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THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY |
FROM JUSTINIAN TO LUTHER. AD 518-1517CHAPTER XIV.BONIFACE VIII AND THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY
“WE declare, we say, we define and pronounce that to
every human creature it is absolutely necessary to salvation to be subject to
the Roman pontiff”. So wrote Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303). He was born of a
noble family of Anagni, studied canon law, visited France, and on coming to
England was besieged in the Tower of London by the rebellious earl of
Gloucester and rescued by the future King Edward I. He gained great influence
as a cardinal, forced the weak and ascetic Pope Celestine V to abdicate, and was
himself crowned Pope with much pomp in January 1295. He had a passionate
desire, to restore the papacy to the proud position which it had held in the
days of Innocent III, to unite the European states under his own authority, and
to rescue the Holy Land. He pursued these ends with indefatigable energy and
stated his opinions with the harsh dialectic of a professional canonist. The
result was to involve the papacy in serious disputes with other powers and to
pave the way for future disasters.
It was a matter of money which, not for the last time,
kindled the quarrel between Rome and the states beyond the Alps. In 1296, by
the bull Clericis laicos,
he forbade the levying of taxes on the clergy, taxes which had been disguised
under such names as 'gifts', 'aids', and 'subsidies'. This immediately produced
a conflict with Philip the Fair of France, which continued in spite of the fact
that in two subsequent letters Boniface softened his claim and offered an olive
branch to France by canonizing Louis IX. He met with more success in dealing
with the German king, Adolph of Nassau, whose position was too unstable to
justify resistance. And he refused to recognize Albert I of Austria until
Albert admitted the right of the Pope alone to bestow the imperial crown. But
these triumphs were more than balanced by failures in England and France.
Boniface in 1300 sent a papal envoy to Edward I, the conqueror of Scotland,
with a bull denying his right to the lordship of Scotland and declaring that it
belonged to the holy see. Edward, who was a man of deep religious feeling, laid
the Pope’s bull before the barons and requested them to send their own reply.
This reply declared that the kings of England ought not to answer to any judge
concerning their rights. And Edward himself rejected an article promoted by Winchelsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the effect that
the clergy should not be taxed without the consent of the Pope.
In the meantime Boniface had the consolation of
witnessing the Jubilee which he had proclaimed for the year 1300. It is thus
briefly described by a recent Jesuit historian: “On the publication of the bull
granting the remission of all their sins to the pilgrims who should betake
themselves to Rome, an enormous crowd of the faithful of all countries flowed
thither. It is estimated that every day of the Jubilee the number of strangers
present in the Eternal City amounted to 200,000. A contemporary affirms, perhaps
with some exaggeration, that he had seen in the basilica of St. Paul two clerks
occupied day and night in collecting with shovels the money which rained down
at the foot of the altar of the apostle”. Encouraged by the spiritual and
financial support derived from the Jubilee, Boniface entered upon a second
conflict with Philip the Fair. He promoted to the see of Pamiers, a see erected
without consulting the king, Bernard Saisset, a Languedocian who had no love for the French monarch; and he
added to his indiscretion by sending Saisset as his
legate to Paris. The legate's behavior was such that he was soon placed under
arrest. Boniface gave vent to his indignation, and on December the 5th, 1301,
issued his celebrated bull Ausculta fili in which he claims that God has put him over kings and
their kingdoms, and convokes the bishops of France to a council at Rome. He
compares Philip his 'son' to the deaf adder which stoppeth her ears. The partisans of Philip replied by circulating a forged bull which
exaggerated the claims made in the authentic document, and the king convoked
the three orders of the realm to meet at Paris. The Estates General therefore
met for the first time in the cathedral church of Notre-Dame on April the 10th,
1302, and assured Philip of their unanimous support.
