Papocracy

Papocracy or Hierocracy also sometimes called "Papalism," is an element of Catholic Theology and Ecclesiastical law that holds that the legitimate Catholic pope holds supreme authority over, not just spiritual, but also temporal affairs, and indeed, over the full world. In its widest application, Papocracy posits that since Christ is Lord of the Universe and both King and Priest, and the pope is His vicar, the pope possess from Him, directly from Jesus Christ, by his being instituted and constituted Pope, both spiritual and temporal authority over the whole world. 

Papocratists at the turn of the 14th century such as Augustinus Triumphus and Giles of Rome depicted secular government as a product of human sinfulness that originated, by necessity, in tyrannical usurpation, and could be redeemed only by subordination to the superior spiritual sovereignty of the pope. At the head of the Catholic Church, responsible to no other being except God, the pope, they taught, was the monarch of a universal kingdom whose power extended to Christians and non-Christians alike.

The Papocratists limit their extensive conception of the pope's authority by acknowledging that the day-to-day exercise of temporal power belongs, in general, to secular princes and rulers, albeit under the guidance of the pope.

Papocracy was criticised at the time by heretics, from a Royalist (Heresy of Regalism) perspective by John of Paris, in defence of the universal monarchy of the Holy Roman emperor by Dante Alighieri, and by critics of papal supremacy over the Catholic Church itself such as Marsilius of Padua. 

Papocratism, heretics claim, originated with the Gregorian Reform also called the Hildebrandine Reform spearheaded by Ildebrando of Sovana, subsequently known as Pope St Gregory VII, claiming that successive popes since the pontificate of Gregory I at the start of the 7th century had rarely felt the need to assert the principle of papal primacy explicitly; that the growing frequency of papal intervention in church government incentivised canonists to articulate on the relationship between the pope and the bishops, and that by the 11th century this articulation of papal primacy had begun to extend to the pope's authority in the secular sphere as well; and, that, once the pope's internal monarchy within the church itself had been firmly established under Pope Innocent III at the beginning of the 13th century, the canonists could direct their attention further towards temporal affairs.

As a matter of fact, Papocracy was held by the Popes even during the Great Roman Pagan Persecutions, long before Emperor Constantine the Great, and have been reiterated, although in increasingly muted form, down to the Great Modernist Apostasy that began Oct. 1958. 

In his 1075 Dictatus papae, Pope St. Gregory VII gave the principle of Papocracy a detailed legal form. 

Papocracy came into sharper focus at the time of the struggle between Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII, who responded to Philip's increasingly Gallicanist and Regalist heretical tendencies and acts by reiterating Papocracy, culminating in his 1302 bull Unam sanctam, which pronounced that the "spiritual power has to institute the earthly power and judge it" and that "it is entirely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff." 

The mid-13th century elaboration by the canonist Hostiensis of the pope's plenitudo potestatis, "plenitude of power," was an important milestone in the development of Papocratism. Hostiensis noted the traditional Christian argument that all political power derived from God;  the pope had a special status: as God's vicar, the pope, when he exercised his office and did not sin, acted in place of God; the pope's power was supernatural; he could issue dispensations at will from any positive law, rendering bastards legitimate, for example, and restoring the reputation of the infamous. 

Pope Innocent IV, who reigned from 1243 to 1254, affirmed  Papocracy by asserting that the pope had the right to elect a monarch himself if any Christian kingdom should fall vacant.

Expositions of  Papocracy were composed at around the same time, such as Giles of Rome's De ecclesiastica potestate ("On Ecclesiastical Power") in 1301 and James of Viterbo's De regimine Christiano ("On Christian Government") in 1302. 

Papocracy continued to hold sway well into the 16th century, as shown by the Fifth Lateran Council's republishing of Unam sanctam and Pope Pius V's  deposition of Elizabeth Boleyn in England by his 1570 bull Regnans in excelsis.

Despite their sweeping conception of the authority of the papal office, Papocratists did not believe that the pope should, in the ordinary course of events, directly exercise temporal power himself. Though inferior to the pope, they held that the office of the secular prince was nonetheless ordained by God, and the pope's temporal authority was to be exercised indirectly through his guidance and direction of princes. 

The canonist Augustinus Triumphus, in his 1326 Summa de potestate ecclesiastica ("Summary Account of Ecclesiastical Power"), argued that the pope had universal jurisdiction in both temporal and spiritual matters across the whole world ("in toto orbe terrarum spiritualium et temporalium... universalis iurisdictio"), but his immediate temporal administration extended only to the lands that the Pope possessed and ruled as secular prince or sovereign, the Papal States in Italy, and Avignon.

Opposition to Papocracy is often termed "dualism": in practice Papocratist and dualist positions often overlapped, with Papocratists acknowledging the distinct authority of secular princes while dualists accepted the pope's overall leadership of the Christian community.

Papocracy was critiqued on a number of fronts. Writing in the context of the dispute between Boniface and Philip of France, John of Paris argued in his 1303 De potestate regia et papali ("On Royal and Papal Power") that Christ's kingship was not of this world, and could not be interpreted as temporal jurisdiction. Moreover, while spiritual authority was united in the church and its steward the pope, political authority was naturally plural. In his De Monarchia, composed roughly around 1310, Dante Alighieri adopted a different line of attack, defending the universal authority of the Holy Roman emperor: it was against nature for the church to exercise temporal power, but also for political authority to be divided. Marsilius of Padua, in his 1324 Defensor pacis ("The Defender of the Peace"), rejected the entire basis of the papacy as a divinely sanctioned office, arguing that it was a political office like any other and that the pope's illegitimate claims to universal authority were a cause of civil discord.