¹ Summa theologiae, Ilallae, q. n, art 3, resp.

² The prominent Protestant theologian Robert McAfee Brown writes occasionally under the nom de plume ‘St Hereticus’ (Writings of St. Hereticus [Philadelphia, 1979]), and Peter Berger entitles his call for religious affirmation The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (Garden City, New York, 1979).

³ Tanner, Decrees, p. 1002.

⁴ Rahner, Karl and Vorgrimler, Herbert, Theological Dictionary, ed. Cornelius Ernst, and trans. Richard Strachan (New York, 1965; 3rd impression, 1968), p. 203.Google Scholar

⁵ Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), vol. 1 of(The Christian Tradition (Chicago, IL, and London, 1971), pp. 68–120, 203.Google Scholar

⁶ Wiles, Maurice F., The Making of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries (Oxford and New York, 1996).

⁷ Williams, Rowan, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London, 1987).Google Scholar

⁸ Tierney, Brian, ‘Religious rights: an historical perspective’, in Witte, John, Jr and der Vyver, Johan D. van, cds, Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Religious Perspectives (The Hague, Boston, and London, 1996), pp. 17–45, esp.pp 18–19, 43–45Google Scholar. Tierney has himself been the most effective presenter of medieval developments favourable not only to a growth of religious liberty but to the recognition of natural rights in general. See especially his Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650 (Cambridge, 1982) and The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law,1150-1625 (Atlanta, GA, 1997).

⁹ On the problems involved in finding a place for non-liberal cultures within the framework of liberal political theory see Kymlicka, Will, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar, and Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford, 1995); Heyd, David, ed., Toleration: An Elusive Virtue (Princeton, NJ, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York, 1993)Google Scholar. I am indebted to Erik A. Anderson for these references and for discussion of some of the issues considered in this paper.

¹⁰ Russell’s review appeared in Speculum, 53.4 (October 1978), pp. 831–3. Russell himself aims at a more theoretical account in Dissent and Order in the Middle Ages: The Search for Legitimate Authority (New York, 1992). For a study that succeeds much better than others in getting inside the positions of both heretics and their opponents, see Gordon Leff, Heresy.

¹¹ Moore, , Dissent (1985), pp. 263–83Google Scholar. ‘In seeking a correlation between the incidence of heresy and other phenomena one alone holds. … It always flourished where political authority was diffused, and never where its concentration was greatest’ (pp. 281–2).

¹² Moore, R. I., The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 930–1250 (Oxford and New York, 1987).Google Scholar

¹³ For the canonists see Tierney, Brian, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge, 1955, repr. 1968)Google Scholar. The arch-curialist Augustinus de Ancona, writing in the 1320s, acknowledged the possibility of papal heresy at various places in his Summa de ecclesiastica potestate (especially in Question 5, De depositione papae) and argued for substantial limits to the obligation of Christians to obey the pope (Question 22, article 1) (Rome, 1584), pp. 129–30.

¹⁴ See my The Political Thought of William of Ockham: Personal and Institutional Principles (Cambridge, 1974). Some of Ockham’s concerns are expressed in his Short Discourse on the Tyrannical Government … Usurped by Some Who Are Called Highest Pontiffs, trans. John Kilcullen (Cambridge, 1992) and in the selections from Ockham’s major political writings translated by Kilcullen in A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings (Cambridge, 1995).

In my introductions to these volumes I argue for Ockham’s importance as a proponent, on medieval grounds, of normal but not invariable separation of religious and secular political institutions. Professor Kilcullen’s work in progress on a critical edition of the Dialogus is on the internet at www.mq.edu.au/pub/hpp/ockham/dialogus/zip.

¹⁵ Brian Tierney thus presents Ockham as an exponent of anti-papal papal infallibility in Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350 (Leiden, 1972, 2nd impression with a Postscript 1988).

