Hierocracy threatened: the ‘auctoritas’ and ‘potestas’ as core concepts in the pontifical documents of Boniface VIII (1235- 1303) and Clement V (1264-1314)

Abstract

The Latins concepts of auctoritas and potestas, belonging to the Roman political world, were crucial to the development of institutions in the medieval world and may be taken as significant parameters to understand the papal documentation produced by pontiffs Boniface VIII (1235-1303) and Clement V (1264-1314). Both, through documents Unam Sanctam (1302) and the Council of Vienna (1314) respectively, give continuity to a discursive line of the Roman Church that peaked with Pope Innocent III (1161-1216), but in the early fourteenth century was seriously threatened by the consolidation of power of the French monarchy.