Monday, November 16, 2020

Jacques Almain (c. 1480-1515) on Papal Error

Jacques Almain (c. 1480-1515), a proponent of conciliarism in the pre-Reformation era, wrote the following about actual instances of papal error that infringed upon the Gospel:

 

. . . some have issued decrees contrary to the gospel, such as Pelagius [II], who issued a constitution that all the subdeacons in Sicily should abstain from their wives, whom they had married while in minor orders, or relinquish their office, which, because it was iniquitous and against the gospel, Gregory I, his successor, withdrew, as it is obvious from the text and gloss of c. Ante triennium [Gratian’s Decretum, D. 31 c. 1]. If he could issue a judicial decree contrary to the gospel, [he could] so define. (Jacques Almain, “A Book Concerning the Authority of the Church,” Chapter X, in J.H. Burns and Thomas M. Izbicki, Conciliarism and Papalism [Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 179-80)

 

Elsewhere, in chapter XII, Almain wrote the following, which is apropos in light of Francis being the current pontiff:

 

. . . if the Church cannot get rid of a pope ruling it to its destruction and leading souls to hell in droves by his instigation and example, it follows that a purely natural and civil polity would be better organized than the ecclesiastical polity. For a purely civil and natural polity would not be well organized if it could not bring down its king who is throwing it into disorder. Indeed a community cannot abdicate the power of bringing down and killing him as a member corrupting the whole body. Granted the opposite, indeed, the polity would seem to be despotically enslaved. When, therefore, Christ established the ecclesiastical polity for a supernatural end, more perfect in its kind than a purely natural polity, since things later in generation are prior in perfection, it follows that He left the ecclesiastical polity the power to bring down its ecclesiastical prince and king if he ruled not for its edification and destruction. Otherwise, indeed, He would not only have established it in a worse condition than a purely civil polity but He would have deprived the community of what is known to belong to it by natural law. Also, He would not have made the Christian community free, but rather enslaved in the strictest servitude.  (Ibid., 193)