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.
The result of this failure of the conciliar principle at Basel was that Nicholas V.inaugurated a new age for the Papacy in Rome.

I have already described the chief features of the Papal government from his election to the death of Clement VII.