Renaissance Ecclesiology: A Study of Papal Power

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Appears in Fall 1975, Vol. I, No. 2

Papal power is often misunderstood in today’s world. In an effort to end the confusion, Jeffrey A. Mirus analyzes the treatises of the pro-papal authors of the Renaissance period. In so doing he not only sheds light on the nature of authority in the Catholic Church, but he specifically points out the importance of a hierarchical structure in determining the Church’s character and role in the process of human sanctification.

Some study of papal authority would seem to be called for considering the challenge to that authority in our own day. Moreover, the concern about the nature of religious authority in general which characterizes the modern world makes an inquiry into the nature of the Catholic Church as an authoritative institution of crucial importance. Perhaps one of the most rewarding ways to study this whole question is to examine the quarrel between popes and councils in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a quarrel which centered on the distribution of power and authority within the Church.

The claim of councils to be superior to popes in this period grew in part from a crisis in Church leadership—the Great Western Schism. After 1378, for about 40 years, there was at least one anti-pope at all times. This difficulty arose when the French cardinals became discontented with papal policy shortly after the papacy’s return from exile in Avignon. These cardinals returned to the French city, proclaimed the Roman Pope invalidly elected, and substituted a rival pope of their own making. The resulting schism legitimately confused many Catholics, notably St. Vincent Ferrer, and gave urgency to the need to find some way of restoring clear lines of authority in the Church.

Therefore it was not surprising that many bishops, canonists and theologians argued that a general council should be called to restore unity—as well as to make peace among the Christian princes, launch a crusade against the menacing Turks, and initiate a much needed reform of the Church. In any case, relying on the old juristic arguments of Jean Gerson and others, some thinkers began to develop a theory of conciliar power in response to the need for a practical solution.

As both the need and the theory grew, the bishops of Western Europe began to take steps to call a council. The first major council of this period materialized at Pisa in 1409. There the fathers attempted to end the schism by declaring both popes deposed and electing a third candidate of their own. The result was that for the next eight years there were three popes, and it was not until a second council at Constance in 1417 that the bishops succeeded in deposing the two anti-popes (one created at Pisa) and persuading the legitimate pope to resign for the good of the Church. A new legitimate pope, Martin V, was then elected, which ended the schism.

Ideally, this would have been the end of the conciliar movement. Conscious of their success, however, ideological conciliarists emerged who argued not only that councils should be called regularly, but also that when in session they should be the supreme power in the Church. Thus when a council was called by Pope Eugenius IV at Basle in 1431, a long struggle ensued between pope and council over the attempt of the bishops to seize the rule of the universal Church. Only after eight years did Rome emerge victorious, her difficulties compounded by the opposition of the German emperor, who, like other rulers of that time, sought to play one side against the other in accordance with his own selfish interests. At any rate, a new council of Basle threatened ecclesiastical stability in 1482, and a serious challenge to papal power arose again at Pisa in 1511 with the conciliarists being supported this time by the King of France.

During these quarrels over authority in the Church, it was the Dominican Order which emerged as the foremost defender of papal power. Building on the arguments of fourteenth century papalists, the Dominicans developed a full range of answers to the fifteenth and early sixteenth century conciliarists. (1) Moreover, half of the leading Dominican defenders contributed substantially to a fuller development of ecclesiology in which the nature and exercise of power and authority within the Church was clearly defined. The precise nature of this problem is perhaps more clearly seen in the writings of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries than in contemporary literature simply because nearly all men believed that the Catholic Church was both the true congregation of the Christian faithful and a unique mystical body with Christ as its head. The quarrel which was carried on in the conciliar age did not call into question the divine character of the Church. Rather, the quarrel was over the distribution of power and authority among the various parts of that mystical body which all believed the Church to be. (2) A consideration of the views expressed, and an explanation of the Dominican ecclesiology, then, will serve to illuminate much of the darkness enveloping the question of authority within the Church today.

