The Decline of the Late Medieval Papacy - Essay Example

?The Decline of the Late Medieval Papacy The latter part of the Middle Ages saw the decline of the papacy as an What this means is that such decline is not only exclusively characterized by the unpopularity or ineffectual regime of individual popes during the period. Instead, the papacy independent of the personalities that occupied the institution has been effectively undermined, experiencing a consistent and inevitable erosion of its power and authority. Two historians – Walter Ullmann and Paul Misner, who documented this upheaval in the Roman Catholic history, will be the subject of this paper. Particularly, their views on the causes of the fall of the papacy between 1400 and 1800 will be reviewed and compared. Reasons Ullmann’s main position with regards to the decline of the papacy during the late Middle Ages is that it was caused by the Church’s secularization. He has provided several arguments for this position. The most important of these is the allusion to the Great Schism that culminated in 1400s as the greatest crisis in the history of papacy, which, according to him, finally sank the institution enormously in European regard, dragging the Church with it as the world watched deeply pained and scandalized with the way the Church conducted its affairs during the period. There are several underlying issues entailed in this event. And these are excellently demonstrated in the way Ullmann recounted the elections of the pope. He cited the year-long process wherein the College of Cardinals elected a pope early in the fourteenth century with such bitterness of the debates and intrigue. A French-sponsored candidate was elected and because of this the papacy was moved to France wherein six consecutive French popes ruled until 1377 when the papacy finally returned to Rome. The election of the next pope saw rioting in Rome, as people clamored for a Roman pope, fearing further French influence. Ullmann highlighted how conclave, fearing for their lives, elected an Italian, who turned out later on to be not of their liking. According to Ullmann, the Reformation is not the fundamental reason for the decline of the papal authority and power. It was the succession of individuals whose sole qualifications were their wealth and Italian social status that made the papal institution fade into the background. The series of developments afterwards would then become the height of the so-called Great Schism, which severely damaged the papacy. Several popes would hold office at the same time, with a number of Church councils asserting their power further aggravating the situation. Ullmann identified the Fifth Lateran Council, the last medieval council that aimed to reform the Church, as one of the demonstrations by which the Great Schism has damaged the papal institution: The papacy here showed itself in perhaps its worst light: instead of insisting upon the enforcement of the law it dispensed with from the observation of these decrees. And in so doing the whole panoply of papal weapons including the plenitude of power, was invoked. In a way, the fifth Lateran Council was a conciliar swan song of the medieval papacy and the precursor of Trent in this same century.1 Meanwhile, Misner also echoed Ullmann’s position, that the Church decline as undermined by the papacy has been a consequence of the corruption of the popes. Central to this argument is the system of infallibility, which, in Misner’s view, “formed a vicious cycle in which the Roman communion had imprisoned itself without hope of escape.”2 An important variable must be highlighted here. Misner also believed that the papal institution and the mechanisms and systems that it entails, had, not only corrupted the personalities that held the office but also provided no means of escape or alternative for a pope to pursue reform or impose a righteous regime. He noted that the pope was merely a figurehead and instrument of the system and that the Pope’s primacy could only be sustained if he upholds a corrupt system. The corruption underscored the kind of secularization that came with the way the popes exploited his flock for his own advancement and his politics with the other princes of the Church as well as the other rulers in Europe. As with Ullmann’s position, Misner viewed this corruption of the papacy as the main progenitor of the Great Schism and the attacks on the Church coming from the reformists and the European rulers and monarchs who were emboldened to defy the popes and established their own Churches such as what happened in England when King Henry VIII established the Anglican Church. Sources The approach by which Ullmann and Misner wrote their accounts and expressed their theses and commentaries on the subject differed primarily in their use of sources. Ullmann took a more complex path by perusing several historical sources while Misner focused on John Henry Newman and his works exclusively. This divergence in strategy allowed the two scholars to emphasize their respective messages effectively. Ullmann sought a more scholarly treatise and took pains in presenting an objective narrative for his positions. This in itself is commendable because it cleared his work from bias and provided for a more comprehensive and balanced discourse. What this meant, however, is that he acquired a considerable distance to the subject in addition to the considerable number of arguments he was able to raise. Besides the secularization of the Church, Great Schism caused by the papal squabbles, he also cited the activities of the Eastern Empire as a contributing factor of the weakening of the papal institution, specifically with regards to the persistent efforts to impose papal primacy over the Eastern Church. Meanwhile, Misner wanted a more intimate approach. By using Newman as a resource exclusively, he achieved this excellently. In the process, he was able to cover certain dimensions to the issue that cannot be covered by an amalgamation of historians who are prone to simplify events and actions, and the motives and reasons behind them. Newman’s perspectives on the issues that the papacy faced during the latter part of the Middle Ages are invaluable and provided its readers a more holistic, human and involved depiction of what actually transpired. Newman’s choice is particularly important in this regard because: 1) he lived during the period of the decline; and, 2) Newman was an Anglican who converted into Catholicism later on. These factors are important in establishing the authority of Misner’s work because the secondary source had not only had first-hand accounts to offer but such accounts has been provided with in-depth and scholarly insights with regards to the developments of the period. Ullmann, discussed the decline of the papacy in a chapter called, The Last Phase of the Medieval Papacy. Here, he summed up his argument by saying that the “unadulterated monarchic role of the pope that the papacy became Europe’s focal point in the Middle Ages; and it was the operation with this self-same monarchic function which on the threshold of the modern period reduced the papacy to a power situated in central Italy.”3 It is a classic case of how absolute power corrupts. All the other details and variables were secondary and direct and indirect offshoots of this fundamental causality. Following Newman’s life and his involvement with Catholicism, along with his perspectives on it, the reader would find that Misner was only able to write in detail about the late medieval papacy in the last part of his book. Particularly, this was when he devoted the investigation to Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, written by the author in his deathbed. By probing the motives, intentions of Newman’s opinions and actions, Misner was able to reconstruct and depict a fresh perspective on the movements that define the papacy of the period. Newman was both an insider and an outsider in the Catholic Church with his relationship with it. A great part of his life was devoted to the Anglican Church and then, afterwards, he would rub elbows with princes of the Roman Church. His religious opinions, particularly, during the time of his “reconversion” to Catholicism, was an honest examination of the papacy, its decline and future. This point is made more plausible by the idea that he must be seeking some form of redemption and/or legacy since he knew that he was already dying. If the publication time has any bearing on the manner by which the authors’ investigations and arguments were formed, it will not significantly play its role here because both of Ullmann and Misner’s work were published in the 1970s, separated only by a couple of years in their release from the press. Again, what mattered was the use of sources by these two authors. They each pursued their separate approaches that, fortunately for their readers, allowed them to represent the issues and developments in different but complementary manner. Essentially, the reasons that they gave behind the decline of the papacy are almost the same – the secularization of the Church, the Great Schism, the Reformation and the political relationship of the popes with the other European rulers. What is certain, however, is that one was all about the general picture while the other ingratiated itself deeper by focusing on one account and its numerous dimensions. Put in another way, one focused more on the political aspects while the other on biographical account. Nonetheless, their conclusions are almost identical, differing only in the way they were presented. References Misner, Paul. Papacy and development: Newman and the primacy of the Pope. Leiden: E.J. Brill Archive, 1976. Ullmann, Walter. A Short History Of The Papacy in the Middle Ages. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1972. Read More