ALBIGNANI, Pietro.

First edition of this work on papal authority by the Catholic Italian jurist Pietro Albignani. It is divided into three letters to Pope Clement VII, though the dedication is to Pope Paul III: the first on papal authority, the second on the pope’s role as ‘treasurer’ of the church, including the right to issue indulgences, and the third on the doctrine of confession. It is explicitly stated on the title-page to be anti-Lutheran, and preceding the main work is a ‘humorous and well-intentioned’ (jocunda et saluberrima) letter from Albignani to Martin Luther himself, one year before Luther’s death in 1546.

Albignani attempts to connect Old Testament scriptural evidence for Christ holding authority directly from God to Christ’s election in the New Testament of St. Peter as the head of his church on earth, the divine basis for papal authority. He discusses Christ’s genealogy and his fulfilment of God’s word and of the Mosaic law. Albignani’s argument rests particularly on the equivalence of scriptural authority with the decretals, the Catholic volumes of canon law, which he claims are no less holy, and he says that when Luther burned books containing the decretals, as he did in 1520, he committed a worse sin than Pilate and Judas had in the crucifixion of Christ.

The legal framework for Albignani’s discussion of papal power concerns the rights and judicial powers of the pope, which have their basis in the pope’s absolute superiority, his ability to interpret divine law and to establish canon law, and his infallibility as God’s representative on earth. Albignani states that it is heretical and sacrilegious to doubt the pope’s power and his authority to establish laws. Some of the pope’s prerogatives concern canon law, such as his power to dissolve marriages, but Albignani is also concerned with the pope’s relationship to the temporal powers, noting for example the pope’s immunity from prosecution by the Holy Roman Emperor, as well as the pope’s ability to depose the Emperor without the approval of the cardinals. Albignani notes that the authority of the temporal ruler is only given in order to punish the wicked, but that there are among them wicked rulers, whom it is the responsibility of God’s representative to punish.

Albignani’s discussion of papal power includes a defence of the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, including the papal right to grant indulgences and to lighten the punishments inflicted on souls in purgatory. Albignani challenges some of Luther’s attacks on purgatorial doctrine, such as the question of why the pope does not simply empty purgatory? He ends his work with an imaginary series of prayers from the faithful to God regarding Luther: ‘let Luther consider well the Catholic faith, let Luther not sow tares among the wheat, let Luther not speak ill of the popes,’ etc. (f. 93). This discussion sets up the following two parts, the first on the sale of indulgences and the doctrine of confession, Albignani quoting directly from Luther’s 95 Theses (nos 18, 56 and 57, f. 99), which he refutes, and the second on the nature of sin, confession, and papal authority of absolution.