I. DIVERGENT VIEWS OF POWER IN THE CHURCH

Although the leading theories behind the conciliarist position were developed mainly before 1420, the leading proponent of conciliarism in the fifteenth century was Joannes de Ragusio at the Council of Basle. (3) Joannes argued quite simply that when Christ gave the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven to Peter (Matt. 16:19), Peter received them only as a representative of the whole Church, to which the keys were really meant to be committed. (4) Therefore Joannes believed that only the whole Church can act securely in the promise of Christ, and, indeed, that power in the Church derives from the whole body of the faithful. (5) In explaining the role of the popes, Joannes and all the conciliarists argued that the pope exercises the power of the keys as a specific gift from the whole Church for its own well-being. As the whole is greater than its parts, the pope is not superior to the entire Church but is only its greatest member. (6) On the other hand, a general council can be said to represent the entire Church, according to Joannes, and so the fullness of power of the keys (plenitudo potestatis) can be exercised by such a council, (7) which includes the pope as an equal voting member. For the conciliarists, the council, like the whole Church, became a superior mystical body united directly with Christ, (8) a body which enjoys all the promises of Christ for the protection of the Church unto the salvation of souls.

In all this it is clear that for the conciliarists the papacy is a purely political or administrative office, with no inherent spiritual power. The council, on the other hand, is a true mystical body which, when united, is far more powerful than the mere political hierarchy which functions normally to make Church operations more efficient. To state the case in terms of the overall nature of the Church, it may be said that in the conciliar conception of the Church, perfection of being and acting both reside in the universal council as absolutely representing the mystical nature of the congregation of the faithful united to Christ.

This was the point of view, then, which the Dominican papalists of the Renaissance had to combat. Before examining their work, however, it will be helpful to turn to the traditional view of papal authority as expressed especially by the papalists of the preceding century. It is this tradition upon which the Dominicans built.

Before the Great Western Schism, papal writers were mostly concerned to protect the popes from the claims of powerful kings and emperors. Even in that time, however, a certain episcopism, or the view that each bishop is a totally independent vicar of Christ in his own diocese, came to the attention of the papal champions. The most important writer on internal problems of Church authority was Petrus de Palude, also a Dominican. He wished to determine whether the pope was the preeminent figure in the Church by a unique gift of Christ, or merely by the concession of the people. It was this question which he tried to answer in his work. (9)

After showing the logic of having one ruler in the Church rather than many, Petrus argued specifically that Christ had given power to the bishops over the priests, and likewise power to the pope over the bishops. As proof he cited the fact that Christ gave power to Peter, the Apostles and the seventy-two disciples in turn. (10) Petrus further argued that Christ’s concession of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to Peter (Matt. 16:19) made Peter a vicar general for Christ on earth, and, moreover, Christ’s prayer that Peter would not defect in faith (Luke 22:32) guaranteed a certain firmness of faith which would make the Roman Church, where Peter resided, the true Church without spot or wrinkle. (11) Finally, Petrus argued that these gifts to Peter, like those to Adam, were intended for both Peter and his successors in the Roman See. (12) He thus established papal power as a gift of Christ rather than a concession of the people.

Petrus described this power as giving preeminence to the pope in ecclesiastical administration and spiritual jurisdiction, the power to hear appeals from the whole Church, and the power to depose inferiors. This power was seen to exceed that in the rest of the Church, and therefore not to be derived from the Church, even though the other ranks of the Church have their own specific powers as well. Thus the pope was viewed as being above judgment by the rest of the Church. In conclusion, it may be said that the perfection of the Church’s nature for Petrus and the other fourteenth century papalists lay in the proper coordination of the various Christ-given powers distributed among her members, a coordination performed by the pope by virtue of his preeminent Christ-given jurisdictional authority, to which anyone can appeal should contention arise.

II. TOWARD A FULLER UNDERSTANDING OF PAPAL POWER

Such were the arguments available to the Renaissance Dominicans when they took the field against the dangerous conciliar attack. It is obvious from their treatises that they viewed their work as having two essential dimensions: first, to protect the popes successfully by refuting conciliar claims; second, to develop a full-blown positive theory of papal power which would put the problem to rest once and for all. With these two purposes in mind, the Dominican defenders laid their foundation on the firm ground of their fourteenth century predecessors. As a corner stone, the Dominicans established that Peter was given the fullness of power (plenitudo potestatis) in the commission of the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven by Christ. (13) This gave Peter full sacramental orders and full direct spiritual jurisdiction in the whole Church. According to the papalists this power was established also in Christ’s grant that Peter might bind and loose in heaven and earth (Matt. 16:19). The treatise writers saw the fulfillment of Christ’s promises of power to Peter in the commission of the flock to Peter’s care in John 21:15-17. (14) It remained to show that Peter had successors who carried on his power.

