chapter 1

Ideas of power and authority during the disputes

between Philip IV and Boniface VIII

The disputes between King Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface

VIII in the years 1296 to 1303 over who held legitimate power, that
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

is, authority, provoked a debate which gave a new direction to

political thought. This was a classic case of the development of
political ideas in response to a crisis. It was a great paradox of
medieval history that the church, originally instituted outside the
governmental and legal structures of the Roman Empire, had itself
over time become the prime developer of the language of power.
Here was the crisis of this process, begun in the fifth century,
revitalized in the papal reform of the eleventh and consolidated in
the twelfth and thirteenth, whereby the church had developed as a
legal and governmental institution under a papal monarchy with
increasing jurisdictional pretensions. Papal claims to power were
encapsulated in the concept of the pope’s plenitude of power
(plenitudo potestatis). The origin of this formulation lay with Pope
Leo I (440–61), who used the phrase in a restricted manner to
indicate how the delegated and therefore partial authority of a papal
vicar, that is, legate, differed from the pope’s, which was full in
relation to it. The formulation was not used by Gregory VII, but
emerged in the twelfth century as a way of expressing papal
sovereignty, a usage which diverged from Leo I’s original meaning,
and was to be found frequently, and definitively, in Innocent III’s
decretals.1 The conflicting claims of the church and of secular rulers
had now brought about a conflict with the French king, stimulating
Copyright 2011. Cambridge University Press.

1
See Kenneth Pennington, Pope and Bishops. The Papal Monarchy in the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), pp. 43–74.

11

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 12 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
both defence and refutation of the papal position, together with
profound discussion of the nature, exercise and location of authority
in society. Indeed, this intellectual ferment produced a mass of pamph-
lets, tracts and treatises which amounted to a new genre devoted to
ideas of power. There was a creative application of traditions of
discourse to contribute to discussion of the issues involved in the
crisis, with a variety of diverse results. Clear perceptions of questions
of power and authority were elaborated.2
The essence of this bitter conflict was clearly expressed in an
anecdote current in England at the time – that Philip’s chancellor and
ambassador to the pope, Pierre Flotte, had said to Boniface, ‘Your
power is verbal, ours however is real’,3 an observation that raised a
fundamental question about the nature and relative effectiveness of
royal and papal authority. Both sides accepted that the church did
have power; the questions at issue were how much and of what kind,
and where the points of demarcation lay. In a way the French
monarchy and the papacy deserved each other. They and their
followers were arguing within the same mental world, in support
of their respective institutions, perceived as legal entities with rights
and duties.
That conflict should break out was the result of the collision of
fundamentally diverging views about the relationship between tem-
poral and spiritual power, views which were the culmination of
developments in the thirteenth century. As regards the papacy, what
may be termed a progressively hierocratic interpretation of the role
of the pope had become dominant in papal practice and in canon law.
This trend marked a divergence from what had previously been the
case in the High Middle Ages. In interpreting the period from the
reform papacy of the eleventh century onwards, modern historians

2
For the political thought produced in this dispute, see Gianluca Briguglia, La
questione del potere. Teologi e teoria politica nella disputa tra Bonifacio VIII e Filippo
il Bello, Filosofia e Scienza nell’ Età Moderna (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2010).
3
See the continuation of William Rishanger, Chronica, ed. Henry Thomas Riley,
Rolls Series, 28, 2 (Millwood, NY: Kraus reprints, 1983), pp. 197–8; and Thomas
of Walsingham, Ypodigma Neustriae, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, Rolls Series, 28, 7
(Wiesbaden: Lessing-Druckerei, 1965), pp. 217–18.

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 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII 13
have been divided in applying forms of hierocratic or dualist models.
These terms need some explanation. They are clearly modern cat-
egories applied to the Middle Ages; they are inexact but have
provided a useful shorthand. According to the hierocratic model of
papal monarchy, the pope as the direct successor of St Peter has the
divinely appointed headship on earth of the body of the Christian
community which has been committed to his care by Christ. Within
this body, the clergy is superior to the laity and spiritual jurisdiction
to temporal. Because the pope is responsible before God for the
Christian community, he has the right to judge, depose and concede
power to secular rulers. Indeed, the pope came to be seen as the
mediator of the ruler’s power from God. There was no autonomy for
the secular ruler and no way in which the pope could be judged by
any other human being. The dualist model stressed the fundamental
distinction between clergy and laity in a different way. It understood
temporal and spiritual power as being both derived ultimately from
God but as existing in parallel. The pope’s role was seen as essen-
tially spiritual, with the result that he had no right to interfere in the
exercise of a secular ruler’s power. All accepted that the dignity of the
spiritual power was greater, but that did not mean that the temporal
power was subject to it. Boniface VIII in his actions and in his words
represented a hierocratic interpretation of the papal office. Indeed,
his pontificate and the first three decades of the fourteenth century
witnessed the high point of the elaboration of hierocratic doctrine.
The dualist model, limiting the pope to a purely spiritual role outside
the papal states and providing the king with an independent function
in his rulership, would clearly be more suited to the aspirations of
secular rulers. In the case of the French monarchy, the thirteenth
century had seen a dramatic consolidation of the state with an
increased perception of the notion of the ruler’s territorial sover-
eignty. The need for royal jurisdictional control over all the king’s
subjects, both clerical and lay, had come to be seen as paramount.
Any pretensions to independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction within
the kingdom had come to be seen as unacceptable if the king’s
sovereignty were seen to be thereby infringed. There could however
be no totally clear differentiation between the hierocratic and

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 14 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
dualist models because there was some overlap. Any hierocratic inter-
pretation would accept the fundamental distinction between the func-
tions of the clergy and the laity: the role of the secular ruler was seen as
valid but subordinate to the spiritual ruler. There was an acceptance that
the office of the secular ruler was to exercise temporal power and that
the pope only did so indirectly outside the papal states. Likewise, any
dualist view accepted the headship of the pope in the Christian commu-
nity. But this element of overlap meant that the boundaries of jurisdic-
tions could appear fuzzy and it was this that accounted for so much of
the conflict between the two powers – it was largely a problem of
demarcation of spheres of operation. Insofar as both hierocratic and
dualist views operated within the context of a Christian society, they
may be understood as deriving from and expressing a medieval
Augustinian notion of government and rulership, although Augustine
himself predated any such development of ideas of papal monarchy.
Both sides in the disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
thought the other was at fault. The conflict broke out because the
papacy sought to protect church rights under canon law which it
considered the French crown to have infringed. The French mon-
archy in turn believed that the papal response sought to diminish
the rights of the king and, indeed, to undermine his sovereignty.
There were in fact two disputes. The first concerned the issue of
royal taxation of the clergy. Both the English monarch Edward
I and Philip had been taxing their clergy to finance war against each
other. This infringed a decree of the Fourth Lateran Council of
1215, whereby lay taxation of the clergy was only permitted with
papal approval. Royal taxation of the clergy had of course become
commonplace, but Boniface chose to make an issue of it now, partly
because he considered that Christian monarchs should fight Islam
rather than each other in the aftermath of the final expulsion of the
crusaders from the Holy Land in 1291. In April 1296 Boniface
issued the bull Clericis laicos which, without mentioning either king
by name, forbade secular rulers to tax the clergy and the clergy to
pay such taxes without the permission of the apostolic see. The bull
expressly stated that lay rulers had no jurisdiction over clerics or
their property. However, Boniface was humiliatingly forced to back

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 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII 15
down under the pressure of a royal ordinance, issued in August,
which imposed an embargo on the export of precious metal from
France, an important source of papal finances. In July 1297 Boni-
face in the bull Etsi de statu exempted Philip from the provisions of
Clericis laicos and permitted the king to tax his clergy in the case of
emergency, which amounted in practice to acknowledging that he
had carte blanche in this matter.
This was more than a squabble over taxation. Larger issues were
involved. From Boniface’s point of view, the principle of the liberty
of the church (libertas ecclesiae) was at stake: that the clergy were
free from lay control and subject to that of the pope. Behind this
view lay the assumption that the clergy were a superior caste to the
laity, amongst whom were included secular rulers according to
canon law. From Philip’s perspective, his sovereignty within his
kingdom was damaged if he could not tax his clerical subjects, a
pre-eminent economic group, without the approval of another ruler.
In his view, the pope was going beyond spiritual matters and was
interfering in the material interests of France.
The second dispute also raised questions of the liberty of the
church and royal sovereignty, but it did so in a more profound way.
It centred round the issue of the privilege of clergy to be tried solely
by ecclesiastical courts, again a fundamental principle of canon law.
In 1301 Philip had the Bishop of Pamiers, Bernard Saisset, arrested
and then tried in his presence for blasphemy, heresy and treason.
Saisset was then held in nominally ecclesiastical custody at the
king’s pleasure. This infringed the canon law provision that a bishop
could only be tried by the pope. Boniface could have avoided
conflict on this issue but chose confrontation instead. In so doing,
he went against his earlier practice before he became pope, when as
a legate to the French court in 1290 he had negotiated with Philip an
agreement whereby the king issued an ordinance confirming the
privileges of the French clergy and the right of the Parlement of
Paris to judge French prelates and hear appeals from their temporal
courts. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction was protected but the principle
underlined that the king was the supreme judge in temporal matters
in his kingdom, where there were no areas of clerical immunity. The

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 16 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
French monarchy had long been seen as the greatest supporter of
the papacy, especially against the empire: the breakdown in relations
a few years later was not foreseen.
The dispute went from bad to worse for the papacy. Boniface
was obstinately committed to the course of action he had chosen,
especially as a bishop was involved. Philip was convinced that his
sovereignty was at stake. If he could not try a bishop for treason,
how could he be truly sovereign? Boniface demanded that Saisset
be released and revoked the privileges granted in Etsi de statu. He
went further, however, by summoning all the French bishops to a
council in Rome to discuss the preservation of ecclesiastical liberty,
the reform of the kingdom of France, the correction of the king’s
previous excesses and the good government of the kingdom itself.
He was therefore treating the king’s government as a matter of
ecclesiastical concern. In December 1301 he issued the bull Ausculta
fili (Listen Son), which in its tone would appear highly patronizing
to the French court and in which he stated that Philip as the pope’s
dearest son had a superior, and that he was subject to the head of
the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This bull could easily be read as main-
taining that the king was subject to the pope in both temporal and
spiritual matters, since Boniface did not specify what kind of
superiority he claimed. The reaction of the French court was fierce
indeed: public opinion in Paris was whipped up against Boniface
when Philip’s advisers produced and made public two forgeries –
one known as Deum time (Fear God), a crude version of Ausculta
fili, claiming that the king was subject to the pope in temporal and
spiritual matters, and the other a blunt response to this entitled
Sciat tua maxima fatuitas (May Your Very Great Fatuity Know).
The culmination was the first meeting of a form of Estates General
at Paris in April 1302, which was called to condemn Boniface.
Furthermore, successful pressure was put on the northern French
prelates not to attend the pope’s council – only bishops from the
south took part.
In the midst of this maelstrom, in November 1302 Boniface issued
the bull Unam sanctam which, without any reference to the dispute,
enunciated in lapidary fashion the papal view of the ultimate

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 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII 17
subordination of temporal to spiritual power.4 It was a curious
document quite unlike any other medieval papal bull: it was more
like a very short tract, but one issued with papal authority. Boniface
was seeking to set forth the principles underlying the papal position.
Since he was proclaiming what he saw as traditional and everlasting
truth, it was very important that the bull should contain nothing
new. It largely consisted of a collage of passages from theological
sources together with some juristic content. Boniface presented a
long-established argument from unity. He described the church as a
mystical body (corpus mysticum)5 in a juristic, corporational sense,
under one head, Christ, whose representative was the pope, with all
power on earth, spiritual and temporal, lying within it. Boniface
applied a strictly hierarchical view with overt reference to Pseudo-
Dionysius.6 He referred to the traditional two-swords argument,
using a hierocratic interpretation of Bernard of Clairvaux’s famous
formulation of it, to show that secular power was derived from and
exercised at the command of the priesthood. He then paraphrased a
well-known passage by Hugh of St Victor in a hierocratic manner to
demonstrate that spiritual power, because it instituted the earthly,
could judge it ‘if it has not been good’.7 The bull ended with the
statement ‘We declare, state, define and pronounce that it is entirely
necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the
Roman pontiff ’, which itself was based on Aquinas’s words in his
Contra errores Graecorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks).8

