No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Undergraduate ideas about medieval papal history tend to take the following form. In the late eleventh and early twelfth century the papacy led a reform movement and increased its power. In the mid- to late twelfth century its spiritual authority waned as its legal activities expanded. Innocent III gave a new lease of life to the institution by extending its protection to those elements in the effervescent spiritual life of the time which were prepared to keep their enthusiasm for evangelical preaching and apostolic poverty within the limits of doctrinal orthodoxy. By the middle of the thirteenth century, however, the papacy was more preoccupied with Italian politics than with the harnessing of spiritual enthusiasm. Its power and prestige remained great until the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Pope Boniface VIII was humiliated by the forces of the French King, acting with the Colonna family. The ‘Babylonian Captivity’ at Avignon, which followed shortly afterwards, was a period of grandiose claims and real weakness in relation to secular powers (especially France), of financial exploitation of the clergy, and of costly involvement in Italian wars. The Great Schism and the Conciliar Movement marked a still lower point in the religious prestige of the papacy. In the later fifteenth century the superiority of pope over council came to be generally recognized. Moreover, the papal state, in central Italy, was consolidated to provide a relatively secure base, and popes became patrons of painting and humanism. The patronage was a largely secular matter, however, and the papal court that of a secular prince. As for the popes’ control over the Western Church, it was limited, at least in practice, by the power of kings and princes over the clergy of their territories. Above all, the idea of sovereign papal authority in the religious sphere no longer had any connection with the real forces of religious sentiment and spirituality.
1 Ed. Ryan, Christopher, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies Papers in Medieval Studies, 8 (Toronto, 1989)Google Scholar. Note especially Phyllis B. Roberts’s contribution on ‘The Pope and the Preachers. Perceptions of the religious role of the papacy in the preaching tradition of the thirteenth-century English church’, pp. 277-97, and Bougerol’s, J. G. ‘La Papauté dans les sermons médiévaux français et italiens’, pp. 247–75Google Scholar (but see P. 407, below, for what may be an interesting negative result of their work).
2 For a succinct statement of his view, see Mollat’s chapter in the old Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Tanner, J. R., Previté-Orton, C. W., and Brooke, Z. N., 7 (Cambridge, 1932), esp. pp. 284–7.Google Scholar
3 O’Malley, John W., Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine and Reform in the SacredOratorsofthePapalCourt c.1450-1521 (Durham, N. Carolina, 1979).Google Scholar
4 On the élitism note the remarks of Vauchez, André, La Sainteté en Occident aux deniers siècles du Moyen Age d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques = BEFAR, 241 (1981), p. 477Google Scholar: ‘Les foules avec lesquelles elles n’avaient guère de contacts, ne leur inspiraient que défiance: ne réclamaient-elles pas des prodiges et des miracles, alors que la seule chose importante pour ces femmes, était la conversion du coeur?’
5 Ibid., p. 474.
6 Moorman, J., A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517? (Oxford, 1968), pp. 441–53Google Scholar, esp. pp. 441 and 452-3. For papal vindication of San Bernardino’s use of the YHS symbol, ibid., p. 465.
7 Egger, C., ‘Canonici Regolari della Congregazione di Windesheim’, in Dizionario degli Instituli di Perfezione, ed. Pellicia, G. and Rocca, G., 2 (Rome, 1975), cols 112-17, at 113–14Google Scholar. As for the Brethren of Deventer (who had not become Canons), the bishop of Utrecht promulgated a decree in favour of them in 1401, thus determining a controversy about them in their favour; they were attacked again at the time of the Council of Constance by the Dominican Matthias Grabow, who appealed to the pope after an investigation in Utrecht, but was condemned and obliged to recant, which he did in 1419 (by which time Martin V was already pope). On the foregoing see Post, R. R., The Modem Devotion. Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism = Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 3 (Leiden, 1968), pp. 288–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Oakley, Francis, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca and London, 1979), p. 107.Google Scholar
