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St. Robert Francis Romulus Bellarmine, S.J. |
Early in the 17th century, Saint Robert Bellarmine, S.J. found
himself at the center of an international controversy over clerical
exemption. Several years earlier, in 1599, he was pressured into
justifying exemption on more solid natural law grounds rather than
treating it as mere human invention. Clerical exemption was a central
issue in the Venetian Interdetto controversy of 1605-07,
when Pope Paul V excommunicated Venice for violating ecclesiastical
prerogatives. Bellarmine was caught in the middle. On one side were
theologians ,like Paolo Sarpi, who argued that clerical exemption was of
human origin and, therefore, clergy were subject to secular law. On the
other side were papalists, who defended the divine origin of clerical
privilege, like the Spanish jurist, Francisco Pena. Though he
disapproved of the Interdetto, Bellarmine was drawn into the
debate on the side of Rome, primarily to defend himself: first, against
critics like Sarpi, who used his own theories to limit papal temporal
power; and, second, against Pena, who blamed him for providing
theoretical ammunition to the Venetians. This, argues Tutino, was a
challenge for Bellarmine, whose insistence on the separate jurisdictions
of temporal and spiritual authority, left unclear under what conditions
a pope’s intervention into earthly affairs, on behalf of souls, might
be justified.
The Venetian Interdetto was only
one of several international crises that marked Bellarmine’s career. The
second was the growing threat of royal absolutism to the spiritual
jurisdiction of the Church. Bellarmine decided to refute the absolutist
claims, contained in: The True Law of Free Monarchies (1603) by King James I. Tutino argues that Bellarmine saw this text as a new
political and theological challenge to the Church—and to his own
political theology. James’s Protestant-sounding arguments were aimed at
strengthening the crown at the expense of the Church, and constituted a
new kind of heresy, one that went beyond the claims of his Tudor
predecessors. The Stuart monarch was not merely a threat to the
Catholics of England. His vision, of absolute temporal sovereignty over
the spiritual authority of the Church, could spread across the
continent. Indeed, the king directed his ambassadors to distribute
copies of his book to receptive state officials in Catholic, as well as
Protestant, capitals. The danger posed by James was not limited to his
book, however. The controversy over the “Oath of Allegiance,” offered
Bellarmine a new opportunity to defend papal spiritual supremacy.
Imposed in January 1606, after the Gunpowder Plot was foiled, the Oath
required English Catholics to deny the pope’s power to excommunicate and
depose the king, asserting the latter’s primacy over spiritual affairs. James was not the only one from across the
English Channel to defy Bellarmine. Scotsman, William Barclay, was the
leading “divine right” theorist of his day, according to John Locke, and
a professed Catholic, who taught civil law in France until his death in
1608. Barclay’s De potestate Papae was published in England
the following year. Widely praised at the Sorbonne and elsewhere, his
book explicitly challenged Bellarmine’s theory of potestas indirecta
by denying the incommensurability of the temporal and spiritual
jurisdiction, thereby elevating the sovereign to the same level as the
pope. Bellarmine once again had to defend potestas indirecta,
while fending off papalist critics like Pena, who believed his theory of
papal primacy too modest to be effective against the enemies of Rome.
Bellarmine’s refutation of Barclay is published in Tutino’s On Temporal and Spiritual Authority.
Link (here) to read the full article at Homiletic and Pastoral Review by John M. Vella
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