4
For the text of the bull, see Extrav. comm., 1.8.1 (ed. A. Friedberg). It was dated 18
November but may have been issued a few months later. References are to this edition.
5
For the history of this phrase, see Henri de Lubac, Corpus mysticum: l’Eucharistie et
l’Eglise au Moyen Age, Etude historique (Paris: Aubier, 1949).
6
Pseudo-Dionysius was an anonymous early sixth-century Christian writer in
Greek who purported to be St Paul’s disciple Dionysius the Areopagite (a claim
which Boniface would have believed). He had the distinction of having invented
the term ‘hierarchy’. His influence on medieval western thought was profound
through Latin translations of his works.
7
‘Spiritualis potestas terrenam potestatem instituere habet, et iudicare, si bona non
fuerit’ (col. 1246).
8
‘Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus, dicimus,
diffinimus et pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate salutis’ (col. 1246). See

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 18 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
Despite these ringing words, the culmination of the conflict was a
débâcle for the papacy. Boniface died in 1303 a few weeks after the
outrage at the papal city of Anagni to the south-east of Rome,
where he reacted bravely to being threatened with death by the
French forces under the command of Philip’s minister Nogaret and
by those of the dissident Cardinal Sciarra Colonna. His death did
not put an end to French pressure. Pope Clement V in 1306 in his
decretal Meruit backed down totally. In it he stated that he did not
wish anything prejudicial to the French king or his kingdom to arise
from Unam sanctam, that the king and his kingdom should be no
more subject to the pope than they had been before the bull was
issued, and that the kingdom and people should be in the same state
as they were before. Clearly, this second dispute had raised the issue
of power both at the theoretical level and at the nakedly practical
level through the exertion of acute pressure by the French crown.
Unam sanctam itself had no effect on events. Indeed, it was only
incorporated into canon law in the sixteenth century, when it was
included in the Extravagantes communes. Writers did refer to it in
the remainder of the Middle Ages but it is modern historians who
have given it real prominence, seeing it as a definitive statement of
the claims of the medieval papacy and thus according it a retro-
spective importance which it lacked when it was issued. Boniface
was indeed unfortunate in the timing of his reign: if he had occupied
the throne of St Peter in less exciting times, his papacy would have
been remembered for his great positive achievement – the issuing of
the Liber sextus of the Corpus iuris canonici.

the lesser tracts

Two kinds of tract were produced in the context of the disputes
between Philip IV and Boniface VIII: they may be distinguished

Aquinas, Contra errores Graecorum, 2.38, in Opera omnia, ed. Roberto Busa, 7 vols.
(Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, Günther Holzboog KG,
1980), vol. iii, p. 508: ‘Ostenditur etiam quod subesse romano pontifici sit de
necessitate salutis.’

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 The lesser tracts 19
from each other both by length and by subject matter. The lesser
tracts were directly related to the detailed issues of the conflict,
while the major tracts addressed fundamental questions arising from
the disputes but made little or no reference to current events. Both
groups argued from authoritative texts – the Bible, the works of
previous Christian theologians, Aristotle, canon and Roman law –
and history. In so doing they were arguing in a typically medieval
way and one characteristic of scholastic thought patterns. They
were not ostensibly trying to innovate, although they might have
done so incidentally or under the guise of arguments supported by
authority. Both the lesser and major tracts gave extensive treatments
to aspects of the question of power.9
Amongst the lesser tracts, the one known, from its opening words
(or incipit), as Antequam essent clerici (Before There Were Clerics)10
was an anonymous pro-royal response to Clericis laicos. It was most
probably written between August 1296 and September 1297, because
it alluded to Philip IV’s prohibition of the export of bullion and
would have been out of date once Etsi de statu was known in France.11
It was very short but contained important arguments for the royal
side. The references which it made to authorities were entirely to
the New Testament.
The particular merit of Antequam essent clerici was that it attacked
the pro-papal position on a fundamental point: the concept of the
liberty of the church (libertas ecclesiae) itself. The author rejected the
papal interpretation whereby this notion applied to the church as an
ecclesiastical body. The idea of the church had, of course, a wider
meaning as well – the community of all Christians. The writer

9
For a survey of these tracts, see Jürgen Miethke, De potestate papae. Die päpstliche
Amtskompetenz im Widerstreit der politischen Theorie von Thomas Aquinas bis
Wilhelm von Ockham, Spätmittelalter und Reformation, 16 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2000), pp. 68–126.
10
For Latin text with an English translation, see R.W. Dyson (ed.), Three Royalist
Tracts. Antequam essent clerici; Disputatio inter clericum et militem; Quaestio in
utramque partem (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999). All references are to Dyson’s
edition; all translations from Latin into English are my own.
11
Ibid., p. 2.

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 20 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
maintained that the church was composed of clergy and laity, and
that God had willed that both should enjoy this freedom – as he said:
‘Did Christ die and rise again only for the clergy? No way!’12 He
rejected, as an abuse, any attempt by the clergy to claim liberty of
the church exclusively for themselves.13 His main concern was to
attack those clerical pretensions which, to his mind, infringed the
rights of the French crown. He therefore then narrowed the general
concept of ‘liberty’ to the more specific one of ‘liberties’ in the sense
of legal privileges. He argued that the liberties of the clergy had been
granted by popes but with the goodwill or permission of secular
rulers, and that such liberties could not take away the capacity of
kings to govern and defend their kingdoms. The kingdom was
described in organic terms as a body composed of a head (the king)
and members. Both clergy and laity together composed this body.
The clergy therefore should pay taxes for the defence of the realm,
because they could not fight themselves; any refusal to do so was
considered to be aiding the enemy and therefore treason. Indeed, the
kingdom’s right to self-defence was enshrined in natural law.14
The theme of the subjection of the clergy to the temporal power
of kings and princes received a more extensive treatment in another
anonymous pro-royal tract, the Disputatio inter clericum et militem
(Dispute Between a Cleric and a Knight).15 We cannot be certain
about its date of composition. Since it was concerned with the issue
of royal taxation of the church, it seems at first sight to have been
written during the first dispute between Philip and Boniface, but it
also contained a passage which is reminiscent of Boniface’s lan-
guage in Ausculta fili and that of the pro-royal forged papal bull
based on the latter and disseminated in a public relations exercise to
whip up public resentment against the pope: ‘A little while ago

12
‘Numquid solum pro clericis Christus mortuus est et resurrexit? Absit!’ (ibid.,
p. 4).
13 14
Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., pp. 4–6.
15
For Latin text with an English translation, see Dyson, Three Royalist Tracts and
N.N. Erickson (ed.), ‘A dispute between a priest and a knight’, Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society, 111, 5 (1967), 288–309. All references are to
Dyson’s text; all translations from Latin into English are my own.

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 The lesser tracts 21
I had a big laugh, when I heard that it had recently been decreed
by the Lord Pope Boniface that he himself is and should be lord
over all principalities and kingdoms.’16 As its title suggests, the tract
had the dramatic form of a dispute between two interlocutors, a
cleric and a knight, the latter of whom was given the better of the
argument. It was written in a lively way and was influential in the
history of political thought because it was to be incorporated into
the Somnium viridarii (Dream of the Orchard) produced in about
1376 or 1377, a form of compendium of French political thought
then swiftly translated into French as Le songe du vergier. The
author of the Disputatio drew on a wide knowledge of relevant
biblical passages.
The fundamental idea of the Disputatio was that temporal and
spiritual power were separate and distinct. The most striking
argument to support this notion appeared towards the beginning
of the tract, where it was maintained that, in considering Christ, a
distinction must be made between two times: one of humility
(corresponding to his life on earth up to and including his passion)
and the other of power (after his resurrection). St Peter had indeed
been constituted Christ’s vicar, but for the latter’s state of humility,
not of glory or power and majesty. There was however some
ambiguity in the author’s use of the term ‘power’ (potestas).
Although he contrasted the times of Christ’s humility and power,
he said that Christ ‘committed to his vicar that power which he
exercised as mortal man, not that which he accepted when he had
been glorified’.17 The power committed to the pope was not that of
temporal rulership but of a purely spiritual kingship and lordship,
such as Christ had exercised in his humility.18 Therefore, the author

16
‘Vnde nuper mihi risus venit magnus, cum audissem noviter statutum esse a
Domino Papa Bonifacio quod ipse est et esse debet dominus super omnes
principatus et regna’ (Dyson, Three Royalist Tracts, p. 14). Cf. Ausculta fili and
Tua maxima fatuitas (English translation, in Brian Tierney, Crisis of Church and
State, 1050–1300 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1964), pp. 185–7).
17
‘Illam ergo potestatem suo vicario commisit, quam homo mortalis exercuit, non
illam quam glorificatus accepit’ (Dyson, Three Royalist Tracts, p. 16).
18
Ibid., pp. 18–20.

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 22 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
did accept the notion of power in both spiritual and temporal
senses. The main biblical passages referred to in support of his
argument were those one would expect: ‘My kingdom is not of this
world’ (John 18:36); ‘I came not to be ministered unto but to
minister’ (Matthew 20:28); and Jesus’s statement when he refused
to judge over an inheritance: ‘Man, who made me a judge or a
divider over you?’ (Luke 12:13–14). Property was treated as being
under temporal power. Peter was given the keys to the kingdom of
heaven, not an earthly one (referring to Matthew 16:19). The
Disputatio’s approach was extremely clever in that it accepted the
pope’s claim to be the vicar of Christ but interpreted that title in
such a way that it rejected the papal hierocratic interpretation. The
pope’s power was understood in the sense of spiritual service and
certainly not of temporal rulership over people and property.
Indeed, the specific purpose of the tract was to demonstrate that
ecclesiastical possessions were subject to royal control: the knight
sought to silence the protestations of the cleric in defence of the
property rights of the church. The Disputatio argued that the church
did not possess its property absolutely, but that such property had
been conceded to the church in trust by secular rulers in order to
fulfil a purpose of protection of the clergy, who therefore had an
obligation to contribute to the defence of the realm. It was up to the
king or prince to determine whether the clergy were using their
property well, that is, for the benefit of the commonwealth (res-
publicae utilitas), as examples from Old Testament kingship con-
firmed.19 Indeed, the tract used the argument of necessity to justify
the ruler’s capacity to revoke clerical privileges for the common
good, an example of how necessity was employed to increase the
power of the ruler over his subjects in order to achieve a purpose
which was itself a defining limitation of rulership.20 The culmination
of the tract’s argument was expressed thus by the knight:
And so, lord clerk, hold your tongue and recognize that the king, through the
laws, customs, privileges and liberties which he has given you, is preeminent

19 20
See ibid., pp. 29 and 35. Ibid., p. 40.

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 The lesser tracts 23
in royal power and, having consulted equity and reason, or his magnates, can
add, diminish, change and regulate, whatever he likes, as he sees fit.21
This is not to say that everything went the knight’s way in the
dispute. He had difficulty in responding to the cleric’s use of the ‘by
reason of sin’ (ratione peccati) argument. This was one of the
strongest weapons in the papal arsenal. It had been classically
formulated by Innocent III and maintained that the pope, as head
of the church, had the right to intervene wherever he judged sin to
be involved. As the clerk said, this gave the church the right to
judge in temporal cases.22 The knight’s stumble here showed the
difficulties which any anti-papal writer encountered if he admitted
that the power of secular rulers existed within the context of the
Christian community of which the pope was the head.
The writer of the Disputatio was a Christian and a Frenchman,
and towards the end of the tract he felt impelled to consolidate the
claims of his monarch by making it clear that the King of France in
his kingdom enjoyed the same power as the Roman Emperor in the
Empire. He traced this back to the division of the Empire under the
Carolingians. This was an expression of the rex in regno suo argument
which had become such a well-worn part of the ideology of kingship
in France in the thirteenth century.23
Another anonymous tract, conventionally known to modern
historians as the Quaestio in utramque partem (Both Sides of the
Question),24 was a longer, well-structured scholastic treatment of
the relationship between temporal and spiritual power. Although it
came down on the royal side, its approach was measured and

21
‘Et ideo, domine clerice, linguam vestram coercite, et agnoscite regem legibus,
consuetudinibus, privilegiis et libertatibus datis, regia potestate praeesse, posse
addere, posse minuere, mutare quamlibet, aequitate et ratione consulta, aut cum
suis proceribus, sicut visum fuerit, temperare ’ (ibid., p. 42).
22
Ibid., p. 21.
23
For an innovative treatment of French ideas of empire at this time, see Chris
Jones, Eclipse of Empire? Perceptions of the Western Empire and its Rulers in Late
Medieval France, Cursor mundi, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).
24
See Dyson, Three Royalist Tracts, p. xxviii for forms of the title. All references are
to Dyson’s edition; all translations from Latin into English are my own.