9 Ibid.
10 Paulus, N., Geschichte des Ablasses im Mittelalter vom Ursprung bis zum Mille des 14. Jahrhunderts, 3 vols (Paderborn, 1922-3).Google Scholar
11 Cf. the following passage by the late medieval preacher Lochmayr, Michael, Sermones de Sanctis (Hagenau, 1497)Google Scholar [BL call no. IB. 13751], sermon 57, ‘De sancto Petto apostolo’ (incipit: ‘Tibi dabo chues reg. ce. Matt xvi (19) In ordinationibus siue promotionibus …’), final col. [edn. unpaginated]: ‘Quarta clauis dici tur iurisdicrionis iudicandi et sentenriandi in foro penitentie et contenrioso. Hanc autem et si omnes apostoli habuerunt a Christo, tamen ut essent sub Peno. Ipse autem Petrus immediate a Christo accepit omnem plenitudinem iurisdicrionis, et sic omnis eius successor, id est papa, plenitudinem potestatis habet a Christo, aiti autem episcopi et prelati in parte habent et omnes a papa. Unde Gre. in e. Decreto et se. ii. q. vi inquit: Romana ecclesia uices suas ita aliis imperriuit ecclesiis ut in partem sint uocate sollicitudinis, non in plenitudinem potestatis. Ad quod designandum papa semper et ubique uritur pallio, ahi uero prelati ceteris (cerris recte) diebus et locis, ut in e. ad honorem, de usu pal. Hanc potesta tern Chrisms beato Petto contulit cum dixit: Pasce oues meas, que po tes tas extenditur ad omnia iuris diuini uel naturalis dubia declarando, omnia iura positiua statuendo et abrogando, omnia priuilegia condonando, de omnibus in utroque foro qui sunt in ecclesiis dei sententiando, penas omnes temporales debitas pro peccatis per indulgencias relaxando, et multa alia que nullus alius potest…’. See also p. 401 and n. 35 below.
12 The application of indulgences to the dead does not appear to have received papal approval until the fifteenth century, but a crude form of it had caught popular imagination long before, to judge from a strange thirteenth-century exempium: see Little, A. G., Liber exemplorum adusum praedicantium saeculo XIII compositas a quodamfratte minore anglico de provincia Hiberniae (Aberdeen, 1908, reproduced 1966), no. 166, pp. 98–9Google Scholar. See also Paulus Geschichte des Ablasses, 2, p. 183, on the unauthorized application of indulgences to the dead. Theologians, as well as popular devotion, anticipateci the later decision by Church authority ibid.: ‘Wenngleich seit der Mine des 13. Jahrhunderts zahlreiche Theologen lehrten, dass die Kirche Ablässe fur die Verstorbenen erteilen könne, so haben doch zu jener Zeit die kirchlichen Oberen noch unterlassen, nach dieser Lehre zu handeln’—so the papacy was probably not responding to popular belief alone.
13 Ibid., 2, pp. 103-4.
14 In reality, according to the editors of the Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years MDCCCCVI-MDCCCCX (London, 1912), p. 145 (item 65): ‘The usual Hours of die Cross, “Patris sapiencia,” etc., supplemented by additional verses relating to the Virgin, beg. “Matris cor uirginium trena torum triuit.”’
15 For example, ibid., p. 144: ‘40. Indulgence of Clement V. for the gospel (cursus evangelii) of St. John. f. 69. 41. Indulgence of John XXII. (1317) for the psalter of SL Mary. f. 69 b … 45. Prayer with indulgence of John XXII. (cf. Add. MS. 33381, f. 151b, Harl. MSS 211, f. 141, 1260, fo. 158). Beg. “Anima Christi sancrifica me.” f. 75.’
16 Paulus, , Geschichte des Ablasses, 2, pp. 21–2.Google Scholar
17 Cf. ibid., 3, p. 296: ‘Kaum einem andern Papste werden so viele Gebetsablässe zugeschribeen, wie Johann xxii.’
18 Cf. ibid., pp. 300—1.
19 On Leonardus, see Kaeppeli, T., Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, 3 (Rome, 1980), pp. 80–5Google Scholar (on this collection, p. 84).
20 Urino, Leonardus Mattaei de, Sermones aurei de Sanctis (Cologne, 1473)Google Scholar [BLcall no. G. 11935], sermon ‘In festo beato Petri apostoli’ (incipit, col. 222va-b: ‘[T]ibi dabo claues regni celorum, Math. 16° ca. et in euangelio presentis solemnitaris [col. b]…’). fol. 226ra: ‘Cum enim anime existentes in purgatorio sint membra huius nostri corporis mistici, propter cari ratem cum qua decesserunt, capaces sunt omnium honorum que fiunt et que facta sunt. Et sicut stomachus omnibus membris corporis substanciam cibi distribuit, sic ecclesia omnia merita, tam presentia quam preterita, suis membris distribuit’
21 I do not know of any general work in print which draws together the various manifestations of this idea, though Michel Mollat’s influential seminar at Paris in the 1970s gave a unity to the investigations of many individual scholars.
