104 Law and Morality Abroad (to ca. ad 1550)parties presented their rival cases to the Council of Constance— where it
became the greatest set- piece international- law drama of the Middle Ages.
At the council, the knights were represented at fi rst by Peter Wormditt,
who was the proctor of the order’s grand master, and later by a Dominican
named John Falkenberg. Also acting for the knights was a canonist named
John Urbach. On the knights’ behalf, Urbach contended that there could be
no lawful jurisdiction by infi dels. Moreover, any unbelievers who violated
the laws of nature “may be lawfully corrected by means of the secular arm”
acting on behalf of the church. Pagans could lawfully wage war against
Christians, he argued, only if they recognized “the supremacy of the
Church” and, even then, only “in a case of pure and simple defence.” Re-
garding the case at hand, the allegation was that Poland had unlawfully en-
tered into alliance with pagan Lithuania and that the Poles were employing
pagan and schismatic troops against the knights.
Falkenberg’s advocacy in the knights’ cause was decidedly more vigorous
than Urbach’s. Already on record as denying that the Poles were true Chris-
tians, he proceeded to denounce the Poles and Lithuanians as “heretics and
shameless dogs who have returned to the vomit of their infi delity.” Th is
tirade was the cause of Falkenberg’s later arrest on charges of scurrilous li-
bel. On the less infl ammatory level of legal doctrine, he asserted the princi-
ple of dilatatio.
Th e able champion of the Polish side was Paul Vladimiri (or Wlodkowic),
a former rector of the University of Cracow and a noted canon lawyer. He
leveled a barrage of counterallegations against the knights. One was that
they had deceived the popes into granting permission for the order’s attacks
on Poland. Vladimiri also maintained that the order’s supposed religious
mission was a mere façade for aggression and land grabbing, and that the
Lithuanians were being attacked even aft er giving indications of a willing-
ness to live peacefully. Th e conversion of the Lithuanians to Christianity, he
asserted, was actually being carried out not by the order but by the Poles,
and peacefully rather than violently. Against the dilatatio principle specifi -
cally, Vladimiri invoked Innocent IV’s position, that pagans exercised law-
ful sovereignty over their lands. Consequently, war against them could be
justifi ed only on the ground of actual misconduct— either a refusal to admit
Christian missionaries into the territory or violations of the laws of nature.
Th e Lithuanians, he insisted, were guilty of neither of these off enses.