ABSTRACT

The pope's plenitudo potestatis was balanced by the bishop's pars sollicitudinis; fullness of power might often have been empty enough if the burden of implementing policy had not been shared. This made it all the more important for the Papacy to maximise its control over episcopal appointments; and it is unnecessary to do more than recall the contentious issues this raised with the kings and princes for whose government the bishops were also key figures. Savonarola's passionate puritanical preaching of moral and religious reform became increasingly associated with a millenarian vision of the role and destiny of the Florentine republic. The Church authorities were often adept in absorbing and, as it were, domesticating what could not be suppressed. When the greatest crisis of the medieval Church broke, the point of fracture lay in the ecclesiastical polity itself.