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Voluntarism and Conciliarism in the Work of Francis Oakley

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Voluntarism and Conciliarism in the Work of Francis Oakley VOLUNTARISM AND CONCILIARISM IN THE WORK OF FRANCIS OAKLEY Constantin Fasolt 1,2 Abstract: Francis Oakley has devoted much of his scholarly effort to elaborating three claims about the conciliar theory made early in the last century by John Neville Figgis: that it was rooted in secular precedents (false, as shown by Brian Tierney); that it exercised a lasting influence on early modern European political thought (true); and that conciliar thinkers transformed principles of medieval constitutionalism into political theory properly speaking (also true). Thanks in large measure to Oakley’s work, and in spite of whatever unanswered questions may remain, the ‘road from Con- stance to 1688’ is now securely mapped across the landscape of early modern political thought. Voluntarism occupies a less prominent but more fundamental place in Oakley’s writings, because it posed a challenge to the arguments with which conciliar theorists aimed to establish a constitution for the church. They met the challenge with the dis- tinction between God’s absolute and ordinary, or ordained, power. This distinction is fundamental to Oakley’s work in a double sense: it clarifies a central issue in the his- tory of European thought; but it also helps to understand the point of his investigations into that history. The point is not to trump papal absolutism with the ace of conciliar supremacy, but to trump all forms of dogmatism by asserting ‘the necessity of admit- ting, and with full candor, the historicity, the relativity, the reformability of all doc- trinal pronouncements’. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it aims to characterize Francis Oakley’s contribution to the history of European political thought in terms of the two subjects to which most of his scholarly work has been devoted: volun- tarism and conciliarism. Second, it also aims to clarify the relationship between voluntarism and conciliarism, not so much in historical reality as in Oakley’s own investigations of that reality. It is hoped that this will demon- strate the extent to which voluntarism is the more fundamental of his preoccu- pations, and in the process cast some light on the underlying purpose of his work.3 1 Dept. of History, The University of Chicago, 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago IL 60637, USA. Email: [email protected] 2 This article is a revised version of a paper given in a session on ‘Conciliarism and Political Theory in the Late Middle Ages: In Honor of Francis Oakley’ at the 34th International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. I would like to thank Politica: The Society for the Study of Medieval Political Thought and the American Cusanus Society for sponsoring the session, Gerald Christianson and Thomas Izbicki for inviting me to speak, and Francis Oakley himself for his gracious response. Works cited in the notes without the name of an author should be understood to have been written by Francis Oakley. 3 Oakley’s work on conciliarism is best approached through his book Council over Pope? Towards a Provisional Ecclesiology (New York, 1969) and the articles reprinted HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XXII. No. 1. Spring 2001 Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2010 For personal use only -- not for reproduction 42 C. FASOLT The history of conciliarism, also referred to, with certain differences of emphasis, as the conciliar theory and the conciliar movement, is particularly closely associated with Oakley’s name; and this, apart from the sheer volume of his publications on the subject, for two main reasons. First, because of the indefatigable patience with which he has subjected the study of conciliarism to the discipline of clear and precise definitions. He rarely fails to remind his readers, for example, that the conciliar theory was about the church’s potestas iurisdictionis in foro exteriori.4 Nothing more and nothing less. Two huge areas of thought about the church, its function and its purpose thus were ex- cluded from the domain of the conciliar theory. One was the priestly potestas ordinis,that‘poweroforder’towhichpriestswereordainedandthatmani- fested itself in divinely instituted and sacerdotally administered sacraments. The other was the potestas iurisdictionis in foro interiori,thedisciplinary power governing the confession of sins and the imposition of penance. The conciliar theory, in other words, was neither about the sacramental powers of the priesthood, nor about the voluntary submission of a sinner’s guilty conscience to priestly guidance. It was instead about the exercise of that public power of jurisdiction by which the church secured its wellbeing as an organized community.5 Conciliar theory, to quote Oakley himself, was adoctrineconcerningthenatureofthechurch’sunityandthelocusofthe supreme jurisdictional authority within it. Although some of its roots are engaged in scriptural soil and in the corporate and conciliar history of the early Christian church, it did not grow to maturity until the thirteenth and (with their original pagination) in Natural Law, Conciliarism, and Consent in the Late Middle Ages: Studies in Ecclesiastical and Intellectual History (London, 1984). His main work on voluntarism can be found in his book on Omnipotence, Covenant and Order: An Excursion in the History of Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz (Ithaca, NY, 1984) and now especially the articles collected in Politics and Eternity: Studies in the History of Medieval and Early-Modern Political Thought (Leiden, 1999). Both themes already figured prominently in his first book, The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly: The Voluntarist Tradition (New Haven, 1964). 