The Power of the Popes: An Historical Essay on Their Temporal Dominion, and the Abuse of Their Spiritual AuthorityDaunou, P. C. F. (Pierre Claude François)
History
The Power of the Popes: An Historical Essay on Their Temporal Dominion, and the Abuse of Their Spiritual Authority
Daunou, P. C. F. (Pierre Claude François)
Papacy -- History; Popes -- Temporal power
³¹⁴ Bossuet. Def. Cler. Gall. 1. 4, c. 12.
Paul V. conspired to disturb England also, by two briefs, in which he
forbade the catholics to take the oath of allegiance to their king James
I: he renewed the bull ‘In caena Domini,’ and inserted it in the Roman
ritual, accompanied by a surplusage of anathemas.³¹⁵ The pretensions of
this pope gave rise to many publications on the pontifical power. The
8th of June, 1610, twenty-four days after the assassination of Henry IV.
the parliament of Paris condemned to the flames a book in which the
Jesuit Mariana permitted, nay advised, the attempting the lives of
intractable kings. The 28th of November following, justice was done the
treatise in which Bellarmin extends over the temporalities of princes
the spiritual power of the popes.³¹⁶
³¹⁵ ‘Pastoralis Romani pontificis vigilantia,’ such are the words of
the bull ‘In cænâ Domini,’ renewed by Paul; it has thirty
articles, that is, six more than the bull ‘Consuevernnt’ of Paul
III.
³¹⁶ Bossuet. Def. Cler. Gall. 1. 4, c. 16.
In 1614 the same parliament consigned to the flames a book, equally
seditious, of the Jesuit Suarez. The court of Rome took a tender
interest in these three works; that of Suarez is more frequently
referred to in the correspondence kept up with the nuncio resident in
France, in 1614: By what right does a parliament judge of points of
doctrine? What does Suarez teach but the catholic faith? What dogma is
more sacred than that of the sovereignty of popes over kings; direct
sovereignty in religious matters, and not less efficacious though
indirect in political ones? Even if some inaccuracies had glided into
the book of father Suarez, did it not belong to the Holy See, alone, to
perceive and ratify them? Such is the substance, during one entire year,
of the letters written in the popes name to his nuncio Ubaldini³¹⁷
However, the civil authority found defenders in two Scotch men, William
Barclay and John his son; then in Anthony de Dominis, who did not spare
the visible head of the church; but, especially in Edmund Richer, who
combated with more calmness the ultramontane opinions, and yet was not
the less the victim of his zeal for the Gallican liberties.³¹⁸
Disputes with the dukes of Parma and of Savoy, the republic of Lucca,
the Ligurians, and with the Swiss; attempts on the Valtaline; intrigues
to support the inquisition at Naples, and to favour the Jesuits in
Spain: these trifling details we shall dispense with, as generally
tending but to prove the impotence of pontifical ambition from 1505 to
1621.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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