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The Way of Action: Pierre d’Ailly and the Military Solution to the Great Schism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

R. N. Swanson
R. N. Swanson*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

The traditional role of the medieval latin church in legitimising warfare tends to fall into two main categories. On the one hand, there are the secular political wars, in which the church can perhaps be seen as a third force: while called on to legitimise and support partisan conflict between supposedly Christian antagonists, it could also work as a force for peace. On the other hand, there are the religious wars, to which the church was itself a party, either in warfare against infidels, or against those who, in their obstinacy, refused to recognise and accept the authority of the Roman church.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 20: The Church and War , 1983 , pp. 191 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1983

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References

1 For the divisions of Europe, see Delaruelle, E., Labande, E.-R., and Ourliac, P., L’église au temps du grand schisme et de la crise conciliare, FM 14 (2 vols, Paris 1962-4) 1 pp 19-42Google Scholar; Swanson, [R.N.], Universities, [academics, and the great schism (Cambridge 1979)] ch 2 and map 1 at p xiii.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The whole tract appears in [Johanna Cersonii . . . opera omnia, ed L.E.] Dupin [(5 vols. Antwerp 1706)] 1 cols 646-62; the definition of the solutions is at col 657. The surviving version of the tract is incomplete, having been re-edited by d’Ailly after 1409: see G. Ouy, Le receuil epistolare autographe de Piene d’Ailly, et les notes d’Italie de Jean de Montreuil, Umbrae codicum occidentalium 9 (Amsterdam 1966) pp xii-xiii. On d’Ailly, see L. Salembier, Le cardinal Pierre d’Ailly (Tourcoing 1932) and for the most recent statement of his early career and status within the university of Paris in the 1380s, A.E. Bernstein, Pierre d’Ailly and the Blanchard affair, university and chancellor of Paris at the beginning of the great schism (Leiden 1978) pp 60-9. For a general survey of his political and ecclesiological thought see F. Oakley, The political thought oj Pierre d’Ailly: the voluntarist tradition (New Haven and London 1964).

3 Denifle, H.S. and Châtelain, E., Chartularium universitär Parisiensis (4 vols, Paris 1891-9) no 1667Google Scholar; Valois, [N.], La France [et le grand schisme d’occident (4 vols, Paris 1896-1902)] 2 pp 419–20 Google Scholar; Oxford, Ballici college, MS 165B, pp 222-4: advocacy of the via facti by Jean Goulain and Raoul d’Oulmont. See also the support for the use of force contained in a poem circulating at Paris in 1381; its arguments are summarised (with references to the text) in N. Valois, ‘Un poème de circonstance composé par un clerc de l’université de Paris (1381)’ Annuaire-bulletin de la société de l’histoire de France 31 (1894) p 215.

4 For the background to this, and its opening stages, see de Bouard, M., Les origines des guares d’Italie: la France et l’Italie au temps du grand schisme (Paris 1936) pp 45–73.Google Scholar

5 Ibid pp 144-54; Durrieu, P., ‘Le royaume d’Adria’ Revue des questions historiques 28 (1880) pp 43–78.Google Scholar

6 Nordberg, M., Les ducs et le royauté: études sur la rivalité des ducs d’Orléans et de Bourgogne, 1392-1407 (Uppsala 1964) pp 84–5.Google Scholar

7 Rothbarth, M., Urban VI und Neapel (Berlin and Leipzig 1913)Google Scholar.

8 Perroy, E., L’Angleterre et legrand schisme d’occident (Paris 1933) pp 175–209, 223, 227-8, 235-6, 243, 259.Google Scholar

9 Valois, La France 4 pp 159-72.

10 The tracts in which their comments appear were both produced in 1379. For Gelnhausens Epistola brevis, see Kaiser, H., ‘Der “kurze Brief’ des Konrad von Gelnhausen’ Historische Vkrteljahrschrift 3 (1900) p 385 Google Scholar; for Langenstein’s Statement in his Epistola pacis, see BN MS lat. 14644, fol 160v. Langenstein repeated his rejection of the via facti in his Epistola de cathedra Pari in 1394: A Kneer, Die Entstehung der konziliaren Theorie: zur Geschichte des Schismas und der Kirchenpolitischen Schriftsteller Konrad von Gelnhausen (†1390) und Heinrich von Langenstein (†1397) (Rome 1893) p 142.

