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To: Dionysiusdecordealcis

"I would have to say that Roman Catholicism never did claim "complete temporal autority for the pope.""

The Dictatus Papae? :)


38 posted on 01/18/2006 11:23:24 AM PST by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!)
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To: Kolokotronis

We don't have the faintest idea who really wrote the dictatus papae or what their intention was--we have a half dozen different speculative theories. They certainly never exercised any doctrinal or ecclesial authority. Any who claims to know that they represent the position of Gregory VII is talking through his hat. They might be a papal document, but no one knows for sure, one way or another.

Through them the "Church" is not claiming anything at all because they were never promulgated by any authoritative ecclesial office--we simply don't know whether they ever got past some papal secretary's nightstand. They stand out like a sore thumb against the entire rest of Gregory VII's assertions of papal authority, which stop short of claiming any temporal power. He claims the right to depose the emperor on the basis of spiritual power. He does not claim temporal authority or power--the whole point of the Gregorian Reform was the Church's spiritual independence from control by the temporal rulers.

Innocent III is sometimes portrayed as claiming temporal authority, but I don't think he comes close. There are a number of good discussions of this by historians, including a recent reader giving the various interpretations, ed. by James Powell, if I recall correctly.

Read current scholarship on the Gregorian Reform on the dictatus papae. The best book is the massive biography by John Cowdrey a respected professor at Oxford. IT's simply titled Gregory VII. He shows that one can't build a case for anything on the dictatus papae.


46 posted on 01/18/2006 2:00:21 PM PST by Dionysiusdecordealcis
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