Popes, Teachers, and Canon Law-In the Middle Ages

Popes, Teachers, and Canon Law-in the Middle Ages EDITED BY [ames Ross Sweeney and Stanley Chodorow WITH A FOREWORD BY Stephan Kuttner Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDON S~/11JO' .', [I I] Papal Reserved Powers and the Limitations on Legatine Authority ROBERT C. FIGUElRA The medieval church-understood as the collectivity of individual be- lievers-had available to it only a primitive communications apparatus and thus was too intractable for anyone man to supervise effectively and rule personally. Its government and administration were managed not only through the papacy but also through smaller units: the diocese with its bishop, the parish with its priest, and the monastery with its abbot. Much of what we would today call "ecclesiastical government" occurred on these local levels. This chapter focuses on an institution or administra- tive device that medieval popes used to share governmental tasks ex- ercised under their traditional or newly claimed authority-papallega- tion. Like all agents of government, legates provided a means by which information and resources were transmitted to the center of power, deci- sions were executed, commissioned jurisdiction was applied, and physical resources were transferred outward from that center. Such activities depended in part on authorization and supervision. How could the pope communicate to his legate and also to the church at large which papal powers this agent was empowered to exercise? At the same time, how could the pope satisfy himself that his unique jurisdiction was not diminished by employing a legate? The answer to both of these ques- tions, when viewed from the theoretical standpoint of canon law, lies in a consideration of papal mandates and of powers normally reserved to the pope alone. We must first consider a legate's powers and authorization. Medieval I wish to acknowledge the insightful advice of Professor Robert L. Benson (University of California, Los Angeles) regarding an earlier draft of this essay. Abbreviations used in this chapter are listed in appendix 1. Robert C. Figueira popes and canonists alike agreed that legates could perform certain tasks purely as a function of their office, "by right of legation" jiure legationis). The minimal prerogatives of this office were considered fixed and were comprehended within the generic terms "general legation" (generalis legatio) and its authorization, the "general mandate" (generale mandatum). In addition, the pope could authorize a legate (or anyone else, for that matter) to accomplish any task whose performance normally per- tained to or was reserved for the pope's jurisdiction alone. These powers could be transferred through "special concession" or "special mandate" (speciale mandatum). This system of classification usually occurred in decretist glosses in a variety of formulations. The best method for analyz- ing the specific powers encompassed by these terms would be both to investigate some of the actual decretals from the Libet extra wherein mention of these powers is made and to compile from decretalist glosses a detailed list of the specific powers both reserved to the pope and normally prohibited to legates. Up until now a systematic treatment of canonistic texts in this regard has not been attempted. Legatine Mandates in the Libel Extra While on legation in Sicily during I 199-I 200, Cardinal Cinthius of St. Laurence in Lucina attempted to transfer or translate the bishop of Troia to the vacant metropolitan see of Palermo.' For this act Pope Innocent III roundly denounced Cinthius in a series of decretals (X 1.30.3,4). Nonethe- less, faced with the fait accompli of the translation and aware of the personal importance of the bishop under consideration (he was the chan- cellor of the kingdom of Sicily), Innocent eventually acquiesced in the translation. Yet he considered it to have been an altogether abnormal act by his legate.s Innocent's complaints offered a concise statement of many of the factors relevant to legatine powers. by the lesson of punishment you ought to recognize how much you overstep .... you, who to the scorn of both canonical sanctions and general custom have presumed by your own will ... to transfer de facto ... the bishop of Troia . from the church of Troia to that of Palermo without our special mandate.s Although a generallegation was committed to you within the kingdom of Sicily, without special mandate you nevertheless ought not to have stretched forth your hand to those things reserved to the Supreme Pontiff I. See Zimmermann, p. 29, and Maleczek, pp. 105-6, for details regarding this legation. 2. See X 1.8.3. 