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 24 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
balanced. It expressly set out to argue according to philosophical,
theological, canon law and Roman law arguments. It is useful
for modern historians because it serves as a compendium of
theological and canonist authorities, whereas its use of philosophy
is scant and of Roman law texts thin indeed.25 Its date of compos-
ition cannot be demonstrated with certainty, although it was most
likely produced between December 1301 and September 1303
during the second dispute, that is, after the publication of the two
royal forgeries aimed at discrediting Boniface and before the events
at Anagni. However, Karl Ubl has persuasively argued that it was
produced to support the royal side in condemning the forgery,
Deum time, in the process of calling the form of Estates General in
April 1302.26
From its outset, the tract set itself the task of solving two
interrelated questions concerning power: whether spiritual and
temporal power were distinct and separate, and whether the pope
possessed full power over both spiritual and temporal matters, in
such a way that secular rulers were subject to him in temporals. The
bulk of the tract consisted of arguments with general application to
the relationship between the papacy and secular rulers. Initially, the
author sought to demonstrate that the two powers were distinct and
that the pope had no lordship over temporal matters. Then, in order
the better to understand the two initial questions, the author sys-
tematically addressed five points: that both temporal and spiritual
power were instituted and ordained by God; that these two powers
were distinct and divided; that God in instituting the spiritual power
gave it no lordship over earthly things; that there were areas in
which the temporal power was subject to the spiritual and others in
which it was not; and that the King of France enjoyed liberty and
exemption such that he recognized no superior in temporal matters.
The even-tempered character of the tract is especially revealed in

25
The only Roman law reference is to the Auth., ‘Quomodo oporteat episcopos’
(Coll., 1.6 = Nov., 6).
26
Karl Ubl, ‘Johannes Quidorts Weg zur Sozialphilosophie’, Francia – Forschungen
zur westeuropäischen Geschichte, 30, 1 (2003), 65.

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 The lesser tracts 25
this last section because most of the arguments are expressed in
general terms not specific to the French monarchy.
What was notable about the Quaestio in utramque partem was the
fundamental reason it put forward for the division and separation
between the two powers. The author had a very clear perception
that the root cause was that spiritual and temporal matters were
different in kind: they belonged to different genera: ‘Since therefore
spiritual and temporal things are of different genera, it does not
follow that he who has power in spirituals has it in temporals.’27
This was a very strong argument based on the categorization of
observed phenomena. It argued from the difference in kind of the
objects of the two powers to the separation of the exercisers of
power over these objects. It was an approach that was radically
different from the hierocratic approach, which assumed a hierarchy
of difference whereby inferiors were led back to their origin in God
through layers of superiors, with temporal power being necessarily
derived from spiritual power, which was of greater dignity. Indeed,
the author rejected the characteristic hierocratic form of argument
from macrocosm to microcosm. He set out to refute the Pseudo-
Dionysian proposition that the government of the church on earth
should mirror that of the church in heaven through having one
ruler: the imperfection of this world dictated that no one person
could rule both spiritual and temporal things.28
On one level, the author certainly elaborated his theme that the
two powers were distinct, corresponding to the dual nature of
human beings: the spiritual to the life of the soul and the temporal
to that of the body.29 But the distinction was not a total one. He was
heavily influenced by a moderate dualist interpretation of canon
law. He was, for instance, willing to accept that the pope could
declare subjects freed from their oaths of allegiance to their rulers
on the grounds of heresy, schism or contumacy against the Roman
church.30 He also accepted the standard claims of church

27
‘Cum igitur spiritualia et temporalia sint res diversorum generum, non sequitur
quod qui habet potestatem in spiritualibus habeat eam in temporalibus’ (p. 110).
28 29 30
Dyson, Three Royalist Tracts, pp. 84–6. Ibid., p. 66. Ibid., p. 106.

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 26 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
jurisdiction in cases of conflict of laws where a temporal case had
spiritual connections, as in feudal cases by reason of sin or where an
oath was involved, or in cases involving dowries.31
Overall, the author was conscious of the fuzzy edges between the
spheres of spiritual and temporal power. But because the hierocratic
viewpoint conceived of both temporal and spiritual power as being
exercised within the church, understood as the Christian community,
the author of the Quaestio felt he had to reply to the possible
accusation that his approach would destroy unity, a core value in
his opponents’ discourse. He accepted the greater dignity of spiritual
things but not the conclusion of the hierocrats that he who had
power in greater things necessarily had it in lesser ones (in this case
temporal matters), since they were of different genera. It was more
that there was, within the church, a mutual dependence between
the two powers, respecting their fundamental difference:
If however these two powers were completely distinct, in such a way that one
was not dependent on the other, this duality would be an occasion of
division. But there is a mutual dependence, because the temporal needs the
spiritual because of the soul, whereas the spiritual needs the temporal on
account of its use of temporal things.32
In that way unity was preserved: ‘Thus the temporal power is
somehow ordained to the spiritual in those things which pertain to
spirituality itself, that is, in spiritual things. And this way multipli-
city is reduced to unity.’33 But ultimate unity lay in the headship of
Christ, from whom both powers were derived, with the pope as his
principal spiritual vicar and the secular ruler, whether king or
emperor, head as regards the rulership of temporal affairs.34 Christ

31
Ibid., pp. 76–80.
32
‘Si autem istae duae potestates essent omnino distinctae, ita quod una non
dependeret ex alia, ista dualitas esset occasio divisionis. Sed inter eas est mutua
dependentia, quia temporalis indiget spirituali propter animam, spiritualis vero
indiget temporali propter temporalium rerum usum’ (ibid., p. 100).
33
‘Sic potestas temporalis quodammodo ordinatur ad spritualem in iis quae ad
ipsam spiritualitatem pertinent, id est, in spiritualibus. Et per istum modum
multitudo reducitur ad unitatem’ (ibid., p. 86).
34
Ibid., p. 88.

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 The lesser tracts 27
himself had not used temporal power or entrusted it to his vicar, the
pope, whose plenitude of power applied only to spiritual things and
was in any case not absolute, but full only in comparison to that of
inferior prelates who were called to part of the care of souls.35
Christ’s shunning of earthly power had a further consequence for
St Peter, the other apostles and their successors:
Christ forbade Peter, as much as the other apostles, lordship, power and
jurisdiction in temporal things, when he enjoined extreme poverty upon
them, saying ‘Do not possess gold and silver, etc. [Matthew 10:9]’ . . . Christ
commanded the apostles to be distanced from earthly possessions and
temporal lordship, because he wished them to be spiritual men.36
In recognizing the link between earthly power and possessions, between
powerlessness and poverty, the author was taking up a position in the
contemporary debate about poverty, centred on the conflicts within the
Franciscan order. As we shall see, the interrelated themes of poverty and
power played a crucial role in ecclesiastical controversy in the first half
of the fourteenth century, and were in many ways the most fundamental
issues facing the church. The author’s insistence on extreme poverty for
the clergy reflected the interpretation of the rigorist wing, the Spiritual
Franciscans. For him, the two distinct genera of spiritual and temporal
matters implied poverty and possessions respectively.
Another anonymous quaestio, traditionally known by its incipit as
the Rex pacificus (The Peacemaker King), also provided a balanced
pro-royal approach. It was a classic defence of the dualist thesis,
being designed to demonstrate that the pope had no jurisdiction in
temporal matters (other than that given him by a temporal ruler)
and none over the French monarch in particular. Again we do not
know for certain when it was written, but it must have been after
August 1297, because it refers to the canonization of Louis IX, and

35
Ibid., p. 108.
36
‘Christus, tam Petro quam caeteris apostolis, dominium, potestatem et
iurisdictionem in temporalibus interdixit; cum eis extremam paupertatem
indixit, dicens: “Nolite possidere aurum et argentum, etc. [Matthew 10:9]” . . .
Elongationem a possessione terrena et dominio temporali praecepit Christus
apostolis, volens eos spirituales esse’ (ibid., pp. 70–2).

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 28 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
quite possibly after December 1301, because of what appears to be a
reference in it to the wording of the royal forgery Deum time. Karl
Ubl considers that it was also produced as part of the pro-royal
propaganda effort harnessed to condemn Deum time, by way of
preparation for the form of Estates General of April 1302.37
The Rex pacificus was notable for its clear treatment of power
understood as jurisdiction exercised in the government of this
world. The author made use of organic imagery:
And just as in the human body, the operations of the heart and the head are
distinct, so also in the government of the world, jurisdictions are distinct,
namely spiritual, which is represented by the head, and temporal, which is
represented by the heart.38
These two jurisdictions were distinct: their relationship was not one of
mutual dependence but of mutual defence for the good rule of the
respublica in both spiritual and corporeal matters,39 a co-operation which
created unity.40 Indeed, the author, overtly accepting the Augustinian
view that true justice was only to be found where Christ was the ruler,
held that he had two vicars:
When the pope is said to be the vicar of Christ, I say that it is true in spiritual
matters, but he truly has another vicar in temporal ones, namely, the
temporal power, which since it is from God, as is said in Romans 13, can
be said to be in God’s place in temporal rule.41

37
Ubl, ‘Johannes Quidorts Weg’, p. 65.
38
‘Et sicut in corpore humano cordis et capitis sunt distinctae operationes, sic in regimine
mundano distinctae sunt iurisdictiones, videlicet spiritualis, que repraesentatur in capite,
et temporalis, quae repraesentatur in corde’ (p. 22 – all references are to R.W. Dyson
(ed.), Quaestio de potestate papae (Rex pacificus)/An Enquiry into the Power of the Pope.
A Critical Edition and Translation, Texts and Studies in Religion, 83 (Lewiston, NY,
Queenston, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999)); all translations from Latin into
English are my own. For the use of head and heart imagery, see now Takashi Shogimen,
‘“Head or Heart?” revisited: physiology and political thought in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries’, History of Political Thought, 28, 2 (Summer 2007), 208–29.
39 40
Dyson, Quaestio de potestate papae, p. 50 Ibid., p. 51.
41
‘Sed quando dicitur papa est Christi vicarius, dico quod verum est in spiritualibus,
sed bene habet alium vicarium in temporalibus, videlicet, potestatem temporalem:
quae cum sit a Deo, sicut dicitur ad Rom. XIII, potest dici vices Dei gerere in
regimine temporali’ (ibid., p. 48).

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 The major tracts 29
He who was greater in the church should exercise only a humble
ministry in temporal matters.42 Furthermore, since there were kings
before priests in point of time, temporal power could not be derived
from spiritual power because ‘the cause is prior to that whose cause
it is’.43
The writer of the Rex pacificus made no clear distinction between
church and state. There was a fluidity in his usage of the terms
respublica and ecclesia. He made a traditional distinction between
two meanings of ecclesia:
And this should be understood by explaining the word, ‘church’, not in its
general sense, as when we say that the church is called the congregation of
the faithful, but in its special one, namely, in so far as the church is
distinguished from the world, and clergy and ecclesiastical men from laymen
and secular people.44
He argued in this way because he was producing a dualist argument
about the exercise of power within the ecclesia in its wider sense. His
sources of authority were the Bible and canon law. He was in
essence opposing the papacy on its own ground as all exponents
of the dualist view were. The merit of the Rex pacificus was clarity
of expression, not originality of thought. What was required for a
more effective denial of Boniface VIII’s claims was a clearer
distinction between the notions of church and state rather than an
attempt simply to delineate the relative spheres of spiritual and
temporal jurisdiction within the Christian community.

the major tracts

The major tracts, which examined fundamental issues arising from
this conflict, were produced within a short time-frame between 1302
and 1303. Of these, probably the first in date of composition was that

42 43
Ibid., p. 18. ‘Causa prior est eo cuius est causa’ (ibid., p. 48).
44
‘Et hoc intelligi debet accipiendo Ecclesiam non in generali, prout dicimus quod
Ecclesia dicitur congregatio fidelium, sed secundum quod accipitur in speciali:
scilicet prout Ecclesia distinguitur contra saeculum, et clerici et viri ecclesiastici
contra laicos et saeculares’ (ibid., p. 29).

