Plenitude of Power

The Doctrines and Exercise of Authority in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Robert Louis Benson

Robert C. Figueira

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754631736
• eBook ISBN: 9781317079712
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

'I study power' - so Robert Louis Benson described his work as a scholar of medieval history. This volume unites papers by a number of his students dealing with matters central to Benson's historical interests - ecclesiastical institutions and administration, emperorship and papacy, canon law, political ideology, and historiography. The justification and exercise of political power is considered in two chapters that look at how the hagiography of a late Roman military saint, Maurice, was harnessed in the 11th century to the discussion of the power exercised by both emperor and pope, and how both pious purpose and political pretext animated the Hohenstaufen emperors' suppression of heresy. Three subsequent chapters focus on the Church: a study of the legal commentaries that taught that the 'authority to bind and loose' in a specific ecclesiastical matter could be determined by the opinions of 'the elders of the province'; an argument that Innocent III's administration of the Roman church represented a model for the ordering of all Christian society; and an inquiry into the doctrinal formation of the 'territorial principle' in the exercise of jurisdiction by papal legates. The late Middle Ages provides the focus for two additional studies, namely an exploration of the issues of power and authority in the charitable institutions of Cologne in the 13th-14th centuries, and the argument that the current desire for universal standards of governmental conduct in the area of basic human rights hearkens back to natural law theory as outlined in the 15th century by Nicholas of Cusa. Two historiographical studies round out the volume: an estimation of modern research regarding the political theology of late antiquity, and a reflection on Benson's own contribution to historical scholarship. Together, these papers both epitomize and further develop Benson's distinctive approach to the study of the Middle Ages, while themselves making their own important contribution.

Chapter 1
Congrega seniores provinciae: A Note on a Hiberno-Latin Canon Concerning the Sources of Authority in Ecclesiastical Law

Bruce C. Brasington

At D. 20 c.3 of his Concord of Discordant Canons, Gratian presents a spurious text attributed to Pope Innocent I (401–17):

In those cases where no authority for binding or loosing appears in the four Gospels and all the other writings of the Apostles, turn to the Greek sacred Scriptures. If there is nothing there, then turn your hand to Catholic histories of the Catholic Church written by Catholic authors. If there is nothing there, carefully examine the examples of the saints. And if, having checked all these, the state of the question has not been illuminated, gather the elders of the province and ask them. For something is more easily discovered by asking many elders. For the Lord, the true guarantor, said [Matthew 18:20]: ‘If two or three of you gather in my name on earth, whatever they ask in any matter will be done for them by my Father.’¹

Here are the authoritative sources of canonical tradition. When all texts have failed, the ecclesiastical superior or judge is advised to summon the seniores provinciae, the ‘elders of the province’. The following study examines the origins, message, and reception of this text, which first appeared in the eighth-century Collectio Hibernensis. This inquiry will question not only the relation between individual and Church, but also the replacement of oral counsel from individuals or elite groups by written normative texts. Thereby one can shed light on the development of the ‘textual community’ gathered around canonical tradition.

The Seniores Provinciae of the Collectio Hibernensis

Sole chapter. Innocent says: Therefore, concerning these cases where – of the twenty-two books of the Old Testament and of the four gospels (together with all the writings of the Apostles) – no authority appears for binding and loosing, turn to the divine writings which are called ‘hagiographic’ in Greek. If there is nothing there, then turn your hand to Catholic histories of the Catholic Church written by Catholic authors. If there is nothing there, consult the canons of the Apostolic See. If there is nothing there, carefully examine the established examples of the saints. And if, having checked all these, the state of the question has not been illuminated, gather the elders of the province and ask them. For something is more easily discovered by asking very many judges. Indeed the Lord, the true guarantor, said [Matthew 18:20]: ‘If two or three of you gather in my name on earth, whatever they ask in any matter will be done for them.’²

The Collectio Hibernensis (hereafter Hibernensis) was compiled around 700 by the pro-Roman faction in the Irish Church. The collection’s sources were diverse and many remain unidentified.³ Our canon perhaps reflects this pro-Roman orientation, for both seniores and provincia could indicate a desire to maintain an episcopally based polity in the Irish Church in the face of the abbots’ power over their monastic parruchia.

