Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels The Church and the Non-Christian World, 1250-1550

224 Pages·2015·13.322 MB·English

by  James Muldoon

POPES, LAWYERS, AND INFIDELS
The Church and the
Non-ChristianW orld
1250-1550
POPES,
LAWYERS,
and
INFIDELS
JAMES MULDOON
Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Jersey.
Copyright © 1979 by James Muldoon
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without permission in writing from
the publishers, except by a reviewer who wishes to
quote brief passages in a review written for
inclusions in a magazine or newspaper.
ISBN: 978-0-8122-7770-8
Published by the University of Pennsylvania Press
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Muldoon, James, 1935-
Popes, lawyers, and infidels.
Bibliography: p. 197
Includes index.
I. Persons (Cannon law) I. Title. II. Title: The
church and the non-Christian world, 1250-1550.
Law 262.9'32 79-5049
CONTENTS
Introduction vii
1. Christian Relations with Infidels: The Theory 3
2. Innocent IV: The Theorist as Practitioner 29
3. The Successors of Innocent IV 49
4. The Popes of Avignon and the World beyond
Christendom 72
5. The End of the Mongol Mission 92
6. The Lawyers Reconsider the Rights of Infidels 105
7. The Spanish Experience 132
Conclusion 153
Appendix: A Note on Medieval Attitudes and
Modern Racism 159
Notes 161
Bibliography 197
Index 209
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INTRODUCTION
cRITICISM of the way in which Europeans have treated the
inhabitants of the non-European world in the course of
European expansion has a long history. Three centuries be-
fore Christopher Columbus encountered the American Indians,
European intellectuals and clergymen had criticized the treatment
of the peoples whom the crusaders and other Europeans encountered
as they moved outward from the heartland of European civilization.
These criticisms sound familiar to anyone acquainted with the
sixteenth-century critics of the Spanish conquest of the Americas.
Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the relationship
of sixteenth-century critics of European expansion to their medieval
predecessors.
The concentration upon post-Columban expansion and its effects
is associated with the popular tendency to distinguish sharply be-
tween the medieval world and the modern. No one today would
flatly deny the existence of some continuity between medieval cul-
ture and institutions on the one hand and their modern counterparts
on the other. Few, if any, contemporary historians would accept the
late nineteenth-century view that the Renaissance, the Reformation,
the scientific revolution, and the discovery of the Americas marked
a sharp break with the medieval past. Current scholarship has placed
much stronger emphasis upon the continuities between the medieval
and the modern eras. The problem is, of course, one of emphasis
and degree, not of absolutes.
For the medieval historian, the continuity between the medieval
and the modern worlds is obvious, so much so that in recent decades
medievalists have devoted much time and effort to demonstrating
the medieval origins of numerous ideas and institutions generally
labeled modern. Medievalists have placed the Italian Renaissance in
a medieval perspectiv
viii § Introduction
Martin Luther's theology, as well as pointing out the origins of the
scientific method in thirteenth-century England.1 Other historians
have discussed the expansion of Europe not since 1492, but since
1415, using the Portuguese capture of Ceuta in North Africa to
mark the beginning of European overseas expansion.2 Even earlier
dates could, however, be advanced. By the middle of the fourteenth
century, European seamen had encountered the Canary Islands,
which were to play a vital role in later expansion into the Atlantic.
It is even possible to date European expansion from the announce-
ment of the First Crusade in 1095.3 From that point onward, con-
stant pressure was applied to the border regions of Europe, leading
to the extension of European culture, values, institutions, and, above
all, religion into new lands. Expansion would seem to be an essential
characteristic of European culture. To a great extent, it is connected
with European religious values: Christianity is a missionary religion
seeking to bring into the fold all mankind. Other factors, such as
the well-known desire of Europeans for spices, also encouraged
European interest in the world beyond Europe. When Vasco da
Gama responded to an Indian official who asked why he had come
by saying we "have come to seek Christians and spices," he was
summing up the motivation for several hundred years of European
expansion.4
Just as there was an underlying continuity between the successors
of Columbus and his predecessors, so too there were critics of ex-
pansion before Columbus as there were after him. The links between
the first generation of post-Columban critics, the Spanish writers
Francis Vitoria and Bartholomew de Las Casas, and medieval critics
of the behavior of Europeans toward non-Europeans have become
obvious in recent years.5 Their criticism was rooted in medieval
arguments about the rights of infidels in the face of a European in-
vasion. What has led to an increased awareness of the role of medi-
eval arguments about the rights of non-Europeans has been an in-
creased interest in medieval canon law. It was this legal tradition
that underlay many of the arguments that Vitoria, Las Casas, and
other critics of Spanish imperial policy presented. At the same time,
those who defended and supported the Spanish conquest of the
