freedom of the clergy, that the clergy could come or go, were free to
discuss and free to act, was entirely absent at Trent. For Jewel, councils
were to be free of coercion and not governed by some predetermined
oath to the Pope that was the prerequisite of attendance. This, also,
Trent did not possess.^170
Jewel did not confine his use of Conciliarist arguments merely to the
calling of the council. It extends to two other important points, both of
which touched the question of the council’s convening, but in particular
addressed canonical and conciliar issues. The one concerns the
superiority of a council over a pope, and the other concerns the licitness
of a council called in abeyance of both the whole body of the clergy, and
the pope in particular. The Conciliarists used two concepts by which they
hoped to circumvent canon law:
,or moderation; and the
Aristotelian concept of equity. Jewel, while pure of the Conciliarists’
specific language, nonetheless expanded on their thought by which he
justified English action.
Prior to the convening of the Council of Constance, Jean Gerson, the
Chancellor of the University of Paris, wrote his Tractatus De Unitate
Ecclesiae.^171 In it he countered the papalist objections raised to the calling
of the council at Pisa in the abeyance of papal authority, namely, whether
an orthodox pontiff could be questioned and whether a council could be
held without papal authority? Gerson, like the other Conciliarists, and
as the canonists before them, built his theories upon the Roman, legal
dictum,quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus approbari debet(What touches
[concerns] all, ought to be approved by all).^172 Gerson appealed to
natural law in establishing that every part should be willing to disown its
own place and prestige for the sake of the salvation of the whole.^173 He
’ ́
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE ELIZABETHAN CHURCH 101
(^170) Jewel,Ad Scipionem, in Works, IV, pp. 1100, 1122. The question of the oath seems
a bit disingenuous on Jewel’s part, since an oath was required of the English clergy before
they could be ordained, let alone sit in either convocation or Parliament, that Elizabeth was
supreme in all matters and causes whether temporal or spiritual.
(^171) Jean Gerson, Oeuvres Complètes, introduction, text and notes by Mgr Glorieux, Vol
VI, L’Oeuvre Ecclésiologique (Paris, 1965). There is a translation in Matthew Spinka,
Advocates of Reform: Wyclif to Erasmus.Vol XIV, The Library of Christian Classics,
Philadelphia, 1953.
(^172) This phrase had been employed by Marsiglius of Padua, and had been one of the
reasons that some at one time saw Conciliarism as arising out of his, William of Ockham’s
and John of Paris’s writings. However, see Brian Tierney, Foundation of the Conciliar
Theory(Cambridge, 1955). The place Marsiglius of Padua had in the thought of Henry
VIII’s apologists, especially Thomas Starkey, at one time was taken as a given, though this
has been called into question specifically in Thomas F. Mayer, Thomas Starkey and the
Commonweal. Humanist politics and religion in the reign of Henry VIII(Cambridge,
1989), pp. 139–46.
(^173) ‘Hoc nimirum dictat naturae lex ut pars quaelibet pro suo toto salvando sedet et
exponat.’ Gerson,Tractatus, p. 138.