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Unity and Diversity: Perceptions of the Papacy in the Later Middle Ages*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Margaret Harvey
Margaret Harvey*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

One feature of late medieval life always strikes the modern student as most strange: the Roman Church was an institution which you could, if you had the courage, opt out of, but you did not opt in, or rather, it was assumed that you were in unless you took steps to make dissent clear. Here I would want to add that being ‘in’ included accepting the papacy. My object in this paper is to discuss aspects of this situation, to ask how the papacy was perceived before opinions were distorted by the need to accommodate the impact of Luther. There are few areas where it is more important not to write history from the Reformation backwards; between Protestant polemic and Catholic apologetic the late medieval papacy remains in need of an impartial historian. Textbooks are few and detailed studies of many aspects non-existent. In this paper I will merely try to illuminate a few questions which arise when one begins to consider what it meant to say that in the late Middle Ages all orthodox Latin Christians accepted the papacy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 32: Unity and Diversity in the Church , 1996 , pp. 145 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1996

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Dr R. Britnell and Dr J. Britnell for helpful discussions of many matters in this paper.

References

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11 Harvey, England, Rome, pp. 140-3.

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24 Stump, Constance, pp. 44-8, 167-9.

25 Ibid., pp. 72-103.

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27 Stump, Constance, pp. 100-3, 270.

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29 Harvey, England, Rome, p. 75.

30 Ibid., chs 7 and 8, with further bibliography there.

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33 Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Armarium, 39, vol. 6, fol. 153r, Ex fide relatione.

34 Oxford, Lincoln College MS 117, pp. 298-441. Discussion in Harvey, England, Rome, pp. 230, 234-5.

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38 Crowder, Unity, Heresy, p. 23.

39 Above, note 32.

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42 Helmrath, Das Basler Konzil, pp. 320-1.

43 Ibid., pp. 498-9.

44 Crowder, Unity, Heresy, pp. 29-31. Several works by A. Black are pertinent, most recently, ‘The conciliar movement’, in J. H. Burns, ed.. The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought (Cam bridge, 1988), pp. 573-87.

45 Interesting discussion in A. Black, Council and Commune. The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth Century Heritage (London, 1979), pp. 215-22.

46 Monumenta Conciliorum Generalium Sec. XV, 4 vols (Vienna and Basel, 1857-1935), 2, pp. 965-6; Gill, Florence, p. 73.

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52 Sigmund, Cusa, pp. 271-2; Cusa, Concordance, p. xxxiii.

53 Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, p. 402, accuses him of opportunism. The quotation is from Sigmund, Cusa, p. 275, from Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Friedrich III, 15, ed. H. Herre (Gotha, 1914), p. 772. See also E. Meuthen, Die letzen Jahre des Nikolaus von Kues (Cologne and Opladen, 1958), pp. 78-81.

54 Pius, II, Commentarii rerum memorabilium que temporibus suis contigerunt, ed. Heck, A. van, Studi e Testi, 312, 313 (2 vols, Vatican City, 1984), 2, bk 7, ch. 9, p. 446.Google Scholar

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58 Concilium Tridentinum diariorum, actorum, epistularum, tractatuum nova collectio 12 (Freiburg in Br., 1930), pp. 131-45, esp. p. 135. See also Jedin, H., A History of the Council of Trent, trans. Graffrom, E. ed. of 1949 (London, 1957), 1, p. 424.Google Scholar

59 Torquemada, Disputation, pp. 35-7.

60 Ibid., pp. 39-40.

61 Ibid., pp. 40-1.

62 Ibid., p. 41.

63 Ibid., Augustine: pp. 32, 34, 35; Jerome: p. 40; Cyprian: p. 41.

64 Harvey, England, Rome, pp. 220, 232-3.

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67 Ibid., p. 441-2.

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70 Ibid., pp. 257-8.

71 For what follows: Jedin, H., Crisis and Closure of the Council of Trent. A Retrospective View from the Second Vatican Council, trans. Smith, N. D. (London, 1967)Google Scholar, chs 5 and 6, esp. pp. 134-15. Decrees of Trent and Vatican II, see DEC, 2, pp. 743, 921-4.

72 In general Thomson, Popes and Princes, ch. 4, and articles by Partner cited in note 26 above.

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78 D. Thomson, Renaissance Architecture. Critics. Patrons. Luxury (Manchester, 1993), for the whole subject, esp. ch. 1; Aristotle, The Ethics of Aristotle, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (Harmondsworth, 1953), pp. 109-15 for the theory; McManamon, ‘The ideal Renaissance Pope’, pp. 34–5, 39–40.

79 Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6 vols (London, 1767-77), 6, p. 336, quoted by B. Wolffe, Henry VI (London, 1981), p. 95.

80 D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, p. 48. In general: D. S. Chambers, A Renaissance Cardinal and His Worldly Goods: The Will and Inventory of Francesco Gonzaga (1444-1483), Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, 20 (London, 1992), esp. ch. 2; K.J. P. Lowe, Church and Politics in Renaissance Italy. The Life and Career of Cardinal Francesco Soderini (1453-1524) (Cambridge, 1993), esp. chs. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.

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84 Ibid., ch. 5.

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87 Harvey, England, Rome, p. 66.

88 M. Luther, Table Talk in Works, 54, ed. and trans. T. G. Tappert (Philadelphia, 1967), p. 296; Maas, C. W., The German Community in Renaissance Rome, 1378-1523, Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte, Supplementheft 39 (Rome, 1981), p. 99.Google Scholar

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90 D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, p. 222.

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94 Ibid., p. 314.

95 Ibid., p. 313.

96 Above, n. 20.

97 Trenchant comment in Shaw, Julius II, pp. 7-8.

98 Background: Shaw, Julius II, pp. 281-6, 291-2, 298-9; N. M. Minnich, The Fifth Lateran Council 1512-17 (Aldershot, 1993); idem, The Catholic Reformation (Aldershot, 1993), chs II, III and IV.

99 DEC, 1, p. 618.

100 For all that follows: Thomson, J. A. F., ‘The “well of grace”: Englishmen and Rome in the fifteenth century’, in Dobson, R. B., ed., The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 99–114 Google Scholar; Harvey, England, Rome, ch. 6, pp. 101-14.

101 Harvey, England, Rome, p. 111.

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103 See for example the marriage dispensations for kings of England: Henry VII: S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII (London, 1972), p. 66 and Appendix D; Henry VIII: J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (London, 1968), pp. 23-4, and ch. 7.

104 Procés de Condamnation de Jeanne D’Arc, ed. P. Tisset, 3 vols (Paris, 1960-71), 1, p. 193; 3, pp. 108-13.

105 Ibid., 1, pp. 176, 343.

106 Ibid., 1, p. 387.

107 Harvey, England, Rome, pp. 236-7; E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars. Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-c. 1580 (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1992), pp. 287-98; Swanson, Church and Society, pp. 227-8 and 292-4.

108 See Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 287-98, for English examples in rest of paragraph.

109 Reeves, ‘The medieval heritage’, in Reeves, Prophetic Rome, pp. 32-6; McGinn, ‘Angel pope’, passim.

110 Harvey, England, Rome, p. 234.

111 Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench under Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry VII, 1, Setden Society, 88 (1971), no. 13, pp. 123–4. For background: P. McNiven, ‘Rebellion, sedition and the legend of Richard H’s survival in the reigns of Henry IV and V, BJRL, 76 (1994), pp. 93-117, esp. pp. 100-3.

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116 Haigh, English Reformations, pp. 123-4; Elton, Policy and Police, pp. 232-40.

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