Americas also relied upon the medieval legal tradition. When friars
read the Requerimiento, a statement of Spanish intentions, to un-
comprehending American Indians, they too were acting as they
believed the medieval legal tradition demanded. As a result, the
ix § Introduction
conquest of the Americas generated a debate about the rights of the
conquered that was shaped by almost three hundred years of legal
argument. Until comparatively recently, canon law was viewed as
an exotic aspect of medieval life, not worthy of the intensive study
that had been given to the development of English common law.6
Canon law, as the law of the universal Church during the Middle
Ages, played a much more important role in medieval life and in-
tellectual development than has often been recognized. In countries
not affected by the Protestant Reformation—Spain, for example-
medieval canon law continued to shape intellectual life into the
modern era. Even in those countries where the Reformation suc-
ceeded, the canon law tradition continued to influence policy and
institutions. One need look no further than the list of references to
canon law appended to a modern edition of John Calvin's Institutes
of the Christian Religion to appreciate the use of canon law in the
Reformation itself.7
Only because of the recent work in medieval canon law can
scholars now come to deal effectively with Garrett Mattingly's
statement some years ago about the relationship between Vitoria
and Las Casas and their medieval predecessors: "the conclusions at
which the Spanish school arrived are obviously implicit in twelfth-
century canonists with explicit elaborations in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries."8 Mattingly, and those who adhered to his
opinion, presented little evidence to demonstrate the dependence of
the sixteenth-century writers upon the medieval canonists, and the
evidence given was often based on a failure to understand the work
of the medieval canonists correctly and on conclusions drawn by
scholars who were enthusiastic about what they saw as the Spanish
contribution to the formation of modern international law. More
often, in spite of Mattingly's specific reference to medieval canon
law as the source of sixteenth-century thinking about the rights of
non-Europeans, scholars sought the origins of such thought in the
medieval tradition of scholastic philosophy.9 While Vitoria was a
formally trained scholastic philosopher, he was more eclectic than
that phrase would imply. He also drew upon the canon law tradi-
tion when he considered the plight of the Indians of South America.
The present study is the result of a dozen years of studying the
canonists' writings from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century.
The purpose has been to test the accuracy of Mattingly's statement
about the debt of the sixteenth-century Spanish critics of the con-
x § Introduction
quest to the medieval legal tradition. At the outset, it should be
made quite clear that Mattingly set the starting point of any such
research too early. While it is true that canon law emerged as a
fully developed branch of legal science in the mid-twelfth century
with the appearance of Gratian's Decretum, nevertheless interest
in the rights of non-Christians became a significant aspect of canon-
istic thought only in the mid-thirteenth century. The starting
point of this study is the pontificate of Pope Innocent IV (1243-54).
Before he ascended the papal throne, he had been, as Sinibaldo
Fieschi, a noted canon lawyer, the man F. W. Maitland described
as "the greatest lawyer that ever sat upon the chair of St. Peter."10
As a canonist, Innocent IV brought together several strands of legal
thought relating to infidels in the first attempt to consider the rela-
tions that could exist between Christians and infidels. As pope, In-
nocent IV initiated the Mongol mission, the first attempt to deal
with the Mongol threat to eastern Europe on a diplomatic level, as
well as to convert the Mongols to Christianity. The result was the
blending of legal theory and papal practice in a single career. It was
the union of these two traditions that formed the intellectual back-
ground of Vitoria and Las Casas. Innocent IV remains the crucial
figure in this development, however, because although many of his
successors as pope were also .legally trained, none showed both the
legal imagination and the personal interest in the problem of the in-
fidels to bring the analysis of the rights of infidels to a more sophisti-
cated level. For three centuries following Innocent IV's death, his
thinking influenced the thought of those who wrestled with the
problems created when Europeans moved out from Europe itself and
encountered people of various levels of culture and civilization.
In writing any scholarly book, an author incurs debts of apprecia-
tion to colleagues who have assisted him in various ways. While it
is dangerous to cite specific individuals for fear that some others
will be omitted, justice demands that several people be thanked. In
the first place, I owe a great deal to Professor Brian Tierney of
Cornell University, who introduced me to medieval canon law.
Anyone who works in the field of canon law also owes an enormous
debt to Professor Stephan Kuttner of the University of California
at Berkeley. In my case the debt is quite personal because of his
very kind assistance to me on the first day I worked in the Vatican
Library. For the past dozen years, Professor Edward M. Peters of
the University of Pennsylvania has been not only a good and kind