CEVAP:

The papal claim to “fullness of power” had been a point of controversy among the medieval political thinkers. Originally, the claim meant that the pope-holding the highest position and representing the authority of the Church-could intervene by full right in any Church affair. Besides the historical arguments, there are theological or philosophical arguments, too. If “there is no power but from God” and the pope is God’s representative on earth, then it seems that power comes to Christian kings through the pope.

The popes in general claimed that, while ruling was normally the business of secular rulers, the pope could intervene in governmental matters as well, whenever he saw any good reason. Canon lawyers had been busy with drawing up lists of circumstances in which the pope might intervene but some items in the list were so comprehensive, which paved the path for the popes to intervene any time. For example, intervention ratione peccati, “by reason of sin”, meant that if a secular ruler commits an injustice (which is a sin) ,then the pope might intervene.

However, most of the political writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were involved in controversy about the extent and limits (or absence of limits) of papal authority; and, this situation made room for the distinction between secular and sacred authorities as well as for the quest for a secular order; the examples of which are to be found in the texts of Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham.