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Papal deposing power
The papal deposing power was the most powerful tool of the political authority claimed by and on behalf of the Roman Pontiff, in medieval and early modern thought, amounting to the assertion of the Pope's power to declare a Christian monarch heretical and powerless to rule.
Pope Gregory VII's Dictatus Papae (c. 1075) claimed for the Pope "that it may be permitted to him to depose emperors" (12) and asserted the papal power to "absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men" (27).
Oaths of allegiance held together the feudal political structure of medieval Europe. The principle behind deposition was that the Pope, as the ultimate representative of God from whom all oaths draw their force, could in extreme circumstances absolve a ruler's subjects of their allegiance, thereby rendering the ruler powerless. In a medieval Europe in which all confessed the Pope as head of the visible Church, it gave concrete embodiment to the superiority of the spiritual power over the temporal—the other side, so to speak, of the role of Popes and bishops in anointing and crowning emperors and kings.
Some prominent papal depositions:
There are cases where the pope invested an anti-king:
The Oath of Allegiance (1606) formulated for James I of England contained a specific denial of the deposing power. It triggered the Catholic Roger Widdrington's opposition to the unconditional acceptance by Catholics of the deposing power. Widdrington instead used the language of probabilism from moral theology, claiming that the deposing power was only a 'probable' doctrine, not a matter of faith.
In a letter to the Archbishops of Ireland dated 14 October 1768, the papal legate at Brussels, Archbishop Thomas Maria Ghilini, wrote that "the doctrine [that 'no faith or promise is to be kept with heretics, or princes excommunicated; or that Princes deprived by the Pope, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects, or by any other person whatsoever'] is defended and maintained by most Catholic nations, and has been often followed in practice by the Apostolic See. It cannot therefore upon any account be declared 'detestable and abominable' by a Catholic, without incurring, by such declaration, the imputation of a proposition, rash, false, scandalous, and injurious to the Holy See."
In a meeting at Thurles in 1776, the bishops of Munster "with the exception of Dr. MacMahon of Killaloe, who absented himself, passed sentence on the Hibernia Dominicana and its supplement [in which Ghilini's letter of 1768 had been printed], giving our entire disapprobation of them, because they tend to weaken and subvert that allegiance, fidelity, and submission, which we acknowledge ourselves we owe from duty and from gratitude to his Majesty King George III., because they are likely to disturb the public peace and tranquillity, by raising unnecessary scruples in the minds of our people, and sowing the seeds of dissensions amongst them, in points in which they ought, both from their religion and their interest, to be firmly united; and because they manifestly tend to give a handle to those who differ in religious principles with us, to impute to us maxims that we utterly reject, and which are by no means founded in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church."
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Papal deposing power
The papal deposing power was the most powerful tool of the political authority claimed by and on behalf of the Roman Pontiff, in medieval and early modern thought, amounting to the assertion of the Pope's power to declare a Christian monarch heretical and powerless to rule.
Pope Gregory VII's Dictatus Papae (c. 1075) claimed for the Pope "that it may be permitted to him to depose emperors" (12) and asserted the papal power to "absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men" (27).
Oaths of allegiance held together the feudal political structure of medieval Europe. The principle behind deposition was that the Pope, as the ultimate representative of God from whom all oaths draw their force, could in extreme circumstances absolve a ruler's subjects of their allegiance, thereby rendering the ruler powerless. In a medieval Europe in which all confessed the Pope as head of the visible Church, it gave concrete embodiment to the superiority of the spiritual power over the temporal—the other side, so to speak, of the role of Popes and bishops in anointing and crowning emperors and kings.
Some prominent papal depositions:
There are cases where the pope invested an anti-king:
The Oath of Allegiance (1606) formulated for James I of England contained a specific denial of the deposing power. It triggered the Catholic Roger Widdrington's opposition to the unconditional acceptance by Catholics of the deposing power. Widdrington instead used the language of probabilism from moral theology, claiming that the deposing power was only a 'probable' doctrine, not a matter of faith.
In a letter to the Archbishops of Ireland dated 14 October 1768, the papal legate at Brussels, Archbishop Thomas Maria Ghilini, wrote that "the doctrine [that 'no faith or promise is to be kept with heretics, or princes excommunicated; or that Princes deprived by the Pope, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects, or by any other person whatsoever'] is defended and maintained by most Catholic nations, and has been often followed in practice by the Apostolic See. It cannot therefore upon any account be declared 'detestable and abominable' by a Catholic, without incurring, by such declaration, the imputation of a proposition, rash, false, scandalous, and injurious to the Holy See."
In a meeting at Thurles in 1776, the bishops of Munster "with the exception of Dr. MacMahon of Killaloe, who absented himself, passed sentence on the Hibernia Dominicana and its supplement [in which Ghilini's letter of 1768 had been printed], giving our entire disapprobation of them, because they tend to weaken and subvert that allegiance, fidelity, and submission, which we acknowledge ourselves we owe from duty and from gratitude to his Majesty King George III., because they are likely to disturb the public peace and tranquillity, by raising unnecessary scruples in the minds of our people, and sowing the seeds of dissensions amongst them, in points in which they ought, both from their religion and their interest, to be firmly united; and because they manifestly tend to give a handle to those who differ in religious principles with us, to impute to us maxims that we utterly reject, and which are by no means founded in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church."