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 30 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
of Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus), De ecclesiastica potestate
(On Ecclesiastical Power), of 1302. This work, 209 pages long in
the modern edition, was the first systematic and truly extensive
treatment of the nature of ecclesiastical and in particular papal power
and its relation to secular rulers. It was a classic exposition of the
papal hierocratic claims at their most extreme. The tract itself was
developed out of a sermon which Giles delivered before the papal
curia earlier in the year.45 Giles wrote expressly to support the
position taken by Boniface VIII and indeed dedicated his work to
the pope, who made use of it in the construction of Unam sanctam.46
Giles, an intellectual product of the University of Paris, was the
leading member of the Augustinians there, having been made their
first professor of theology. In 1291 he was made Prior-General of the
order and in 1294 Boniface had made him Archbishop of Bourges,
although he spent most of the rest of his life at the papal curia. His
academic standing was of the highest rank. De ecclesiastica potestate
was not, however, his only contribution to political thought: in 1277/9
he had produced his De regimine principum (On the Government
of Princes), which was fundamentally different in approach: it was
thoroughly this-worldly in tone, making heavy use of an ultimately
Aristotelian assumption of the autonomy of the political order, and
ignored questions of the relationship between temporal and spiritual
power. There was no hint in the earlier work of the line he would take
in this later work. Was this evidence of a profound inner contradic-
tion or of a change of mind? The intellectual explanation is that there
was no problem, because Giles in the two works was arguing in
different ways and on different levels, the political first and subse-
quently the theological, a method familiar in the Parisian schools.

45
See Concetta Luna, ‘Un nuovo documento del conflitto fra Bonifacio VIII e
Filippo il Bello: il discorso “De potestate domini papae” di Egidio Romano (con
un’appendice su Borromeo di Bologna e la “Eger cui lenia”)’, Documenti e studi
sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, Rivista della Società Internazionale per lo
Studio del Medioevo Latino, 3, 1–2 (1992), 167–243.
46
Karl Ubl maintains that Giles was writing in answer to the pro-royal arguments
produced by way of preparation for the form of Estates General of April 1302:
‘Johannes Quidorts Weg’, p. 70.

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 The major tracts 31
The practical explanation is that the works were offered to different
rulers, whose requirements needed this mental versatility on Giles’s
part: the De regimine principum had been composed as an advice-book
for the future Philip IV of France, no less, and in its manuscript
dissemination became the most influential example of the medieval
mirror-of-princes genre.
Giles did not of course set out to say anything new in De
ecclesiastica potestate, but in taking hierocratic ideas to their
extreme, logical conclusions he reached formulations which did
extend their scope and meaning. His fundamental presuppositions
were hierarchical: the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal,
of the soul over the body and of the clergy over the laity. The tract
itself is difficult to follow because it is highly diffuse and repetitive,
showing every sign of having been written in a rush. But the
cumulative effect is to hammer home the thesis of papal power.
The tract is both exhaustive and exhausting to read.
Giles’s core argument stemmed from the proposition that lordship
(dominium) understood as both power of jurisdiction and property
rights existed justly only within the church in its wider sense as the
Christian community. Just dominium was therefore the product of
grace. Within the Christian community, the church in its narrower
sense of the clergy was the medium by which grace was administered
through the sacraments and sinners were reconciled. The church,
understood as the clergy, was therefore the ultimate possessor of all
jurisdiction and property. Giles went further: he equated the church
with the pope, in whom all the powers of the church were ultimately
focused and from whom all of them were derived. His overall thesis
was therefore a radical exposition of papal power.
The sources of Giles’s tract were wide-ranging, notably the Bible,
canon law (and especially papal decretals), Peter Comestor’s Historia
scholastica, Aristotle, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Bernard of
Clairvaux and Hugh of St Victor. Giles wove these authorities into
his text, but in ways which often departed from their original
meanings and contexts. He used authorities to support his own
structure of reasoning; as he said, ‘Because, perchance, authorities
may not suffice for someone, we want to produce the reasons why no

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 32 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
one could have just ownership (dominium) of anything, unless
he were regenerated through the church’.47 He referred, for instance,
to Augustine ’s famous statements, ‘Remove justice, and what are
kingdoms but bands of robbers on a large scale?’ and ‘True justice is
found only in that commonwealth whose founder and ruler is
Christ’, in support of his hierocratic argument, whereas Augustine
himself in his mature thought reached the position that true justice
could not be attained in this world and that justice should be removed
from the definition of the state.48 What we find in Giles is an example
of that medieval Augustinisme politique which understood Augustine
to have meant that the only truly just society was a Christian
one (that is, the church in its wider sense), with Christian rulership
the only just form.49
Giles made it abundantly clear that he collapsed the power of the
church as a whole into that of the pope. From the beginning of
the tract there was a concentration on the power of the pope, and
the whole work can be seen as an analysis and justification of papal
claims to plenitude of power (plenitudo potestatis). In the first
chapter of Book One, Giles gave the most urgent possible justifica-
tion for covering this topic. Ignorance of matters of faith and
morals led to damnation, but it lay with the pope exercising his
plenitude of power to define matters of faith and morals in an
authoritative way.50 The question of papal plenitude of power thus
related to salvation itself. Giles also recognized that he must treat

47
‘Quia forte alicui auctoritates non sufficiunt, volumus raciones adducere, quod
nullus possit cum iusticia de aliqua re habere dominium, nisi sit regeneratus per
ecclesiam’ (2.7, p. 74 – all references are to Aegidius Romanus, De ecclesiastica
potestate, ed. R. Scholz (repr. Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1961)).
48
‘Remota itaque iustitia quid sint regna nisi magna latrocinia?’ (Augustine of
Hippo, De civitate dei, 4.4, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, vol. xlvii
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), p. 101); ‘Vera autem iustitia non est nisi in ea re
publica, cuius conditor rectorque Christus est’ (De civitate dei 2.21, p. 55). See
R.A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine
(Cambridge University Press, 1970).
49
See Joseph Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300–1450 (London
and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 42–3.
50
Aegidius Romanus, De ecclesiastica potestate, 1.1, p. 5.

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 The major tracts 33
the pope’s power over temporal matters: ‘For this too is discerned
as pertaining to good morals, so that the laity may learn also in
temporal things, in which they are very hostile to clergy, to obey
their superiors.’51
In defining the pope’s plenitude of power, Giles set it within the
limits of what was given to the church: ‘In the supreme pontiff,
however, there is plenitude of power not in every way, but in so far
as there is power within the church, so that the whole of the power
which is in the church is reserved to the supreme pontiff.’52 This
plenitude of power had two modes of operation. As definer of
matters of faith and morals, the pope had the power to lay down
moral laws as positive law for humanity, but had the capacity to go
beyond these himself, because he was above the laws which he had
made. Also, in what could appear a somewhat obscure definition,
the pope could achieve without a second cause that which he could
achieve with one.53 This was on the surface an innocuous formula-
tion, but viewed within the hierarchical context of Giles’s world
view it was pregnant with meaning. God of course was the arche-
type who could do by himself whatever he could do through his
human agents. The pope could do the same within his sphere of
operation. This meant that all jurisdictional power within the Chris-
tian community lay ultimately with the pope. Within the church
understood more narrowly as an ecclesiastical body, all authority
(such as that of a bishop) derived from the pope, while within the
church understood in its widest sense as the body of believing
Christians, the power of secular rulers was also derived from the
supreme pontiff. In normal circumstances there was an undisturbed
hierarchy of functions in which ecclesiastical and temporal author-
ities exercised their specific powers, but in an emergency, if the

51
‘Nam et hoc ad bonos mores pertinere dignoscitur, ut discant laici eciam in
temporalibus, in quibus oppido infesti sunt clericis, suis superioribus obedire’
(ibid., 1.1, p. 5).
52
‘In summo autem pontifice est plenitudo potestatis non quocumque modo, sed
quantum ad posse, quod est in ecclesia, ita quod totum posse, quod est in ecclesia,
reservatur in summo pontifice’ (ibid., 3.9, p. 193).
53
Ibid., 3.10, p. 195.

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 34 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
good of the church demanded it, the pope could intervene and, if
necessary, exercise powers directly which he normally delegated to
others lower down the hierarchical ladder.
The tract discussed, at inordinate length, the relationship between
spiritual and temporal power. The power of the pope was primary
and universal, while that of the secular ruler was secondary and
particular.54 Giles expressed his argument in classic terms. He argued
that priesthood was prior to kingship in time and greater than it in
dignity, on the grounds that the spiritual power had instituted the
earthly power and could judge it for its delinquencies, referring
expressly to the authoritative statement of Hugh of St Victor.55
He repeated and elaborated in a hierocratic manner Bernard of
Clairvaux’s expression of the two-swords analogy, thereby going
beyond Bernard’s own intentions. Giles said that the two swords
mentioned in Luke (22:38) signified spiritual and temporal power;
that both were in the ultimate possession of the pope, who conceded
the use of the material sword to the temporal ruler but retained the
right to command its use, command being superior to use.56 Giles
held that of the church’s two swords, one was drawn (that of spiritual
power), while the other was sheathed (the material sword held
by right of command).57 Behind this view lay a deep conviction of
the superiority of spiritual things over temporal things. Giles
reflected the deeply ingrained notion that the clergy should not

54
See for instance ibid., 2.6 (at length), pp. 60–70; and 3.11, pp. 200–6.
55
Ibid., 1.4, pp. 11–12; 1.5, pp. 14–15; 1.6, p. 22; 2.5, p. 55. See Hugh of St Victor, De
sacramentis christianae fidei, 2.2.4, PL, vol. clxxvi, col. 418: ‘Quanto autem vita
spiritualis dignior est quam terrena, et spiritus quam corpus, tanto spiritualis
potestas terrenam sive saecularem potestatem honore, ac dignitate praecedit. Nam
spiritualis potestas terrenam potestatem et instituere habet, ut sit, et iudicare habet
si bona non fuerit. Ipsa vero a Deo primum instituta est, et cum deviat, a solo Deo
judicari potest.’
56
Aegidius Romanus, De ecclesiastica potestate, 2.5, pp. 56–8; 2.15, pp. 137–8.
57
Ibid., 2.5, p. 56. Giles referred to Bede at this point for the notion of the drawn
and undrawn swords, but his interpretation in terms of the spiritual and the
material sword is not in Bede: see Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio, 6 (PL 92,
cols. 601–2), quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena aurea in quattuor evangelia,
Expositio in Lucam, 22, c. 10, ed. P. Angelicus Guariditi (Rome: Marietti), p. 291.

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 The major tracts 35
dirty their hands with involvement in secular affairs – that was not
their job. But he did maintain that there were occasions on which
the church, and the pope in particular, could exercise temporal
power directly. Canon law gave a wealth of examples justifying
papal intervention in temporal matters in certain cases (‘certis
causis inspectis’): these were listed and discussed at length by
Giles.58 More interestingly, he argued ingeniously that just as
Christ could override the normal workings of nature by perform-
ing a miracle, his vicar, the pope, could also override the normal
function of the secular ruler by a direct intervention of power in a
temporal matter.59 Giles believed that power in itself was some-
thing good and only its use could be bad (one of the reasons
justifying papal intervention), but that all power derived ultim-
ately from God, who could permit his people to suffer a bad ruler
for their spiritual improvement, an Augustinian argument.60
But was there any limit to the pope’s ultimate power in temporal
matters? This was an old conundrum for any medieval juristic
discussion of sovereign power. Giles said:
We shall distinguish the double power of the Supreme Pontiff, and his double
jurisdiction in temporal matters: the one absolute, the other regulated,
because, as the wise philosophers say, he who makes the law should observe
it. If, therefore, the Supreme Pontiff, according to his absolute power, is
otherwise without bridle and halter, he should impose on himself a bridle and
halter, through himself observing his legislation and law.61
This has echoes of the theme of the ruler’s absolute and ordained
power, a well-worked trope of both jurists and theologians from the

58
Aegidius Romanus, De ecclesiastica potestate, 3.5–3.8, pp. 168–90.
59
Ibid., 3.9, pp. 190–1.
60
Ibid., 2.9, p. 83. See 3.7, pp. 179–85 for details of grounds for papal intervention in
canon law.
61
‘Distinguemus duplicem potestatem summi pontificis et duplicem eius iurisdiccionem
in temporalibus rebus: unam absolutam et aliam regulatam, quia, ut tradiderunt
sapientes philosophi, legis positivus debet esse legis observativus. Si ergo summus
pontifex secundum suum posse absolutum est alias sine freno et sine capistro, ipse
tamen debet sibi frenum et capistrum imponere, in se ipso observando leges et iura’
(ibid., 3.7, p. 181).

