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FitzRalph's Antimendicant ‘proposicio’ (1350) and the Politics of the Papal Court at Avignon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Janet Coleman
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Extract

The conciliar movement is often seen as the major political issue in which the universities of Oxford, Paris and the newer universities became actively embroiled during the fourteenth century and thereafter. It was the last and most ambitious product of the medieval vision of government by consent and representation that had evolved during the fourteenth century, and it marshalled the resources of theorists and practitioners of politics, of arts and theology faculty lecturers, of canon and civil lawyers, of monarchical publicists and papal hierocrats. In general, conciliarism drew upon the university-trained in a manner not previously seen on such a scale. During the Great Schism (1378–1449), the universities assumed exceedingly important roles in the affairs of the universal Church, with the University of Paris playing a dominant part from the start in proposing the via concilii. Pierre d'Ailly was, like Gerson, Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of Langenstein, and like the earlier Marsilius of Padua, a Paris scholar. And it has recently been argued that university support for the Basle conciliar programme was motivated not only by an attachment to the ideal of conciliar government but also by the hope of reforms which would improve the status of university-trained doctors in the Church. While the bulk of controls proposed by the conciliar movement concerned the reduction of papal control, a few aimed more explicitly at promoting the interests of graduates.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , July 1984 , pp. 376 - 390
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

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10 Orme, N., ‘Education at a medieval English cathedral: Exeter’. This JOURNAL, xxxii (1981), 265–83Google Scholar, notes that of the canons and dignitaries of Exeter cathedral (with which we recall FitzRalph had connections through Grandisson), the vast majority had studied mainly at Oxford and the most popular studies (4O.6%) were (during the period 1380–1541) canon and civil law. Of all recorded study for 1380–1400, the highest were in laws: 8 were licensed in canon/civil law, 8 were D.Can. or Civ.law, and one was a Doctor of Theology. Since 1283 the chancellor was bound to reside and deliver regular lectures in Latin to the local clergy on theology or canon law (p. 272). Also see the Wyclifite text (English Works of Wyclif, F. D. Matthew (ed.), 156–7): ‘For now heþene mennus la wis and worldly clerkis statutes ben red in vnyuersitees & curatis lemen hem faste wiþ grete desir, studie & cost, but þe lawe of god is litel studied.’ Wyclif saw theology's chief opponent, in the universities, to be civil law (De Officio Regis, 188–95).

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13 Offler, ‘A political “collatio”’, 126.

14 Chartularium Univcrsitatis Parisicnsis, ii. n. 1042, 505–7.

15 Summa Ricardi Radulphi Archiepiscopi Armachani in questionibus Armenorum, Paris 1512, fos 2r-3r, cited by Minnis, Alastair, ‘Late medieval discussions of compilatio and the role of the compilator’, Beiträ;ge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literalur, ci, 3 (1979), 385–421Google Scholar

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28 Ibid., 477–9, 345–53- A. Fliniaux, ‘Contribution à l'histoire des sources du droit canonique. Les anciennes collections de Decisiones Rotae Romanae’, Revue Historique de Droit Français et Étranger, 4e série, 1925.

29 B. Guillemain, ‘Cardinaux et société curiale aux origines de la double election de 1378’, Genèse et débuts, 19–30; esp. 22; see Gasnault, P., editor of the papal constitution, Sollicitudo pastoralis, 6 July 1353, rejecting the articles, Lettres secrètes et curiales d'Innocent VI, Paris 1959Google Scholar, premier fasc, no. 435. The text of articles is examined by Mollat, G., ‘Contribution à I'histoire du Sacré Collège de Clèment v à Eugène IV’, Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique, xlvi (1951), 23–112, 100–4.Google Scholar

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32 Bresc, ‘La Genese du Schisme’, 49.

33 Jacques Le Goff,’ Universités et courants humanistes’, Genèse el debuts, 163–74, p. 170refers to the researches of Pierre Gasnault and Giuseppi di Stefano.