# Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV
THE SCHOLASTIC PERIOD
From the case of Honorius we may pass clean away to the Scholastic period, when the great systematic theologians were gathering into consolidated form the developments of the Middle Ages. Six hundred years have elapsed since Honorius was condemned by the Episcopate. The relation of Papal to Episcopal power has greatly changed. To contrast the theology of the thirteenth century with that of the seventh is to realise a different atmosphere. Many elements contributed to the enormous increase of papal influence. The Mohammedan conquests and the isolation of the Apostolic Churches of the East left the Roman spirit to develop its governmental tendencies, unbalanced, unchecked by those more primitive conceptions which it was the mission of the unchanging East to retain. The calamitous severance between the East and West must have had disastrous influence on the proportionate development of Papal and Episcopal power.
The growth also of the temporal power of the Roman See falls within this period. It is neither our purpose nor permitted by our limits to dwell much on this aspect of papal claims. Yet a reference to the subject is necessary, because the growth of temporal power contributed to the general influences of the Papacy on the mediæval mind, and to no inconsiderable con​fusion between the secular and spiritual spheres. The learned work of Gosselin, Superior of the Seminary of St Sulpice in 1850, on the power of the Pope in the Middle Ages, shows how naturally the temporal authority grew out of the circumstances of the period.
The temporal sovereignty of the Roman See arose simply out of the necessities of the Roman People, who, being abandoned by the Empire, intrusted their temporal interests to the papal guardianship. Neither Charlemagne nor Pepin were the founders of the temporal sovereignty; they were but its protectors and promoters. It was founded in the legitimate consent of a helpless and forsaken people. But, being once founded, loftier reasons were gradually created to justify and explain it. Archbishop Fénelon's opinion, which Gosselin quotes and accepts, was that the deposition of princes by the Pope in the Middle Ages was based in the belief that none but Catholics could rule over Catholic nations. Consequently, a contract between Prince and People was implied: their loyalty depending on his fidelity to Religion. Therefore the Church neither made temporal rulers nor unmade them; but when consulted by the people, the Pope decided cases of conscience arising from a contract and an oath of fidelity. But this power to determine when consulted, easily slid into an assertion and a claim of a loftier character. The double effect of excommunication on the religious and the temporal status of the victim naturally led to endless confusion: it exalted the possessor of this two-fold power to a height which earlier ages would have considered simply amazing. It was a principle universally admitted in the time of Gregory VII. that excommunication entailed the loss of all civil rights. Consequently, says Fleury, when ​Gregory VII., adopting novel maxims, and carrying them to greater lengths, openly asserted that, as Pope, he had the right to depose all sovereigns who were rebellious to the Church, and grounded these pretensions on the power of excommunication, his opponents had no defence to make. Conceding the principle that excommunication involves temporal results, Gregory was invincible. But the consequence was a vast extension of the papal authority.
And of course this vastly extended authority affected the weight of every papal claim. Gosselin's study of the temporal power of the Papacy is exceedingly interesting as an illustration of development. It shows how easily developments may be defended on theological theories with which those developments had really nothing whatever to do. Its shows how little we can trust ultimate developments merely on the ground of their existence; as if prevalence and legitimacy were invariably one and the same. It shows the insecurity of assuming that the theories by which developments are supported are necessarily the causes by which they were produced.
The Episcopate still retained in the year 1300 its dignity, as the ultimate court of appeal when in Council assembled; but the Papacy had made gigantic strides from the conditions of its tenure in the Cyprianic age. The Vincentian test of Catholic doctrine by identity with the past was being exchanged for submission to a living authority in Rome. The ancient appeal to the Universal Church was being exchanged for a theory which identified the Roman Communion with the Catholic Church. A strong and dangerous tendency had arisen to substitute à priori conceptions of the appropriate for appeal to ancient facts. Speculative theories of ecclesiastical principle were being made a substitute, ​in Scripture reading, for real interpretation. Theories were read into apostolic utterances from which they could by no critical ingenuity be derived.
The greatest theologian of the Roman Church, St Thomas Aquinas, is an embodiment of mediæval theories of papal claims. He died in 1274. The treatise, De Regimine Principum, whether his or not, was universally ascribed to him in former days, and possessed for many centuries the weight of his name and authority. It represents, at any rate, the prevailing mediæval view. By an obvious misuse of the metaphor that the Pope is the Head of the Church, it draws the inference that from the Head all understanding descends to the Body. In the Pope is the plenitude or fulness of all grace; for he alone confers plenary indulgence on all sinners, so that the words originally applied to Christ are also applicable to him: "of his fulness have all we received." Certainly those who accepted habitually this view were being prepared for the conclusion that the Church was the passive recipient of the Pope's infallible utterances.
