Generalkapitel der Orden und Konzilien im Mittelalter. Ein struktureller Vergleich, Annales Historia Conciliorum, 51 (2021), 159-172

This article focuses on the 12th and 13th centuries. Although in that period it was specifically
the General Councils that acted as organs of the Church as a whole and the General
Chapters of the religious orders, on the other hand, were only systemic segments of the
Church, both were representative assemblies that dealt with and led to decisions on the central
problems of ecclesial life in a broad supra-regional setting with approximately the same
number of participants. The essential difference, however, was that, unlike the Councils,
General Chapters were bodies that were not only anchored in a written constitution, but
also had the sole power to change it autonomously. The participants represented the order
as the supreme decision-making body. So they realised from the beginning the horizontal
idea of governance that lay behind conciliarism, whereas the Church persistently and ultimately
adhered to the vertical monarchical principle.