ABSTRACT
TO MODERN INQUIRERS these measures and manifestations may sound rather strange. They may even evoke a reaction which prevents a proper appreciation of the principles involved. Their appreciation however must take into account several factors. First, that the concept of the modern State had not yet arrived, if by this concept we understand a body or a society which has, in the public field, independent, original and indigenous powers and operates entirely on its own premisses, maxims and aims. It would not be correct to say that the Church as the union of all the faithful, clergy and laity, took the place of the medieval State, for, as we have tried to show, it was precisely one of the most pronounced papal principles that the Church was entrusted to the pope, which meant that it had no autonomous and autogenous rights: a principle which was cf course strongly bound up with the theocratic premisses and which was equally strongly operative in the royal field. If the concept of State could be employed at all in the Middle Ages, it could only be applied to the pope himself: he alone was superior, was in modern terminology a sovereign because he stood above the society of the faithful, his subjects, and was no member of the Church. By virtue of Peter (=pope) forming a consortium potentiae with Christ and, juristically, this partnership being a society, the pope was (not only a natural person, but also) a juristic person,1 or a corporation sole. As such the pope stood indeed above the Church and was its supreme monarch. Within this framework no ‘sovereignty’ of a secular prince could be envisaged: he was not independent, his laws were subject to annulment, his prisoners were to be released by virtue of a papal command, and so forth. The manifestations of the papal government at work make the monarchic status of the pope and the lack of this status with secular princes abundantly clear.
