Juan de Torquemada und Thomas de Vio Cajetan: Zwei Protagonisten der päpstlichen Gewaltenfülle by Ulrich Horst (review)

Juan de Torquemada und Thomas de Vio Cajetan: Zwei Protagonisten der päpstlichen Gewaltenfülle. By Ulrich Horst. [Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Dominikanerordens, Neue Folge, Band 19.] (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012. Pp. ix, 195. €69,80. ISBN 978-3-05-005902-0.)

Ulrich Horst has given us, over the years, several studies of Dominican thought on the papacy. In this brief book, Horst revisits his past work on two outstanding papal apologists. Juan de Torquemada (d. 1468) was a Castilian Dominican who attended the Council of Constance in 1418, studied theology in Paris, and participated in the earlier years of the Council of Basel (1431–49). Disillusioned with the council, which was attempting to impose reforms on Pope Eugenius IV (1431–47), he became Master of the Sacred Palace and then a cardinal. Among his works concerning the Church was the Summa de ecclesia (1453), in which he opposed both the Hussites and conciliarism. Thomas de Vio (d. 1534), known as Cajetan, was a noted commentator on the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. He served as Master General of the Order of Preachers before becoming a cardinal. Cajetan defended the papacy in the controversy over the conciliabulum of Pisa (1511–12), participated in the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17), and opposed Martin Luther.

In this book, Horst provides a brief overview of important issues with some background to orient the less experienced reader of ecclesiastical history. The result is a concise work that should inspire further reading and research. Following a foreword and a useful bibliography, the work is organized into three sections. The first is an overview of earlier Dominican thought on the papacy. The second focuses on Torquemada, and the third on Cajetan. The third section concludes with a brief glance at later Dominican thought on the same topic.

The first section provides brief overviews of the thought of Aquinas, John of Paris, Hervaeus Natalis, John of Naples, Pierre de la Palu, Guilelmus Petri de Godino, and Antoninus of Florence on the papacy. Aquinas, of course, receives the most attention. His thought influenced later generations of friars. Little attention is given to the opponents of the mendicant orders, not even to William of Saint Amour and Jean de Pouilli. Horst does, however, note that the penetration of the mendicants into local dioceses and parishes made the issue of papal privileges for the friars an inevitable focus of conflicting opinions.

The sections of Torquemada and Cajetan cover familiar ground. The two men were strong defenders of the papacy, and they had to address real challenges. Both had to deal with conciliarist thought, and Cajetan had to confront the Reformation. (The book does give more attention to Cajetan’s opponent Jacques Almain than to any other individual critical of the papacy, a slight imbalance in the text.) Both wrote about jurisdiction, plenitude of power, papal authority in matters of doctrine, and the limits that canon law imposed on a pontiff who fell into error. Cajetan emerges as the more creative thinker, seeking new ways to defuse challenges to Rome without exposing the pope to the agendas of rulers and conciliarists. He also is shown to have been more interested than Torquemada in the full extent of papal authority in matters of doctrine. All of this is explained briefly with substantial excerpts from the primary texts to document the points made.

All of this is familiar from Horst’s past writings. So is his brief exposition of the conciliar thought of Francisco de Vitoria. More intriguing is our glimpse of the ideas of later writers like Alberto Pasquali and Isidoro Isolani. We must hope that Horst will cast more light on them in future publications. Another matter that bears further exposition is the borrowing of Dominican papalism by the Jesuits, especially Cardinal and Saint Robert Bellarmine.