Conservative bishops in the council were fearful that the idea of the College of Bishops would be interpreted as a new conciliarism, a fifteenth-century idea that an ecumenical council was the supreme authority under Christ in the Catholic Church. Of the members of the council, 322, a substantial minority, voted against any mention whatever in the document of a "college" of bishops), and were now proposing 47 amendments to chapter III. Accordingly, a "Preliminary Note of Explanation" (in Latin, Nota explicativa praevia", often referred to as "the Nota praevia") intended to reconcile them with the text was added on 16 November 1964. The Note reaffirmed that the college of bishops exercises its authority only with the assent of the pope, thus safeguarding the primacy and pastoral independence of the pope.