3· X 1.30.3. Papal Reserved Powers and Legatine Authority as a sign of singular privilege. And ... if some of these matters already seemed permitted to legates by the office of legation itself, matters which often had been granted to legates by special concession (such as the absolution of those persons who incur the canon of a promulgated sentence on account of raising sacrilegious hands against clerics), did you reckon that you could subject the church of Palermo to the church of Messina, and, by conceding the privilege of primacy to the latter, set it over the former, just because we committed to you as legate the fulflll- ment of our representation? Or do you think that by virtue of the same reason you are permitted to unite two bishoprics or divide a single one without a special license!+ For Innocent III a grant of general legation alone clearly did not permit the legate to transfer bishops, to divide or unite bishoprics, or strictly speak- ing even to absolve persons excommunicated automatically for presum- ing violence against clerics. A special papal mandate or license could, however, authorize these very actions. As regards the absolution of vio- lent excommunicates, Innocent did not cite an earlier decretal of Clement III IX 5.39.201 whose substance was reaffirmed in a later decretal of Greg- ory IX IX 1.30.91. These two decretals showed that grants of special papal license in this matter to cardinal-legates or legates de latere had been so common and routine during the late twelfth century and early thirteenth that this prerogative of absolution had become standard for this most exalted type of legate in all situations and eventually was accepted even without special mandate.f Other types of legates were more limited in their ability to absolve such men, but even they may have transcended such restrictions when empowered "by special grace" of the Apostolic see. A special papal mandate not only empowered a legate [or anyone else] to perform something beyond his own inherent powers or beyond a general commission, but simultaneously defined a discrete and more specific type of activity as well. In other words, any special mandate derogated, super- seded, or cance1ed in some specific matter anyone's general commission. A decretal of Celestine III (X 1.30.21exemplified this phenomenon when it 4. X 1.30.4. 5. Although Clement himself did not expressly say that legates a latere may normally absolve in such cases without a special mandate, this was precisely the inference drawn by the rubricator !"Legati de latere absolvere possunt excommunicatos pro iniectione manuum in clericos") and by subsequent decretalists-Abbas antiquus, Lectura aurea ... super quinque libris Decretalium (Strasbourg, 1510), at X 5.39.:10: "Casus"; Glossa ordinaria ad X, 5·39.20: "CASUS.... Nota quod legati qui mittuntur a latere domini papae, licet non habeant mandatum speciale, absolvere tarnen possunt excommunicatos. Bemardus." Both Bemard of Parma and Hostiensis maintained that this prerogative derived from customary usage: Glossa ordinaria ad X, I.I7.17: "non obstante"; Hostiensis, Summa, p. 319: "Quid pertinet." Robert C. Figueira distinguished between the jurisdictions of legates and of papal judges- delegate. You have taken pains to inquire from us, whether a general legate in a province, a person other than him to whom we delegated a case, can himself take cognizance of a case either before or after [the delegate's own) cognizance, or can in such a way impede the progress of our commission transmitted to a delegate judge.... we respond that a legate ... cannot impede a commission made specially to another ... , because a special mandate derogates a general one, whence, if a sentence has already been promulgated according to the form of our mandate, the same judge cannot disturb it in any way whatsoever, unless he should receive a special mandate concerning this matter. Indeed, the primacy of a special over a general mandate was raised in an objection against a legate in a similar case reported in the Liber extra (X 5.1.22). At the request of Walter, abbot of Corbie, three clerics were delegated by Innocent III to conduct a visitation of that monastery. After their arrival at Corbie a cardinal-legate (Guala Bicchieri] appeared and conducted the visitation himself." Thereupon the legate summoned WaI- ter (who seemed to have been compromised somewhat by the legate's findings) to Paris to state any objections to the visitation the abbot might have. Innocent reported that in Paris the abbot objected, among other things, "that he [the legate] could not proceed as regards the correction of the monastery which had been committed beforehand by our [the pope's] authority to the aforesaid judges [the three visitors]." At this point the abbot appealed to the pope. Nonetheless he was subsequently deposed by the legate, and the monks elected a successor." As it happened, the pope eventually decided the case against Walter for reasons which did not address the validity of the abbot's assertion that the visitor's special mandate had precluded legatine action. Papal Reserved Powers That legates required special authorization to perform certain activities within the purview of papal power necessitated a special category of 6.

Load more