Boniface held the council at Rome, and on November the
8th published the bull Unam Sanctam, which has
been quoted in the opening words of this chapter. The bull is the most absolute
assertion of the power of the Pope which was ever formulated in the Middle
Ages. Near the time of the publication of this bull, William de Nogaret became chancellor of France and precipitated events
by his audacious proposal to seize the Pope in Italy, and then bring him to
France to be condemned by a national council. Philip secured the help of the
Colonna family, a great family at feud with the family of the Pope, and Sciarra
Colonna and a large band of soldiers made their way to Anagni, where the Pope
was then residing. They appeared in the city at dawn, and, after a day spent in
pillage, invaded the palace, and found the Pope lying on his bed and clasping a
cross. After three days of confinement and humiliation he was rescued by a
crowd of his friends from Anagni and its neighborhood. He was taken to Rome,
where he was kept in the Vatican by the Orsini until his death, a month after
his capture. Arrogant and avaricious, he was at least energetic and courageous,
and might have accomplished much for the Church if he had not been, in the
words of Villani, “a man more worldly than became his station”. A fresco of
Giotto represents him publishing the indulgence of 1300, and Dante, in his
Divine Comedy, places Boniface VIII in hell with the title of “Prince of the
New Pharisees”, who fought not with Saracens and Jews but with Christian
people.
Benedict XI (1303-1304), the successor of Boniface
VIII, reigned only for a few months. He released Philip from the
excommunication which he had incurred, softened the decisions laid down in the
bull Clericis laicos,
and exhorted the Christian world to undertake a crusade. The Colonna and Orsini
families by their continual feuds made Rome insecure for any Pope, and in fact
fifteen pontiffs had already lived almost entirely away from their capital. The
papacy therefore sought another home, far removed from the ancient seat of
spiritual sovereignty, and found this home at the very gates of France.
On the river Rhone, in what is now the south-east of
France, wind-swept and somewhat unhealthy, lies the city of Avignon.
It is remarkable for its massive medieval ramparts, a
huge somber palace, and an exquisite Gothic mausoleum in a Romanesque cathedral
church. That mausoleum is the tomb of Pope John XXII, and the ramparts and the
palace were built by popes in the fourteenth century. For Avignon was chosen in
1308 by Clement V as his papal residence, and it remained the papal seat until
1377, when Pope Gregory XI migrated to Rome. Then two antipopes, Clement VII
and Benedict XIII, resided there till the latter was expelled in 1408. But the
town remained in the possession of the popes till the French Revolution.
Pope Clement V (Pope from 1305 to 1314), a Gascon with
a Gascon's love of ostentation, was by birth a subject of the King of England,
and by force of circumstances an instrument of the King of France. He was well
educated and he was affable. But he was too weak in health and character to
resist the implacable ambition of Philip the Fair, who was determined to
strengthen the French monarchy and to put the papacy under his yoke. The Pope
was to be employed to destroy the powerful order of the Templars, whose wealth
Philip coveted and whose influence he feared. And among the first acts of the
new Pope was the creation of nine French cardinals, a token to the world that
the papacy, so fiercely independent under the late Pope Boniface VIII, had
entered into the bondage which men called the “Babylonish Captivity”.
The Templars, an order which was considered to be the
bulwark of Christianity against the unbelievers, were at the zenith of their
power. This power did not only rest upon the reverence felt for the Cross whose
cause they championed, or upon the fear inspired by their swords. The Templars
had become the bankers and financiers of Europe. In their strongholds gold and
silver were kept safely, and it was they who made trade with the East possible
and profitable. From Ireland to Armenia they were a force to be reckoned with,
and nowhere more than in France. Philip the Fair, a persecutor of Jewish and
Lombard money-lenders, coveted the money of the Templars, and he also hoped to
make the different military orders amalgamate and acknowledge one master, and
that master a Frenchman. He craftily took advantage of the vulgar gossip which
put the worst interpretation upon the pride and isolation of the Templars. For
human nature is apt to suspect what it does not understand, and it was reported
that within the fortresses of the Templars appalling profanities and the vilest
vices were commonly practiced. By the king's command all the Templars in France
were arrested on October the 13th, 1307.
The Pope was at first indignant and claimed that the
matter should be dealt with by his own tribunal. Philip pretended to submit,
but the inquisitors, under the direction of his confessor, continued to examine
the arrested Templars. Many of them under torture confessed abominable crimes,
and the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, admitted that he had denied Christ and
had spat upon the Cross. Clement V countenanced the torture of the accused, but
reserved his final judgment for a Council held at Vienne in 1311.