Seniores carried a wide range of meanings in early-medieval secular and ecclesiastical Latin.⁴ Tertullian (c.160–c.225) referred to seniores as men appointed to serve in the Church. They were chosen on the basis of their good character, not wealth, so that a class of influential patrons could not take root.⁵ Later, the term seniores laici came to designate unordained lay representatives at ecclesiastical meetings.⁶ As early as Cyprian of Carthage (+258), the term could also mean the episcopate, because bishops had now gained the status of patronage within their communities.⁷ Given the well-established connections between the late-antique North African Church and Ireland, texts conveying such usages of seniores could have been available to the compilers of the Hibernensis.

The Hibernensis assumed the necessity of bishops. When in the fifth century Patrick first encountered in Ireland a pastoral world beyond the Roman pale, he appears to have assigned a bishop to each tuath, or petty kingdom. He intended the primitive Irish Church to reflect the polity of the Continent. It was this traditional order that the Hibernensis intended to defend against the expansion of the monastic confederations, or parruchiae, around 700. While seniores carried a wide variety of meanings in early Ireland,⁸ its usage in the Hibernensis may well echo Patrick’s plans for the Irish polity.⁹

What did provincia mean? It seemed to carry its traditional ecclesiological/political meaning, an assumption reinforced by the material that follows in the Hibernensis. Book 20 is, in fact, entitled De provincia, a usage which, as Robert Benson demonstrated, echoed earlier Visigothic practice equating an ecclesiastical province with a kingdom: provincia = regnum.¹⁰ Here provincia = tuath. Thus the phrase seniores provinciae connoted not only the objectives of the pro-Roman party in the Irish Church, but also the ideal Church-State unified polity advanced earlier by the Visigoths. The call to gather the seniores linked a distinctive ecclesiology connecting Spain and Ireland with a charismatic, typologically grounded, oral jurisprudence that assumed the continuing inspiration of the bishops by the Holy Spirit, a circumstance that sufficed even when sacred texts were silent. One almost expects to find Cyprian in the canon’s inscription, not Innocent I.¹¹

Seniores Episcopi: The Canon and the Audience of the Decretum Burchardi

When the canon reappeared in the early eleventh-century Decretum of Bishop Burchard of Worms,¹² it seems likely that its audience would have read the seniores as ‘elder bishops’. Seniores episcopi are well attested in the legal and liturgical literature of the Carolingian world. As the tenth-century Romano-German pontifical notes, the Roman order for conducting a general council required their participation: ‘Let the metropolitan bishop or one of the elder bishops give the prayer.’¹³ As in the late-antique usage from North Africa, we do not find a juridically precise group in these seniores, but instead a group enjoying customary deference as the eldest members of the provincial episcopate. Can we determine what jurisprudential and ecclesiological resonance our text and its seniores would have had for Burchard’s audience?

We find a clue in the exegetical tradition attached to Matthew 18:20, the scriptural passage concluding the canon that justifies the gathering of the seniores. Here Christ’s call to prayer makes a guarantee that He will be with even the smallest gathering of His disciples. It also immediately follows a reiteration of the temporal power of binding and loosing granted them (Matthew 18:18). By the third century the biblical text had furnished for Cyprian an excellent illustration of perfect Christian unity grounded in the episcopate:¹⁴

For the Lord counseled unanimity and peace when he said ‘I say to you that if two or three of you are gathered together on Earth in my name, whatever you ask will be done for you by my Father in Heaven.’ Indeed ‘wherever two or three are gathered together in my name’ shows that much will be bestowed not on the number of those praying but on their unanimity.

Cyprian appropriated the text to strengthen the bishops’ power. Ambrose (c.340–97) later amplified this reading, emphasizing that divine power came to priests not through their merits, but because their office had been founded by the Lord:¹⁵

Since Scripture testifies that at the prayers of Jereboam fire descended from heaven and, again, when Elijah prayed fire was sent and consumed the sacrifices, we must understand that God does not consider the merits of the person but rather the office of the priest. That visible fire was sent so that they might believe; an invisible fire accompanies us who believe. Therefore believe that the Lord Jesus is present at the prayers of priests when he said: ‘Where two or three are present, there I will be in their midst.’

