Marsilius of Padua: The Defender of the Peace

We now reply to the remaining objections adduced from Scripture in chapter 3 of this discourse, which might seem capable of persuading someone that the Roman pope or any other bishop is a coercive judge, in the third signification, over all clergy or over all others indiscriminately, without being instituted by the human legislator but being instead directly ordained by God. One should say firstly, in reply to the objection that was taken from Matthew 16, when Christ said to Saint Peter: ‘I shall give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven etc.’, that Christ in these words did not give Saint Peter or any other apostle any power apart from that of binding and loosing men from their sins, as Saint Bernard explicitly says To Eugenius, On Consideration, Book I, chapter 5, which we quoted above in chapter 5 of this discourse, section 2, and which we also discussed in detail in chapters 6 and 7 of this discourse; nor any plenitude of power otherwise than as was stated in chapter 23 of this discourse. Hence on the basis of these words, neither the Roman nor any other bishop or priest receives, in the person of an apostle or apostles, coercive authority or jurisdiction in this world over any cleric or layperson. For it was said: ‘I shall give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,’ differentiating this from worldly kingdom. For Christ signified by his example that each apostle and successor of the apostles, bishop or priest, is excluded from this kind of government, when he said in Luke 12: ‘Man, who hath made me judge?’ (viz. of earthly things). And the same thing from the other words quoted previously in chapters 4 and 5 of this discourse.

We should reply in the same or similar fashion to the authorities taken from the canon, Matthew 18 and John 20, when Christ said to the apostles: ‘Whomsoever ye shall bind on earth etc.’, and: ‘Whose soever sins ye remit etc.’