The Council of Vienne, summoned by the bull Alma Mater
and attended by numerous bishops from all parts of western Europe, including
Scotland and Ireland, opened on October the 16th, 1311. The position of Clement
V was critical and his conduct was criminal. Philip the Fair was near at hand
at Lyons, demanding the immediate suppression of the Order. On the other hand
many of the bishops said that the Order could not be judicially suppressed
until the knights had been allowed to defend themselves. Seven Templars offered
themselves as deputies for the defence, and Clement
had them cast into prison. In March 1312 Philip came to Vienne and sat on the
Pope's right hand while the pontiff preached against the Templars. On March the
22nd Clement 'provisionally', and not de jure or by way of a definite sentence,
abolished the Order, although it had never been formally pronounced guilty. In
May, to the vexation of Philip, he transferred the goods of the Order to the
Knights of St. John, and then reserved to himself the case of the Grand Master
and other high officers of the Order. The Council closed on the same day. It
had been merely a pretext for giving some appearance of justice to the
abolition of the Templars; and such trivialities as the proposed crusade and
the reform of the Church, both of them on the nominal programme of the Council,
had been quickly expedited and dismissed.
Then for a time the fate of the Templars is veiled in
silence. But the silence is broken by the record of the tragic end of Jacques
de Molay and of Gaufrid de Charnay, Preceptor of Normandy. In March 1314 they
were brought to a scaffold erected in front of Notre-Dame, Paris. The Pope had
committed the right of judging the accused to three cardinals, and their
sentence was read before the assembled multitude. It was a sentence to lifelong
imprisonment. Suddenly and unexpectedly the two Templars cried out that they
were not guilty of the action of which they were accused, but only guilty of
betraying the Order with a view to saving their own lives; the Order itself was
pure. The astonished cardinals postponed their decision to the next day. But
the king's council at once condemned the accused to death. Towards dusk a pile
of faggots was erected on the little island in the Seine called Tile des Juifs. Facing death heroically and protesting their
innocence, the Templars were burnt with their eyes towards Notre-Dame, and the
light of the flames played on the walls of the king's palace. The next month
died Pope Clement V.
After much dispute among the cardinals, Jacques Duèse of Cahors, an elderly Frenchman, was elected Pope,
taking the name of John XXII (1316-1334). He was an eminent jurist and a hard
worker, and his pontificate tested his qualities to the utmost. There were two
candidates for the German throne, Louis IV of Bavaria and Frederic III of
Austria. The former defeated his rival in 1322, but was forbidden by the Pope
to discharge the functions of government until his election to the throne was
confirmed by the papal chair. Louis IV replied by appealing from the Pope to a
General Council and treating the Pope as one who had forfeited his chair by
heresy. The alleged heresy consisted in reversing the decisions of former popes
who had favored the Franciscans, and in condemning the view that Christ and his
apostles had no personal or even common property. Far more extreme and
visionary beliefs were held by the so-called 'Spirituals' among the
Franciscans. Excommunicated by the Pope for their schismatical tendencies, the Spirituals joined other discontented elements in the Church,
and rallied round Louis in opposition to the Pope.
Among these opponents of John XXII was the celebrated
English Franciscan philosopher William of Occam, whose teaching subordinated
the Pope to a general council, and a general council to Scripture and the whole
body of the faithful. William of Occam went to Pisa in 1328 and there conferred
with two learned doctors of the University of Paris, Marsilius of Padua and
John of Jandun. Some four years previously these two
men had produced the adventurous treatise called Defensor Pacis. This book,
though neither very lucid nor entirely logical, had quickly captured the
attention of the learned. Its theories were novel and audacious, and it might
be called not so much a defender of the peace as a declaration of war. It
treated the medieval prerogatives of the papacy as fictitious and the papacy as
a human institution, leaving the sovereign pontiff only the rank of president
in an episcopal republic. It denied any coercive authority of the hierarchy,
even over clerics, unless this authority was conceded by the people, and it
affirmed that the whole body of the faithful, or their delegate the head of the
State, ought to choose persons to be admitted to holy orders, appoint to
benefices, and authorize religious institutions. Democratic in its essence, the
Defensor Path could be forged into a weapon for the promotion of an aggressive
imperialism, and John XXII very naturally condemned, the authors of this
troublesome treatise.
In 1327 Louis IV marched on Rome, and on January the
17th, 1328, was crowned in St. Peter's by Sciarra Colonna. He caused the clergy
and people to depose John XXII, and he selected in his stead a 'Spiritual'
Franciscan, who took the name of Nicolas V. Louis placed the 'fisherman's ring'
on the finger of Nicolas, who was enthroned in St. Peter's ten days later.
