conceived them is found in his Dictatus. The bishop of Rome,
who enjoys a unique title, that of “pope,” may annul the
decrees of all other powers, since he judges all but is judged by
none. He may depose emperors and absolve the subjects of
the unjust from their allegiance. Gregory’s position was almost
inexpugnable at a time when it was conceded by practically all
that spiritual concerns were incalculably more momentous than
secular, that the Church was rightly one and indivisible, with
one divinely revealed faith and a system of sacraments absolutely
essential to salvation. No one called in question the
claim of the clergy to control completely all “ spiritual ” matters.
Moreover, the mightiest secular ruler was but a poor sinner
dependent for his eternal welfare on the Church and its head,
the pope, who in this way necessarily exercised an indirect
control over the civil government, which even the emperor
Henry IV. and William the Conqueror would not have been
disposed to deny. They would also have conceded the pope
the right to play the role of a secular ruler in his own lands, as
did the German bishops, and to dispose of such fiefs as reverted
to him. This class of prerogatives, as well as the right which
the pope claimed to ratify the election of the emperor, need not
detain us, although they doubtless served in the long run to
weaken the papal power. But the pope laid claim to a direct
power over the civil governments. Nicholas II. (1058–1061)
declared that Jesus had conferred on Peter the control (ima)
of an earthly as well as of a heavenly empire; and this phrase
was embodied in the canon law. Innocent III., a century and
a half later, taught that James the brother of the Lord left to
Peter not only the government of the whole Church, but that
of the whole world (totum seculum gubernandum).[1] So the
power of the pope no longer rested upon his headship of the
Church or his authority as a secular prince, but on a far more
comprehensive claim to universal dominion. There was no
reason why the bishop of Rome should justify such acts as
Innocent himself performed in deposing King John of England
and later in annulling Magna Carta; or Gregory IV. when he
struck out fourteen articles from the Sachsenspiegel; or
Nicholas V. when he invested Portugal with the right to subjugate
all peoples on the Atlantic coast; or Julius II. when
he threatened to transfer the kingdom of France to England;
or the conduct of those later pontiffs who condemned the
treaties of Westphalia, the Austrian constitution of 1867 and
the' establishment of the kingdom of Italy. The theory and
practice of papal absolutism was successfully promulgated
by Gratian in his Decretum, completed at Bologna about 1142.
This was supplemented by later collections composed mainly
of papal decretals. (See Canon Law and Decretals, False.)
As every fully equipped university had its faculty of canon
law in which the Corpus juris canonici was studied, Rashdall
is hardly guilty of exaggeration when he says: “By means
of the happy thought of the Bolognese monk the popes were
enabled to convert the new-born universities-the offspring
of that intellectual new birth of Europe which might have
been so formidable an enemy to the papal pretensions-into
so many engines for the propagation of Ultramontane ideas.”
Thomas Aquinas was the first theologian to describe the Church
as a divinely organized absolute monarchy, whose head concentrated
in his person the entire authority of the Church, and
was the'-source of all the ecclesiastical law (conditor juris),
issuing the decrees of general councils in his own name, and
claiming the right to revoke or modify the decrees of former
councils-indeed, to make exceptions or to set aside altogether
anything which did not rest upon the dictates of divine or
natural law. In practice the whole of western Europe was
subject to the jurisdiction of one tribunal of last resort, the
Roman Curia.. The pope claimed the right to tax church
property throughout Christendom. He was able to exact an
oath of fidelity from the archbishops, named many of the
bishops, and asserted the right to transfer and dispose them.
The organs of this vast monarchy were the papal Curia, which
first appears distinctly in the 11th century (see Curia Romana),
and the legates, who visited the courts of Europe as haughty
representatives of the central government of Christendom.
It should always be remembered that the law of the Church was regarded by all lawyers in the later middle ages as the law common to all Europe (jus commune). The laws of the Carolingian empire provided that one excommunicated by the Church who did not make his peaceRelations of the ecclesiastical and civil governments. within a year and a day should be outlawed, and this general principle was not lost sight of. It was a capital offence in the eyes of the State to disagree with the teachings of the Church, and these, it must be remembered, included a recognition of the papal supremacy. The civil authorities burnt an obstinate heretic, condemned by the Church, without a thought of a new trial. The emperor Frederick II.’s edicts and the so-called établissements of St Louis provide that the civil officers should search out suspected heretics and deliver them to the ecclesiastical judges. The civil government recognized monastic vows by regarding a professed monk as civilly dead and by pursuing him and returning him to his monastery if he violated his pledges of obedience and ran away. The State recognized the ecclesiastical tribunals and accorded them a wide jurisdiction that we should now deem essentially secular in its nature. The State also admitted that large classes of its citizens-the clergy, students, crusaders, widows and the miserable and helpless in general-were justice able only by Church tribunals. By the middle of the 13th century many lawyers took the degree of doctor of both laws (J.U.D.), civil and canon, and practised both. As is well known, temporal rulers constantly selected clergymen as their most trusted advisers. The existence of this theocratic international state was of course conditioned by the weakness of the civil government. So long as feudal monarchy continued, the Church supplied to some extent the deficiencies of the turbulent and ignorant princes by endeavouring to maintain order, administer justice, protect the weak and encourage learning. So soon as the modern national state began to gain strength, the issue between secular rulers and the bishops of Rome took a new form. The clergy naturally stoutly defended the powers which they had long enjoyed and believed to be rightly theirs. On the other hand, the State, which could count upon the support of an ever-increasing number of prosperous and loyal subjects, sought to protect its own interests and showed itself less and less inclined to tolerate the extreme claims of the pope. Moreover, owing to the spread of education, the king was no longer obliged to rely mainly upon the assistance of the clergy in conducting his government.
The chief sources of friction between Church and State were four in number. First, the growth of the practice of “reservation” and “provision,” by which the popes assumed the right to appoint their own nominees to vacant sees and other benefices, in defiance of the claims of the crown, the chapters and private patrons. In the case of wealthy bishoprics or abbacies this involved a serious menace to the secular authority. Both pope and king were naturally anxious to place their own friends and supporters in these influential positions. The pope, moreover, had come to depend to a considerable extent for his revenue upon the payments made by his nominees, which represented a corresponding drain on the resources of the secular states. Secondly, there was the great question, how far the lands and other property of the clergy should be subject to taxation. Was this vast amount of property to increase indefinitely without contribution to the maintenance of the secular government? A decretal of Innocent III. permitted the clergy to make voluntary contributions to the king when there was urgent necessity, and the resources of the laity had proved inadequate. But the pope maintained that, except in the most critical cases, his consent must be obtained for such grants. Thirdly, there was the inevitable jealousy between the secular and ecclesiastical courts and the serious problem of the exact extent of the original and appellate jurisdiction of the Roman Curia. Fourthly, and lastly, there was the most fundamental difficulty of all, the extent to which the pope, as the universally acknowledged head
- ↑ See further, Innocent III.
