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Royal Taxation and the English Church: The Origins of William of Ockham's An princeps

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Cary J. Nederman
Cary J. Nederman
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 1, New Zealand
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Extract

In the summer of 1337, representatives of the English King Edward III and the German Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria concluded negotiations leading to the formation of an Anglo-imperial alliance. Edward, who was in the midst of preparations to pursue by force his dynastic claim to the French crown, received from Ludwig the title of imperial vicar-general per Alemanniam et Galliam, an act which conferred upon him sovereign rights over subjects and lands west of the Rhine. In return, Edward provided the emperor with the substantial financial remuneration which he required to stabilise his own position within Germany. This Anglo-imperial treaty, the greatest achievement of Edward's early diplomatic programme, was solemnised in a ceremonial meeting between the two rulers during September of the following year. One figure who was no doubt in attendance throughout these events was William of Ockham, the Franciscan philosopher and theologian exiled from his native England as the result of a dispute with Pope John XXIL. Ludwig, while never an entirely reliable protector, had sheltered Ockham and numerous other intellectuals who had run afoul of the papal court at Avignon.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , July 1986 , pp. 377 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 The following summary of events is derived from H. S. Offler, ‘England and Germany at the beginning of the Hundred Years War’,EUR liv (1939), 608-31; and Fowler, Kenneth, The Age of Plantagenet and Valois, New York 1967, 48–9Google Scholar.

2 The specifics of Ockham's life and career are supplied by: Boehner, Philotheus, introduction to Ockham, Philosophical Writings, Edinburgh 1957; Léon Baudry,Google ScholarGuillaume d'Occam: sa vie, ses auvres, ses idees sociales et politiques, Paris 1949; and Jürgen MiethkeGoogle Scholar,Ockhams Weg zur Soziaiphilosophie, Berlin 1969Google Scholar.

3 See Offier, H. S., ‘Empire and papacy: the last struggle’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. vi (1956), 40Google Scholar.

4 The full title given to the tract is: An princeps pro suo succursu, scilicet guerrae, possit recipere bona ecclesiarum etiam irwito papa; this title is not Ockham's own, but is of later invention. The most recent edition of An princeps is in H. Offler (ed.), Guillelmi de Ockham, Opera Polilica i, Manchester 1974, 228-67.

5 McGrade, A. S., The Political Thought of William of Ockham, Cambridge 1974, 22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Offler, H. S. in his introduction to An princeps, Opera Politico i. 226Google Scholar.

7 An princeps, 229 (author's translations).

8 Giles of Rome, De ecclesiastica potestate, ed. Scholz, R., Weimar 1929, ii. ch. viiGoogle Scholar.

9 In France, the claim to be disputed was the location of dominium: did it pertain to the pope, the ruler or the private property holder? This conflict is apparent in such French tracts as Jean Quidort's De potestate regia etpapali and the anonymous Disputatio inter dericum et militem. In England, by contrast, I find no evidence of an attempt to challenge the claim that the king was ultimate dominus (because donor) of the property of all his subjects. That principle had been firmly established during the reign of Henry n, if not earlier, as a result of the terms of the Norman Conquest and its aftermath. The English issue, rather, seems to be the assignment of iurisdictio: does a bequest of property to the Church involve the transfer of iurisdictio to the pope? (See also note 40 below.)

10 Lunt, W. E., Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327, Cambridge, Mass. 1939, ch. viiGoogle Scholar.

11 Pantin, W. A., The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, Cambridge 1955, 128Google Scholar.

12 This dating is suggested by Wright, Thomas in his edition of The Political Songs of England, London 1839; repr. Hildesheim 1968, 273Google Scholar.

13 Ibid. 311-12.

14 Ibid. 313.

15 Ibid. 316-17.

16 Ibid. 317.

17 Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Denholm-Young, N., London 1957, 46–7Google Scholar.

18 Ibid. 41.

19 Ibid. 76-7.

20 Ibid. 79.

21 This spectre is raised by Winchelsey, Langtoft's: The Political Songs of England, 312Google Scholar.

22 William of Pagula, Speculum Regis Edwardi III, ed. Moisant, J., Paris 1890Google Scholar, Recension A, sec. iv. On the authorship of this tract, and the relationship between its two recensions, see Boyle, Leonard, ‘William of Pagula and the Spectrum Regis Edwardi III’, Mediaeval Studies xxxii (1970), 329–36Google Scholar.