¹⁶ For a concise presentation of what the early Christian opponents of heresy took themselves to be contending against, see Hultgren, Arland J. and Haggmark, Steven A., eds, The Earliest Christian Heretics: Readings from Their Opponents (Minneapolis, MN, 1996)Google Scholar. Also see Peters, Edward, ed., Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe: Documents in Translation (Philadelphia, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moore, R. I., The Birth of Popular Heresy (New York, 1975; repr. Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1995)Google Scholar; Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., eds, Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York, 1969, 1991)Google Scholar; Lambert, , Heresy, Bernard Hamilton, The Medieval Inquisition (New York, 1981)Google Scholar; and the medieval essays in SCH 9 and 21. Many of the numerous articles on heretics and heretical movements listed in the Leeds International Medieval Bibliography focus on socio-economic and political factors – on causes, that is, rather than reasons – although reasons on one side or another can sometimes be found in them.

¹⁷ For these earliest uses see Kittel, Gerhard and Friedrich, Gerhard, eds, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. and trans. Geoffrey Bromley, with an index compiled by Pitkin, Ronald E., 10 vols (Grand Rapids, Ml, 1964–76; repr. 1983), 1, pp. 180–4.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Bultmann’s, article on marevoi in Kittel and Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 6, pp. 205–28.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Against Heresies, trans. Roberts, Alexander and Rambaut, W. H., The Ante-Nicene Fathers (henceforth ANF), 10 vols (Grand Rapids, MI, 1951-74), 1, pp. 309–567Google Scholar. A new English translation, St Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies, has been begun by Dominic J. Unger for the series Ancient Christian Writers. Book 1 appeared in 1992 (New York and Mahwah, NJ). For a critical text with French translation, see SC, 34, 100/1-2, 152–3, 263–4, and 293- 4. Also see Dennis Minns, Irenaeus (London, 1994).

²⁰ The best attested title, , can be translated ‘A Treatise Against All the Heresies’, but has the special connotation of putting things in order, and is not necessarily adversative (although it is undoubtedly meant to be here). Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium, ed. Wendland, Paul, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, 26 (Leipzig, 1916)Google Scholar, Sig. B; ed. Miroslav Marcovich (Berlin and New York, 1986). Translated as The Refutation of All Heresies by MacMahon, J. H. in ANF, 5, pp. 9–153.Google Scholar

²¹ The Panarion of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis: Selected Passages, trans. Philip R Amidon (New York and Oxford, 1990), p. 5. Epiphanius asks forgiveness from the priests to whom he addresses his work ‘if you should ever find [us] speaking in anger or calling certain people deceivers or imposters or wretches, even though it is not our custom to ridicule or make fun of people’ (p. 6).

²² Another instance of retroactive sharpening of the opposition between orthodox and heretic is Unger’s rendering of the term Demiourgos differently in his translation of Irenaeus depending on its presumably distinct meanings for Irenaeus himself and the Gnostics he is concerned to expose and refute. ‘Whenever Demiourgos refers to the Gnostic creator-god, I translate it Demiurge. But when Irenaeus uses it for the true Creator, I translate Creator to avoid ambiguity. The Demiurge is the god who made the material world and is the author of wickedness, quite inferior to the supreme deity’ (Against the Heresies, trans. Unger, i, note 9 to Pref, p. 127).

²³ On this theme see Gerard Verbeke, ‘Philosophy and heresy: some conflicts between reason and faith’, in W. Lourdoux and D. Verhelst, eds, The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (uth-tjth C), Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Series 1, Studia IV (Louvain and The Hague, 1976), pp. 172–97.

²⁴ Subsequent opinion concerning the need for prompt resolution of the issues raised by Arius about the person of Christ varied. The church historian Socrates Scholasticus (c. 380- 450) thought that there would have been less controversy if Anus’s bishop had been less determined to require immediate agreement with his own position (Ecclesiastical History, Book 1, chapter 6; A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 14 vols [New York, Oxford, and London, 1890–1902], 2:5). St Jerome (c. 342–420) held that ‘Anus was only a spark in Alexandria, but because the spark was not put out at once its flames filled the whole world’ (Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians [on 5.9], PL 26, col. 403).

²⁵ Tanner, , Decrees, pp. 33–5.Google Scholar

²⁶ Decree 27; Tanner, pp. 224–5. The language of Decree 3 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) unleashing the Albigensian Crusade is still harsher (ibid., pp. 233–5). There are only two brief references to heretics between Constantinople I and Lateran III in Tanner’s collection.

