Europe.  One was the way suggested by John Hus; that the Church should be reconstituted, after a searching analysis of the real bases of Christian conduct, an appeal to Scripture as the final authority, and a loyal endeavor to satisfy the spiritual requirements of individual souls and consciences.  The second plan was that of inquiry into the existing order of the Church and detailed amendment of its flagrant faults, with preservation of the main system.  The Council adopted satisfactory measures of reform on neither of these methods.  It contented itself with stipulations and concordats, guaranteeing special privileges to the Churches of the several nations.  But in the following century it became manifest that the Teutonic races had declared for the method suggested by Hus; while the Latin races, in the Council of Trent, undertook a purgation of the Church upon the second of the two plans.  The Reformation was the visible outcome of the one, the Counter-Reformation of the other method.

The Council of Constance was thus important in causing the recognition of a single Pope, and in ventilating the divergent theories upon which the question of reform was afterwards to be disputed.  But perhaps the most significant fact it brought into relief was the new phase of political existence into which the European races had entered.  Nationality, as the main principle of modern history, was now established; and the diplomatic relations of sovereigns as the representatives of peoples were shown to be of overwhelming weight.  The visionary mediaeval polity of Emperor and Pope faded away before the vivid actuality of full-formed individual nations, federally connected, controlled by common but reciprocally hostile interests.[18]

The Council of Basel, opened in 1431, was in appearance a continuation of the Council of Constance.  But its method of procedure ran counter to the new direction which had been communicated to European federacy by the action of the Constance congress.  There the votes had been taken by nations.  At Basel they were taken by men, after the questions to be decided had been previously discussed by special congregations and committees deputed for preliminary deliberations.  It soon appeared that the fathers of the Basel Council aimed at opposing a lawfully-elected Pope, and sought to assume the, administration of the Church into their own hands.

[Footnote 18:  See above, p. 2, for the special sense in which I apply the word federation to Italy before 1530, and to Europe at large in the modern period.]

Their struggle with Eugenius IV., their election of an antipope, Felix V., and their manifest tendency to substitute oligarchical for Papal tyranny in the Church, had the effect of bringing the conciliar principle itself into disfavor with the European powers.  The first symptom of this repudiation of the Council by Europe was shown in the neutrality proclaimed by Germany.  The attitude of other Courts and nations proved that the Western races were for the moment prepared to leave the Papal question open on the basis supplied by the Council of Constance.