Summa summae S. Thomae, Tomus III

[The civil principality of the Roman Pontiff has been attacked under a twofold respect, namely with regard to the fact and with regard to the right.

Against the historical fact Protestants have raged in general, among whom Basnage, Mosheim, and Sismondi hold the chief place, who contend that the beginning of this principality is not immune from every stain of injustice, asserting that the Supreme Pontiffs fraudulently used various circumstances of things to create their temporal power and gradually to extend its limits. Nor have there been lacking even among Catholics those who, not attending sufficiently to the historical monuments, have consented to these men more than is fair.

Others have condemned this principality absolutely, as repugnant to evangelical doctrine and by its nature incompatible with spiritual power. Such were Wycliffe, condemned by the Council of Constance, Calvin, and most enemies of the Catholic Church, who, understanding that by this power the authority of the Holy See was buttressed, tried to make it odious and persecuted the Roman Pontiffs as subverters of the Gospel. Some also boasting of the title of Catholics have favored this opinion more or less, alleging that for fulfilling the spiritual ministry spiritual means suffice, and that it is hindered by the care of temporal things; whose system is contained in that celebrated formula: « A free Church in a free State. »

Against whom.

I say 1°: The civil principality of the Roman Pontiff is a legitimate fact.

It is proved. 1° It was constituted legitimately. Neither by force nor by fraud did the Pontiffs obtain their civil principality. For how could they have reduced those regions under their dominion, when no means lay ready to them for protecting themselves and keeping themselves unharmed? No more did they seize this power by fraud, which rather was offered to them spontaneously by peoples and princes. For many cities abandoned by the emperors for two hundred years and attacked by the Lombards implored the Pope's help and gave themselves to him. If therefore the consent of peoples is required — which today is vaunted as the preferable and indeed only way of acquiring dominion — this title did not fail the Roman Pontiffs. To the consent of citizens were added the confirmation and express grant of the emperors. Pepin handed over to the Supreme Pontiff the dominion of the exarchate of Ravenna, and Charlemagne confirmed this donation, other possessions being added, to whom Louis the Pious and his successors consented. Finally the countess Matilda left her own territory to the Holy See in a solemn act.

2° It was ratified by legitimate prescription. From the times of Pepin and Charlemagne more than a thousand years are counted, and if the Supreme Pontiffs several times were driven from their possessions by princes whose vices they ought to rebuke and whose excesses to repress, from the age of Charles V emperor and Francis I king of the French, that is, for three centuries, they exercised their principality peacefully. Moreover, all confess that so long an expanse of time amply suffices for legitimate prescription. And this was sanctioned in public law; for hardly any pact of peace was concluded between princes in which the temporal power of the Holy See was not recognized and placed under common protection, as was done especially and solemnly in the congress held at Vienna in Austria in the year 1815, in which the boundaries of many kingdoms of Europe were changed and determined.

3° Its legitimacy is demonstrated also from its effects, even temporal ones. Let us hear Leo XIII expounding this argument lucidly and eloquently in the Encyclical Inscrutabili, promulgated on the occasion of his assumption to the supreme pontificate:

« But what, if the works of the Roman Pontiff are considered, can be more unjust than to deny how greatly the Roman Bishops have deserved well of civil society as a whole, and how nobly? Truly our predecessors, that they might provide for the good of peoples, never hesitated to undertake struggles of every kind, to drain grave labors, and to expose themselves to harsh difficulties; and with eyes fixed on heaven, they neither bowed their forehead to the threats of the wicked, nor suffered themselves to be led away from duty by flatteries or promises with degenerate assent. This was the Apostolic See which gathered together and joined the remnants of the old society that had slipped away; this same was the friendly torch by which the humanity of Christian times shone forth; this was the anchor of salvation amid the fiercest storms by which the human race was tossed; it was the sacred bond of concord which joined nations remote and diverse in manners to one another; finally it was the common center whither were sought, together with the doctrine of faith and religion, the auspices and counsels of peace and of the conduct of affairs. Why say more? It is the praise of the Supreme Pontiffs that most steadfastly they threw themselves forward as wall and bulwark, lest human society relapse into superstition and ancient barbarism.

« But would that this salutary authority had never been neglected or repudiated! Certainly neither would civil principality have lost that august and sacred dignity which it bears implanted by religion, and which makes one condition of obedience noble and worthy of man; nor would so many seditions and wars have blazed up, which defiled the earth with calamities and slaughters; nor would kingdoms once most flourishing, cast down from the summit of prosperity, be pressed by the weight of all miseries. An example of this thing are also the eastern peoples, who, having broken the sweetest bonds by which they were joined to this Apostolic See, lost the splendor of their pristine nobility, the praise of sciences and arts, and the dignity of their empire.

