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It remains to note the contribution of Innocent IV to that corpus of
theologico-political doctrine in construction since the time of St.
Gregory VII. Here the finished canonist Sinibaldo Fieschi shows
himself, as pope, the scholarly equal of the other pontifical jurists,
Roland Bandinelli and Lothario Conti. [ ]
The theory, as it left Innocent III, he strengthened considerably, from
the point of view of its defence in an age increasingly hostile, by
insisting on the authority of the Church rather than that of the pope.
There is not so continual an emphasis on the rights of the pope's
personal authority, in this matter of the duty of mankind universally
to acknowledge the supremacy of the sacerdotium. Here Innocent IV
prefers to appeal to the divinely instituted right of the Church. A
striking example of this is his bull Agni sponsa nobilis of March, 1246
-- incidentally a singularly moving piece of papal eloquence. His
claims for the papal authority are of course not less extensive than
those of his predecessors. The pope has power to bind and to loose
universally. Not only all Christians, but all their affairs come within
his scope. This authority he has the right to exercise universally, at
any rate occasionally (saltem causaliter) and especially by reason of
the moral aspect of a question (maxime ratione peccati). [ ] Both the
swords, then, are in the Church's keeping. An important distinction
makes clear the different position of the emperor -- the man who fills
the papally created office -- and the different hereditary monarchs.
who are not, by virtue of their consecration, by any means subject to
the prelates who consecrate them in the way in which the emperor, from
his consecration, is subject to the pope.
These theologico-political theories did not meet with universal
approbation from the princes of the time. Not only the revolutionary
half-heretic Frederick II, but such excellent Catholics as St. Louis IX
of France and his mother the famous Blanche of Castile resisted stoutly
on occasions. There were two spheres especially where the claims of
pope and kings overlapped and where, from now onwards for centuries,
friction between the two jurisdictions was chronic. There was, first of
all, the matter of the: Church's judiciary power. For centuries the
Church alone had tried accused clerics; and, in some matters, laymen,
too, were answerable before its courts. The new legal renaissance
which, through all western Europe, was now beginning to transform the
organisation of the different States was bound to challenge the older
institution. Especially in France were the protests in this matter
strong.
In England the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury had fixed public
opinion on this question in an anti-royal sense, but England was the
chief centre of the protests in the second of the spheres where Church
and State overlapped. This was the matter of taxation. The great
characteristic of the external activity of the Roman Church, since the
time of St. Leo IX, is the rapidity with which, after the forced
inertia of centuries, it centralised the administration of its primacy.
That centralisation was the secret of its strength in the later battles
with Barbarossa and with his grandson Frederick II. The Roman Church
had reformed itself; it had reformed and liberated the other Churches
too. Under a succession of indomitable popes it had fought off every
attempt to enslave religion once again. But the process had been
expensive. The vast administrative machine, the endless procession of
legates and popes perpetually in motion from one end of Europe to the
other, and finally the armies and the fleets -- all these made demands
on the treasury which the resources of the Roman See alone could never
meet. That the whole Church should help to finance the battles fought
by Rome on its behalf was only just. With the increased centralisation
there spread, ever and ever more widely, the new Church taxation. [ ]
Within this elaborate financial machine, inevitably -- or
quasi-inevitably -- there had grown up abuses of a very grave kind. The
protests heard so early as the time of Alexander III, were almost. by
the middle of the thirteenth century, a permanent feature of Catholic
life. In Innocent IV's reign, especially, they came in thick and fast,
and from no country so violently as from England.
To the presence of these two sources of complaint among good Catholics
Frederick II had already appealed. He was not indeed successful, but
his intensive propaganda, the way in which he drew the world's
attention to the matter, did much to fix the trouble in very concrete
fashion in Catholic life and tradition. Henceforward the
anti-clericalism of orthodox Catholics is a steadily growing menace to
the future of religion.
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