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 36 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
mid-thirteenth century. In juristic scholarship, the discussion
centred upon the possible conflict between the emperor’s status as
being ‘freed from the laws’ (legibus solutus), that is, from human
ones, and the notion that it was fitting for him to observe the laws
which depended on his sovereign power for their validity.62
In sum, Giles held that the pope, as the ‘fount of power’ ( fons
potestatis), had the most perfect human power.63 In a highly revealing
passage right at the end of his tract, he openly acknowledged the
emotional message underlying his analysis of the church’s and in
particular the pope’s power:
Let us all equally hear the purpose of my discourse. Fear the church and
observe its commandments. This means every man; that is, every man is
directed to this. Indeed, the church is to be feared and its commandments
observed, or the Supreme Pontiff, who occupies the apex of the church and
who can be said to be the church, is to be feared and his commandments
observed, because his power is spiritual, heavenly and divine, and is without
weight, number or measure.64
This shows just how far Giles had gone (like the papacy itself ) in
seeing the church, and the pope in particular, in terms of the
possession and exercise of power.
But it was in his treatment of dominium in the sense of property
rights that Giles made his most extreme and truly striking statements,
discussing the whole question at very great length, notably in Book II.
He argued that all right to property came through the church, because
regeneration through the church’s sacraments of baptism (the remedy
for original sin) and penance (that for actual sin) was necessary for

62
See Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought, pp. 118, 167; and Kenneth
Pennington, The Prince and the Law, 1200–1600 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford:
University of California Press, 1993), pp. 54–75.
63
Aegidius Romanus, De ecclesiastica potestate, 3.10, p. 197.
64
‘Finem ergo loquendi omnes pariter audiamus: Ecclesiam time et mandata eius
observa, hoc est enim omnis homo, idest ad hoc ordinatur omnis homo. Ecclesia
quidem est timenda et mandata eius sunt observanda, sive summus pontifex, qui
tenet apicem ecclesie et qui potest dici ecclesia, est timendus et sua mandata sunt
observanda, quia potestas eius est spiritualis, celestis et divina, et est sine pondere,
numero et mensura’ (ibid., 3.12, p. 209).

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 The major tracts 37
just possession or ownership.65 This led him to make the remarkable
statement that: ‘The church is more lord of your possessions than you
are yourself.’66 Dispossession on the grounds of mortal sin was there-
fore justified.67 Excommunication would also have the same effect,
which, he pointed out, would not be the case if the church were not the
lord and mistress of all temporal goods.68 Most shockingly of all, Giles
hit at the centre of the structure of societal property relationships by
maintaining that the church had ultimate control over inheritances,
saying that one did not justly inherit simply by the will of one’s carnal
father. An heir’s state of mortal sin could invalidate the possession of an
inheritance.69 It is difficult to believe that Giles expected to be taken
seriously in reality; maybe he was just trying to make a point. What he
was doing was to develop the hierocratic argument to its logical
extreme.
When it came to the question of actual possession of property by
the church as opposed to an ultimate form of lordship in the
Christian community, Giles was more circumspect. He was ambiva-
lent about the clergy’s possession of wealth. He made it clear that
the clergy should not make the accumulation of wealth their main
aim, because possessions would tend to impose anxiety on them
and distract them from their spiritual mission. The clergy, while
retaining ownership and possession of temporal goods, should
delegate the actual administration and care of the church’s property
to others. For both clergy and laity, temporal goods had to be
ordered to a spiritual end.70 These statements by Giles should be
seen in the context of the early fourteenth-century debate about
poverty and property. He was acutely aware of the recommenda-
tions to poverty in the New Testament. He accepted that to have
nothing of one’s own pertained to perfection, but that that was a
work of supererogation, as in the case of the rich young man in the

65
Ibid., 2.8, p. 78.
66
‘Magis itaque erit ecclesia domina possessionis tue, quam tu ipse ’ (ibid., 2.7,
p. 74).
67 68
Ibid., 2.7, p. 74. Ibid., 2.12, p. 108.
69 70
Ibid., 2.8, pp. 79–80. Ibid., 2.3, p. 44.

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 38 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
Gospels. For Giles, however, members of religious orders vowed to
poverty retained this perfection if they held possessions as property
of a church.71 He maintained that the condition of the church had
changed over time. In its first age, temporal possessions had
been prohibited, but direct divine support given; in its second,
possessions were conceded and God’s hand somewhat removed.
Nowadays, the church lived in a different age:
In this third age, therefore, the church is endowed with both, because it
rejoices in both the support of temporal possessions and divine help, so that,
governing itself, it can maintain its standing. For in the first place the church
had its beginning and then its growth; now however it has perfection and
standing, on account of which, so that it may preserve its standing, it needs
both divine help, lest it suffer shipwreck, and the support of temporal
possessions, lest it be held in low esteem by laymen.72
This reflects Giles’s main purpose in writing: to justify and, through
his scholarship, vindicate the rights claimed by the church. He thus
exactly expressed the aims of Boniface VIII, which is why Giles was
recognized by the pope as his greatest intellectual support. Both
men were demanding that the laity show proper respect for the
divinely created rights of the church and the papacy in particular.
Giles was defending the church’s rights to jurisdiction and property,
that is, its power in this world, which he considered to be the
underpinning necessary to sustain its spiritual mission.
Another tract, De regimine christiano (On Christian Govern-
ment), also written in 1302 (or slightly later), was produced by
Giles’s Augustinian colleague at Paris, James of Viterbo. This too
supported the hierocratic claims of the papacy and was dedicated to
Boniface VIII. It was a very extensive and detailed work divided
into two parts: the first considered the nature of the church and the

71
Ibid., 2.1, p. 38.
72
‘In hoc ergo tercio tempore utroque est ecclesia dotata, quia gaudet et
temporalium subsidio et divino auxilio, ut se possit in suo statu regere et
conservare. Habuit enim prius ecclesia inicium, postea incrementum; nunc
autem habet perfeccionem et statum: propter quod, ut in statu huiusmodi se
conservet, et indiget divino auxilio, ne naufragium paciatur, et temporalium
subsidio, ne a laicis vilipendatur’ (ibid., 2.3, p. 48). See also 2.2, p. 38.

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 The major tracts 39
lengthier second expressly addressed the question of power within
the church and the relationship between spiritual and temporal
power. The tone of the piece was level-headed and it was well
structured, being a measured, scholastic treatment, making a
notable contribution to medieval ecclesiology. James’s loyalty was
rewarded: having already supported Boniface’s position with his
tract De renunciatione papae (On the Resignation of the Pope)
concerning the resignation of Celestine V, he was made Archbishop
of Benevento in September 1302 and named Archbishop of Naples
in December of the same year.73
James understood the church to be a community, but one of
grace rather than nature. In order to describe this community more
accurately, he used traditional imagery which differentiated
between three kinds in ascending order of magnitude: the house,
the city and the kingdom. In so doing he referred expressly to
Augustine and gave biblical citations for applying all three to the
church. But the next step he took showed a more radical approach:
And although the church is rightly named by these three terms signifying
community, it is however more properly called a kingdom (regnum): because
the church contains a great multitude collected from diverse peoples and
nations, and diffused and spread throughout the whole world; because in
the ecclesiastical community there is found everything which suffices for the
salvation of men and the spiritual life; because it was instituted for the
common good of all men; and because, like a kingdom, it contains within
itself very many interconnected congregations of an increasing scale of
magnitude, like provinces, dioceses, parishes and colleges.74

73
See E. Ypma, ‘Recherches sur la carrière scolaire et la bibliothèque de Jacques de
Viterbe {1308’, Augustiniana, 24 (1974), 247–82.
74
‘Et licet hiis tribus nominibus communitatem designantibus, recte nominetur
ecclesia, magis tamen proprie regnum vocatur; [tum] quia ecclesia magnam
multitudinem comprehendit, ex diversis populis et nationibus collectam, et toto
orbe terrarum diffusam et dilatatam; tum quia in ecclesiastica communitate,
omnia, que hominum saluti et spirituali vite sufficiunt, reperiuntur; tum quia
propter omnium hominum commune bonum instituta est; tum quia, ad instar
regni, intra se continet congregationes plurimas ad invicem ordinatas ac se
excedentes, ut provincias, dyoceses, parrochias et collegia’ (1.1, pp. 94–5 – all
references are to James of Viterbo, De regimine christiano, in Le plus ancien traité
de l’Eglise, Jacque de Viterbe, De regimine christiano (1301–2), Etudes des sources et

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 40 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
James was applying political criteria which owed much to Aristotle:
magnitude, self-sufficiency and the end of the common good. He
was transposing characteristics of the greatest natural community to
that of grace, the better to comprehend the church as being one
made up of human beings. His definition of the church as a regnum
prepared the way for his main concentration on its government
(regimen), through the exercise of power ( potestas), located ultim-
ately in the hands of its king (rex) – the pope.
James’s approach differed from that of Giles of Rome’s De
ecclesiastica potestate. Whereas Giles in that tract considered that
only Christian rulership had validity, James accepted that man’s life
in community was the product of the natural order:
The institution of these communities or societies proceeded from the natural
inclination itself of men, as the Philosopher shows in the first book of the
Politics. For man is by nature a social animal and one living in a multitude,
which results from natural necessity, in that one man cannot live in self-
sufficiency on his own, but needs help from another.75
In explaining the relationship between natural and Christian ruler-
ship, James pursued what he called a ‘middle way’ (via media):
The institution of temporal power, materially and in its origin, has its
existence from the natural inclination of men, and thereby, from God, insofar
as the work of nature is the work of God; as regards its perfection, however,
and form, it has existence from the spiritual power which is derived from
God in a special way. For grace does not do away with nature but perfects
and forms it. Similarly, that which is of grace does not do away with that
which is of nature, but forms and perfects it. Wherefore, because the spiritual
power looks to grace, and the temporal to nature, the spiritual does not
thereby exclude the temporal but forms and perfects it. Indeed, every human
power is imperfect and unformed, unless it be formed and perfected by the

édition critique, critical text with an introduction by H.-X. Arquillière (Paris:

Gabriel Beauchesne, 1926)).
75
‘Harum autem communitatum seu societatum institutio ex ipsa hominum naturali
inclinatione processit, ut Philosophus ostendit primo Polit. Homo enim
naturaliter est animal sociale et in multitudine vivens, quod ex naturali
necessitate provenit, eo quod unus homo non potest sufficienter vivere per
seipsum sed indiget ab alio adjuvari’ (ibid., 1.1. p. 91).