« But the illustrious monuments of all ages declare the outstanding benefits which have gone forth from the Apostolic See into whatever region of land; this Italian region has perceived them above all, and the nearer it stood to the same See, the more abundant fruits it received from it. Certainly Italy owes to the Roman Pontiffs solid glory and amplitude, whereby she stood out among the remaining nations. Their authority and paternal care more than once shielded her from the onset of enemies, and brought relief and aid to her, that the Catholic faith might at no time fail to be kept whole in the hearts of Italians.

« The merits of predecessors of this kind, to pass over the rest, the memory of the times of St. Leo the Great, Alexander III, Innocent III, St. Pius V, Leo X, and other Pontiffs attests above all, through whose works or auspices Italy escaped safe from extreme destruction, which impended from the barbarians, retained the ancient faith incorrupt, and nourished amid the darkness and squalor of a ruder age the light of learning and the splendor of arts, and kept them flourishing. This our own nourishing city, the seat of the Pontiffs, attests, which took from these the greatest fruit, namely that it was not only a most fortified citadel of faith, but was made an asylum of good arts and a dwelling of wisdom, and won toward itself the admiration and observance of the whole world. Since the magnitude of these things has been handed down to everlasting memory in the monuments of history, it is understood with ease that only by hostile will and unworthy calumny, for the deception of men, could there be thrust upon them by voice and writings that this Apostolic See was a hindrance to the civil culture of peoples and the happiness of Italy.

« If therefore all the hopes of Italy and of the universal world are placed in that force common utility and healthful good — wherein the authority with which the Apostolic See is endowed — and in the tightest bond, which binds all the faithful of Christ with the Roman Pontiff, we recognize that nothing rather ought to belong to us than that we keep the Roman Chair's dignity safe and sound, and ever more and more preserve the union of members with head, of sons with father. »

It is confirmed by this peremptory argument. It cannot be admitted that an illegitimate fact should be perpetuated in the Church of Christ and by her, as legitimate, not only tolerated but even steadfastly vindicated; because, affirming this legitimacy and reproving the contrary doctrine, the Church would err and teach falsehood. Yet no Catholic will think thus. Therefore.

I say 2°: The civil principality of the Roman Pontiff is necessary.

This necessity is understood not absolutely, but conditionally and hypothetically. For if it had pleased Christ to attach a civil principality to the primacy of his Vicar as something essential, Peter himself ought to have obtained and exercised it. Moreover, through the first centuries the Roman Pontiffs were destitute of it; nay, they were adorned with no other purple than their own blood, through martyrdom; nor did they begin to enjoy such power except when, with a wondrous propagation of the Gospel, secular princes themselves became Christian with their peoples, and it was necessary that the supreme leader and shepherd of all be nowise subject to them, that he might freely fulfill his office toward them.

Proof. of the necessity of this principality: from the nature of the office committed by Christ to his Vicar. For

In order that the primacy of the Roman Pontiff may be exercised in a more efficacious manner, it is necessarily required that the Pope enjoy full liberty. Yet civil principality is the condition of this perfect liberty. Therefore this principality is necessary.

Proof. of the minor: by the solemn declaration made by Pius IX, driven out from his civil power, in the consistory held at Gaeta on April 28, 1849:

« The reason of our office, he said, demands that, in defending the civil principality of the Apostolic See, we defend with all our strength the rights and possessions of the holy Roman Church and the liberty of the same See, which is joined with the liberty and utility of the whole Church. And indeed men who, applauding the recalled decree (of spoliation), affirm things so false and absurd, either ignore or pretend to ignore that it was done by a quite singular counsel of divine providence that, the Roman empire having been divided into many kingdoms and various nations, the Roman Pontiff, to whom the government and care of the whole Church was committed by Christ the Lord, should have a civil principality for this very cause, that unto the very governing of the Church itself and the defending of its unity he might possess that full liberty which is required for discharging the office of the supreme apostolic ministry. For it is known to all that faithful peoples, nations, and kingdoms will never render full confidence and observance to the Roman Pontiff if they see him subjected to the dominion of some prince or government and not free. Indeed faithful peoples and kingdoms would never cease vehemently to suspect and fear lest the Pontiff conform his acts to the will of that prince or government within whose dominion he dwelt, and therefore would often not hesitate on that pretext to resist those acts. And indeed let even the enemies of the civil principality of the Apostolic See who now dominate Rome say with what confidence and observance they themselves would receive the exhortations, admonitions, mandates, constitutions of the Supreme Pontiff, when they recognized him to be subject to the command of any prince or government, and especially if he were subject to such a prince between whom and the Roman dominion some lasting war was being waged. » From these things the necessity asserted above is demonstrated invincibly.

