Plenitudo potestatis

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Plenitudo potestatis (Latin for abundance of violence ) describes the doctrine of full papal authority, developed in the Middle Ages , over the members of the Church under the Pope as well as over all secular authorities.

The term plenitudo potestatis has a long history and appears repeatedly in papal documents. It originally goes back to Pope Leo the Great in the 5th century, who used the term in a letter and wanted to underpin the powers he claimed. The power of the ( Roman ) emperors therefore mainly serves to protect the church, but the bishop of Rome alone has divine power of redemption and connection and exercises ecclesiastical primacy over other bishops. This led to the claim that the Pope was vicar of all Christianity. The claim to full papal power could only be gradually enforced even within the church, with the papacy in the 5th century even partially depending on imperial help. In this context, however, the first signs of conflicts arose with regard to the imperial claim to have a say in church issues. Although the position of power of the papacy in late antiquity and in the early Middle Ages was relatively weak, the idea of ​​full power was repeatedly taken up by the papal side and finally adopted into canon law .

Until the 11th century, full papal authority was basically limited to the church. This changed when, as a result of the investiture dispute , Pope Gregory VII claimed to be the highest authority not only in ecclesiastical, but (at least indirectly) also in secular questions and thus also to judge the emperor and the empire . Gregor even met resistance from the German imperial episcopate when several bishops in the Roman-German Empire sided with the emperor and did not want to unconditionally submit to the papal sovereignty. In this conflict between Pope and Emperor, the relationship between papal and imperial power played a decisive role, since both saw themselves as universal powers. From the imperial side, at least formally, the claim was made that the emperor was the supreme authority in secular questions, while the pope was this in spiritual matters. From the point of view of theoreticians friendly to the emperor, the emperor's power came directly from God, while the curial side emphasized that the pope received power from God and delegated it, whereby the emperor was only a recipient of power from papal hands. It was about the interpretation of the so-called two swords theory . This fundamental conflict determined the relationship between papacy and empire until the end of the Middle Ages.

Under Innocent III. the claim to full papal power was emphatically emphasized and reached the climax of political realization. Innocent extended the claim to all areas of life, the papal right to intervene in ecclesiastical and also secular questions should in fact apply indefinitely. In 1204 he formulated in the Decretal Novit that the Pope exercised a right to judge all Christians. He took up a central idea of ​​the decretists : The Pope is the ordinary judge of all ( papa est iudex ordinarius omnium ) in all matters, be they clerics or lay people. Thus the doctrine of the Pope as the representative of God and as the holder of full authority in ecclesiastical and secular questions was finally formulated and specified in canon law. It remained an integral part of the papal self-image in the following decades. In curial circles, for example, the thesis was put forward that the Pope was the true emperor ( papa est verus imperator ).

The development of the papal claim to perfection of power (which the Roman-German emperors never accepted unconditionally, as the dispute at the time of Frederick II and also in the reign of Henry VII shows) began in the early 14th century with the formulation of the papal bull Unam Sanctam 1302 taken to extremes. Pope Boniface VIII raised the claim to de facto absolute papal world domination and the subordination of all other powers to that of the Pope, which no one was allowed to judge. In the conflict with the power-conscious French King Philip IV , however, this concept failed completely. Nevertheless, a universal papal claim to power in the 13./14. Represented in the 19th century by various curialist authors, such as Aegidius Romanus or Jakob von Viterbo , this met with vehement opposition from both the imperial (see Engelbert von Admont , Dante ) and the French side. The full papal authority should never again be raised to this extent, let alone enforced.

The self-assertion of state sovereignty is closely linked to the defense of papal claims in the secular area (for example by the French monarchy in the late 13th and early 14th centuries) and the related scholarly discourse. Since the late Middle Ages , the full power of the monarch became increasingly important. This can be traced back to the early modern period , when full political power was now sought by the rulers in their own domain.

literature

  • Robert Louis Benson: Plenitudo potestatis: Evolution of a formula from Gregory IV to Gratian. In: Studia Gratiana 14, 1967, pp. 193-217.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Leo I., Epistula 14, 1 ( Patrologia Latina 54, 671); see. also Robert Louis Benson: Plenitudo potestatis: Evolution of a formula from Gregory IV to Gratian. In: Studia Gratiana 14, 1967, pp. 193-217, here pp. 198-200.
  2. ↑ See Heike Johanna Mierau: Emperor and Pope in the Middle Ages. Cologne 2010, p. 30.
  3. ↑ Heike Johanna Mierau: Emperor and Pope in the Middle Ages. Cologne 2010, p. 30ff.
  4. ↑ Heike Johanna Mierau: Emperor and Pope in the Middle Ages. Cologne 2010, p. 72f.
  5. ↑ Hans K. Schulze : Basic structures of the constitution in the Middle Ages . Vol. 3 ( Emperor and Empire ). Stuttgart u. a. 1998, p. 273ff.
  6. ↑ See in detail John A. Watt: The Theory of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century. In: Traditio 20, 1964, pp. 179-317, here pp. 268ff.
  7. ↑ Johannes Fried : The Middle Ages. History and culture. Munich 2008, p. 258.
  8. ↑ Heike Johanna Mierau: Emperor and Pope in the Middle Ages. Cologne 2010, p. 169.
  9. ↑ See basically Jürgen Miethke : De potestate papae. Tübingen 2000; Michael Wilks: The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge 1963.
  10. ↑ For the development from papal full power to state power at the turn of the Middle Ages to the modern age, see for example Holger Erwin: Machtsprüche. The ruling right to organize "ex plenitudine potestatis" in the early modern period. Cologne u. a. 2009, especially p. 37ff.