Introduction

Augustine of Ancona (Augustinus Triumphus) was born around 1270\73. He studied at Paris, lectured on the Sentences of Peter Lombard there sometime between 1302 and 1306, and returned as a master in theology in 1313–15, after serving as Lector in the school of his monastic community, the Augustinian Order of Hermits, at Padua. He became Chaplain to Charles, son of King Robert of Naples, in 1322. Augustine wrote on logic (including a commentary on Aristotle's Prior Analytics), psychology, and metaphysics and composed more than a dozen theological treatises and biblical commentaries. He completed the Summa de ecclesiastica potestate, from which the present selection is taken, by the end of 1326, as evidenced by a letter dated December of that year acknowledging receipt of the work at the papal court in Avignon. He died in 1328.

The Summa on Ecclesiastical Power is the most extensive medieval articulation of the papalist, curialist, or hierocratic conception of spiritual and temporal power earlier advanced by such authors as Giles of Rome and James of Viterbo and developed (with qualifications regarding secular affairs) by Juan de Torquemada, Cardinal Cajetan, and Albert Pighi. In more than a hundred questions, each consisting of several articles, Augustine considers the pope's power first in itself, then in relation to the acts of lordship or dominion for which it is ordained, and finally in relation to the various personal statuses making up Christian society, which all derive what perfection they have from their papal source.