One of the chief arguments for successors was drawn from the same text (John 21:15-17). Christ here told Peter to “feed my sheep.” The word my was taken by the papalists to show that the flock belonged to Christ, and that Peter was being established here as a vicar. When one vicar dies, they argued, the assumption is that another replaces him until Christ returns to take charge personally once again. These arguments also point out that the popes as vicars are subject only to the Pastor whom they are commissioned to replace—Christ himself. (15) The Dominicans also argued that since Christ promised to build the Church upon Peter (Matt. 16:18), his Church—the Roman See—is universal, and whoever inherits it inherits episcopal jurisdiction over the whole Church. (16) Moreover, the Roman Church, built upon Peter after his confession of faith in Christ, and governed under the same Peter whose faith Christ prayed for, was held to be inerrant down through the centuries as well. (17)

Having reviewed the basic arguments, the Renaissance papalists proceeded to prepare for their tremendous ecclesiological contribution. Locked in battle with the conciliarists, they asserted that Christ’s promise to build the Church upon Peter the rock made Peter and the popes the very foundation of the Church itself. This they did to prove the essential unity and universality of the Roman Church against the claims to power of the councils. (18) Two of the writers, Alberto Pasquali and Raphael de Pornasio, took this occasion to point out something even more profound—that the power of the keys made Peter not only the foundation but also the constructor of the Church, for all of the papalists agreed that it is the Petrine power which extends the Church by explicating articles of faith, expounding the natural law and governing the sacraments. (19) The Dominicans further argued that Peter was indeed the head of the Church, both as a monarchical figure in the political structure of the Church, and as the vicar of the mystical body with full extrinsic or jurisdictional power and spiritual authority. As the Dominican Giovanni di Montenero proclaimed to the Greeks at the Council of Florence in 1439, (20) Peter was head in both reverence and power. Finally, the Dominicans once again argued that anything said about Peter could also be applied to all the popes. For this they gave the new proof that since Peter’s power was so obviously necessary to the Church, Christ must have intended successors, who indeed receive the fullness of power upon election to the Roman See. (21)

With this the Dominican defenders of the papacy had already refuted the basic conciliar objections to papal authority. Moreover, they had hinted at the necessity of papal authority to the survival of the Church. Their unique contribution to ecclesiology could now be made: five of the Dominicans proceeded to show that the life-giving power in the Church depended precisely on the Church’s hierarchical structure with the pope at the top. Taking the analogy of the pope as a head, for example, the papalists Tommaso de Vio, Juan de Torquemada and Alberto Pasquali all argued that what is given to the head is only given to the body through the head, and just as the body derives all power from the head, the Church derives all power from the pope. (22)

This argument was, of course, a direct response to the corporate theory of the conciliarists who argued that power resides in the body of the faithful who are merely represented by the head. But the argument went beyond mere analogy with a human body. As Juan de Torquemada clearly pointed out, the idea of the pope as a head is an illustration of something deeper. For just as the head influences the body, argued Juan, so the first member of the hierarchy influences the others. Juan meant to show simply that the plenitudo potestatis is found in the apex of the hierarchy, and that it does not exist in the other levels unless it is derived. (23) At least four other Dominicans reached the same conclusion. (24)

III. HIERARCHY: THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAL

The idea of hierarchy expressed here is one which requires careful definition, for hierarchy can take many forms. For the conciliarists, hierarchy in the Church was a matter of administrative arrangement, while for the early papalists it was an essential feature of the Church. It remained to the Renaissance thinkers to develop the nature of the flow of power within the hierarchy in order to reveal the impossibility of conceiving of the Church as a life-giving society without it. The Dominicans found a basic framework for their discussion in hierarchy as defined by Neo-Platonic philosophy.

It was pseudo-Dionysius who brought the Neo-Platonic conception of hierarchy into the Christian tradition, about the sixth century. This conception included three interacting factors, named in Greek. The first, or Thesmos, is the divinely ordained law of the universe which gives ontological order to all of creation with the good distributed in ranks and degrees. The second, or Logos, is the idea which participates in the all-perfect good, but generates degrees which are capable of being perfected proportionately to their place in the hierarchy, thus giving definition to the various hierarchical ranks. The third, or Eros, extends each degree or rank limited by Logos beyond itself and upward to the next higher good and toward the highest good. Eros establishes rapport within the hierarchy. Thus in the pseudo-Dionysian hierarchy of creation, the life of each rank is both a property and a goal. Each degree strives for the highest good, but at the same time it finds immediate perfection in and must strive toward the apex through the next higher degree. Without this, disorder enters the universe.

