A closer look
In the early 1400s, the Catholic Church had a massive logistical problem: three different men simultaneously claimed to be the infallible Pope, excommunicating each other in a petty geopolitical standoff. The Council of Constance solved this with the Haec Sancta decree, which radically declared that church councils got their authority directly from Christ, meaning they could boss the Pope around. They essentially unionized against the papacy, fired all three rival popes, and hired a shiny new one. It was a revolutionary moment of clerical democracy that the Church predictably walked back the absolute second the crisis was over, deciding absolute monarchy was much less of a headache.
