of new religious, with still larger exemptions, and owning no obedience but to their distant superiors. The result was such that even a cardinal, Simon of Beaulieu, said in France, in 1283, that all ecclesiastical discipline was ruined by the privileges of the Begging Orders, and that one might well call the Church a monster.1 The parish priests were then the most powerless and unprotected of all classes of the clergy; they had no organ and no representation for making their complaints heard. The bishops complained frequently, and the University of Paris made a long resistance; but all had to bow to the united power of the Popes and the Mendicants. The only effect was to convince the monks more clearly that the Papal system, with its theory of Infallibility, was as indispensable and valuable to them as to the Curia itself. § XIX. Infallibility Disputed. All the alleged grounds for Papal Infallibility, through the older Roman fabrications, the pseudo-Isidore, the Gregorians, and Gratian, and, finally, the Dominican forgeries and the theological authority of St. Thomas, were now admitted almost without contradiction. Vet 1 Hist. Lit. de France, xxi. 24. it was not generally acknowledged that a Pope was actually infallible in his pronouncements on matters of faith. In countries where the Inquisition was not permanently established, the contrary might be taught, and for centuries opposite views on this point prevailed. That the Roman Church was divinely guaranteed by a special Providence against entire apostasy from the faith was affirmed by Guibert of Tournay about 1250,1 and Nicolas of Lyra,2 and was pretty generally believed. But then it was always assumed that a Pope could fall into heresy, and give a wrong decision in weighty questions of faith, and that he might in that case be sentenced and deposed by the Church. Besides the history of Liberius, it was mainly the oft-quoted canon of Gratian, ascribed to St. Boniface, that supplied the rule of judgment here. Even the boldest champions of Papal absolutism, men like Agostino Trionfo and Alvaro Pelayo, assumed that the Popes could err, and that their decisions were no certain criterion. But they also held that an heretical Pope ipso facto ceased to be Pope, without or before any judicial sentence, so that Councils, which are the Church's judicature, only attested the 3 1 De Offic. Episc. c. 35, in Biblioth. Max. Patrum, t. xxv. 3 Si Papa, Dist. vi. 50. vacancy of the Papal throne as an accomplished fact. In that case, according to Trionfo, the Papal authority resides in the Church, as at a Pope's death.1 So too, Cardinal Jacob Fournier, afterwards Pope, thought that Papal decisions were by no means final, but might be overruled by another Pope, and that John XXII. had done well in annulling the offensive and doctrinally erroneous decision of Nicolas III. on the poverty of Christ, and the distinction of use and possession. And Innocent III. had said before," For other sins I acknowledge no judge but God, but I can be judged by the Church for a sin concerning matters of faith." And Innocent IV. allowed that a Papal command containing anything heretical, or threatening destruction to the whole Church system, was not to be obeyed, and that a Pope might err in matters of faith. John XXII. had to learn, not without personal mortification, that his authority was of little weight when opposed to the dominant belief, and that a simple recantation was his only resource. 1 Summa, v. 6. 2 See Eymeric. Director. Inquis. p. 295. 3 De Consec. Pontif. Serm. 3. Opp. (ed. Venet. 1578), p. 194. But he thinks God would hardly suffer a Pope to err against the faith. 4 Comment. in Dec. v. 39, f. 595. 'Papa etiam potest errare in fide et ideo non debet quis dicere, credo id quod credit Papa, sed illud quod credit Ecclesia, et sic dicendo non errabit." The passage is left in the repertory of his work, but has been expunged from the text of the later editions. S When he preached at Avignon the doctrine that the blessed do not enjoy the Beatific Vision before the general resurrection, a universal outcry was raised in Paris. The theologians drew up propositions declaring the doctrine to be heretical. The King had it publicly condemned in Paris with sound of trumpets, and commanded the Pope to accept the judgment of the Paris doctors, who must know what was the true faith better than the spiritual jurists, who understood little or nothing of theology. That was the estimate long entertained of the Curia. No confidence was felt in their judgment on questions of dogma and theology. The inseparable connexion between Aquinas and Papal Infallibility was shown in the contest already mentioned between the University of Paris and the Dominican Order, in the person of Montson. The Dominicans said that St. Thomas's doctrine was in all points sanctioned by the Popes, among others by Urban v. in his Bull, addressed to the High School of Toulouse; and thus the Popes bear witness to St. Thomas, and he to the Popes. But St. Thomas teaches, on the authority of his spuri 66 1 As Cardinal D'Ailly stated it to the assembly of the French clergy in 1406, the King's message to the Pope was still ruder and more peremptory, qu'il se revoquait ou qu'il se ferait ardre." Cf. Du Chastenet, Nouv. Hist. du Conc. de Constance (Paris, 1718), Preuves, p. 153. Villani, whose brother was then in Avignon, does not mention this. ›us Cyril, that it is enough for the Pope alone to declare what is matter of faith, and to sanction or condemn any doctrine. On the other hand, the Faculty enumerated a whole series of errors in St. Thomas, and classed among them this very doctrine of Papal Infallibility.1 They distinctly call it heresy, it being notoriously the doctrine of the Church that there is an appeal from a Pope to a General Council, and that every bishop, by divine and human right, is qualified to pronounce sentence on points of faith. Thus in 1388 the dogmatic infallibility of the Popes was repudiated by the first and most influential theological corporation in the Church, and the superiority of Councils in matters of faith expressly affirmed, though certainly no Paris theologian doubted the genuineness of the imposing testimonies cited by St. Thomas. The Popes themselves were constantly bringing their dogmatic authority afresh into suspicion. The most thorough-going and credulous devotee of Roman suprem acy could not help feeling uneasy when he found that the Papal See was at a loss for any clear and well-defined principles, on one of the gravest and most practically important questions, involving all certainty of individual and corporate religious life-the doctrine of ordination, 1 D'Argentré, Collect. Judic. i. 2, 84. |