22 Indulgences showed their debt to the early penitential system by using the language of ‘days’ and ‘years’. François de Meyronnes, O.F.M., gave a succinct explanation of what the language meant: Sermones de sanais… (Basle, 1498) [BL call no. IA. 37711] (incipit: ‘In uincula sancti Petri. Quodcunque ligaueris… Mat xvi… Duos fines ultimos…), fols 97vb-98ra: ‘… tantum diminuitur de pena pugatorii per unam diem aut per annum de indulgentia quantum breuiatum fuisset si talis per annum aut per diem penitentiam banc egisset, quia indulgencie respiciunt penam peccati secundum quod [fol. 98ra] imponuntur ab ecclesia, et illud potest ab ecclesia remitti, et cum esset remissum, non remittitur [sic] in alio mundo.’ I have not verified whether this is the sermon de indulgentiis preached on the feast of St Peter in Chains before the pope and cardinals at Avignon, to which B. Roth refers in his Franz v. Mayronis O.F.M. Sein Leben, seine Werke, seine Lehre vom Formalunterschied in Gott = Franziskanische Forschungen, 3 (Werl in Westfalen, 1936), p. 45. For our purposes it is the early printed text, with its mass diffusion, that matters. For an analysis of medieval indulgence doctrines in their relation to the history of penance, see Poschmann, B., Der Ablass im Licht der Bussgeschichte = Theophaneia: Beiträge zur Religions-und Kirchengeschichte des Allertums, 4 (Bonn, 1948).Google Scholar
23 For a list of editions, see Kaeppeli, , Scriptores, 3, p. 84.Google Scholar
24 Cf. d’Avray, D. L., The Preaching of lhe Friars. Sermons diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford, 1985).Google Scholar
25 On Meffredi see Schneyer, J. B., Geschichte der katholischen Predigt (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1969), p. 226Google Scholar; and cf. Copinger, W. A., Supplement to Hain’s Repertorium Bihliographicum (London, 1895-1902), pt 2,1 (1898), p. 398.Google Scholar
26 Decretam, C.24 q.1 c.7 (cols 968-9).
27 cuius: eius in edition.
28 Anthiecenus: sic in edition.
29 Decretum, C.9 q.3 c.21 (col. 612).
30 Ibid., C.2 q.6 c 11 (col. 469).
31 habet: habent in edition.
32 Cf. nn. 30 above, and 35 below.
33 ‘Meffreth’, de sanais, sermon 39 (xxix in edition!), the first sermon ‘In cathedra Petri ([Nuremberg], 1487? [BL call no. IB. 7381], parts c-d (edn unpaginated).
34 On Michael Lochmayr (Lochmaier) see Schneyer, , Geschkhte, p.206.Google Scholar
35 Decretum, C.2 q.6 cc. 11 and 12 (cols 469-70), both of which include the plenitude of power/partial solicitude antithesis, on which see Wilks, Michael, The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1963), p. 341Google Scholar (with further refs) and p. 387. Cf. notes 30 above and 36 below.
36 Decretales, 1.8.4 (col. 101): ‘Romanus Ponrifex semper et ubique utitur pallio; alii in ecclesiis suis et certis diebus tantum…. Ad honorem…’; this decretal, too, contains the plenitude of power/partial solicitude antithesis.
37 For the Latin text see n. 11 above. So far as I can see, the construction changes in the course of the sentence. It is also unclear whether ‘de omnibus … in ecclesiis’ should be translated ‘concerning all things, in both the fora which are in the churches of God’, or ‘in either forum, on all people who are in the churches of God’.
38 On Leonardus see n. 19 above.
39 Sermones aurei, sermo ‘In festo beato Petri apostoli’, fol. 222vb: ‘Super quo talem moueo questionem: Utrum beatus Petrus ecclesie Christi fuerit pastor excellentior quam Moyses synagoge dei rector uirtuosior?’
40 Decrelum, D.21 pars 1, Friedberg, 1, cols 66-7. The passage quoted corresponds closely, but not exactly, with the text in Friedberg. A long passage is omitted between ‘minores sacerdotes’ and ‘Simpliciter’.
41 discredo: diseremo in edition.
42 Decrttum, D.22 c2 (cols 73-4). Leonardus leaves out some bits of the passage and slightly varies the wording.
43 Sermona aurei, sermon ‘In festo beato Perro’, fols 222vb—3ra.
44 See Friedberg, 1, cols 66—76: much on Roman primacy.
45 On Roberto Caracciolo, see Schneyer, , Geschichle, p. 216.Google Scholar
46 Since a part of the passage consists of almost nothing but references, which it seems super fluous to repeat in the Latin text which follows the translation, I attach the footnotes identifying references to the English version.
47 Granari, ad Decretum, D.21 c1 (col. 67).
48 Decretum, D.21 c.2 (col. 69).
49 Possibly Decretum, D.50 c.16 (cols 184-5): ‘Tua sanctitas requisivit.’
50 Not identified. Words might have dropped out of Caracciolo’s text. Decretum, D.50 c.69 (col. 203) does not seem to fit.