²⁷ In Epistle 185 Augustine replies to the Donatists’ denial that a true church can ever persecute by reminding them of their own attempts to bring imperial authority down on the Catholic bishop Caecilian but also by emphasising the need to consider the cause for which persecution is suffered as well as the persecution itself. ‘The true martyrs are those who suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake, not on account of wickedness or the impious division of Christian unity’: Epistolae, ed. Al. Goldbacher, CSEL, 57, pp. 8–10; Letters, trans. Wilfrid Parsons, The Fathers of the Church (Washington and New York, 1947-) [henceforth FOTC] 30, pp. 149–51. For praise of imperial laws passed against paganism, see Epistle 93, ed. Goldbacher, CSEL, 34, pp. 454, 471; trans. Parsons, FOTC 18, pp. 65, 8a. See Frend, W. H. C., The Donatisi Church (Oxford, 1952)Google Scholar and, for a survey of research following Frend’s book, Markus, R. A., ‘Christianity and dissent in Roman North Africa: changing perspectives in recent work’, SCH, 9, pp. 21–36Google Scholar; repr. as selection 8 in Markus, R. A., From Augustine to Gregory the Great: History and Christianity in Late Antiquity (London, 1983).Google Scholar

²⁸ Augustine is the single most important source on heresy cited in Gratian’s Decretum (mid-twelfth century), the major point of departure for late medieval canon law. Walther, H. G., ‘Haresie und päpstliche Politik’, Concept of Heresy, pp. 104–43Google Scholar; p. 2.

²⁹ Brown, Peter, ‘St. Augustine’s attitude to religious coercion’, Journal of Roman Studies, 54 (1964), pp. 107–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley, CA, 1967).

³⁰ The Advantage of Believing, trans. Luanne Meagher in St Augustine, The Immortality of the Soul, The Magnitude of the Soul, On Music, The Advantage of Believing, On Faith in Things Unseen (New York, 1947), pp. 391–442, esp. p. 391. Iosephus Zycha, ed., De utilitate credendi, CSEL, 25.1:1-48; p. 1.

³¹ Latin text with English translation by Miiller, Liguori G., The De Haeresibus of Saint Augustine: A Translation with an Introduction and Commentary, The Catholic University of America Patristic Studies 90 (Washington, 1956)Google Scholar. Trans, by Teske, Roland J. in Augustine, Arianism and Other Heresies (Hyde Park, NY, 1995), pp. 15–77Google Scholar. Plaetse, R- Vander and Beukers, C., eds, De haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum, CChr.SL, 46, pp. 263–358Google Scholar. In correspondence Augustine had observed that two earlier heresiographers had come up with quite different numbers of heresies in the same period. Epiphanius counted 80, Filastrius of Brescia 156. Augustine concluded that ‘this would not have happened unless what seemed to be a heresy was different from one to the other of them’ (Epistle 222, Teske, p. 26; Vander Plaetse and Beukers, p. 276). He remarks on the value a definition would have and indicates his intention to discuss the question in the preface to De haeresibus; the promise is renewed in the epilogue to the work as we have it (Liguori, pp. 61, 129; Teske, pp. 33, 58; Vander Plaetse and Beukers, pp. 289, 344–5). For Coluthus and those who always went barefoot, heresies 6s and 68, Liguori, pp. 106–9; Teske, pp. 49–50; Vander Plaetse and Beukers, pp. 330–1.

³² Guibert, Joseph de, ‘La notion d’hérésie chez saint Augustin,’ Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, 21 (1920), pp. 368–82, esp. pp. 374–75, 378–79Google Scholar. De Guibert notes (p. 374, n. 5) that the distinction between heresy and schism proposed by the Donatist Cresconius (‘a heresy is a sect of those following different [beliefs, Le., different beliefs from the orthodox], a schism is separation between those holding the same [beliefs]’) was often repeated approvingly as being Augustine’s (for example, by Thomas Aquinas). Elsewhere Augustine proposed lack of charity as the distinguishing mark of heresy (Sermons 37 and 46; Contra Cresconiutn, II, 15–20 and I, 40; as cited by de Guibert, p. 374). He held in these passages that it was impossible to have charity apart from the Church, from which he presumably did not think it follows that everyone defending the Church’s faith does so charitably.