The same Pontiff, in the Encyclical of June 18, 1859, affirms the same necessity decisively, saying: « We plainly proclaim it necessary that this See have a civil principality, that it may exercise its sacred power for the good of religion without any impediment. » Many times afterwards he protested in divers allocutions against the invaders of the pontifical territory, declaring them entangled in ecclesiastical censures.

Leo XIII, as soon as he was raised to the dignity of the supreme pontificate, did not fail to renew these protestations and reclamations, in the aforementioned Encyclical Inscrutabili: « That, first of all, we may assert and strive by every means we can for the rights and liberty of this Holy See, we shall never cease, that due obedience stand to our authority, that obstacles be removed which impede the full liberty of our ministry and power, and that we be restored to that condition of things which the counsel of divine wisdom had long since assigned to the Roman Bishops. In demanding this restoration we act not from zeal of ambition or desire of dominion, but from the reason of our office and the bonds of the oath of religion by which we are bound; and moreover not only because this principality is necessary for defending and preserving the full liberty of spiritual power, but also, what is most certain, when the temporal principality of the Apostolic See is in question, the cause also of public good and of the salvation of the whole human society is at stake. Hence we cannot pass over, in virtue of the duty of our office, by which we are held to defend the rights of holy Church, but must renew and confirm entirely in these our letters all the declarations and protestations which Pius IX of holy memory, our predecessor, several times issued and repeated against the violation of the rights pertaining to the Roman Church. » And this declaration Leo XIII himself afterwards repeated more than once, occasions being given.

Therefore it is licit for no Catholic to contradict these declarations, nor to hold that the civil principality of the Roman Church was indeed useful in past times, but no longer accords with present manners and the new law. For in the Syllabus, by mandate of Pius IX, two following propositions were inserted among the condemned: LXXV. « That the children of the Christian and Catholic Church dispute among themselves about the compatibility of the temporal with the spiritual kingdom. » Which proposition is reproved as understood in this sense, that it is lawful for Catholics with safe conscience to embrace either opinion. — LXXVI. « That the abolition of the civil empire which the Apostolic See enjoys would conduce most greatly to the liberty and felicity of the Church. » Whence by the constitution Apostolicae Sedis, of October 12, 1869, they are punished with excommunication latae sententiae specially reserved to the Roman Pontiff: « invaders, destroyers, detainers, by themselves or through others, of cities, lands, places or rights pertaining to the Roman Church; or usurpers, disturbers, retainers of the supreme jurisdiction in them; as well as those offering aid, counsel, favor to each of the aforesaid. » This censure is renewed from the bull Cone, § 20.

These things the declarations of very many provincial councils convened in these later times confirm, of which several invoked these words of Bossuet:

« We beseech you all that the sacred principality be safe and unharmed in every way. » There must be noted especially the councils of the provinces of Tours, Reims, Rouen, Toulouse, Albi, Bourges. The Fourth Council of the province of Bordeaux celebrated at Poitiers, in the year 1859, firmly adhered to the declaration of Pius IX related above, and its decree was amply approved and praised by the same Pontiff.

From all which it follows that the civil principality was established by the ordination of divine providence as necessary for the Roman Pontiff in the sense said above.

It is confirmed the proposition by this fact: that, when the pontifical territory was subtracted by force of arms to the legitimate dominion, the usurper, the Catholic nations and even certain heterodox ones vindicating full liberty for the Roman Pontiff in fulfilling his ministry, tried to still the protestations rising everywhere, by obtaining from the legislative power the law which they called of security, whereby it was sanctioned that royal honors were to be rendered to the Pontiff, and that a new government would watch over his liberty to be defended. How this obligation was fulfilled, or rather despised, all know; but from this fact is deduced that the necessity of the full liberty and independence of the Supreme Pontiff was commonly acknowledged. Moreover he will never be wholly independent of any secular power unless the civil principality shall have made him equal to all kings and princes. Therefore.