Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 84 No. 4, 2014.
Preliminary communication
The Development of the Awareness of the Papal Primacy II. A Historical-theological View of the Second Millennia
Niko Ikić
orcid.org/0000-0001-5634-0387
; Catholic Theological Faculty in Sarajevo, University of Sarajevo, Bosna and Herzegovina
Abstract
The awareness of the papal primacy has been quite high at the end of the first millennia, although it reached its peak in the first half of the second millennia and it has been dogmatically promulgated towards the end of the second millennia. In its development through certain awareness of precedence and passive spiritual priority, according to the universal ecclesiology, the primacy has assumed an active juridical and universal significance for the universal Church. The awareness of the primacy has grown from the vision of vicarius Petri to the position of vicarius Christi with an added interpretation of direct and unlimited authority that has to be accepted by anyone who wants to reach salvation. Such an understanding of the papal primacy has quickly come into conflict with the imperial authority of the day. Formally, two authorities have been recognised in the image of two swords with an added interpretation that they both reside in the Church, i.e. the spiritual one (sacerdotium) for the Church, and the temporal one (imperium) from the Church. An equally important image was the one representing two lights on the same sky, the Sun and the Moon. In that sense, as the Moon gets its light from the Sun, similarly the royal authority gets its brilliance from the papal prestige. In other words, it has been widely held that the temporal authority has to be subjected to the spiritual one, since spiritual surpasses temporal. Such an awareness of the primacy had its difficulties in the second millennia. The Avignon captivity, the era of anti-popes, the movement of conciliarism and gallicanism and other events have clouded the splendour of the papal primacy. Nevertheless, suprema potestas has gained a certain conciliar confirmation at the Council of Florence and the Council of Trent, although its full recognition will have to wait until the First Vatican Council, while its theological revival and reevaluation happened at the Second Vatican Council.
Keywords
papacy; primacy; infallibility; conciliarism; gallicanism
Hrčak ID:
133992
URI
Publication date:
6.2.2015.
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