ABSTRACT
According to Pope Innocent III, Christ had committed the Church to St Peter on three different occasions: ante passionem, when he named Peter 'the rock' and granted him the keys; circa passionem, when he prayed that Peter's faith would not fail; and post passionem, when he told Peter to feed his sheep. Some of the staunchest defenders of Petrine primacy in the Late Middle Ages could be found within the mendicant orders, whose many rights and privileges were guaranteed by the papacy, often to the consternation of the secular clergy. One of the keenest critics of a monarchical papacy, Marsilius of Padua, denied outright that the New Testament contained any doctrine of Petrine primacy, thereby attempting to demolish the very foundation upon which the late medieval papacy had constructed the edifice of its authority. Likewise in his Gospels commentary, Cajetan had argued that the singularity of this promise was supported by the 'plain context of the letter'.
