WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

et utinam non fuisset factum, nec guerre incepte cum sarracenis, saltem longinquis postquam
molesti non erant. Quia scriptum est, Jo. X: Alias oves habeo que non sunt de hoc ouili, scilicet
ecclesie. Et sine distinctione dictum fuit Petro, Jo. ultimo: Pasce oves meas. Successor ergo Petri
habet illas pascere et defendere, ergo non impugnari vel ledi permittere…ut latius disputat et
concludit in hac sentencia Joannes Andree, post Oldradum…et plene notatur per Innocentium et
per alios modernos.
Lastly, regarding the Crusade, let the soul of our Lord turn aside: because his predecessor [Pope]
Martin V did not allow to the Lord king João, his [Duarte’s] father, except while he lived; and
even this, he did this with great difficulty and I wish that it had not been done, nor the war begun
with the Sarracens, at least they were not bothered for a long time. Because it is written, John 10:
Other sheep I have which are not from this fold, namely the Church. And without distinction it was
[said] to Peter, in the last chapter of John: Feed my sheep. Therefore, the successor of Peter has
to feed and defend the sheep; therefore he should not permit them to be hurt or fought
against…such widely Johannes Andreas, following Oldratus, argues and concludes…and fully it is
noted through Innocent and through other modern [canonists] [My emphasis]. 119
This is the exact reasoning which Vladimiri (a modern canonist) had used in arguing against the
Teutonic Knights twenty years before Eugene’s dealings with the Canaries. It is the same
reasoning which prevented Martin V—under the Council of Constance—to endorse in full João
of Portugal’s crusade against North Africa. And it is the same reasoning that led Eugene IV
initially to protect the Canarians against enslavement, arguing that sovereignty was made
“indistincte” ‘indistinctly’ for all humans, faithful and unfaithful alike.
In giving Duarte a bull of crusade, Eugene was not simply trying to temper the
inevitability of European expansion as James Muldoon has argued. 120 Quite the contrary, he was
openly overturning over two decades of thought about sovereignty, and he was doing it because
of the discourse used within Duarte’s letter. Somehow, Duarte persuaded the Pope that he could
allow a Christian king to take infidel property without jeopardizing the Church’s discursive
claim to authority—that there was a modified linguistic structure of voice, which could conceive
authority as representation without also jeopardizing the universal idea of authority. Something
in Duarte’s discourse suggested to the Pope that, in thinking sovereignty as representation, one
119 Monumenta 5.269.
120 Muldoon Popes 130.
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