On the origins of Luther's break with Rome: a badly-put question

O n the origins of Luther's break with Rome: a badly-put question I. Positing the question and defining the terms The papacy chose to look at the causa Lutheri primarily in terms of Martin Luther's denial of Rome's divine foundation and universal jurisdiction. The point at which Luther definitively denied that the bishop of Rome was pope by divine right has been a critical question in scholarly work on the subject. Leo's bull, Exsurge Domine, which condemns, in Thesis 25, Luther's view that 'the Roman pontiff is not the Vicar of Christ over all the churches in the whole world, appointed as such by Christ himself in blessed Peter', starts with theseringingwords: Arise, O Lord, and judge thy cause ... Arise, O Peter, and in the name of the pastoral charge imposed upon thee from on high, put forth thy strength in the cause of the holy Roman Church, the mother of all churches, the mistress of faith. 1 Thus it reaffirms the papacy's divine foundation in the person of Peter, as well as its claim to being 'the mother of all churches' and the guardian of the faith. Many misconceptions surround both assertion and denial. Most scholars assume that no authoritative statement of papal primacy existed in the Middle Ages, and that Luther for one did not know of any. This is, however, not the case. Eck, at Leipzig on 8 July 1519, reminded Luther that such a statement had received conciliar sanction at the Council of Florence in 1439. The papal bull, Laetentur Coeli, reads as follows: W e proclaim that the Holy Apostolic See and the Roman Pontiff hold primacy over the whole world, that the Roman Pontiff himself is the successor to Peter, prince of the Apostles, that he is the true vicar of Christ, head of the whole church, father and teacher of all * I wish to thank Associate Professor Sybil M. Jack for organising the confere 'Luther 500', in 1983, at which the first version of this paper was presented, and for inviting m e to include it in Professor Collinson's Festschrift. 1 Translated from B. J. Kidd (ed.), Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation, Oxford, 1967, Doc. 38, p. 75 (all translations given below, unless otherwise indicated, are m y own): Exsurge, Domine, et iudica causam tuam . . . Exsurge, Petre, et pro pastorali cura . . . tibi . . . divinitus demandata, intende in causam Sfaerae] R[omanae] E[cclesiae], matris omnium ecclesiarum, ac fidei magistrae. P A R E R G O N ns 14.1 (July 1996) 58 Z. Zlatar Christians, and that the full power of nourishing, ruling and governing the universal church was given to him in [the person of] Peter by our Lord Jesus Christ; as it is also contained in the acts of the ecumenical councils and in the holy canons.2 Cardinal Cajetan, who examined Luther at Augsburg, gave a rebuttal of Luther's views on the papacy in his De divina institutione pontiftcatus romanipontificis, published in 1521. Here, he systematised, and bequeathed to later theology, three critical questions: thefirstconcerns Peter's primacy in the apostolic college (Petrine primacy); the second, the successor to Peter's ministry (Petrine succession); and the third, the bishop of R o m e as the legitimate successor to Peter. By Luther's time the questions were over a thousand years old, for i t was Pope Leo I (440-461) who had first advanced the thesis at the Council of Chalcedon (451), arguing that 'the bishop of R o m e succeeded to Peter's role in the Church because of Christ's will, not because of a conciliar decision or for a political reason'. Papal primacy, he held, was 'of divine and not of ecclesiastical [that is, human] institution'. It is this Leonine position, restated by the Council of Florence, that Luther first denied in his Resolutio Lutherana super Propositione XIII de Potestate Papae. This poorly known work, much neglected by Reformation scholars, undermines the view of the chronology of Luther's break with Rome which is currently accepted. II. L'etat de la question: Luther and the papacy in the Leipzig Debate Luther scholars have generally agreed...