Neo-Platonic philosophy is exceedingly complex, fluid and difficult to define. In practical terms, pseudo-Dionysius argued that bishops transmit duties and illumination to priests, and priests to laity, in a triadic ecclesiastical order. (25) Therefore, for the Dominicans this philosophical view tied in nicely with what they were trying to prove about the Church. Drawing Aristotelian philosophy into the discussion, they enlarged the pseudo-Dionysian hierarchy to include a fourth level—the pope at the apex, immediately above the bishops. In Aristotelian philosophy, with its dynamic, mobile system, the Prime Mover moves all others. God is conceived as a supreme governor actively directing all of creation. Thus, the papalists found in Aristotle a clear way of expressing the monarchical role of the pope in directing the entire Church.

The unique contribution of the Renaissance papalists, however, was their use of a fusion of Platonic and Aristotelian thought in developing their ecclesiology. (26) Convinced of papal supremacy by their very faith, these Dominicans proceeded to appropriate the best philosophical thought to their purpose of clarifying their own ideas and expressing them in a logical way. By their fusion of Plato and Aristotle, the active power of the apex of the hierarchy and the origins and inter-relationships of the various ranks could all be dealt with in a unified system. It is no surprise that the Renaissance Dominicans should have made use of such a system, for Neo-Platonic thought was popular in their day while Aristotelian thought had been a foundation block of their traditional educational program. Moreover, in purely metaphysical terms, the chief synthesizer of Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy in a specifically Christian system had been the Dominicans’ most venerated Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas.

In working out his metaphysics from many materials, St. Thomas included elements of both great classical systems. For Thomas, God is perfect because he contains the perfection of all, and all perfection in creatures descends from God just as the sun diffuses its rays. Thus all creatures participate in the goodness of God, but they do so in an ascendant direction. Their participation is deficient and imperfect, always striving for union upward with the First All-Perfect Being. This Neo-Platonic aspect of St. Thomas’ system, which illustrates the perfection of the creature through grace very nicely, tends to make God appear as a passive Being which inevitably radiates subsidiary beings in an unwilled cosmos. But St. Thomas knew from Scripture that God was an active creator, an intelligent and free artisan. This truth obviously fit the Aristotelian conception of God as prime mover quite well. Therefore, in Thomist thought, there is a fusion between the two: freely created beings with distinct natures depend on participation in God’s grace precisely for their maintenance as beings. Creation and participation are united, and the hierarchical arrangement of the universe works not as a means of creation, but as a means of sustaining the creature’s life and effecting ascent to union with God. (27)

The possibilities of this line of thought for ecclesiology proved to be enormous, for all agreed that the Church was precisely a society which embodied the means by which men reach God. The immediate suggestion is that the Church involves a hierarchy. St. Thomas himself, although he never wrote a specific work in defense of papal power, did develop his theories with regard to the Church’s expression of truth. He argued that God gave truth to the Church and ordained that it should be communicated in a hierarchical order from the Pope. (28)

IV. HIERARCHY: THE DOMINICAN CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH

The Renaissance Dominicans naturally came across scattered references to papal power in their study of St. Thomas’ writings, notably the Quodlibets, the Summa and the works against the Greeks and Gentiles. As the conciliar attack increased in the 1430’s, Juan de Torquemada found it useful to draw up a collection of the statements of St. Thomas on papal authority. (29) These statements provide some basis for further development. Basically, St. Thomas was quoted as saying that it belongs to the pope to determine faith, for while Christ is indeed the head of the Church intrinsically through grace, the pope is the head extrinsically through his directing authority. Moreover, Juan quoted Thomas to say that although the pope is not necessary to the existence of other prelates, who all take their power from the Apostolic Succession, nonetheless the power of the prelates derives from the pope in the sense that only the pope, with the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, can govern the power in the service of the Church. (30) Again, since the Church was conceived as the means by which men reach God, the hierarchical implications are tremendous.

