In 1311, at the council of Vienne, William Durant the Younger, bishop of Mende and count of Gévaudan, demanded a reform of the church ‘in head and members’ – a phrase that would reverberate throughout the later middle ages and which he was among the first to introduce into public debate. The centre-piece of this reform was to consist of the transferral of the responsibility for the law of the church from the papacy to general councils, which would meet at ten-year intervals: ‘Henceforth the church of Rome ought to enact no general laws unless a general council has been convoked, and such a council ought to be convoked every ten years.’ Lest anyone should think that the papacy would still be free to change existing laws by granting dispensations, Durant declared explicitly that the papacy was not to ‘issue any dispensations, privileges, or exemptions contrary to the provident conciliar constitutions of the holy fathers unless a general council has been called.’ In support of these demands he invoked the famous principle that ‘what touches all must, according to the rule of both canon law and civil law, be approved by all in common’.