The Triumph of Monarchy Over Christian Universalism
Kings generally endorsed the ideal of political universalism and, as such, were at least theoretically beholden to the pope and the emperor, a restriction which they came to throw off over the course of the Late Middle Ages as kings asserted their autonomy and independence.
By 1250, emperors played no significant role in European politics,[308] and the popes had been losing their supremacy ever since the beginning of the fourteenth century when Philip IV, the Fair, of France abducted Boniface VIII, in the aforementioned episode at Anagni. The “captivity of the papacy” at Avignon, the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation would further serve to severely undercut papal supremacy.The evolution from papal to “pact-based” legitimation is especially evident in the case of the Portuguese monarchy. In 1179, Alfonso I Henriques became King of Portugal via papal concession.[309] However, when his successors to the throne, Alfonso II (1211-1223), and Sancho II (1223-1248), confronted and squared off against the papacy, they were excommunicated and stripped of their rights to legitimately occupy the throne. It was Alfonso III, who managed to overpower the papacy by winning the support of the Portuguese Cortes (parliament), which met for the first time in 1254, in Leiria. Henceforth the Portuguese kings’ legitimacy rested exclusively on pacts with the social classes. In March of 1385, the Portuguese Cortes gathered in Coimbra demonstrated its capacity to instate a new dynasty when it chose as king John I of Portugal rather than John II of Castile who, in theory, held a greater dynastic right by virtue of his marriage to the daughter of former king, Ferdinand I.[310]
Another example will help us to understand this phenomenon. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI, through what are known as the “Alexandrine Bulls” divided the New World between the Spaniards and Portuguese to formalize rights to the conquest of the recently discovered overseas territories.[311] A year later, however, through the bilateral Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), the kings of Portugal and Spain decided the limits of their respective spheres of expansion on their own, disregarding the papacy.[312]
More significant for the history of western law and the western polity, were the “internal” limitations curtailing the power of the late medieval kings, as these would prove to be more lasting and effective.
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