11 Dupin 1 cols 657-60.

12 See in particular his tract Cruciata, printed in John Wiclif’s polemical works in latin ed R. Buddensieg (2 vols, London 1883) 2 pp 588-632.

13 Dupin 1 col 657.

14 Ibid cols 657-8.

15 Ibid col 657. An erudite legalistic justification for the use of force is given by Raoul d’Oulmont in his tract of 1397: Oxford, Balliol college, MS 165B, pp 222-4.

16 On this see Russell, F.H., The just war in the middle ages (Cambridge 1975) ch 3Google Scholar; Chodorow, S., Christian political theory and church politics in the mid-twelfth century: the ecclesiology of Gratian’s Decretum (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1972) pp 228-46Google Scholar.

17 Dupin 1 col 658. The reference is to De legibus, c.l: see Parisiensis, Guillielmus, Opera omnia (2 vols, Paris 1674) 1 pp 28-9.Google Scholar

18 Dupin 1 col 658. The tag is derived from Ovid, Metamorphoses 1 line 191.

19 See n 12.

20 Despite his opposition to the via jacú (above, n 10), Langenstein seems frequently to have fallen into the trap of invoking force to be exercised by secular authorities when considering their role in terminating the schism. See the considerations of his Epistola exhortatoria imperatori; et aliorum regum el principům ad pacem ecclesie uniuersalis, and of his later letter to Rupert of the Palatinate urging action based on the precedent of the 1130s, in Swanson, Universities pp 54-5, 88-9. Similar difficulties arise with another tract of the 1380s, the so-called Tetragonus Aristotelis (ibid pp 55-6).

21 The arguments favouring peace are at Dupin 1 cols 658-60.

22 Matthew 13:24-30.

23 Dupin 1 cols 658, 660.

24 For other considerations along these lines see Swanson, Universities pp 52-3.

25 Dupin 1 col 659. The references are to the commentary at 3, dist 39; 4, dist 15, q.3; 4, dist 25. The closest parallels seem to be at Johannes Duns Scotus, Opera omnia (12 vols, Lyons 1639) 8 pp 994-5; 9 pp 220-1, 563.

26 Both citations are at Dupin 1 col 659. The Augustine is a reference to the gloss Multitudo ион est excommunkanda, пеC princeps populi, to Matthew 13:29, Ne forte (not, as d’Ailly has it, Matthew 13:28, Vis ¡mus). The Lactantius citation is Divinarum institutionum 5,1,2.

27 The generally dismissive attitude is apparent in the manner in which the via facti is referred to among attempts to stimulate discussion of possible solutions to the schism at the university of Paris in the early 1390s: Chartularium, 3 pp 614, 625. There is a brief discussion of the use of force in Jean Gerson’s De jurisdictione spirituali of 1391, which perhaps reflects the influence of d’Ailly’s earlier ideas (Jean Gerson, oeuvres completes, 3: l’oeuvre magistrale, ed Glorieux, P. (Tournai 1962) pp 6-7Google Scholar). For Oulmont see above n 15.

28 See, for example, the Conclusio universitatis juribus, produced at Paris c1394, discussed in Swanson, Universities pp 91-2.

29 Oxford, Balliol college, MS 165B, p 85.

30 du Chastenet, H. Bourgeois, Nouvelle histoire du concile Je Constance (Paris 1718) preuves, p 13 Google Scholar; Swanson, R., ‘The university of Cologne and the great schism’ JEH 28 (1977) p 8 n 1.Google Scholar