Development of Papal Theories

Introduction

Who was greater: the Pope or the Emperor/Kings? Ever since the legalization of Christianity in 313, popes and emperors have been engaged in many arguments about who was the head of Christian society. Emperors asserted administration, producing quotation to precedence for example Constantine and the Council of Nicea in 325.

Discussion and Analysis

The papacy on the other hand, contended papal primacy with such concepts as the Petrime theory, the history of orthodoxy, and the detail that the Pope controlled the vintage Roman capital (German Princes, 201).

The Concordat of Worms of 1122 CE conveyed an end to the investiture controversy. However, some historians contend that in the centuries that pursued, the papacy overstepped its jurisdiction when it started to use command over the political sphere as well. Pope Innocent III approaching after a long line of popes of who had used such command is one that is most intensely attacked. Did he overstep the boundaries of the papacy and hinder in the political activities or was he only portraying in a sphere in which he had all the right to manage so? Innocent did not waste too numerous possibilities to interpret how his look in temporal activities was justified (Hollister, 123). In detail, he supplied justification in nearly all of his notes, decrees, and policies. By analyzing a couple of the numerous demonstrations, it is clear-cut that Pope Innocent III mostly utilised the rhetoric of god to support his location in political affairs. Although, he may at times have utilised other persuasive schemes for example reasoning, precedent, and chronicled happenings, his strongest component of justification was that his activities were in detail the will of god.

In a note to the prefect of Acerbius and the nobles of Tuscany, Innocent III asserted that his power was larger than the power of the Kings. He clarified this by utilizing a metaphor of the sun and the moon. Establishing that the moon draws from its lightweight from that of the sun, he interprets that in the identical way the "royal power drawn from the splendor of its dignity from the pontifical authority."

Because the king had no power of his own, just as the moon had no lightweight of its own, it had to get it from somewhere else: the pope and the sun, respectively. Therefore because the moon and the monarch were not anything without the pope and the sun, it is ordered that the pope was in detail larger than the monarch because the pope had what the monarch lacked.

However more significantly, Innocent makes quotation to god in his metaphor. Before he even started to interpret where the king's power and administration came from, Innocent asserted that it was "the founder of the cosmos [who] established [the] two large lights," and more expressly, he established them "in the firmament of heaven." It was god who conceived the sun and the moon, and it was he who made it in order that the moon drawn from its lightweight from the sun. Therefore, in ...