WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

ad ovile Domini induci valeant, fauorabiliter intendamus et, pro eis reducendis ac salubriter a
pravorum incursibus preservandis in Domino quoque paternaliter confouendis, pias adhibeamus
nostre partes.
Eugene, etc. To the universal Christian faithful the present letters, which have been inspected,
greetings, etc. With divine clemency ordering, we, presiding, are pressed by assiduous cares and
we are impelled by continuous meditation to the rule of the Lord’s flock so that to these things,
through which no less the sheep of this flock are soundly guarded, but even they are able to be
lead the sick into the fold of the Lord, we favorably extend and, for them leading them and
keeping them from the incursions of distortions also paternally warming them in the Lord, we
apply our pious shares. 107
Eugene’s letter uses the pastoral metaphor of custody not to differentiate between faithful and
unfaithful as Clement and Alfonse do. Rather, almost following Vladimiri, the Papal shepherding
which Eugene’s letter describes is one that occurs charitably and without distinction; it is a
shepherding owed to every part of the “ovile Domine” ‘Lord’s flock’ irrespective of its health or
productivity so that “etiam morbide” ‘even the sickly’ infidels of the Canary Islands deserve the
Pope’s protection.
By 1430, the idea of “fides” and “cultus” that had allowed Clement to articulate authority
no longer helped one to distinguish Christians from non-Christians. On the contrary, Eugene’s
paternalism relied on erasing the distinctions which made the Christian community unique. It is
in this spirit of equality that, in the same day which he wrote Regimini gregis, Eugene issued
another letter Etsi cunctis that exempted the recent and future converts of the Islands (i.e. all of
the natives regardless of their current faith) from the heavy economic levies of those Spanish and
French princes who “sibi dominium temporale vendicant” ‘claimed [the Island’s] temporal
dominium to themselves.’ 108 This action sought to reach out to the new and future converts by
the “bonis exemplis” ‘good examples’ of charity not because these Canarians were lesser in
status compared to their Christians neighbors, but because, as part of Christ’s global fold, they
107 Monumenta 5.90.
108 Ibid. 5.86.
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