Den of heretics: Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham on Papal Plenitudo Potestatis

Abstract

Long before Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’ of France (r.1643–1715), ruled absolutely from Versailles, and other monarchs of Enlightened Europe emulated his model of rulership, Catholic popes, from the pontificate of Innocent III (r.1198–1216), claimed for themselves absolute sovereignty by divine right.1 Theirs was the most — if not the only — effective centralized monarchy of medieval Europe, having been developed on the basis of an administrative structure inherited from the old Roman Empire.2 In order to sustain the enormous weight of papal monarchy, popes began, from the twelfth century, to construct a grand theological and legal edifice of their claims to supremacy.3 They were assisted by theologians and canonists who advocated these new papal claims to untrammelled earthly authority, designated ‘papalists’ or ‘hierocrats’ in what follows.4 Unlike Louis XIV, hierocratic popes conceived their authority as extending not just over the people of a single realm, but over all Christians, and even the entire world. Moreover, they considered their supreme authority to encompass not only temporal affairs, directed toward justice, security, and prosperity in this life, but also the spiritual destiny of every Christian seeking eternal life in heaven. Papalists argued that all positive law depends on the pope for its validity, and that secular rulers and inferior churchmen may only exercise authority on papal sufferance. They likened pontifical authority to the sun, without which the heavens and the earth would be left in utter darkness, thus anticipating the sobriquet afforded to Louis. Sweeping papal authority derives, hierocrats asserted, from the status of each pope as vicar of Christ, the all-powerful Son of God — a status that no pope before the twelfth century, each fashioning himself as the vicar of St. Peter, had dared to assert. In short, hierocratic popes claimed to wield fullness of power (plenitudo potestatis) on earth, and presented that claim as holy dogma.