logical outgrowth of the belief that each local church ought to have but one bishop (monarchical episcopate), and that these bishops were the sole legitimate successors of the apostles (apostolic succession), and therefore official organs of the Holy Spirit. Although as late as 250 the consensus of the priests, the deacons and the people was still considered essential to the validity of a conciliar decision at Rome and in certain parts of the East, the development had already run its course in northern Africa. It was a further step in advance when synods began to meet at regular intervals. They were held annually in Cappadocia by the middle of the 3rd century, and the council of Nicaea commanded in 325 that semiannual synods be held in every province, an arrangement which was not systematically enforced, and was altered in 692, when the Trullan Council reduced the number to one a year.
With the multiplication of synods came naturally a differentiation of type. In text-books we find clear lines drawn between diocesan, provincial, national, patriarchal and oecumenical synods; but the first thousand years of church history do not justify the sharpness of the traditional distinction. Theprovincialsynods, presided over by the metropolitan (archbishop), were usually held at the capital of the province, and attempted to legislate on all sorts of questions. The state had nothing to do with calling them, nor did their decrees require governmental sanction. Various abortive attempts were made to set up synods ofpatriarchalor at least of more than provincial rank. In North Africa eighteen such synods were held between 393 and 424; during part of the 5th and 6th centuriesprimatialcouncils assembled at Arles; and the patriarchs of Constantinople were accustomed to invite to their “endemicsynods” (σύνοδοι ἐνδημοῦσαι) all bishops who happened to be sojourning at the capital.Papalsynods from the 5th and especially from the 9th century onward included members such as the archbishops of Ravenna, Milan, Aquileia and Grado, who resided outside the Roman archdiocese; but the territorial limits from which the membership was drawn do not appear to have been precisely defined.
Before the form of the provincial synod had become absolutely fixed, there arose in the 4th century theoecumenicalcouncil. The Greek termσύνοδος οἰκουμενική2(1) (used by Eusebius,Vita Constantini, iii. 6) is preferable to the Latinconcilium universaleorgenerale, which has been applied loosely to national and even to provincial synods. The oecumenical synods were not the logical outgrowth of the network of provincial synods; they were creations of the imperial power. Constantine, who had not even been baptized, laid the foundations when, in response to a petition of the Donatists, he referred their case to a committee of bishops that convened at Rome, which meeting Eusebius calls asynod. After that the emperor summoned the council of Arles to settle the matter. For both of these assemblies it was the emperor that decided who should be summoned, paid the travelling expenses of the bishops, determined where the council should be held and what topics should be discussed. He regarded them as temporary advisory bodies, to whose recommendations the imperial authority might give the force of law. In the same manner he appointed the time and place for the council of Nicaea, summoned the episcopate, paid part of the expenses out of the public purse, nominated the committee in charge of the order of business, used his influence to bring about the adoption of the creed, and punished those who refused to subscribe. To be sure, the council of Nicaea commanded great veneration, for it was the first attempt to assemble the entire episcopate; but no more than the synods of Rome and of Arles was it an organ of ecclesiastical self-government—it was rather a means whereby the Church was ruled by the secular power. The subsequent oecumenical synods of the undivided Church were patterned on that of Nicaea. Most Protestant scholars maintain that the secular authorities decided whether or not they should be convened, and issued the summons; that imperial commissioners were always present, even if they did not always preside; that on occasion emperors have confirmed or refused to confirm synodal decrees; and that the papal confirmation was neither customary nor requisite. Roman Catholic scholars to-day tend to recede from the high ground very generally taken several centuries ago, and Funk even admits that the right to convoke oecumenical synods was vested in the emperor regardless of the wishes of the pope, and that it cannot be proved that the Roman see ever actually had a share in calling the oecumenical councils of antiquity. Others, however, while acknowledging the futility of seeking historical proofs that the popesformallycalled, directed and confirmed these synods, yet assert that the emperor performed these functions not of his own right but in his quality as protector of the Church, that this involved his acting at the request or at least with the permission and approval of the Church, and in particular of the pope, and that a special though not a stereotyped papal confirmation of conciliar decrees was necessary to their validity.
In the Germanic states which arose on the ruins of the Western Empire we findnationalanddiocesansynods; provincial synods were unusual. National synods were summoned by the king or with his consent to meet special needs; and they were frequentlyconcilia mixta, at which lay dignitaries appeared. Although the Frankish monarchs were notabsoluterulers, nevertheless they exercised the right of changing or rejecting synodal decrees which ran counter to the interests of the state. Clovis held the first French national synod at Orleans in 511; Reccared, the first in Spain in 589 at Toledo. Under Charlemagne they were occasionally so representative that they might almost be ranked as general synods of the West (Regensburg, 792, Frankfort, 794). Contemporaneous with the evolution of the national synod was the development of a new type of diocesan synod, which included the priests of separate and mutually independent parishes and also the leaders of the monastic clergy.
