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Biblical Authority in the Writing of Pope Innocent IV (1243-54)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
When discussing the thirteenth-century concept of Christian unity, Jack Watt asserted, ‘Too little is as yet known of the interaction of theological and canonical thought to be able to say with precision just what the canonists contributed to this development among more abstract thinkers and what they received from it.’ Thirty-five years on this comment largely remains true for our knowledge of the inter-relation of theology and canon law in the thirteenth century. Little attention has been paid to the impact of theology on canon law, and even less to canon law on theological thinking. G.R. Evans claimed, ‘Canon law glosses tend to be conservative and less theologically sophisticated than contemporary theological work.’ That comment could be seen as an explanation for how little attention has been paid to the theological content of canonical writing. However, canon law glosses were written principally to investigate law. The area of ‘sophistication’ was different. Yet, this is not to say that there was no interest in theological questions and their possible solutions on the part of the canonists. All canon lawyers had a theological education, and they cited biblical references to support their arguments extensively. This paper aims to show that the use and understanding of contemporary medieval theology had an important impact on the writing of thirteenth-century canon lawyers, which should not be readily overlooked by modern scholars.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004
References
1 Watt, John A., The Theory of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century: the Contribution of the Canonists (1965), 105 Google Scholar.
2 Evans, G.R., ‘Exegesis and authority in the thirteenth century’, in Jordan, M.D. and Emery, K., Jr, eds, Ad Luterani: Authorative Texts and their Medieval Readers (Notre Dame, IN, 1992), 98 Google Scholar. Evans’s article makes a compelling case for a change in the approach to authorities in the thirteenth century. However, as with much of the secondary material on biblical exegesis, its focus is the consideration of specifically theological writings.
3 Innocent IV, Commentaria in quinque libros apparatus (Venice, 1610). Various editions of the commentary exist; although there are textual problems and inaccuracies, these are not substantial in the extract being used here.
4 Ibid., Ad X 2.2.10 (238-9), ‘De foro competenti’.
5 Watt discussed the political significance of this passage: Theory of Papal Monarchy, 65–70.
6 Commentaria, 238b: ‘Vacante – hoc est propter defectum imperii, in iure cniin tantum imperii papa succedit.’
7 Ibid., 238b: ‘undc si alius rector alii superiori quam imperatori subditus negligens cssct in reddenda ratione, vel non cssct rector in aliqua terra, tunc non dcvolvctur iurisdictio ad papam, sed ad proximum supcriorcm, nam specialis coniunctio est inter papam et impcratorem, quia papa cura consecrat et examinat, et est impcrator cius advocatus, et iurat ci, et ab co impcrium tenet’
8 Ibid., 239a: ‘Sed diect aliquis, hoc summos pontífices statuerc pro se, unde cum non sine culpa sacreligii loquatur, non est sibi tanta fides adhibenda … sed hi si diligenter attendunt quod dicunt, veri sacrilegii culpam incurrunt.’
9 See appendix for text.
10 Chenu, M.D., Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West (Chicago, 1968), 180.Google Scholar
11 Ibid., 180.
12 Price, B.B., Medieval Thought: an Introduction (Oxford, 1992), 19.Google Scholar
13 Morey, James H., ‘Peter Comestor, biblical paraphrase and the medieval popular Bible’, Speculum, 68 (1993), 16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Although a number of writers distinguish between them, I have used the terms ‘sign’ and ‘symbol’ interchangeably.
15 Price, Medieval Thought, 16.
16 From the other point of view, note Gerhart Ladner, ‘Medieval and modern under standing of symbolism: a comparison’, Speculum, 54, (1979), 230–1: ‘Moreover, the symbolic world view of the Middle Ages cannot be understood without reference to a sacred history which was conceived as a coherent sequence of divinely planned happenings, from creation through the events of the Old and New Testaments and the salvation-oriented progression of mankind.’
17 Matt. 16.19.
18 Commentaria, Ad X 2.2.10.