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Exponents of Sovereignty: Canonists as Seen By Theologians in The Late Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes
G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes*
Affiliation:
Theologisch Instituut, University of Leiden
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Extract

One of the outstanding characteristics of the Church in the late Middle Ages consisted of its highly developed juridical structure. For the first time the Church was a strictly ordered legal body with, at the top, an absolute monarch. With its commandments and prohibitions it dominated all living creatures, from the highest to the lowest, both the whole community and the individual. It represented a closed, strictly disciplined, and organized corporation, with a highly developed system of law, a ‘state above the states’, in which the laymen were the ruled and the clerics were the rulers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 9: The Church and Sovereignty c.590-1918 , 1991 , pp. 299 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1991 

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References

1 Cf. Feine, H. E., Kirchliche Rechtsgeschichte, 1 (Weimar, 1954), pp. 266–7Google Scholar.

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3 Cited by Pierre d’Ailly in his Utrum indoctus in iure divino possit iuste processe, ed. Dupin, L. E., Gersonii opera omnia, 5 vols (Antwerp, 1706), 1, 641–56Google Scholar, at 654b.

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12 Commentarium in libros Sententiarum IV, d.27, 21: cited by Lagarde, G. de, La Naissance de l’esprit laïque au déclin du moyen age, 2 (Louvain and Paris, 1958), p. 333, n. 84.Google Scholar

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24 See n. 3 above.

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26 Pierre d’Ailly, Prologas super lectura Sententiarum (Brussels, 1484[?]), fol. 4r: ‘Sed reperio iterum in hac scola quosdam iuriscanonici professores, qui eciam suas decretales epistolas quasi divinas scripturas accipiunt et eas taliter venerantur, ut propter hoc eorum aliqui plerumque prorumpant blasphemiam scripturarum. Tales enim reprehendit magnus ille utriusque iuris doctor dominus Grarianus sui voluminis d. 9, verba recipiens Augustini, epistula Villa ad Iheronymum.’

27 It concerns the sermons ‘Conversi estis’, in Jean Gerson, Œuvres complètes, ed. Glorieux, P., 5 (Paris, Tournai, Rome, and New York, 1963), pp. 168–79Google Scholar; ‘Pax vobis’, ibid., pp. 435-7, and ‘Dominus his opus habet’, ibid., pp. 218-29.

28 Ed. Glorieux, 3 (1962), pp. 113-202.

29 ‘Contra curiositatem studentium’, ed. Glorieux, 3, p. 242.

30 ‘De vita spirituali animae’, ed. Glorieux, 3, pp. 128-30.

31 ‘Pax vobis’, ed. Glorieux, 5, p. 440: ‘Erubescimus cum sine lege loquimur’ is a well-known dictum; cf. Bartolus, Comm. I ad Auth. 3, 3, 3 (= Nov. 18.5); Comm. I ad Cod. Just. 6, 20,19.

32 For a more detailed survey of Gerson’s ideas about theology and canon law see Meyjes, Posdiumus, Jean Gerson. Zijn kerkpolitiek en ecclesiologie = Kerkhistorische Studiën behorende bij hel Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 19 (‘s-Gravenhage, 1963), pp. 181ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Jean Gerson el l’assemblée de Vincennes (1329). Ses conceptions de la juridiction temporelle de l’Église = Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 26 (Leiden, 1978), pp. 81ff.

33 Pierre d’Ailly, Utrum indoctus in iure divino possi! ¡uste processe, p. 646: ‘Argumenrum secundum pro: “quod sedes apostolica plures promovet legistas et canonistas quam theologos ad ecclesiae praelaturas.”’