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 The major tracts 41
spiritual. This formation however is by approbation and ratification. Human
power, therefore, which exists amongst the infidels, even though it is the
product of human inclination, and thereby legitimate, is nevertheless
unformed, because it has not been approved and ratified by the spiritual.
And similarly, that power which exists amongst the faithful, is not perfected
and formed, until it shall have been approved and ratified by the spiritual.76
He went on to make it clear that this perfection and formation were
through the process of royal unction performed by the spiritual
power.77
James was clearly applying Aquinas’s statement – that grace
perfected nature but did not do away with it – to the relationship
between temporal and spiritual power (a step which Aquinas did
not take himself ).78 Different rules therefore applied to Christian
rulership. Rulership itself was natural, indeed necessary, to man in
his social life,79 but ‘that a believer should be over other believers is
from divine law, which arises from grace’.80 The regimen of grace
brought in the spiritual power which both instituted and could
command and judge the Christian temporal one.81 Indeed, in a
Christian community (the church in its wider sense), temporal
rulership, although it was immediately concerned with secular

76
‘Institutio potestatis temporalis materialiter et inchoative habet esse a naturali
hominum inclinatione, ac per hoc, a Deo in quantum opus nature est opus Dei;
perfective autem et formaliter habet esse a potestate spirituali, que a Deo speciali
modo derivatur. Nam gratia non tollit naturam sed perficit eam et format; et
similiter id, quod est gratie, non tollit id, quod est nature; sed id format et perficit.
Unde quia potestas spiritualis gratiam respicit, temporalis vero naturam: ideo
spiritualis temporalem non excludit sed eam format et perficit. Imperfecta quidem
et informis est omnis humana potestas, nisi per spiritualem formetur et
perficiatur. Hec autem formatio est approbatio et ratificatio. Unde potestas
humana, que est apud infideles, quantumcumque sit ex inclinatione nature, ac
per hoc legitima, tamen informis est: quia per spiritualem non est approbata
et ratificata. Et similiter illa, que est apud fideles perfecta et formata non est,
donec per spiritualem fuerit approbata et ratificata’ (ibid., 2.7, p. 232).
77 78
Ibid., 2.7, p. 233. See ST, 1a, 8.2.
79
James of Viterbo, De regimine christiano, 2.10, pp. 295 and 303.
80
‘Quod autem homo fidelis sit super homines fideles est ex iure divino, quod a
gratia oritur’ (ibid., 2.7, p. 233).
81
Ibid., 2.7, pp. 233–6; 2.10, p. 285.

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 42 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
matters, ultimately served the same spiritual ends as did the spiritual
power: ‘Although the proximate end of temporal power is other
than the end of the spiritual, their ultimate end is however the same:
namely, supernatural beatitude of which the spiritual power has
immediate care; and thus temporal power, if it is exercised rightly, is
said to be in some way spiritual.’82
James therefore showed how Aristotelian naturalistic notions of
the natural order of government and community could be harnessed
to a hierocratic conception through extending the application of
Aquinas’s doctrine of grace and nature in order to provide a
deepened pro-papal understanding of Hugh of St Victor’s contention
that the church instituted the temporal power.83 It was a consider-
able achievement on James’s part to establish this link between the
naturalistic political order and that of Christian rulership. Giles of
Rome had not sought to integrate his thoroughly naturalistic
approach in his De regimine principum with his hierocratic approach
in De ecclesiastica potestate; Aquinas’s treatment of the relationship
between temporal and spiritual power was skimpy and, apparently,
of little interest to him.84 Given the prevalence in intellectual
circles of naturalistic Aristotelian political concepts and the exis-
tence in fact of monarchs claiming to rule by the grace of God,
James was addressing a crucial contemporary question.
But, surely, James’s most important contribution was to the theory
of power in itself, irrespective of who exercised it. He followed the
established view which distinguished between two powers of bishops
and priests: that of orders and that of jurisdiction – the potestas ordinis
was sacramental, while the potestas iurisdictionis was concerned with
judging and ruling. He then had an insight. He held that the power

82
‘Licet finis proximus temporalis potestatis sit alius a fine spiritualis, tamen finis
ultimus idem est: scilicet beatitudo supernaturalis, de qua immediate curam habet
spiritualis potestas; et ideo temporalis potestas, si recta sit, dicitur aliquo modo
spiritualis’ (ibid., 2.8, p. 257).
83
Ibid., 2.7, p. 231.
84
See Joseph Canning, ‘Aquinas’, in David Boucher and Paul Kelly (eds.), Political
Thinkers from Socrates to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 120–1.

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 The major tracts 43
of jurisdiction was by nature ‘royal’.85 Thus, bishops and priests
possessed both priestly power (that of orders) and royal power (that
of jurisdiction).86 As such, to James’s mind, there was a double
(duplex) royal power of jurisdiction, possessed, on the one hand, by
both bishops and priests, and, on the other, by kings.87 He was
therefore able to isolate this notion of power in itself, in the sense
of ruling, without attaching it exclusively to either the temporal or
the spiritual ruler. Royal power was in essence the same thing,
whoever exercised it, priest or king. Power over what and by whom
were secondary questions. He characterized jurisdiction as royal,
because he was using the concept of regnum as the descriptor both
of the church and of the civil community. It was thus his usage of the
notion of regnum which facilitated his recognition of the nature of
ruling power, which, as he said, was his main interest. Power in itself
he saw as good, although it could be put to a good or a bad use.88 He
saw it as necessary to have one head in a community to direct it
towards the common good.89
The head of the church was, of course, Christ, and on earth his
vicar the pope, the rex of the regnum ecclesiae.90 The pope received
from Christ plenitude of power:
The Vicar of Christ, however, is said to have plenitude of power, because the
whole governing power which has been communicated by Christ to the
church, priestly and royal, spiritual and temporal, is in the Supreme Pontiff,
the Vicar of Christ. As much power has been communicated to the church as
was useful for the salvation of the faithful; therefore, in the Vicar of Christ
there is the whole of that power which is required for securing the salvation
of men.91

85
James of Viterbo, De regimine christiano, 2.3, p. 178.
86
Ibid., 2.4, pp. 187–200; 2.5, pp. 201–22.
87 88
Ibid., 2.6, pp. 223–8; 2.7, pp. 229–44. Ibid., 2.10, p. 297.
89 90
Ibid., 2.5, p. 211; 2.10, p. 303. Ibid., 1.1, p. 95.
91
‘Verumtamen dicitur Christi vicarius habere plenitudinem potestatis: quia tota
potentia gubernativa que a Christo communicata est ecclesie, sacerdotalis et
regalis, spiritualis et temporalis, est in summo pontifice Christi vicario. Tanta
vero potestas communicata est ecclesie quanta erat oportuna ad salutem fidelium;
quare in vicario Christi tota illa potentia est, que ad hominum salutem
procurandam requiritur’ (ibid., 2.9, p. 272).

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 44 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
The pope exercised power over the church militant, that is, all
Christians on their pilgrim way in this world: papal plenitudo
potestatis covered secular rulers within the context of the church
in this wider sense – no one was excepted:
It is to be known that the power of the Supreme Pontiff and Vicar of Christ is
called full, firstly, because no one belonging in any way to the church militant is
excluded, but every man existing in the present church is subject to him; and
secondly, because every power ordained by God and given to man for governing
the faithful, whether spiritual or temporal, is contained in this power.92
Indeed, all power within the church was derived from that of the
pope.93 Temporal rulers’ power was subject to the spiritual in both
spiritual and temporal matters, with the result that the pope could
depose them.94 According to James’s profoundly hierarchical
understanding, the lesser temporal power pre-existed in the greater
spiritual power.95 This meant that in reality there was but one royal
power which had two aspects, the spiritual and the temporal:
It can also be said that the spiritual royal power and the temporal are not two
powers, but two parts of the one perfect royal power, of which one alone is in
earthly kings and in an inferior manner, whereas both are in spiritual rulers
and in a more excellent manner. Wherefore, in the prelates of the church and
especially in the Supreme Pontiff there is royal power which is whole, perfect
and full; amongst the princes of this world it exists in part and in a diminished
form.96

92
‘Sciendum est quod potentia summi pontificis et Christi vicarii plena dicitur,
primo quia ab hac potentia nullus ad ecclesiam militantem qualitercumque
pertinens excipitur; sed omnis homo in presenti ecclesia existens ei subicitur.
Secundo, quia omnis potestas ad gubernationem fidelium a Deo ordinata et
hominibus data, sive spiritualis sive temporalis, in hac potestate
comprehenditur’ (ibid., 2.9, p. 273).
93
Ibid., 2.9, p. 273 – immediate continuation of the above passage.
94 95
Ibid., 2.10, p. 285. Ibid., 2.8, p. 248.
96
‘Potest etiam dici quod potestas regia spiritualis et temporalis non sunt due
potentie, sed due partes unius regie potestatis perfecte, quarum una solum est
in regibus terrenis et modo inferiori; in spiritualibus autem est utraque et modo
excellentiori. Unde in prelatis ecclesie et precipue in summo prelato est potestas
regia tota et perfecta et plena; in principibus autem seculi est secundum partem et
diminuta’ (ibid., 2.10, pp. 288–9).

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 The major tracts 45
Therefore, in conferring the power of the keys on St Peter and in
entrusting him with the care of his sheep, Christ gave him at the
same time both spiritual and temporal power and jurisdiction.97
James’s approach provided him with answers to stock objections
to the exercise of temporal power by the papacy. To imagined
opponents using the statement ‘My kingdom is not of this world’
(John 18:36), James replied that there were many things which
Christ did not do but had the power to, and which his vicar may
nonetheless do, the exercise of temporal power being a case in
point.98 His interpretation of the two-swords argument was a
hierocratic rendering of St Bernard’s statement in De consideratione
that the spiritual power held both, directly exercising the spiritual
and commanding the use of the temporal.99 To the standard theo-
cratic argument that the temporal power was instituted directly by
God without any mediation by the spiritual, James responded with a
concept of mediation by human agents: government and social life
were the result of man’s natural inclination; the perfect form of
rulership required the mediation of the spiritual power.100 To the
apparent problem (from James’s point of view) that the Donation of
Constantine involved the exercise of human law over a matter for
divine law, he responded that the emperor, in conceding an earthly
kingdom together with imperial insignia and offices, had not con-
ferred any authority on the pope but had shown reverence to the
spiritual power and the subjection of the earthly to the heavenly
kingdom. God had permitted this honour so that the office of pope
should shine forth in greater splendour. Indeed, the Donation was
an act of co-operation and service permitting the pope more easily
to exercise, de facto, rights which he already possessed de iure divino
but had been unable to use before the time of Constantine because
of persecution by tyrants. The Donation made possible the pope’s

97 98
Ibid., 2.10, p. 292. Ibid., 2.10, pp. 290–2.
99
Ibid., 2.10, pp. 289–90. See Bernard of Clairvaux, De consideratione, 4.3.7, in
Opera omnia, ed. J. Leclercq, H.M. Rochais and C.H. Talbot (Rome: Editiones
Cistercienses, 1963), vol. iii, p. 424.
100
James of Viterbo, De regimine christiano, 2.10, p. 295.

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 46 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
direct involvement in temporal matters, for instance, during a
vacancy in the empire.101
For James, the church was not just a regnum but a true respublica
(commonwealth), because it was a unity and universal. To support
this view, he used a traditional Augustinian interpretation of Cicero’s
definition of the people comprising a res publica – ‘a multitude united
together by consent to law and the participation in a common
good’.102 James concluded: ‘According to this definition, no com-
munity is called a true res publica, except the ecclesiastical, because in
it alone exists true justice, true utility and true communion.’103 The
unity of the church as a regnum derived from its having one ruler,
because that was the best form of government for a multitude – the
one which best secured the common good:
For rulership or government is nothing other than the direction of the
governed to an end which is a good of some kind. Unity however pertains
to the nature of a good, as Boethius proves in Book III of De consolatione
[On the Consolation of Philosophy], in this way – that just as everything
desires the good, so it desires unity without which it cannot exist. Anything
exists insofar as it is one. That, therefore, at which the intention of the
governor of the multitude aims is rightly unity and the peace of the multitude
in which unity consists the good and safety of any society.104

101
Ibid., 2.8, pp. 255–6.
102
‘Populus autem est multitudinis cetus iuris consensu et utilitatis communione
sociatus’ (ibid., 2.4, p. 128) – see Cicero, De republica, ed. K. Ziegler (Leipzig:
B.G. Teubner, 1960), 1.25.39. For the difference between Augustine’s final
interpretation of the implications of this passage and the medieval ‘Augustinian’
interpretation of Augustine’s discussion of it, see Canning, History of Medieval
Political Thought, pp. 41–3.
103
‘Secundum hanc diffinitionem, nulla communitas dicitur vere res publica nisi
ecclesiastica, quia in ea sola est vera iustitia et vera utilitas et vera communio’
(James of Viterbo, De regimine christiano, 2.4, p. 128). See Augustine of Hippo,
De civitate dei, 2.21.
104
‘Nam regimen sive gubernatio nichil est aliud quam directio gubernatorum ad
finem, qui est aliquod bonum. Unitas autem pertinet ad rationem boni, sicut
probat Boetius III. Libro De consolatione, per hoc quod sicut omnia desiderant
bonum, ita desiderant unitatem sine qua esse non possunt. Unumquodque enim
in tantum est in quantum unum est. Unde, illud ad quod tendit intentio
multitudinem gubernantis, recte est unitas et pax multitudinis, in qua unitate

