Universal power

The coronation of Charlemagne in the year 800, which began the Carolingian Empire, marked the appearance of a secular authority with universal claims.

The two century long coexistence of the Pontiff and the Empire (regnum et sacerdocium) was difficult and yielded the Investiture Controversy and several different ideological formulations (the theory of the two swords, Plenitutdo postestatis, Dictatus papae, condemnations of simony, and nicolaism).

[1] The division of the Carolingian Empire between the heirs of Louis the Pious and the claims of different dynasties, such as the Ottonian and the House of Hohenstaufen, to the imperial title, debilitated the power of the emperors and subjected them to a system of election.

The system of election made them dependent on a delicate game of alliances between the nobles that held the title of Prince-Elector, some laymen and others clergymen.

He was incapable of not only standing up to the feudal monarchies definitively free of all subordination Rex superiorem non recognoscens in regno suo est Imperator (Decretal Per Venerabilem by Innocent III, 1202),[2] but to his own territorial princes or Italian city-states.

The Crusades, advocated by the pope, did not give him more control of the briefly conquered territories in the Holy Land, the European kingdoms, or of the new religious orders.

[3] The production of theoretical arguments on the theme of universal power, on the other hand, continued and included contributions such as those of Marsilius of Padua, Defensor Pacis or William of Ockham, Eight Questions about the Authority of the Pope (1342) and De imperatorum et pontificum potestate (1347).

The scholasticism crisis debated the adoption and extension of new legal ideas taken from Roman Law, with the jus commune of the School of Bologna on one side and conciliarism of the Council of Florence on the other.

In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia definitively supplanted the role of the universal powers and brought about modern, secularized international relations based on pragmatism and the prominence of states.

[7] Simultaneously, the relations of the Pope with the French Revolution and Napoleon, as with ideological liberalism itself, oscillated between direct opposition and forced coexistence.