³³ Augustine, , De vera religione, 6.11; CChrSL, 32, p. 195.Google Scholar

³⁴ On Free Choice of the Will, Book 2, chapter 9, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge, MA, 1993), p. 47. Latin text ed. Green, William M., CSEL, 74 (Vienna, 1956), p. 61.Google Scholar

³⁵ Williams, p. 49, and Green, p. 63.

³⁶ Chapter 13, Williams, p. 57, and Green, p. 73.

³⁷ This is in express contrast with Cicero’s definition of wisdom as ‘the science of things divine and human’. De Trinitate, XII.14.22, XII.15.25, XIV.1.3; CChr.SL, 50, pp. 375, 379, 423–4. The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill (Brooklyn, NY, 1991), pp. 334, 336, 371–2.

³⁸ Cf.Hill, Edmund, in the introduction to his translation. ‘Augustine is proposing the quest for, or the exploration of, the mystery of the Trinity as a complete program for the Christian spiritual life, a program of conversion and renewal and discovery of self in God and God in self: The Trinity, p. 19.Google Scholar

³⁹ On the dogma of the Trinity as a solution to major theological problems in early Christianity, see Pelikan, , Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, pp. 172–3Google Scholar. For the Trinity in relation to the problems of late classical culture, see Cochrane, Charles Norris, Christianity and Classical Culture (London, New York, and Toronto, 1957)Google Scholar, especially chapter 11, ‘Nostra philosophia: The discovery of personality’, pp. 399–455. Cochrane argues that the goal of the Augustinian Trinitarian programme is ‘the integration of personality’ (p. 454).

⁴⁰ I do not mean to suggest that reasons and non-rational causes operated in separate universes. Some of what I present under the rubric of reasons is part of current research into causes. For example, it was the business of scholastic intellectuals to weigh reasons, but such weighing sometimes influenced the repression or spread of heresy in ways that were arguably other than reasonable.

⁴¹ Gordon Leff, ‘Apostolic Ideal’.

⁴² Translated by Moore, R. I. from the Chronicle of St André de Castres and the Registrum of Gregory VII in The Birth of Popular Heresy, pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

⁴³ More generally, Gregory’s opposition to simony and concubinage gave official sanction to bitter popular criticism of clerical shortcomings. ‘[Gregory’s] revolutionizing of the lay masses against married clerks … was nothing else but the proclamation of a lay strike: needless to say that the appeal found an immediate response. Upon the sanction of the papal government the masses went to lengths which make us recoil even in our time, hardened as we are in this respect’: Ullmann, Walter, Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (London, 1961), p. 222Google Scholar. Accordingly, for the early canonists simony was the worst heresy. ‘Aufgrund eines Kanons des Dekrets [C. 1, q. 7, c. 27; ed. Friedberg, 1:437-8] hielten sie die simonistische Hàresie überhaupt für das grosste Verbrechen.’ The seriousness with which it was regarded is reflected in the standard commentaries on the two major parts of the canon law. The Glossa ordinaria to the Decretum held simony to be worse than heresy. ‘Daraus folgerte die Glossa ordinaria zum Dekret die Simonie sei ein schlimmeres crimen als die Hàresie’: Othmar Hageneder, ‘Der Hàresiebegriff bei den Juristen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts’, Concept of Heresy, pp. 42–103; p. 57. In the Glossa ordinaria to the Decretals (c. 1241), one who perverts the sacraments of the Church, ‘as does a simoniast’, begins the list of those who are called heretics (Hageneder, p. 45).

⁴⁴ According to Bonaventure, ‘Heretics have the sacraments as to truth … but not as to benefit [utilitatem].’ Bonaventure, In quattuor libros Sententiarum, Book 4, dist 6, art. unicus, q. 6; Opera, 4, p. 147. ‘In manifest heretics sacrament and sacrifice are deprived of all fruit’ (ibid., dist 13, art i, q. 1; 4, p. 303). ‘One who receives the sacrament from a heretic as a heretic receives nothing’ (ibid., dist. 5, art. 3, q. 2; 4, p. 126). Thomas considered the objection that since divine virtus prevails over human malice, and since a sacrament contains and causes grace by divine virtus, therefore, ‘however evil may be the one who gives it – or if he is a heretic – one who receives the sacrament from him attains grace’. He replies that, ‘although the sacrament does not lose its virtus, it nevertheless does not have an effect in one who comes to it unworthily, acting against obedience to the church’. In quattuor libros Sententiarum, Book 4, dist. 3, q. 1, art 3c, obj. 2 and ad 2; S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera omnia, ed. Robertus Busa, 7 vols (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1980), 1, p. 492.