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 The major tracts 47
The case of the pope, as the head and governor of the church on
earth, was the pre-eminent example of the link between power and
the common good, the end for which rulership existed.
Another pro-papal tract, De potestate pape (On the Power of the
Pope), written by Henry of Cremona, a canonist at the papal court
and later Bishop of Reggio in Emilia, deserves mention because of
the notoriety which it achieved. It focused on demonstrating that
the pope had temporal jurisdiction throughout the whole world. It
was not long (thirteen pages in Richard Scholz’s edition),105 but it
did provide a wide-ranging exposition of arguments, backed by a
dense mass of authorities, mostly from the canon law and the Bible,
in support of the papal position and refutation of stock objections.
The tract was therefore a highly useful and concentrated source for
those wishing to defend the pope. There is scholarly disagreement
about when and where it was produced. Jürgen Miethke has argued
that it was produced deep in the heart of the papacy, being a
memorandum composed for a consistory in June 1302.106 Karl
Ubl has rejected Miethke’s argument, maintaining that Henry of
Cremona wrote his tract during his legation to Paris, when he
engaged with pro-royal tracts in the debate over Deum time before
the calling of the form of Estates General of April 1302.107 Boniface
VIII was specifically mentioned in the text, which was specifically
aimed at his Ghibelline enemies, with those at Cremona being given
special mention.108 The tract was not overtly aimed at the French
but knowledge of its contents spread very rapidly in Paris. One
French-produced fifteenth-century manuscript of the work, now at
Uppsala, states that it was delivered by Henry in a consistory before

consistit bonum et salus cuiuslibet societatis’ (James of Viterbo, De regimine

christiano, 2.5, p. 211).
105
Henry of Cremona, De potestate pape, in Richard Scholz, Die Publizistik zur Zeit
Philipps des Schönen und Bonifaz’ VIII. (repr. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi,
1969), pp. 459–71. All references are to this edition.
106
See Miethke, De potestate papae, p. 85.
107
Ubl, ‘Johnnes Quidorts Weg’, pp. 59–60, 65.
108
Henry of Cremona, De potestate pape, p. 460.

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 48 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
Boniface in the presence of French ambassadors.109 Ubl, however,
does not consider this to be reliable evidence.110
Henry’s approach was profoundly hierocratic. Out of the mass of
arguments poured forth, certain merit particular attention. The
Donation of Constantine, he maintained, merely recognized that
the church thereby gained the exercise de facto of what it already
possessed de iure, thus answering the objection that the Donation
revealed an imperial source for papal power. Christ wished to come
to the aid of the faith, which meant, in human terms, giving to the
church that power which it had previously lacked – this he did
through the medium of Constantine ’s donation, whereby the
emperor renounced the empire and accepted that he held it from
the church.111 Henry clarified his meaning by referring to the much
commented-on passage in Luke 14:15–24, where the giver of the
feast, disappointed at the refusals of those whom he had first
invited, instructed his servants to search the highways and hedge-
rows and ‘force all to come in’ (compellite omnes intrare): this
symbolized, according to Henry, that the early church, only having
the role of inviting, possessed nothing, whereas the church of his
own day had the power to compel. This passage showed that the
church was going to have the temporal power which the emperors
had lost through persecuting it and the popes in particular.112 To the
classic objection that Christ had said that his kingdom was not of
this world, Henry replied that such was the case de facto, because
Christ was not obeyed, but that de iure he was king of the world.113
Henry felt secure in relying so much on canon law in addition to
the Bible because he took the extreme position that ‘the canons
themselves have been dictated by the Holy Spirit’.114 It is not
surprising that there were similarities between parts of Henry’s text
and that of Unam sanctam, because he formed part of the intellectual

109
See Miethke, De potestate papae, p. 86n229.
110
Ubl, ‘Johannes Quidorts Weg’, pp. 59–60.
111
Henry of Cremona, De potestate pape, pp. 467–8.
112 113
Ibid., p. 468. Ibid., p. 470.
114
‘Ipsi canones sunt per spiritum sanctum dictati’ (ibid., pp. 470–1).

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 The major tracts 49
milieu around Boniface. In particular, his arguments in favour of
unity under one head found clear resonances in the later bull: that
the church was one dove and one body with one head, Christ; that a
body with two heads would be a monster; and that Christ’s clothing
was undivided.115 But Henry’s particular claim to fame was that his
tract became the prime target of John of Paris’s wrath against the
papalists.
John of Paris (Jean Quidort), a Dominican at the University of
Paris, wrote the tract De regia potestate et papali (On Royal and Papal
Power). The scholarly consensus used to be that he wrote it some-
time within the second half of 1302 and the first few weeks of 1303.116
But Karl Ubl has produced very strong arguments that there were
three successive redactions of the text. He claims that the first was
written between February and April 1302 in response to a royal
demand at the time of the debate over Deum time, and that shortly
after the form of Estates General of April 1302, John reworked his
tract to include polemic against Henry of Cremona and incorporated
some suggestions from the Rex pacificus.117 John was a supporter of
the French crown in its conflict with Boniface VIII: for instance, he
joined his fellow Dominicans of the Convent of St James in signing
the petition of June 1303 requesting that the pope be tried before a
general council of the church, a proposal agreed by that month’s
meeting of the three estates in Paris choreographed by the royal
court. As a theologian, he was involved in several controversies,
notably supporting Aquinas against his Franciscan opponents and,
indeed, died in 1306 in the midst of an appeal to Pope Clement V
against the decision made at Paris forbidding him to teach because
115
Ibid., pp. 469–70.
116
See, however, Janet Coleman’s divergent view that the text reflects Dominican
arguments developed from the 1270s to the 1290s against Franciscan positions
and cannot therefore be seen with any certainty as having been written in
response to Boniface VIII’s Clericis laicos, Ausculta fili or Unam sanctam (see
Janet Coleman, ‘The intellectual milieu of John of Paris, OP’, in Jürgen Miethke
(ed.), Das Publikum politischer Theorie im 14. Jahrhundert (Munich: Oldenbourg,
1992), pp. 173–206; and Janet Coleman, A History of Political Thought. From the
Middle Ages to the Renaissance (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 121).
117
Ubl, ‘Johannes Quidorts Weg’, pp. 52–3, 60, 65, 71–2.

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 50 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
of his idiosyncratic ideas on the nature of the Eucharist. His De regia
potestate et papali was a scholastic work meant to be detached in
nature and designed for general application – there were only a
couple of references in it to the dispute between Philip and Boniface.
The tract was moderate in tone and has been characterized as
pursuing a via media between the extremes of papal and royal
apologists.118 Ubl rejects this interpretation, considering that John’s
tract was written to justify the royal position on the division between
temporal and spiritual power, and the rejection of papal demands.119
It is certain that John’s aim was to protect the French monarchy
against papal claims and to vindicate French sovereignty against
both the pope and the emperor.
In this tract, John expressly and avowedly considered the question
of power and was noteworthy because he addressed the problems of
the nature of, and relationship between, temporal and spiritual
power from both sides. This was the result of his scholastic method
in exhaustively marshalling authorities for and against propositions,
to provide biblical, juristic, historical and Aristotelian arguments
which could be useful for the French royal position. His work had
therefore to some extent the appearance of a mosaic of arguments,
and paradoxically provided an excellent conspectus of the range of
hierocratic ones.
At the heart of John’s treatment of the relationship between
temporal and spiritual power lay a recognition that human life
had a dual end or purpose: a natural one in this world, achieved
by the life of virtue, which itself was hierarchically ordered to a
higher supernatural destiny, the enjoyment of the vision of God in
heaven. Temporal government he saw as being primarily (but not
exclusively) concerned with the natural dimension of man’s exist-
ence, with spiritual power being primarily (but again not solely)

118
See the classic treatment of Jean Rivière, Le problème de l’Eglise et de l’Etat au
temps de Philippe le Bel, Etudes et documents 8 (Louvain: Spicilegium sacrum
Lovaniense, 1926), pp. 281–300.
119
Ubl, ‘Johannes Quidorts Weg’, p. 71. For a survey of John of Paris’s political
ideas, see, for instance, Monahan, Consent, Coercion and Limit, pp. 195–205.

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 The major tracts 51
concerned with what related to salvation. But he did not see the
priesthood as being concerned with matters which were purely
spiritual and other-worldly because the church existed as a body
which needed to be governed, whereas secular rulers could not be
considered in a purely naturalistic way because they governed
subjects who were also Christians. The claims of temporal and
spiritual power intersected at the level of government and jurisdic-
tion, and it was here that John made his distinctive contributions.
Clearly, John was coming from a conventional position in
working on the basis of a dual order of human life, and one which
owed a lot to Aquinas; however, he went far beyond Aquinas in
considering the relationship between the two powers, partly because
this was the specific task he was undertaking and partly because of
Thomas’s relative lack of interest in the subject. John also benefited
from a more considerable knowledge of canon law. Because John,
unlike Aquinas, was writing in the context of a conflict, he set
himself to master his opponents’ arguments in order to refute them.
John began his work with an Aristotelian-Thomist definition:
‘Kingship is the government of a perfect multitude ordained
towards the common good by one man.’120 Such government was
derived from natural law and the ius gentium because man was by
nature a civil or political and social animal.121 He defined priest-
hood as being a power, but a spiritual and specifically sacramental
one: ‘Priesthood is a spiritual power conferred by Christ on the
ministers of the church for dispensing the sacraments to the faith-
ful.’122 But what was the relationship between the two? God stood
behind both powers, directly in the case of priestly power and
ultimately in that of temporal power, in the sense that he had

120
‘Regnum est regimen multitudinis perfectae ad commune bonum ordinatum ab
uno’ (ch. 1, p. 75) – all references are to the critical edition of John of Paris, De
regia potestate et papali, in Fritz Bleienstein (ed.), Johannes Quidort von Paris:
Über königliche und päpstliche Gewalt (De regia potestate et papali). Textkritische
Edition mit deutscher Übersetzung (Stuttgart: Ernst Kless Verlag, 1969).
121
Ibid., ch. 1, pp. 75 and 77.
122
‘Sacerdotium est spiritualis potestas ministris ecclesie a Christo collata ad
dispensandum fidelibus sacramenta’ (ibid., ch. 2, p. 80).

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 52 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
implanted a natural instinct in men to live in community and create
governments.123 But his key argument was this: he admitted that the
priesthood was greater in dignity than the secular power, whether
king or emperor, because it was concerned with man’s ultimate
destiny in the next world, to which the virtuous life in this one
(the concern of secular rulers) was but a prelude. But, he maintained,
this did not mean that the secular power was derived from the
spiritual: there was no causality, as from the higher to the lower –
they existed in parallel. Indeed, each was the competent authority in
its own sphere: the secular princeps was greater in temporal matters,
whereas the priesthood was greater in spiritual ones.124 This thesis
gave an effective response to the hierocratic line of argument which
relied on the notion that the hierarchical superiority of the priesthood
necessarily involved an efficient causality whereby the lower secular
power derived its very existence and legitimation from the higher
spiritual power.
This argument was striking enough, but it was based on an idea
of temporal and spiritual power as being different in kind. There
remained an important area where this was not the case: that of
jurisdiction. In his final three chapters (23–5) which wrestled with
the topical question of whether a pope could resign, much debated
by canonists and addressed by Giles of Rome in his De renunciatione
papae (On the Resignation of a Pope), on which John much relied,
he confronted the question of the nature of jurisdiction. He per-
ceived very clearly that jurisdiction in itself remained essentially the
same whether it was exercised by secular or spiritual powers.
Spiritual power could not therefore be completely described as
being sacramental; there was also a parallel spiritual power of
jurisdiction which operated according to the same rules as temporal
power. All jurisdiction, which of necessity involved a structure of
command, belonged to the natural order of human life:
Those things which belong to jurisdiction are not above nature and the
condition of [human] affairs, and above the human condition, because it is

123 124
Ibid., ch. 3, p. 82. Ibid., ch. 5, p. 89.

