Papal Overlordship and European Princes, 1000-1270

Relationships between popes and kings have often been seen, first, as feudo-vassalic, and secondly as part of a general attempt by medieval popes to elevate themselves to world rulership. This book challenges both assumptions. On one hand, the book examines how relationships between popes and kings changed and were formalized, and what such relationships entailed; rather than assuming that a king who was called a ‘vassal’ of the pope had certain duties common to all ‘vassals’, the book asks what the duties and rights of a vassal-king were. On the other hand, this book also focuses on the practicalities of these relationships and concludes that kings and their subjects—not popes—got the most out of them. Kings and subjects could petition the papal curia and they were likely to get their petitions approved. Thus they instrumentalized papal authority and papal overlordship for their own purposes. The narrative of medieval state-building—that national monarchs had to destroy papal and imperial power within their realms to achieve sovereignty—might therefore be turned on its head: kings could actually make use of papal authority to increase their power.

Protection

This chapter examines the extension of the ‘protection of St Peter’ to kingdoms in the twelfth century. When, following the Investiture Contest, kings ceased to be ‘given’ their realms by popes, rulers sought other forms of relationship with the successor of St Peter. Aragon and Portugal were received into the protection of the pope—a relationship analogous to certain monasteries and religious orders. The kings of Aragon even received rights of exemption from episcopal jurisdiction. In the mid-twelfth century, in Aragon, papal authority was weaponized by several of the contending parties in a succession dispute following the death of King Alfonso I. Papal authority thus emerges as tool of local parties, to be used to legitimize their own positions.

Epilogue

Papal overlordship of rulers continued to have importance in the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and even up to the eighteenth century. Papal authority, papal lordship, was always most useful as a tool; as a tool to legitimize the conquest of the New World in the fifteenth century; as a tool to legitimize the conquest of the Canary Islands in the fourteenth century. Throughout this book, the recurring theme has been that petitioners—especially kings—got the most out of papal lordship because, through such lordship, they were able to instrumentalize and weaponize papal authority. The relationships between popes and kings were built and constructed mutually, not imposed by an over-mighty papal monarchy.

State-Making

When Innocent III proclaimed a Crusade against heretics in the south of France, it led, eventually, to the deposition of the count of Toulouse, Raymond VI. One of Raymond’s territories—the county of Melgueil—had an ancient (though vague) relationship with the papacy. The bishop of Maguelone used this relationship to justify his own possession of the county (granted to him, at his request, by the pope). In the process the bishop and the other claimants to the county established that Melgueil was a papal ‘fief’ (feudum)—a term not applied to the county before. Once the bishop had taken possession, he instrumentalized papal authority to build up his power against both internal and external enemies.

Martyrdom in Early Modern England

At the advent of England’s Reformation, the monarch assumed sovereignty over the English Church. This created an established state church, which was designed to counter the papacy’s assertion of supremacy. In doing so, the English Church more emphatically linked itself to the monarchy’s temporal control and its attendant realpolitik than was the case with the Pope’s authority over Roman Catholic territories, barring the small Papal States. For those in England who remained faithful to Roman Catholicism, this created an environment where some Protestants took “popery” to be akin to sedition. Whereas during Mary I’s regime, where the English Church was back under papal authority and martyrs died under heresy statutes rather than treason statutes, it was held under Protestant regimes that to act against the English Church was to act against the English state. Given the wide sway of perspectives within English Protestantism from Presbyterianism to Arminianism, as well as the old faith’s continuing appeal among many, English subjects were confronted with competing notions of what it meant to be a good Christian and, consequently, conflicting views about who qualified as a Christian martyr and what precisely Christian martyrdom involved. Martyrologies and other discourses on martyrdom were powerful tools for defining true religion and influencing the behavior of religious adherents, even if the popular representation of the martyr-figure that arises from these works did not necessarily reflect all of the views on martyrdom held by Catholics and Protestants in contemporary society.

Historical Criticism, Confessional Controversy, and Self-Censorship: Henry Savile and the Lives of John Chrysostom

Henry Savile wrote a critical dissertation on Chrysostom’s biographers for inclusion in the eighth volume of his edition of Chrysostom’s works in Greek. He was indeed very interested in the Lives of his author, primarily in the Dialogus of Palladius of Helenopolis, then only known in Latin translation, whose Greek original he took considerable pains to unearth, to no avail, in libraries throughout Europe. His amanuenses instead brought him an array of Byzantine hagiographical texts, of which he was dismissive, publishing them only in part. Savile’s dissertation propounds his criteria of historical criticism (opposing ‘ancient’, authoritative writers, such as Palladius, and ‘modern’ ones, who invented miraculous stories) and attempts to reconstruct an exact chronology of Chrysostom’s life. It also discusses events immediately following the saint’s death, and argues that the letter of excommunication allegedly sent by Pope Innocent I to Chrysostom’s persecutors, the Emperor Arcadius and the Empress Eudoxia, cannot be genuine. As this episode was much used by champions of papal authority, Savile realized that he would be drawn into contemporary controversies. He preferred therefore to suppress his dissertation altogether: an act of self-censorship which raises fundamental questions about the nature of his undertaking.

Easton and Dante: beyond Chaucer

Easton’s detailed engagement with the Monarchia (especially Book III) is a very early – and possibly the earliest – response to Dante by an English writer. It forms an important part of the debate about papal authority in the later stages in his Defensorium ecclesiastice potestatis, and it would influence thinking on the subject in the middle of the following century (for example, in John Whethamstede’s writing on the papacy). The essay considers Easton’s reading of and disagreement with Dante in the context of the Defensorium’s composition at the Avignon Curia in the 1370s, along with the possibility that during the English cardinal’s later years in Italy he and Chaucer might well have known about each other’s work.

The African Horizon

This chapter looks at the principle period of Spain's “African enterprise,” from the conquest of the Canary Islands in the 1490s up through the conquest of Tripoli in 1510. It presents comparisons of arguments over the Spanish conquests in the Americas, such as the instances in which the inhabitants of the land were non-Christians. It also talks about how the right to effect conquests had been enshrined in papal bulls. In the case of Africa, the chapter discusses how Spanish jurists eventually developed arguments that circumvent papal authority in citing historical claims that North Africa had once constituted part of the ancient Visigothic kingdom of Hispania and that, as a formerly Christian territory, Africa might be conquered by a Christian prince in a “just war.” It also describes the status of Africa's Muslim rulers as usurpers ultimately differentiated them from the “Gentile” inhabitants Spanish friars encountered in the Americas.

III. Pastor Aeternus, Liberalism, and the Limits of Papal Authority

Two dogmatic constitutions from the First Vatican Council, Dei Filius and Pastor Aeternus, are worth revisiting today. These documents were in part a response to the challenge of liberalism. Although such a retrieval of the wisdom of Dei Filius and Pastor Aeternus is necessary as a means of protecting Christ's revelation, this is not sufficient. The doctrine of Pastor Aeternus should also be developed to make more clear the limits of papal authority.