The Emperor's Power Over The Wicked: Can He Punish Every Secular Crime? Opinion 3: An Intermediate Opinion Chapter 19 ~ William Of Ockham

PAOLO VENEZIANO 

Madonna and Child with two Votaries 

c. 1325

The Emperor's power over the wicked: Can he punish every secular crime?

Opinion 3: An intermediate opinion

CHAPTER 19

Student The texts brought forward in chapter 11 above do not seem to be opposed to that third opinion. Do not indicate, therefore, whether some people try to reply to them, but tell me how reply is made to the texts and arguments adduced in chapter 12, because they seem to be incompatible with that third opinion.

Master There is one reply to all of them and that is that they are conclusive when secular judges are not found to be negligent in the punishment of secular crimes. According to that opinion, therefore, if laymen were not found in any way to be defective, negligent or indolent in arranging temporal affairs, in secular occupations or cares, and in punishing secular crimes, clerics, and especially bishops, should not involve themselves in any way in matters of this kind, but it would be proper for them to commit everything of this kind, even the arranging of ecclesiastical possessions, to laymen. So they should fulfil to the letter, just as the words signify, those things which the sacred canons, as adduced in chapter 12 above, command about this, and devote themselves only to the preaching of the word, to reading and to prayer.

William of Ockham, Dialogus,
part 3, tract 2, book 2.

Text and translation by John Scott.
Copyright (c) 1999, The British Academy