⁴⁵ See Ullmann, Walter, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London, 1962; repr.with minor corrections 1965), pp. 262–309.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ On denial of papal primacy as heretical see Hageneder, in Concept of Heresy, pp. 58–71Google Scholar; and in the same volume Walther, ‘Haresie und papstliche Politik’. Heresy is first declared treasonous, a crime of laesae maiestatis, by Innocent III (Walther, p. 134). As curia and canonists came increasingly to regard papal approval as the basis for secular power, love (caritas) came to play less of a role in controversy with heretics (p. 137), and there was a tendency to expand the competence of the papally delegated Inquisition (pp. 140–1). According to the eminent canonist Hostiensis (d. 1271), it was heresy not only to contradict the teaching of the Roman Church but even to oppose a papal privilege or command (p. 142). On the tendency for more and more crimes to be brought under the concept of heresy also see Hageneder, pp. 98–100.

⁴⁷ Giles, of Rome, , On Ecclesiastical Power, trans. Dyson, R. W. (Woodbridge, 1986).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ It must be noted here that medieval canon lawyers, as well as elaborating legal doctrines supporting papal primacy, also made important contributions to the idea of human rights. This aspect of canonist thought is a leading example of Brian Tierney’s ‘medieval… developments of Christian thought that might seem favorable to a growth of religious liberty’. On the canonists and other medieval thinkers involved in this development, see Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights.

⁴⁹ Bernard, of Clairvaux, , Five Books on Consideration, trans. Anderson, John D. and Kennan, Elizabeth T. (Kalamazoo, MI, 1976).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Summa de ecclesiastica potestate, q. 22, art. 1, ad 2 (Rome, 1584), p. 130. On the duty to censure an erring pope in Augustinus (Summa, question 7), see my ‘William of Ockham and Augustinus de Ancona on the righteousness of dissent’, in Andrews, Robert, ed., Franciscan Philosophy and Theology: Essays in Honor of Father Gedeon Gal, O. F. M on His Eightieth Birthday, FS, 54 (1994-7), pp. 143–65.Google Scholar

⁵¹ In quattuor libros Sententiarum, Book 4, dist. 13, q. 2, art. 1, ad 3; ed. Busa, I, p. 492.

⁵² Ibid., ad 9; ed. Busa, i, p. 493.

⁵³ Cf. St Bonaventure, who speaks of the fictive joy of heretics in dying for their errors, ‘who believe that they are dying in accord with the piety of faith, when they are dying in accord with the impiety of error, and hence they do not feel remorse but rather a certain fictive and vain joy’: In II librum Sententiarum, dist. 39, art 2, q. 2; Opera, 2, p. 912. Cf. ibid., dist. 28, art. 1, q. 3, ad 4, p. 679, where a similar argument is given to show that heretics exposing themselves to death merit ignominy rather than glory. Would this have satisfied the correspondent who wrote to Bernard of Clairvaux in amazement at the fact that heretics ‘entered and endured the torment of the flames not merely courageously but joyfully. I wish I were with you, holy father, to hear you explain how such great fortitude comes to these tools of the devil in their heresy as is seldom found among the truly religious in the faith of Christ’? Quoted by Moore, Dissent (1985), p. 2.

⁵⁴ Quaestiones disputatile de ventate, quest 14, art io, ad io; ed. Busa, 3, p. 98. Bonaventure to the same effect at In III Librum Sententiarum, dist 23, art. 2, q. 2; Opera 3, p. 492.

