WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

Hostiensis. Hostiensis, commenting on the body of church law that pertained to pagan property
during the crusades, argued that the coming of Christ removed all authority from the world’s
“gentes” ‘people’ and gave it to the Church and so the Pope could justifiably dispose of any
authority over the world. 48 When Clement cites the Psalms to nations engaged in colonial
expansion, he does so not only to justify the taking of infidel lands but also the taking of them by
one sovereign—by the Pope.
Clement’s ability to merge two implicit and explicit meanings within a metaphor puts his
detractors in a double bind: either they admit to his request and confirm the Pope’s sovereign
fiat, or they explicitly assert their own right to extend the Christian cult and thus justify the
metaphoric by which he has made his claims. Answering such logic is never easy, and so the
king of Portugal Alfonse IV, who was actively engaged in the Canary Islands’ exploration and
for whom such an absolute Papal fiat would undermine his investment, carefully began his denial
of Clement’s request for aid in this manner:
Vos quidem dignissimus successor dominicus, cui omni moda cura est christicole gregis et
solicitudo commissa, non solum eum custodire a luporum morsibus, verum etiam ampliare curatis,
quod in litteris a vestra sanctitate directis suscepimus, dum ad extirpandos infidelitatis palmites
infelices, qui totam terram insularum Fortune inutiliter occupant, et plantandum vineam Dei
dilectam, dominum Loudovicum, consanguineum nostrum, principem elegistis.
Certainly, you most worthy lordly successor, to whom the whole care and appointed protection of
the flock of Christian-tillers/Christian worshipers [christicole gregis] [is given], not only care to
guard it from the bites of the wolves, but to amplify the truth, which we understand in the directed
letters from your Holiness. You selected us a lord, our blood-kin Lord Luís, to extirpate
infelicitous shoots [infelices palmites] of infidelity, who uselessly occupy the whole land of the
Fortunate Islands, and to plant the dear vineyard of the Lord. 49
Alfonse’s careful reply to Clement does not begin as an explicit rejection of the Pope’s request
but as an adaptation of the metaphoric tradition of cultivation, which authorized the Pontiff’s
legal actions, with one of pastoral care of the “christocole gregis” ‘the flock of Christian
worshipers.’ True, to a certain extent, Alfonse is simply repeating a certain Christian affinity of
48 Muldoon Popes 16.
49 Monumenta 1.232.
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