ABSTRACT
In October of 2006 the Istituto per le scienze religiose in Bologna published a revised edition of its classic collection of the decrees of the ecumenical councils. It inserted into its former title Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta the word Generaliumque. The article by Brandmuller traces the evolution of the meaning granted to the term “ecumenical” over the centuries. Brandmuller suspects that Alberigo began with the list supplied by Roberto Bellarmino which did not distinguish between general and ecumenical councils and then added both the distinction and other councils. Given the prominence of the term “Catholic tradition” in the discussions on ecumenical councils, it may be helpful to examine the writings of two sixteenth-century figures, Roberto Bellarmino the theologian and Domenico Giacobazzi the canonist, both made cardinals, whose scholarship on the question of what constitutes a general or ecumenical council has come to be considered classical among Catholic theologians and canonists.
