The Infallibility of the Apostolic See in Juan de Torquemada, O.P.

THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE APOSTOLIC SEE IN JUAN DE TORQUEMADA, O.P. VHE DEBATE OVER the infallibility of papal definiions of faith remains largely unresolved. This is so espite the theological discussions resulting from attempts to re-examine Vatican I's Pastor Aeternus in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the decade of controversies surrounding the publication of Paul VI's Humanae Vitae and Hans Kiing's Unfehlbar?. There is a continuing discussion, not least of all in English, of not only the interpretation of the definition of Vatican I, but also of the history of the dogma and its present meaningfulness.1 The present state of the question requires that further work be done on the historical development of the concepts and language about this aspect of the petrine role in the church. Furthermore, recent ecumenical conversations demonstrate the continuing importance of this theme within the mutual search for deeper understandings of the nature of the Word of God, Christian faith, the teaching office in the church, and ministry. In order to begin to fill one of the gaps remaining in the history of papal infallibility as well as uncover some theological insights which may be of use in further discussion, this essay will investigate one significant moment of the historical articulation of this doctrine. This moment came as the dust from the western schism and the conciliarist struggles settled throughout fifteenth century Christendom.2 The aging curial cardinal Juan de Torquemada 1 An insightful survey of the literature in English may be found in John T. Ford, C.S.C., " Infallibility: A Review of Recent Studies," Theological, Studies 40 (1979), pp. £73-305. 2 For a characterization of the mid-fifteenth century as a period marked by the end of the western schism and the demise of conciliarism, and thus as a period of " triumph " of papal power and a parallel resurgence of papalist ideas, see Augustin Fliche-Victor Martin, Histoire de L'Eglise depuis les origines jusqu'a nos joura 242 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE APOSTOLIC SEE 243 collected the thoughts and writings of a lifetime and proceeded to write the first specifically ecclesiological treatise in the history of Christian theology. This Summa de Ecclesia, composed about 1453, together with the Commentaria super DecrefJum (1464), represents the culmination of a career of thorough study and heated debate. Despite the statement of the preface of the Summa that it is written " against the adversaries of the Church and the primacy of the apostolic see," this mature masterwork of the theologian of the papal resurgence does not deserve to be written off as solely or blindly polemic. In fact, the key point of his theology, papal infallibility, demonstrates by its central positioning a nuanced conception of the petrine role influenced by the Thomistic Scholastic tradition as much as the attacks of conciliarists and Hussites. This infallibility, though a relatively new concept at the time, evokes a certain organic vision of the role of magisterium, especially the papal, in the life of faith of the individual Christian and the unity of the entire Christian church. Thus this thought, crucial to the later understanding of the infallibility of papal decisions of faith, also discloses the important Thomistic conceptions which underlie much of the development of this doctrine and which might contribute significantly to a renewal of a theology of the papal magisterium within the post-conciliar church. We shall treat Torquemada's view on infallibility in the Summa de Ecclesia by first looking at the argumentation of Chapters 109-112, discussing its relation to Torquemada's earlier exposition of infallibility at Nurnberg and Mainz (14381439 ), these chapters' place within the work, and then the argumentation itself. Secondly, we shall attempt to uncover the internal movement of the argument to determine if there is a central point being made, which discussion will necessitate a brief look at the principal antecedents of Torquemada's posi- (Paris: Blond & Gay), Vol. XIV (1964), pp. 516-519; Vol. XV (1951), pp. 16-65; cf. also Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 55-79. 244 EUGENE S. MORRIS tion. As a result, we will...