Five Dominicans—Giovanni Casanova, Raphael de Pornasio, Juan de Torquemada, Alberto Pasquali and Tommaso de Vio (Cardinal Cajetan)—built upon all this to develop a full-blown hierarchical conception of the Church. They began by reaffirming that the fullness of power is transmitted from God to the Pope by the commission of Christ. (31) As Juan de Torquemada expressed it:

Just as in the celestial hierarchy the fullness and total perfection of power resides in one sole hierarch, so too in the ecclesiastical hierarchy it is in the Roman pontiff, who alone is called in the fullness of power, that the highest and supreme fullness of ecclesiastical power is placed. (32)

From this the Dominicans naturally went on to argue that all grades, ranks or dignities in the Church must depend on the pope. Raphael de Pornasio stated clearly that “the order and grade of the ecclesiastical dignity of all depends immediately on the pope, as the Apostolic Order on Christ.” And Giovanni Casanova took pains to show that it pertains to the pope “to order the whole Church and its grade and status.” (33)

A study of the ideas of these men makes it clear that it is because the pope orders and governs the various grades that all power depends on the pope. The nature of the power upon which all others depend is specifically jurisdictional. In this the Dominicans follow the fourteenth century distinction between jurisdiction and orders, for all bishops are equal in orders. Jurisdiction, however, is derived from the pope, ultimately from Peter—the foundation and constructor of the Church. The pope has this power by virtue of his episcopacy in the Roman See, which, as the Church historically built upon Peter, is clearly the universal see. As Raphael de Pornasio put it, the Roman Church instituted all other grades and dignities and is, therefore, the mother of all other churches. (34)

The Dominicans’ conception of the dependency of grades and dignity within the Church on the pope reveals the close connection they saw between the respective powers of jurisdiction and orders. In philosophical terms, it might be argued that the jurisdictional power, which gives structure and form to the Church, radiates the Platonic degrees within which the Aristotelian potency of sacred orders must be enacted, and outside of which the exercise of power in the quest for perfection is not possible. In ecclesiological terms this means exactly what the Dominicans argued: the special gifts which Christ has freely fashioned in his ministers must play their part in the process of salvation through the hierarchical structure of the Church. Indeed, outside that structure it is impossible to exercise power in such a way that it gives life to the community by drawing it closer to God. Hence the papalist Dominicans felt justified in concluding their arguments by stating flatly that the power of all prelates derives from and depends on the pope. (35)

One point which should not be forgotten here is that the Dominicans were moved to their task by the threat posed by the various councils. Therefore more than anything else they emphasized the dependence of general councils on the pope. Tommaso de Vio specifically argued that nothing can make a council perfect without the pope, and all agreed that conciliar law takes effect only with papal backing. [36] These papalists went on to offer images by which the relationship between pope and council can be illustrated. They argued that the whole Church receives the power of the keys from the pope just as the stars receive light from the sun (as was then believed), which illustrates both the nature of power and the source of unity in the Church. (37) By far the strongest image, however, was given by Casanova. He said that the power from God in the Church is received mediately through the Petrine power, just as we all receive our humanity from God mediately through Adam. In this image can be seen the profound difference between the Renaissance Dominican papalist view and that of their fourteenth century predecessors. The earlier writer, Petrus de Palude, had said that there ought to be one supreme power over the Church just as one Adam had dominion over all nature, or again, that just as Adam had successors, so too should Peter. (38) The old images are adequate to illustrate papal superiority and the Petrine succession, and the Renaissance papalists certainly accepted them. But the new image, created one hundred years later, established a full ecclesiology around that superiority and that succession. The Church was seen by Casanova and the others as deriving all power through the pope as men derive their distinctively human nature through Adam. The development is remarkable for its clarity.