Nicolas then crowned Louis. Quick failure followed this quick success. The
hapless antipope went to Avignon, and, with a halter round his neck, begged for
absolution. The absolution was granted, and the penitent died in 1333 within
the walls of the papal palace.
The next year John XXII was laid to rest in the
cathedral of Avignon. He had caused great irritation by the indefatigable zeal
with which he replenished the papal treasury. Among his fiscal measures was the
extension of the practice of demanding annates—that is, the first year's income
received by persons freshly appointed to a benefice. Dante echoed the general
sentiments of the people when he denounced 'greedy wolves in sheep's clothing'
who 'range wide o'er all the pastures'. But it is only fair to add that John
XXII did not devote to luxury the fruits of his talent in finance. Though he
lavished gifts upon his brothers and sisters, his nephews and nieces, and his
fellow townsmen of Cahors, he lived simply and worked hard, he promoted
learning, and encouraged missionary enterprise in Asia.
The two next popes, Benedict XII (1334-1342) and
Clement VI (1342-1352), were men of very diverse characters, the former the son
of a French miller, the latter the son of a French lord. Benedict XII was a
Cistercian with a strong sense of duty, and he took great pains to secure
reforms in the religious orders and good appointments to ecclesiastical
offices. Realizing that Rome could never be his home, he began to erect the
papal palace at Avignon. He condemned the doctrine of John XXII to the effect
that the souls of the righteous will not enjoy the beatific vision of God until
after the last judgment. Benedict's pontificate is also remarkable for his
relations with the Armenians. The Crusades had made Latin Christendom better
acquainted with the ancient Church of Armenia, and the Dominicans distinguished
themselves by their efforts to bring that Church into union with Rome. Many
Armenian monks were induced to accept papal supremacy. Like other converts they
were inclined to show more zeal than knowledge, and one John of Kerni pronounced the orders and even the baptism of the
Armenian Church to be invalid. Another Armenian embarrassed the Pope by
presenting to him a list of one hundred and seventeen errors and superstitions
held by his compatriots. Vigorous protests and recriminations were the result,
and the cause of reunion was injured. In spite of these obstacles, the worship
of the national Church of Armenia contains distinct traces of Western influence
to this day. A stranger proof of intercourse between East and West is the fact
that in 1338 Pope Benedict XII received sixteen delegates of the Khan of
Tartary.
In dealing with Louis of Bavaria, Pope Benedict XII
was at first no less conciliatory than John XXII had been unbending. This
provoked the jealousies of the Kings of France and Naples, who exerted
themselves to prejudice the Pope against Louis. Three embassies came from Louis
to Avignon with no definite result; and the consequence was that Louis made an
alliance, both defensive and offensive, with Edward III of England. Weary of
internal strife, and sickened by the inaction of the Pope, the Germans took their
own affairs into their own hands. At Rense, on July the 16th, 1338, all the
prince-electors of the Empire, with the exception of the King of Bohemia, swore
to defend the liberties of the Empire. They declared that the emperor's
authority came immediately from God alone, and that the prince whom the
electors had lawfully elected needed no further confirmation for his title of
king and emperor. These principles were upheld soon afterwards by the Diet of
Frankfurt, a city which was under the Pope's interdict from 1329 to 1349. His
position having been strengthened in Germany, Louis deserted Edward III and
allied himself with the French. He entered into negotiations with the new Pope,
Clement VI, who demanded such severe conditions of peace that a rupture followed
and a bull deprived him of his empire. He died in 1347 after the electors had
chosen his friend Charles, King of Bohemia, as emperor (Charles IV).
Clement VI (1342-1352) was a Benedictine and a
theologian. He boasted that his predecessors had not known how to be popes, and
he considered that a successor of St. Peter ought to live like a prince. He was
a munificent patron of the arts, and the pontifical palace was resplendent with
rich decorations and sumptuous apparel. He bought cloth of gold from Damascus,
silk from Tuscany, woolen cloth from Flanders, and linen from Paris; and in the
season for wearing furs he had in his wardrobe cloaks and caps made of more
than a thousand ermine skins.
In his methods of taxation he displayed an unlimited
rapacity, a rapacity which did not exceed the demands which were made upon him
by greedy adventurers, clerical and lay. But he wished to be clement in deed as
well as in name. In the awful plague of 1347 he was generous in relieving the
distressed. He opposed the cruel diversion of harrying the Jews and condemned
the fanaticism of the Flagellants who scourged themselves for the glory of God.