51 In fact, probably Decretum, D.50 c.53 (col. 198).
52 Decretum, D.50 c.54 (col. 198).
53 Decretum, D.79 c.3 (col. 277): Oportebat not Oportebit.
54 Decretum, D.80 c.2 (col. 280).
55 Decretum, C.1 q.1 c.21 (cols 364-6).
56 Decretum, C.3 q.6 c.9 (col. 521).
57 Decretum, C.8 q.1 c.34 (col. 579).
58 Decretum, C.8 q.1 c1 (col. 590).
59 Decretum, C.24 q.1 c.15 (col. 970).
60 Sext., 1.6.17 (cols 957-9).
61 Decretum, D.21 02 (cols 69-70).
62 Decretum, C.9 q.3 c.14 (col. 610).
63 Decretum, D.96 c.13 and/or (more probably) c.14 (cols 342-5).
64 Decretales, 1.7.2 (cols 97-8).
65 Decretales, 1.7.4 (cols 99-100).
66 Clem., 2.9 (cols 1147-50).
67 This is, in fact, Decretales, 1.7.3 (cols 98—9).
68 Decretum, C.24 q.1 c.5 (col. 968).
69 Decretum, C.24 q.1 c.6 (col. 968).
70 Then canon law texts, as above in the translation, to ‘… Fundamenta i. vi.’
71 Sermones de laudibus sanctorum clarissimi fralris Roberti Carazoli de Lido ordinis minorum ac pontificis Aquinatensis (per Anthonium Sorg: Auguste, 1490) [BL call no. IB. 6040], ch. 1, sermon 33 (edn unpaginated), ‘de primatu sancti Petri apostoli et de illius eximiis uirtutibus, atque de ipsius Petri et Pauli martirio’, incipit: ‘Tu es Petrus. Uerba sunt redemptoris nostri originaliter Math, xvi ca. et in euangelio presentis solennitatis.’
72 Edith Rodgers, C., Discussion of Holidays in the Later Middle Ages (New York, 1940)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, does not try to solve this particular problem.
73 Cheney, C. R., ‘Rules for the observance of feast-days in Medieval England’, BIHR, 34 (1961), pp. 117–47Google Scholar, esp. pp. 136-44 and 147.1 owe this reference to Richard Pfaff.
74 Hauck, A., Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands (Leipzig, 1887-1920), 5,1 (Leipzig, 1911), pp. 372–3Google Scholar. He adds, p. 373, n. 1, that ‘Die Annahme der neuen Feste erfolgte nicht gleichzeitig und gleichmässig… In Würzburg wurden die drei neuen Aposteltage nicht gefeiert.’
75 Hauck, , Kirchengeschichte, 2, 2nd edn (Leipzig, 1900), p. 275.Google Scholar
76 See nn. 11, 20, 33,71 above.
77 Bougeral, J.-G., ‘La papauté dans les sermons médiévaux français et italiens’, in Ryan, The Religious Roles of the Papacy, pp. 248–75Google Scholar, at p. 249: ‘… beaucoup de prédicateurs et non des moindres paraissent plus désireux de mettre en lumière les défauts du pape et des évoques, compris sous le vocable générique de “prelati,” que de souligner la continuité de la tradition apostolique sous l’impulsion puissante de l’Esprit au travers des siècles.’ The bulk of the material in Bougerol’s extremely interesting article docs not come from model-sermon collections which we know (from surviving manuscripts) to have been widely available. He does however quote brief passages from such collections, e.g. from Servasanto da Faenza (p. 252, n. 18, p. 256, n. 38, p. 271, n. 84, and p. 272, n. 94), from Nicolaus de Aquavilla (p. 256, n. 35), Guibert de Tournai (p. 268, n. 75), and Jean de la Rochelle (p. 267, n. 71). The passage from Guibert de Tournai, notably, anticipates the fifteenth-century passages we have considered in that it is about not only Peter, but his successors, and has the partial solicitude/plenitude of power antithesis. Yet the passage is brief and the emphasis much less resounding, for Guibert then seems to turn his attention to prelates in general: Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS II 1125 (sermon incipit ‘Dilexisti iustitiam … Hec uerba Ps (44.8) possum intelligi de beato Petro’) fol. oora, ‘Habeat ergo prelatus oculos unctos collirio…’; and this may turn out to be the general pattern of comparison between sermons on St Peter in the two periods. Cf. Roberts, ‘The Pope and the preachers’, in Ryan, , ed., Religious Roles, pp. 291–3.Google Scholar