23 This view and its practical limitations have been analysed by Tierney, Brian, Medieval Poor Law: a sketch of canonical theory and its application in England, Berkeley 1959, 34–44Google Scholar.

24 Quoted in ibid. 42-3.

25 Ian Kershaw, ‘The Great Famine and agrarian crisis in England, 1315-1322’, in Hilton, R. H. (ed.), Peasants, Knights and Heretics, Cambridge 1976, 85–132Google Scholar.

26 Vita Edwardi Secundi, 46.

27 Ibid. 76-7.

28 Ibid. 77.

29 Speculum Regis, A, sec. xiii.

30 Ibid.B, sec. xvii.

31 Ibid. B, sec. xiv.

32 Vita Edwardi Secundi, 78.

33 Speculum Regis, A, sec. xiii.

34 An princeps, 228.

35 Ibid. 253.

36 Ibid. 254.

37 Ibid.

38 In my analysis of the English political tradition between 1250 and 1350, I termed this monopoly of power ‘original jurisdiction’; see CaryJ. Nederman, ‘State and Political Theory in France and England, 1250-1350: Marsiglio of Padua, William of Ockham and the emergence of ‘national’ traditions of discourse in the Late Middle Ages,’ unpublished PhD diss., York University, Toronto, 1983, 255-60.

39 An princeps, 258.

40 Strayer, Joseph R., On the Medieval Foundations of the Modern State, Princeton 1970, 38Google Scholar. This distinguishes Ockham from continental theorists like Jean Quidort and Marsiglio of Padua. The view of the latter, I take it, places private dominium before the creation of any public iurisdictio; ownership is legitimate prior to and in the absence of any governmental authorisation. This is expressly stated in the famous seventh chapter of Quidort's Depotestate regia el papali, and it seems to be implicit in Marsiglio's remark at Defensor pads I. ix. 4 that dominium pertains in the first instance to the household, which is a pre-civil construct. In An princeps, on the other hand, the royal iurisdictio arises because the king is ultimate dominus of the goods of his subjects. Thus, whatever is donated to the Church is, technically, a royal donation, since all the goods possessed by Englishmen were originally conceded by the Crown and remain the conditional holdings of subjects. Ockham's king may be said to have jurisdiction because private goods descend from his authorisation and commission, where by comparison Quidort's king acquires iurisdictio only after dominium has been acquired in a pre-political fashion. For a thorough, but somewhat differing treatment of this issue, see Janet Coleman, ‘Dominium in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century political thought and its seventeenth-century heirs: John of Paris and Locke’, Political Studies xxxiii (1985), 73-100.

41 An princeps, 259.

42 See Nederman, Cary J., ‘Bracton on kingship revisited’, History of Political Thought v (Spring 1984), 73–4Google Scholar.

43 An princeps, 260.

44 Ibid. 259.

45 Ibid. 260.

46 Ibid. 259.

47 Ibid. 260. This may refer to King John's submission and homage to Pope Innocent III in 1215, which is cited by the Speculum Regis as a limitation on the king's freedom to act; A, sec. xxxv and B, sec. xxxix.

48 An princeps, 255.

49 Ibid. 256.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid. 265.

52 Ibid. 266.

53 Ibid. 266-7.

54 Ibid. 266.

55 He acknowledges this as a possible objection, for instance, at An princeps, 261.

56 Ibid. 256.

57 Ibid. 256-7.

58 See Gewirth, Alan, ‘Philosophy and political thought in the fourteenth century’, in Utley, F. L. (ed.), The Forward Movement of the Fourteenth Century, Columbus, Ohio 1961, 125–64Google Scholar; and McGrade, A. S., ‘Ockham and the birth of individual rights’, in Tierney, B. and Linehan, P. (eds.), Authority and Power, Cambridge 1980, 149–65Google Scholar; and , McGrade, The Political Thought of William of Ockham, 173–96Google Scholar.

59 An princeps, 257.

60 Ibid. 265.

61 Ibid. 264.

62 Ibid. 256.

63 Ibid. 257.

64 Ibid. 261.

65 Ibid. 262.

66 Ibid. 265.

67 An earlier version of this essay was read to the Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Conference at Villanova University, September 1984. Acknowledgement is due to the helpful comments of the participants in that meeting, as well as to the incisive criticism of the paper by Dr Janet Coleman.