V. CONCLUSIONS

The upshot of the entire discussion is clear. Tommaso de Vio said that papal power must be the container of all power since it is the cause of all, and Juan de Torquemada added that since the power of jurisdiction of the other prelates is derived, “the power of the pope cannot be compared to the particular powers of the other prelates.” Raphael de Pornasio gave insight into the importance of this when he argued that only that Church which is in union with and subject to the pope—and therefore does not fall away from its divine institution—should be called the true Catholic Church. Giovanni Casanova bore this out when he suggested that if the pope is removed from the Church, the Church is eventually destroyed because its unity as a life-giving body of Christ is broken. Alberto Pasquali argued much the same thing when he said the pope cannot be forcibly separated from the rest of the Church without destroying Christendom. (39) It is clear that the Renaissance Dominican papalists developed a fuller hierarchical conception of the Church in drawing on traditional sources. In their conception, the pope is the apex of a hierarchy, from which emanate all other ranks in the ecclesiastical order. The pope can thus exercise immediate descending power over every level. Further, the Dominicans followed St. Thomas in suggesting that all creation finds its way to God through the next higher hierarchical level, in other words that each level of the hierarchy—laymen, priests, and bishops—must take its religious character from the level above. For the Dominicans, then, the Church enjoys her divine character by virtue of her hierarchical structure with the pope at the top. Without this hierarchy, they argued, the Church would lose her very nature as a supernaturally oriented society giving life abundantly until the end of time.

 

NOTES:

1. Giovanni Casanova, Raphael de Pornasio, Juan de Torquemada, Giovanni di Montenero, Joannes Leone, Henricus Institoris, Cyprianus Benetus, Alberto Pasquali, Tommaso de Vio, Sylvestro Prierias.
2. Key Scripture refs: Rom. 12:3-8; I Cor. 12:27-28.
3. See Patet ex precedentibus (Urbani Cod. 49, 55 cart misc XV, Bib. Fransoniane, Genoa) f360c2ff.
4. Ibid., esp. f363c2. Also, f369vc1.
5. Ibid., f361c1.
6. Ibid., f364c2.
7. Ibid., f367vc1.
8. Ibid., f367vc2-368vc1.
9. Tract. de Potestate Papae, ed. Stella, Zurich, 1966.
10. Petrus de Palude, esp. p. 182. (See note 9).
11. Ibid., 140-1; 190-1.
12. Ibid., 186. Also 128-135.
13. I cite only those authors whom I emphasize in the article. Raphael Pornasio, Tract. Magistri Raphaelis De Potestate Concilii ad Rev. Dom. Card. tt. S. Sixti (Bib. Ambrosiana, Milan, MS Z95 sup. s. XVI in), f14 16, 17v, 19-19v; Giovanni Casanova, De Potestate Ecclesiae et Concilii Generali (Bib. Nazionale Marciana, Venice, MS Lat. III 77=2206) f155c1, 162vc1, 164c1, 170ac1, 174c2, 177c1; Juan de Torquemada, Notastis Teneo Superiori (Vat. Lat. 2580 in Bib. Vaticana) f13vc2, 17vc1, 18c1, 18vc2, 20c2, 20vc1, 22c1; Alberto Pasquali, De Potestate Pape Super Concilium (Vat. Lat. 11551 in Bib. Vaticana) f7v, 8-10v, 13v-14, 15, 22v, 27, 30, 40, 78v, 89; Tommaso de Vio, Tract. de Comparatione Auctoritatis Papae et Concilii (J. Th. Rocaberti, ed. Bib. Maxima Pontificis, XIX) 446, 460.
14. E.g., Pasquali (above) f36-36v & Raphael (Responsio ad Rationes Basiliensis Concilii, same M.S. as above) f24v.
15. E.g., Casanova (as in n. 13), f155c1, 155c2, 156c2, 161vc2, 160c2, 162vc2, 174vc1, 175c1; Pasquali (see n. 13) f3v, 47-8, 55-55v, 61v, 75-6, 92, 298, 4v, 5v, 29, 32v, 43f, 45; Tommaso (see n. 13) 447-59; Juan (in Rocaberti, n. l3, v. XIII) Summa de Ecclesia, 322, 326-7, 290.
16. E.g. Casanova (see n. 13), f155c1, 174vc2, 160c2, 170avc1, 175vc1; Pasquali (n. 13), f5v, 12v, 25-25v, 37-37v, 58v-60, 85; Raphael (n. 13), f14, 15v, 17v-18; Juan (n. 13), f14vc2, 22c1, 16vc2; Tommaso (n. 13), 458, 448, 467.
17. It was the “communiter opinio fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum” that the pope, when acting as head of the Church, cannot err in faith. See Sylvestro Prierias, Errata et Argumenta Martini Lutheri Recitata . . ., in J. Th. Rocaberti (n. 13) XIX, 281-2.
18. See Juan, Notastis (n. 13), f14vc2; Raphael, Quae Sit Illa Ecclesia (n. 13) f31. Also see Prierias (De Papa et eius Potestate in Rocaberti—see n. 13—XIX, 368-378) and Giovanni Leone (Tract. de Synodis et Ecclesiastica Potestate in Bib. Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 4127, esp. f75.)
19. Pasquali (n. 13), f14-14v; and Raphael, Quae sit illa Ecclesia (n. 13) f35v-36.
20. Commento alla formola di unione sul primato in G. Hofmann, Papato, Conciliarismo, Patriarcato, 1940, p52.
21. Pasquali, f43-47: “Unde omnes Pontifici Maximi formaliter sunt primus papa: quia omnes habent eandem auctoritatem a Christo tam intensam tam amplam sicut primus papa. . . .” Also Raphael De Pot. (n. 13) f17; Juan, Summa (n. 15) II, 322-3, 327; and Tommaso (n. 13), 450.
22. E.g., Tommaso, De Comparata Auctoritate Papae et Concilii Apologia (Rocaberti—n. 13—XIX), 509; De Comparatione (n. 13), 453; Pasquali, f58v-60, 77-77v, 97-100.
23. Summa, Chapter 55 of Book II, 350-1.
24. Juan was most active 1430-50; the other four are Raphael (1430’s); Casanova (1430’s); Pasquali (1510’s); and Tommaso (1510-1530).
25. Ronald F. Hathaway, Hierarchy and the Definition of Order in the ‘Letters’ of Pseudo-Dionysius (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1969), esp. 36-53.
26. For intro. to the fusion of Plato and Aristotle, Fernand Brunner, Platonisme et Aristotelisme.
27. L.B. Geiger, O.P. La Participation dans la Philosophie de S. Thomas d’Aquin in Bib. Thomiste, v. 23 (1953), pp. 223-30, 366-377.
28. Etienne Menard, La Tradition in Studia Vol. 18, pp. 155-169, 204-227.
29. Flores Sententiarum Auctoritate Summi Pontifice, (in Bib. Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 2580) f87v-93v.
30. Ibid., Sent. 49, sent. 7, sent. 11, & sent. 23, resp.
31. See Raphael, De Potestate Concilii (n. 13), f6, 13v, 16v; Casanova, De Potestate Ecclesiae (n. 13), f160a-160vc2, f171c1; Juan, Summa, II, 315; Pasquali, f10v, 154v; Tommaso, De Compara. (n. 13), 446.
32. Juan, Discourse at Nuremberg (in Mansi, Collectio Amplissima, XXXIA, 48): “Sane quemadmodum in coelesti hyerarchia tota plenaque perfectio potestatis in solo hyerarcha residet; ita ecclesiastica hyerarchia in solo Romano pontifice, qui solus vocatus est in plenitudinem potestatis; summa et suprema ecclesiasticae potestatis plenitudo locata est.”
33. Raphael, De Pot., f20: “Et sic omnis ordo et gradus dignitatis ecclesiasticae dependet immediate a Papa sicut ordo apostolicus a Christo.” Casanova, De Pot., f160vc2: “. . . ordinare totam ecclesiam et gradus et status eius. . . .”
34. Casanova, f160c2; Pasquali, f36ff; Juan, Notastis, f17vc2, f14vc2; Tommaso, De Comparatione, 449; and Raphael, De Potestate, f18; Quae sit illa, f31.
35. Juan, Notastis, f15vc2; Tommaso, Apologia (n. 22), 500.
36. Raphael, De Potestate, f13v, 18v; Juan, Notastis, f20v; Summa III, 509; Pasquali, f77, 80, 82; Tommaso De Comparatione, 469, 466.
37. Raphael, De Potestate, f19-19v, 23v; Quae . . ., f31; Juan, Summa, II, 348-9.
38. See Casanova, De Potestate Ecclesiae, f176vc2-177c1; and Petrus de Palude, 123-125, 186.
39. Casanova, In quodam tractatu quem nuper . . . quod concilium generalem non habet iudicare papam de quocumque defectu etiam de heresi notatum (Bib. Nazionale Marciana, Venice, MS. Lat. III 77=2206), f180c2; Tommaso, De Comparatione, 454; Juan, Notastis, f25c2: “Potestas pape non potest compari ad potestates particulares aliorum prelatorum. . . .”; & Raphael, Quae sit illa Ecclesia, f35; Pasquali, f126.