In this reading of Matthew 18:20, belief and concord were all that mattered. Numbers did not count when calling on divine assistance.

This exegetical tradition calling for charismatic unity and concord among the bishops must have shaped how Burchard’s audience read the Irish canon in his Decretum. Indeed, congrega seniores provinciae could have carried a quite specific juridical and ecclesiological emphasis. Linked to the accompanying passage from Matthew, it recalled an ideal of the Carolingian Church: the concilium perfectum, the call to a perfect council.¹⁶

Concilium Perfectum

As early as the Council of Antioch (341), the Church had considered the minimum requirements for convocation of a council. Canon 16 concluded that a ‘perfect council’ required the presence of a metropolitan.¹⁷ Later, Celestine I reassured the ecumenical council of Ephesus (431) that, since the Lord had said that He would be present with two or three gathered in His name, how much more would he attend their gathering, a crowd of bishops (turba sacerdotum). The Holy Spirit paid no attention to numbers; but, when possible, the more participants, the better for the sake of the Church.¹⁸ As Gregory the Great (c.540–604) eventually put it: ‘If He deigns to be present when two or three are gathered, how much more will He be present when many bishops congregate?’¹⁹

Beginning with the Libri Carolini, Carolingian theorists expanded this patristic argument. In the past the Lord had been present at a council of minimum size; He would thus certainly inspire a larger gathering, especially one presided over by a metropolitan.²⁰ Therefore the wider Church – including Rome and Constantinople – should pay attention to the decisions of the Frankish bishops in any council. As Agobard of Lyons (c.779–840) saw it, this principle fully validated the canons of Gallic councils, decrees often despised by Romans. If the Lord were present with two or three, He had certainly been with the illustrious gatherings of holy Gallic bishops, often twenty and thirty in number.²¹

This suited Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims (c.806–82), whose ecclesiology rested on a continual defence of his metropolitan rights against those episcopal adversaries who replied with the Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries. He expanded upon previous exegesis of Matthew 18:20 to assert the prerogative of the metropolitan to hold a concilium perfectum. We encounter his argument in stages. In an invective against his wearisome nephew Bishop Hincmar of Laon, the archbishop appropriated the definition of a universal council found in an African canon:²² ‘A universal council should not take place except when necessity demands it. Cases that are not common to all should be judged in their provinces.’²³ Thus, only a metropolitan like Hincmar of Rheims might judge the common cases that necessitated a general council. And wherever an archbishop presided, there was automatically a perfect council, the only place where matters touching all, including unsolved cases dealing with matters of faith and general discipline, could be heard:²⁴

Lord Charles, Emperor Augustus, has ordered us to be summoned to the synod for those matters, just as the ecclesiastical rules command, which perhaps provincial councils have been unable to resolve, especially in the matter of faith or general religion, as we have read in the decretals of the Apostolic See and the letters of the emperors. Whereas, we have read in the ecclesiastical histories and the letters of the Apostolic See that general synods have been called by imperial authority.

This perfect council could take radical measures to solve these cases. As Hincmar noted in his De ecclesiis et capellis:²⁵

… if the holy canons are not found that consider events that have happened in our region, then, with the precedent of the Council of Antioch, to provide fitting remedies and suitable answers to necessities the bishops of the province, with the counsel of the metropolitan, and the metropolitan wit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Congrega seniores provinciae: A Note on a Hiberno-Latin Canon Concerning the Sources of Authority in Ecclesiastical Law
• 2 Saints, Pagans, War and Rulership in Ottonian Germany
• 3 Henry VI, Heresy and the Extension of Imperial Power in Italy
• 4 Pseudo-Dionysius, Gilbert of Limerick and Innocent III: Order, Power and Constitutional Construction
• 5 The Medieval Papal Legate and His Province: Geographical Limits of Jurisdiction
• 6 Potens et Pauper: Charity and Authority in Jurisdictional Disputes over the Poor in Medieval Cologne
• 7 Auctoritas, Potestas and World Order
• 8 Christendom before Europe? A Historiographical Analysis of ‘Political Theology’ in Late Antiquity
• 9 ‘I Study Power’: The Scholarly Legacy of Robert Louis Benson with a Bibliography of his Published and Unpublished Works
• Index