The papal synods came into the foreground with the success of the Cluniac reform of the Church, especially from the Lateran synod of 1059 on. They grew in importance until at length Calixtus II. summoned to the Lateran the synod of 1123 as “generale concilium.” The powers which the pope as bishop of the church in Rome had exercised over its synods he now extended to the oecumenical councils. They were more completely under his control than the ancient ones had been under the sway of the emperor. The Pseudo-Isidorean principle that all major synods need papal authorization was insisted on, and the decrees were formulated as papal edicts.
The absolutist principles cherished by the papal court in the 12th and 13th centuries did not pass unchallenged; but the protests of Marsilius of Padua and the less radical William of Occam remained barren until the Great Schism of 1378. As neither the pope in Rome nor his rival in Avignon would give way, recourse was had to the idea that the supreme power was vested not in the pope but in the oecumenical council. This “conciliar theory,” propounded by Conrad of Gelnhausen and championed by the great Parisian teachers Pierre d’Ailly and Gerson, proceeded from the nominalistic axiom that the whole is greater than its part. The decisive revolutionary step was taken when the cardinals independently of both popes ventured to hold the council of Pisa (1409). The council of Constance asserted the supremacy of oecumenical synods, and ordered that these be convened at regular intervals. The last of the Reform councils, that of Basel,approvedthese principles, and at length passed a sentence of deposition against Pope Eugenius IV. Eugenius, however, succeeded in maintaining his power, and at the council of Florence (1439) secured the condemnation of the conciliar theory; and this was reiterated still more emphatically, on the eve of the Reformation, by the fifth Lateran council (1516). Thenceforward the absolutist theories of the 13th and 14th centuries increasingly dominated the Roman Church. The popes so distrusted oecumenical councils that between 1517 and 1869 they called but one; at this (Trent, 1545-1563), however, all treatment of the question of papal versus conciliar authority was purposely avoided. Although the Declaration of the French clergy of 1682 reaffirmed the conciliar doctrines of Constance, since the French Revolution this “Gallicanism” has shown itself to be but a passing phase of constitutional theory; and in the 19th century the ascendancy of Ultramontanism became so secure that Pius IX. could confidently summon to the Vatican a synod which set its seal on the doctrine of papal infallibility. Yet it would be a misconception to suppose that the Vatican decrees mean the surrender of the ancient belief in the infallibility of oecumenical synods; their decisions may still be regarded as more solemn and more impressive than those of the pope alone; their authority is fuller, though not higher. At present it is agreed that the pope has the sole right of summoning oecumenical councils, of presiding or appointing presidents and of determining the order of business and the topics which shall come up. The papal confirmation is indispensable; it is conceived of as the stamp without which the expression of conciliar opinion lacks legal validity. In other words, the oecumenical council is now practically in the position of the senate of an absolute monarch. It is in fact an open question whether a council is to be ranked as really oecumenical until after its decrees have been approved by the pope. (SeeVatican Council,Ultramontanism,Infallibility.)
The earlier oecumenical councils have well been called “the pitched battles of church history.” Summoned to combat heresy and schism, in spite of degrading pressure from without and tumultuous disorder within, they ultimately brought about a modicum of doctrinal agreement. On the one side as time went on they bound scholarship hand and foot in the winding-sheet of tradition, and also fanned the flames of intolerance; yet on the other side they fostered the sense of the Church’s corporate oneness. The diocesan and provincial synods have formed a valuable system of regularly recurring assemblies for disposing of ecclesiastical business. They have been held most frequently, however, in times of stress and of reform, for instance in the 11th, 16th and 19th centuries; at other periods they have lapsed into disuse: it is significant that to-day the prelate who neglects to convene them suffers no penalty. At present the main function of both provincial and oecumenical synods seems to be to facilitate obedience to the wishes of the central government of the Church.
Theright to vote(votum definitivum) has been distinguished from early times from the right to be heard (votum consultativum). The Reform Synods of the 15th century gave a decisive vote to doctors and licentiates of theology and of laws, some of them sitting as individuals, some as representatives of universities. Roman Catholic canonists now confine the right to vote at oecumenical councils to bishops, cardinal deacons, generals or vicars general of monastic orders and thepraelati nullius(exempt abbots, &c.); all other persons, lay or clerical, who are admitted or invited, have merely thevotum consultativum—they are chiefly procurators of absent bishops, or very learned priests. It was but a clumsy and temporary expedient, designed to offset the preponderance of Italian bishops dependent on the popewhen the council of Constance subdivided itself into several groups or “nations,” each of which had a single vote. In voting, the simple majority decides; yet such is the importance attached to a unanimous verdict that an irreconcilable minority may absent itself from the final vote, as was the case at the Vatican Council.