In 1336, Pope Benedict XII. made his list of recognized nations of the church (France, England, Germany, Spain) but in fact included England into Germany. Why?

by MercutioElessar
y_sengaku

Prelates from Scandinavian kingdoms, together with those from Eastern Europe (that did definitely not belong to 'German' in any modern sense), attending to the Council of Constance were also included in German natio, so we cannot regard the nation of council without any reservation as a collective somewhat determined by the papal 'official' recognition, I suppose.

The Late Medieval Papacy did not necessarily employ the coherent criterion of distinguish diverse people and kingdoms across Europe either in council and in some papal institutions like apostolic penitentiary during the Avignon Papacy. To give an example, the Pope used to appoint one or two minor penitentiaries from individual vague language groups in the 14th century, namely: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Slavic, and sometime also Swedish and Czech, mainly from a pragmatic point of view to deal easily with the diversity of lay petitions from individual regions, not necessarily divided by nations in any modern sense (Salonen & Schmugge 2009: 16). We don't have to recall the fact that Italy and Spain did not constitute any unified political or cultural group during that period.

As for English case, we can consider another aspect of the council, however: The notion of four council nations were developed mainly the by the faculty of Arts of the University of Paris, but some French participant of the council of Constance (perhaps included the member of the university of Paris) doubted the qualification of Englanders as an individual principal nation of the council (natio principalis), and instead proposed to categorize them under sub-nation (natio particularis) of another principal nation, German natio. It was the time when the Hundred Years War had been just resumed in its intensity, so it was likely that some French antagonism against England also reflected in this division of council nations (Müller 2012: 23f.).

References:

  • Müller, Heribert. Die kirchliche Krise des Spätmittelalters. München: Oldenbourg, 2012. EDG 90.
  • Salonen, Kirsi & Ludwig Schmugge (ed. & trans.). A Sip from the "Well of Grace": Medieval Texts from the Apostolic Penitentiary. Washington DC: The Catholic U of America P, 2009.
pengoloth

Can you point us to said list? For Benedictus Deus does not contain such a list.