Note 245 — Chapter VIII · Gothic in the Midi (continued 2)

Innocent III was the best type of the theory, enunciated by Boniface VIII as the XIII century closed, that civil rulers derive their power from religious authority. Leo XIII, in the encyclical Immortale Dei, November, 1885, set aside that claim. Each should keep to its own sphere, he said, one is not subordinate to the other; civil authorities are to attend to human affairs, and spiritual authorities to divine things. With every monarch in Europe appealing to him for his arbitration, it is little wonder that Innocent III should have held the views he did.