ALBIGNANI, Pietro.

by Pietro Albignani

£1,450 · Offered by Sokol Books

.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 es

• Binding: Hardcover

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