 Even after he changed allegiance to the side of papal supremacy, Nicholas used his ideas to argue in later brief writings that Basel was not truly representative and that consent was embodied in the college of cardinals. In the following centuries, secular parliaments returned to ideas of consent and representation (though not directly to Nicholas’ book) in attempting to restrict the power of monarchs. In the church itself, tradition continued to outweigh innovation, and the idea of conciliar superiority to the pope seemed dead for centuries. Some twentieth-century thinking in the Roman Catholic Church has returned to and enlivened ideas about council and papacy propounded by Nicholas of Cusa.