He made Casimir of Poland do penance for committing adultery. He founded the
University of Prague and he tried to stop the Hundred Years War between France
and England. The most formidable danger that he had to face was in the Eternal
City itself.
In 1343 he gave the position of apostolic notary to
Nicola or Cola di Rienzi. This man, the eloquent and vigorous son of a
tavern-keeper, took the title of tribune and liberator of the Roman Republic in
1347. Clever in interpreting the aspirations of the multitude, he spoke with
passion of the glory and the servitude of Rome, published new laws, was given
unlimited authority, and organized the police and the collection of taxes.
Intoxicated with success, he cited the two claimants of the imperial throne, Louis
the Bavarian and Charles of Bohemia, to appear before him, and offended the
Pope by proposing to set up a new Roman empire. His power rapidly declined, the
Pope denounced him as a pagan and a heretic; he fled to Charles, now
practically emperor, and Charles delivered him up to Clement VI, who imprisoned
him at Avignon.
Innocent VI (1352-1362), a Frenchman born in Limousin,
came to the throne when Rome was torn by anarchy. Hoping to restore order, he
gave to Rienzi the rank of senator and sent him to Rome as a companion of the
able Spanish cardinal, Albornoz, Vicar-General of the States of the Church.
Albornoz was active, prudent, and diplomatic; but Rienzi, after a brief revival
of his former popularity, became detested for his cruelty, and was killed by
the mob in 1354.
Innocent VI was a man of high character. He reduced
the luxury of the papal court, prohibited pluralities, and tried to make the
higher clergy reside in their benefices and sees. He protested against the
famous Golden Bull of Charles IV, promulgated in 1356, which recognized and
strengthened the power of the electors who chose the German kings, and which
ignored all claims of the popes to confirm their election, or to nominate any
one to administer the Empire during a vacancy.
Urban V (1362-1370), a French Benedictine of blameless
character with a zeal for education, had a brief but memorable reign. He was
crowned at Avignon. At the entreaties of Peter de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, and
the Carmelite monk Peter Thomas, he proclaimed a new crusade. The chief enemies
of Christendom were no longer the Arabs, but the Mongols, who devastated Asia,
and the Ottoman Turks, who threatened the whole of south-eastern Europe. The
Crusaders were able for a time to occupy Alexandria in 1365, but in the very
same year the Turks entered the strong city of Adrianople, which they keep at
the present day. And before another generation had passed they had fought with
the Serbians in the grim battle of Kossovo, where the
Serbians, without being wholly vanquished, lost so heavily that their
subjugation in the next century was inevitable. Though the crusade effected
little, the Pope had the satisfaction of receiving into communion with Rome the
Greek emperor John Palaeologus, who gained very little worldly advantage in
return for his spiritual migration.
Before this event took place the Pope, to the
consternation of the French court, had left Avignon for Rome, where no pope had
stayed for sixty years. His return was hailed with delight, and the poet
Petrarch celebrated it in the words of the psalmist, “When Israel came out of
Egypt and the house of Jacob from among a strange people”. The Pope was visited
by the Emperor Charles IV and crowned the Empress Elizabeth, thus cementing
papal friendship with the Empire of the West as well as the Empire of the East.
But life in Rome was so troubled that he returned to Avignon and died there on
his rough bed and in his Benedictine habit.
The revolt against the papacy, which was ripening in
England during the days of Urban V, will be mentioned later.
Gregory XI (1370-1378), a learned man of noble origin,
gentle and irresolute except in opposing heresy, was the last of the French
popes. He failed to reconcile England and France, or to help the Greeks against
the Turks. He had more success in Italy, which was torn with strife after the
death of Cardinal Albornoz. Florence, Perugia, and Milan rebelled against him.
Florence, a centre of commerce, art, and letters,
with a population of at least 100,000, replied to the Pope's interdict by
levying a tax on Church property and ordering the clergy to disregard the
Pope's action. Gregory then sent an army of Bretons to invade the territory of
the Florentine republic. The Bretons were commanded by Cardinal Robert of
Geneva, afterwards the antipope Clement VII. Then, in 1376, St. Catherine of
Siena went to Avignon as a peacemaker. Peace was not immediately attained, but
the humble and saintly woman, who some years earlier had become a member of the
third order of St. Dominic, did more than anyone else to induce the Pope to
heal the strife between warring nations and to go back to Rome. Knowing the
weakness of his health and aware of other perils, Gregory began his journey. He
arrived in Rome on January the 17th, 1377, and died there in March. His
opposition to the teaching of Wycliffe will be considered later.