And yet it by no means follows that St Thomas Aquinas drew the infallibilist inferences, still less that he taught the Vatican doctrine. It is acknowledged by a recent Roman theologian that while the theology of the Middle Ages on the primacy attained in him its climax, yet he has not developed the doctrine systematically. In point of fact, from an infallibilist standpoint, he still leaves much to be desired. He taught that "we must not believe that the governor of the Universal Church should wish to deceive anybody, specially in those matters which the whole Church receives and approves." And he argued from this in ​behalf of the validity of indulgences which the Pope preached and caused to be preached. But this passage of Aquinas obviously admits of more than one construction. It is general and vague. It does not necessarily ascribe to the Pope any Infallibility at all. It affirms that it would be wrong to credit the Pope with a desire to deceive. It infers that indulgences possess validity because the Pope proclaims them, but also because it is a matter which the whole Church receives and approves. The infallibilist writer Schwane urges that we must not infer from the phrase "which the whole Church receives" that the Pope's Infallibility depends on the Church's consent. But it seems perfectly clear that to St Thomas's mind the reception and approval by the whole Church of the doctrine in question was precisely that which gave stability to the papal utterance about it. He does not write as if the Church's consent was a necessary sequel to a papal decree. In point of fact, if this were so, any reference to the Church's consent might seem superfluous, since it could add nothing to the validity of the Pope's instructions. But in Aquinas's argument for indulgences the elements are two: the Church's reception and approval of the doctrine, and the papal utterance. And these are mutually supporting.
Elsewhere Aquinas says:—
"If any one rejected a decision after it had been made by the authority of Universal Church, he would be considered a heretic. And that authority chiefly [principaliter] resides in the Supreme Pontiff."
But the exact force of his language is among his interpreters a matter of dispute.
Bossuet held that the language of St Thomas on ​Papal Infallibility is capable of a construction not widely different from that of the School of Paris. At any rate the idea of an Infallibility completely independent of any endorsement by the consent of the Church is foreign to his mind. If, however, in spite of this the Ultramontane claims him still, then appeal must be made from St Thomas to the Fathers of an earlier period.
The value of St Thomas's theological inferences on the subject has been challenged within the Roman Church on the ground that he relied upon falsified authorities. Pope Urban IV., intending to assist Aquinas's studies, sent him a collection of assorted extracts from the Fathers, calculated to refute the errors of the Gentile world. Aquinas utilised this collection, confessedly, says Schwane, without much critical endeavour to sift the true character of the extracts. The importance of the passages may be gathered from the fact already mentioned that the theologian Melchior Cano, contemporary of the Council of Trent, considered them to be the strongest evidence from the early Church in behalf of Infallibility. Now it is admitted that this collection of extracts is not genuine. "It appears," says Schwane, himself an Ultramontane, "that the compiler permitted himself to add here and there explanations." Other passages he "developed." Schwane contends that he has not absolutely falsified any; but admits that he ascribed to St Cyril words which cannot be found in the writings preserved to us. Schwane suggests that, possibly, for all that, they might be genuine. Turmel is much less sanguine about this possibility. That Aquinas utilised his authorities in all sincerity is indisputable. It is also indisputable that he was ​deceived. This was urged very forcibly by Janus and Gratry before the Vatican Decisions.
Some maintained that he would have arrived in any case at the same conclusion. Others said that inferences from falsified premises mistaken for the faith of saints awaken serious doubt as to their validity. It was also urged, and probably with truth, that these extracts were not the basis of his doctrine on the primacy. Still it was felt that they contributed to advance ideas. It is an unwholesome pedigree, especially when a Roman theologian calls these forged authorities the strongest passages in the patristic evidences.
* ↑ Translated by Kelly of Maynooth, 2 vs., 1853.
* ↑ Schwane, Hist. Dogm. v. p. 321.
* ↑ In Sententiis, 4 Disc. 20, a. 17.
* ↑ Hist. Dogm. v. p. 321.
* ↑ Summa, 2, 2, Q. ii, a, 2, ad. 3.
* ↑ Bausset, Hist, de Bossuet, ii. p. 399.
* ↑ Bossuet, xxi. p. 494.
* ↑ Hist. Dogm. v. p. 333.