Keeping Kings in Check 77Th e result of Bartolus’s ingenious theory, then, was to reconcile two things
that might be supposed to be contradictory: the in de pen dence of the com-
munes and the retention of at least some vestige of their subordination to
a larger legal entity. Th e resemblance of this thesis to later ideas of inter-
national law— involving states that are, at the same time, “sovereign” and
yet subject to rules of law— has not escaped later observers. For his achieve-
ment, Bartolus has even been credited as “the fi rst theorist of international
law.” Th e Kingdoms
Th e various Eu ro pe an kingdoms— chiefl y Sicily (including the whole south-
ern part of the Italian peninsula), together with the various transalpine
states— presented some of the same challenges to medieval universalist vi-
sions as the Italian communes did. Th ere were some diff erences, though.
One was that the kingdoms had less diffi culty in asserting their in de pen-
dence from the emperors. Notwithstanding theories of universal dominion
on the part of the Roman emperor (as dominus mundi) by such writers as
Dante, the majority view was that the various lands with kings of their own,
such as En gland, France, Scotland, Denmark, and Hungary, were indeed in-
de pen dent states, separate from the empire. Th is was encapsulated in the
common expression Rex imperator in regno suo (“A king is an emperor in
his own kingdom”). Th is thesis was put forward both in France and in Sicily
in the thirteenth century (with some uncertainty as to priority in time).
Th ere was papal support, too, for the proposition that rulers were not sub-
ject to outside controls for acts performed within their jurisdictions. Th is
was held by a decretal of Innocent III entitled Per venerabilem in 1202, in
which he conceded that the king of France, in dealing with his own vassals,
was not accountable to the Holy Roman emperor. Th is statement has been
regarded, with some justice, as a cornerstone of the principle of state in de-
pen dence and sovereignty. In a similar vein was a pronouncement in 1313
by Pope Clement V, called Pastoralis cura, which arose out of a complex
dispute between Emperor Henry VII (Dante’s ideal for a universal mon-
arch) and King Robert of Sicily. Clement held that, so long as a king re-
mained within his own territory, he was not subject to any kind of legal
pro cess (such as a summons to appear before the emperor). Th is decree has