A general survey of the French period of the papacy,
the period of the Babylonish Captivity, will leave upon the mind of the careful
student the impression that the popes were not as black as they have been
painted. They made some real protests on the side of right, some efforts on
behalf of peace in Europe and Christian missions in Asia. But their propensity
for accumulating money and their subservience to the interests of France were
obvious. The popes lost prestige in Italy, Germany, and England, and their
attempt to centralize all authority in themselves provoked jurists,
philosophers, and preachers to ally themselves with the new social forces which
threatened the Church with a reformation from without instead of a reformation
from within.
Some further details regarding the papal method of
governing the Church may now be considered.
In the middle of the thirteenth century we find that
the popes had begun to 'provide' persons for ecclesiastical offices and
benefices without regarding the rights of patrons, and Clement V claimed the
right to appoint all bishops instead of leaving the election of bishops in the
hands of the cathedral chapters. The popes disposed of benefices to men of
their own choosing before those benefices became vacant, and in 1344 Clement VI
claimed the full right to dispose of all churches, dignities, offices, and ecclesiastical
benefices. The promotion of non-resident foreigners to English benefices as a
reward for their services to the popes was somewhat exasperating to Englishmen,
but their exasperation was increased by the Pope encouraging men to resort to
his own legal courts rather than to the courts of their own country. And when
they knew that the large subsidies levied in England passed from the papal
chests at Avignon into the hands of the French army their indignation found an
outlet in the English Parliament.
The English Parliament, in 1343, forbade absolutely
any one to bring into England letters, briefs, and 'provisions' contrary to the
rights of the king or his subjects, and those who broke the law were to be
brought before the king's courts. Clement VI concealed his vexation and by
delay and diplomacy calmed the rising storm. Hostilities soon broke out afresh.
In 1346 King Edward III confiscated the benefices held by aliens. And in 1351
Parliament passed the Statute of Provisors. It openly charged the Pope of Rome
with encroaching upon the rights of others, affirmed that the free election of
bishops and other dignitaries should take place in accordance with ancient
practice, and that if certain patrons and the bishop unduly delayed in
appointing to a benefice the king should have the right to appoint. Edward III
seems not to have used this law, but to have kept it as a weapon in reserve. In
1353 the attack on Rome was renewed in the Statute of Praemunire (from praemonere, to pre-admonish), which prohibits, under pain
of the loss of all property and all civil rights, the transference of cases
from the king's court to any foreign court. A further step was taken in 1366,
in the time of Urban V. He had demanded the payment of the yearly tribute of
one thousand marks which had been promised by King John, a tribute which was
thirty-three years in arrears. This impolitic request was answered by the Lords
and Commons of England, who, after consulting with the clergy, declared that
Edward III was under no obligations to pay what John had promised without the
consent of the nation. They also threatened to oppose the Pope if he should
take canonical proceedings against the king. Such was the soil on which the
doctrines of Wycliffe grew and spread. Gregory XI renewed the papal claims, but
made a few concessions, and Edward III promised not to put in force the
obnoxious statutes. They met each other half-way, and they agreed upon an
armistice. But the fact remains that in the reign of Edward III the English
King and Parliament checked the encroachments of Rome. And this was emphasized
before the close of the century by the statute of Richard II, which claimed for
the king's court his old rights in the matter of ecclesiastical patronage and
forbade under heavy penalties the purchase of bulls from Rome (1392).
Nevertheless, it must be remembered that England, as a
part of a united Latin Christendom, shared the common law, the Ius Commune, of canons and decretals which had the same
force throughout that Christian commonwealth. It would be a mistake to suppose
that the Roman Canon Law was only current so far as it was incorporated into
the native English Canon Law. Archbishop Peckham's Constitution against
pluralities shows us that in the thirteenth century the English Spiritualty
could venture to legislate contrary to a recent decretal. But Peckham humbly
excused himself to the Pope for his conduct, and in the fifteenth century Lyndwood, the great English authority on Canon Law, holds
definitely that though the archbishop may supplement papal legislation, he has
no power to derogate from or abrogate the laws made by his superior, whether
Pope or legate.
CHAPTER XV.TEUTONS, POLES, AND RUSSIANS
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