4 e.g., The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly, pp. 60–2; ‘Figgis, Constance, and the Divines of Paris’, American Historical Review, 75 (1969), pp. 368–86, here pp. 381–2, reprinted as nr. XIII in Natural Law, Conciliarism, and Consent; Council over Pope?, pp. 37–8; ‘The “New Conciliarism” and its Implications: A Problem in History and Hermeneutics’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 8 (1971), pp. 815–40, here pp. 818–19, reprinted as nr. VIII in Natural Law, Conciliarism, and Consent; The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1979), pp. 27–8; ‘Natural Law, the Corpus Mysticum, and Consent in Conciliar Thought from John of Paris to Matthias Ugonius’, Speculum, 56 (1981), pp. 786–810, here pp. 794–5, reprinted as nr. XIV in Natural Law, Conciliarism, and Consent; and especially ‘Conciliar Theory’, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages (13 vols., New York, 1982–9), Vol. III, pp. 513–14. 5 Since the main thrust of Marsilius of Padua’s arguments was to deny to the church the possession of precisely such a public power of jurisdiction, Oakley has consistently, and altogether plausibly, excluded him from the circle of conciliar theorists strictly speaking; see, e.g., Council over Pope?, pp. 56–61; ‘Conciliar Theory’, p. 515. Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2010 For personal use only -- not for reproduction VOLUNTARISM AND CONCILIARISM 43 fourteenth centuries, flowering in the years after the Great Schism in 1378 and winning widespread acceptance in the ensuing ‘conciliar epoch’.6 Having thus drawn clear boundaries around the field tilled by conciliar theorists, Oakley has consistently gone on to distinguish between the differ- ent crops they harvested. Conciliar theory, he argues, came in three main vari- eties. First, and perhaps most commonly, there were conciliar reformers, for whom general councils were the single most important instrument with which to eradicate ecclesiastical corruption and abuse without, however, being nec- essarily entitled to demand obedience from the pope, much less to enforce obedience upon the pope against his will. Second, there was an oligarchic strand that was, both in fact and, obviously, by definition, less popular than the other two because it sought to bestow the governance of the church upon the cardinals in their dual capacity as members of the Roman church and repre- sentatives of the church at large. Third, there was what he calls the strict conciliar theory that focused most sharply on the question of supreme author- ity in the church and did indeed envision the subjection of a recalcitrant pope to the control of general councils.7 It was this third variety — or at least a mod- erate form of it — that rose to ascendancy in the conciliar movement, found precise and dogmatically valid expression in the Council of Constance’s decree Haec sancta,andsetapowerfulexampleforlaterattemptsatinstitut- ing constitutional government.8 These definitions and distinctions may sound familiar, even rudimentary to anyone with a serious interest in the history of the conciliar theory. But if they do, it is in no small part because of the persistence with which Oakley has for several decades driven them home. It is just as well to recall how powerful a bulwark they offer in all humility against the myriad confusions to which investigations of late medieval political thought continue to be all too likely to fall prey apart from their protection. The second reason why Oakley’s name is so closely associated with the study of conciliarism is that his work constitutes one of the best examples in any field of history of building on a tradition of previous scholarship. He has never hesitated to acknowledge the debt he owes to the work of John Neville Figgis, to mention only the most prominent among a number of like-minded historians.9 More precisely, he has openly characterized his work as an 6 ‘Conciliar Theory’, pp. 510, 513–14. 7 Council over Pope?, pp. 62–74; ‘Conciliar Theory’, pp. 511–14. 8 For the claim that Haec sancta represented a moderate or centrist form of the strict conciliar theory, see Council over Pope?, pp. 74–7; ‘The “New Conciliarism” and its Implications’, pp. 819–20; and ‘Conciliar Theory’, pp. 513–14. 9 John Neville Figgis, Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414–1625 (Cambridge, 2nd edn., 1916).
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