⁵⁵ Summa theologiae, Ilallae, q. 2, art 3, ad 2. Cf. ibid., art. 9, where Aquinas asks whether the believer has a ‘sufFicient cause’ for believing (obj. 2). He replies that believing is an act of the understanding assenting to divine truth ‘from a command of the will moved by God through grace’ (body of the article) and that, accordingly, ‘the believer has sufficient inducement to believing, being led by the authority of divine teaching confirmed by miracles and, what is more, by the inner impulse of God who invites [interiori instinctu Dei invitante]’ (ad 3).

⁵⁶ Duns Scotus, In III Librum Sententiarum (Reportatio Parisiensia), dist. 23, q. unica, ‘Utrum ponenda sit fides infusa respectu credibilium?;’ Opera omnia, 26 vols (Paris, 1891–5), 23. pp. 433–45. p. 441.

⁵⁷ For a general account of Ockham’s political thought, see my Political Thought of Ockham. On the relation of Ockham’s political thought to his earlier theological writings see also the concluding section of ‘Natural law and moral omnipotence’, my contribution to Paul Vincent Spade, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ockham (Cambridge, forthcoming). Some of the texts most relevant to Ockham’s break with John XXII and to other points discussed in these paragraphs are translated in A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings.

⁵⁸ A translation by John Kilcullen of the relevant passages from Book 4 of the Dialogus is in preparation for the ethics and political philosophy volume of Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts, ed. A. S. McGrade, John Kilcullen, and Matthew Kempshall.

⁵⁹ Dialogus, Part III, Tract II, Book 2, chapter 4, quoted in Political Thought of Ockham, p. 134. Complementing the view that temporal government as such does not rightfully have power in religious affairs is Ockham’s conception of ecclesiastical government as normally without power in secular affairs. Ockham’s most vehement critique of theories attributing authority over all human affairs to the papacy is his Short Discourse. Ockham argued on biblical grounds that papalism or curialism was heretical. Given his clearly positive conception of properly understood papal authority, we have some basis for putting his accusation that papalist views were heretical into the traditional framework: curialism chooses for itself a part of the whole faith and therefore distorts that part in making it serve for the whole.

⁶⁰ Ockham, Cuodlibetal Questions, Quodlibet 3, q. 7; trans. Alfred J. Freddoso and Francis E. Kelley, 2 continuously paged vols (New Haven, CT, and London, 1991), pp. 193–4.

⁶¹ Ockham argues in his last work that an emperor as such (imperator, inquantum imperator) ought not to involve himself in spiritual matters. He holds, however, that if the emperor is a believer, then as such (inquantum fidelis) he ought to intervene in many spiritual matters, especially cases touching the faith itself, because such cases pertain to absolutely all Christians. De imperatorum et pontificum potestate, ch. 12; ed. Scholz, R., Unbekannte kirchenpolitische Streitschriften aus der Zeit Ludwigs des Bayem (1327-1354), 2 vols (Rome, 1911-14), 2, pp. 453–80Google Scholar, at p. 468. See Political Thought of Ockham, pp. 102 and 131–3 for discussion of this and related passages.

⁶² Cf.Benz’s, E. use of Dostoevsky’s famous conversation between Christ and the Grand Inquisitor as a source of epigraphs in Ecclesia spiritualis: Kirchenidee und Geschichtstheologie der franziskanischen Reformation, 2nd edn (Stuttgart, 1964)Google Scholar. At some point liberal theory would need to address the non-inquisitorial but theologically serious concerns of post-medieval but pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic thinkers. See, for example, the article ‘Hérésie, Hérétique’ by Michel, A. in DTC, 6, cols. 2208–57.Google Scholar

⁶³ In this event the proto-liberal developments in the Middle Ages could be regarded as in some sense the authentic ones, and the research of social historians could be used to explain why what reasonably ought to have happened in fact did not happen.

⁶⁴ The welcome hints of a ‘spiritual’ side to a rights-based political theory in Alan Gewirth’s The Community of Rights (Chicago, 1996) are to be followed up in a section on ‘Spirituality as self-transcendent excellence’ in Self-Fulfillment (Princeton, in press). Ronald Dworkin in his Rudin lectures on *Politics, commitment, and faith’ delivered at Auburn Theological Seminary in October 1996 argues for a liberalism in which it is a central objective value that things ‘turn out well’ for every individual in society. The medieval period has much of interest to say about objectively good human outcomes.