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 The major tracts 53
not above the human condition that men should be in charge of men; rather it
is natural somehow.125
This was said specifically about the pope’s power of jurisdiction, the
essence of the papal office, as opposed to his power of orders, which
he shared with all bishops. Because jurisdiction was something
natural, the choice of which individual should exercise it must lie
with human beings. This applied to both temporal and spiritual
jurisdiction. In the case of the pope, whereas the papal office itself
was divinely instituted, the choice of which individual person should
be pope lay with the cardinals.126 Such consent could be withdrawn.
The papacy existed for the good of the church as a whole. If an
individual pope impeded the common good of the church, then the
cardinals or a general council could depose him if he would not
resign, as John made clear when refuting the argument that the
papacy as the highest created power (summa virtus creata) in one
person could not be removed by another created power:
Although it is the highest power in one person, there is however an equal one
to it or a greater in the college [of cardinals] or the whole church. Or it can
be said that, by divine authority, he can be deposed by the college or even
more by a general council whose consent is supposed and presumed for a
deposition, when there is clear scandal and the head is incorrigible.127
Similarly, in the case of a king, John maintained that the ultimate,
metaphysical source of royal power lay with God, but that the
choice of king, whether in the individual or the dynasty, lay with
the people.128 The barons would be the means by which this
election would be made, as, for instance, in the case of both the

125
‘Ea quae sunt iurisdictionis non sunt super naturam et condicionem negotii et
super conditionem hominum, quia non est super condicionem hominum quod
homines praesint hominibus, immo naturale est aliquo modo’ (ibid., ch. 25, p. 209).
126
Ibid., ch. 25, p. 202.
127
‘Licet sit summa virtus in persona, tamen est ei aequalis vel maior in collegio sive
in tota ecclesia. Vel potest dici quod potest deponi a collegio vel magis a generali
concilio auctoritate divina, cuius consensus supponitur et praesumitur ad
deponendum ubi manifeste apparet scandalum et incorrigibilitas presidentis’
(ibid., ch. 25, p. 207).
128
Ibid., ch. 10, p. 113.

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 54 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
deposition of Childeric and the choice of Pepin.129 Thus, temporal
and spiritual jurisdiction differed not in kind but in their object: the
kingdom or the church as a body which had to be governed.
However, there was another way in which temporal and spiritual
jurisdictional power differed. John argued that by divine law there
was one supreme ruler in spiritual matters instituted to settle
disputes about the faith, lest the unity of the church be destroyed
by conflict, whereas there existed no one universal temporal ruler,
whether by divine or natural law.130 In the secular sphere, the
Christian faithful, through their divinely implanted natural instinct,
had the right to set up a variety of different political communities
and governments in order to live well under the diverse conditions
of their lives.131 John was clearly rejecting the notion of a universal
emperorship, while retaining a universal spiritual role for the pope.
The arguments which John adduced to support his position were
of different kinds. From a theological standpoint, all souls were
essentially on the same level, because there was one human species,
but bodies showed great diversity. The result was that secular power,
but not spiritual power, must reflect variety.132 The sheer scale of
difference undermined any prospect of a universal political society:
There is thus no necessity for all the faithful to come together in some one
political community but, according to the diversity of climate, language and
condition of men, there can be diverse ways of life and diverse polities, and
what is virtuous in one people is not virtuous in another.133
On the practical and empirical level, the spiritual power could
impose its censures far and wide because they were verbal, whereas
the physical power of the sword of secular authorities could not so
easily be applied to those who were distant.134 John also referred to

129 130
Ibid., ch. 14, pp. 145–6. Ibid., ch. 3, pp. 83–4.
131 132
Ibid., ch. 3, p. 82. Ibid., ch. 3, p. 82.
133
‘Non sic autem fideles omnes necesse est convenire in aliqua una politia
communi, sed possunt secundum diversitatem climatum et linguarum et
condicionum hominum esse diversi modi vivendi et diversae politiae, et quod
virtuosum est in una gente non est virtuosum in alia’ (ibid., ch. 3, p. 83).
134
Ibid., ch. 3, p. 82.

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 The major tracts 55
Aristotle’s Politics as showing that the emergence of rulership in
cities or regions was natural but that of imperial monarchy was not.135
He bolstered his argument further by mentioning Augustine’s view
that the spread of the Roman Empire was the result of the desire to
dominate, causing injury to others.136
On the fundamental question of the relationship between the
ruler and property, John considered that there were both similarities
and differences between the positions of the secular prince and the
spiritual power. The determining principle of his approach was to
distinguish between ownership (dominium) and jurisdiction.137
From the prologue of his tract onwards he set out to demonstrate
that the pope had no ownership or jurisdiction over the goods of
laymen. Arguing in an established Dominican manner, he main-
tained that individuals’ property was held by natural right through
their own art, labour and industry. This meant that not only did the
pope have no dominium over it, but that no secular ruler had either.
An individual’s property rights were therefore an area of freedom
for him away from the claims of those in power. What the temporal
prince, but not the pope, had over the goods of laymen was a power
of jurisdiction. Where there was a difference, however, was in the
goods of the church as such. The pope or prelates in no way owned
these, but because ecclesiastical property was held collectively,
dispensers were required to administer it. This left a role for one
head of the church, the pope, as administrator of the church’s
possessions as a whole; prelates would fulfil this function at the
diocesan level. This argument for one head did not apply to the
temporal sphere because there was no such role for a universal
administrator of temporal goods, since the goods of laymen were
held individually. The clergy’s individual, temporal goods were of

135
Ibid., ch. 3, p. 83. John gave no precise reference to the Politics.
136
Ibid., ch. 3, pp. 83–4. John referred to Augustine of Hippo, De civitate dei, 4. The
most relevant chapter in Book IV (ch. 15) does not make this point directly but
does comment that Rome was able to use the injustices of its neighbours to
justify its expansive wars, a point which John noticed.
137
Ibid., ch. 8, p. 98.

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 56 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
course held on the same terms as those of laymen.138 John’s ideas
about dominium and jurisdiction served as a riposte to the hiero-
cratic argument of Giles of Rome, which through identifying
dominium with both ownership of property and government attrib-
uted to the church ultimate power in both areas, encapsulated in the
pope’s plenitudo potestatis. According to John, Christ as man did not
have jurisdiction over the goods of laymen and did not pass this on
to St Peter.139
John’s overall position on temporal and spiritual power was that
there was no completely clear distinction between them, at least at
the sub-sacramental level. The temporal power was not totally
secular, nor was the ecclesiastical power entirely spiritual. The
reason, of course, was that he was discussing a society which was
in fact Christian. Through accepting that both temporal and spirit-
ual jurisdiction co-existed at the public level, his thought contained
the fuzzy edges of an incomplete demarcation between the two, a
reflection of the situation of the time at which he wrote. His
adoption of naturalistic political concepts did not lead him to
produce a clear distinction between state and church; rather, he
saw the church’s own jurisdiction as itself natural. In a way, his
thought remained quite old-fashioned in that he was clearly identi-
fying the natural, political men who constructed communities and
created their governments as ‘faithful laymen’ (fideles laici).140
Further, he used the wider definition of church as the community
of the faithful, in which the ecclesiastical judge presided in spiritual
matters and the secular in temporal.141 Moreover, in his response to
the fundamental hierocratic argument that because the soul was
superior to and ruled the body, the temporal power, having rule
over bodies, derived from the spiritual as from a cause, John
maintained in contrast that royal power was concerned with souls

138
See ibid., ch. 7, pp. 96–8; ch. 3, pp. 82–3. Janet Coleman has drawn especial
attention to the importance of John’s argument concerning the naturalness of
property in, for instance, her History of Political Thought, pp. 118–33.
139 140
See the lengthy discussion in chs. 8–10, pp. 98–117. Ibid., ch. 3, p. 82.
141
Ibid., ch. 16, p. 154.

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 The major tracts 57
as well as bodies. On the face of it, this could seem like a traditional,
theocratic view of kingship, but the justification which he provided
referred to Aristotle:
The philosopher says in the Ethics that the intention of the legislator is to
make men good and to lead them to virtue, and in the Politics he says that,
just as the soul is better than the body, the legislator is better than the doctor,
because the legislator has the care of souls, the doctor of bodies.142
In cases of extreme emergency the pope also had a claim on the
possessions of believers for the good of the faith and to proclaim
what was right in such circumstances.143
Similarly, John envisaged that there could be extreme situations
when the temporal and spiritual powers could intervene drastically
but indirectly in each other’s affairs. The pope could encourage the
people to depose a heretical ruler or one who ignored ecclesiastical
censures – in which case the people would be deposing him directly
and the pope ‘accidentally’ (per accidens). Likewise, the emperor
could excommunicate indirectly a criminal or scandalous pope and
depose him ‘accidentally’ through the medium of the college of
cardinals; if that did not work, the emperor could put pressure on
the people to depose the errant pontiff. John gave this justification
for their mutual power of indirect intervention: ‘They both have
this power against the other, for both the pope and the emperor
have universal and ubiquitous jurisdiction, although the former has
spiritual and the latter temporal.’144 The emperor could correct and
punish a pope who was delinquent in temporal matters. John
approved of the actions of Emperor Henry II in deposing two

142
‘Dicit Philosophus in Ethicis, quod intentio legislatoris est homines facere bonos
et inducere ad virtutem, et in Politicis dicit quod sicut anima melior est corpore,
sic legislator melior est medico, quia legislator habet curam animarum, medicus
corporum’ (ibid., ch. 17, p. 157). John gave no precise references to the Ethics and
Politics.
143
Ibid., ch. 7, pp. 97–8.
144
‘Et hoc quidem potest uterque in alterum, nam uterque papa et imperator
universalem et ubique habet iurisdictionem, licet iste spiritualem et ille
temporalem’ (ibid., ch. 13, p. 138).

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 58 The disputes between Philip IV and Boniface VIII
papal claimants.145 The cardinals had the right to call in the
emperor as the secular arm to secure the deposition of a pope
delinquent in spiritual matters.146 In this section of his tract John
was modifying his earlier expressed view that there was no possi-
bility of universal temporal jurisdiction – no role for an emperor. It
appears as an inconsistency in his thought. A remnant of this
universalist view is also evident in ch. 10: ‘The emperor is greater
in temporals, not having a superior above him, just as the pope is in
spirituals.’147
John’s immediate aim of vindicating the French crown’s inde-
pendence of both the pope and the emperor was expressly
addressed in ch. 21, which he devoted to the Donation of
Constantine. His initial question was whether the pope had any
authority by reason of it, especially over the kingdom of France.
According to John, the pope gained no power from the Donation
because it was invalid. To support this view, he adduced well-
known Roman law arguments, primarily from the Gloss of
Accursius. Furthermore, quite apart from the Donation, there had
been no transfer of empire from the Greeks to the Germans at the
time of Charlemagne. But, he went on, even if the Donation were
valid, it would not apply to France, because the Franks were a free
people who had never been subjected to the Romans. Even if one
were to grant that France had once been part of the empire,
through long prescription this was no longer the case. Not only
this, the papacy had recognized saintly kings of France, most
recently Louis IX. The kingdom of France was, for John, the prime
example of the political arrangement which he favoured – a plural-
ity of kingdoms as opposed to a universal empire. Indeed, justifying
himself with references to the text of the Bible and the Gloss on it,
he stressed that the Roman Empire had been founded on force and
could therefore be removed by force or prescription. The Roman
Empire had no more legitimacy than those which had preceded it

145 146
Ibid., ch. 13, p. 139. Ibid., ch. 13, p. 140.
147
‘Maior est imperator in temporalibus non habens super se superiorem sicut papa
in spiritualibus’ (ibid., ch. 10, p. 106).

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 The major tracts 59
and could pass away like them. He was rejecting any divine
providential view of the empire.148
John was contributing to a scholarly debate which addressed
issues of enduring importance arising out of immediate crisis.
Indeed, the disputes between Philip and Boniface provide us with
the background for understanding so much about fourteenth-century
ideas concerning the relationship between temporal and spiritual
power. As a stimulus to political thought, shown in the tracts it
generated, the conflict bore comparison with the Investiture Contest
of the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries. But there was a telling
contrast with the earlier dispute which, given the limited intellectual
resources then available, had been conducted within a universe of
discourse which was ultimately Augustinian. Writers participating in
the Philip IV–Boniface VIII disputes made full use of a far wider range
of authorities. In particular, both systematic and eclectic usage of
ultimately Aristotelian as well as Augustinian arguments informed
their creative treatments of issues of power and legitimate authority.

148
Ibid., ch. 21, pp. 185–91.

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