Cesaropapismo y competencia jurisdiccional. Patronato regio contra vicarios apostólicos en Sicilia (siglos XVI-XVII)

Abstract

The several spiritual and ecclesiastical powers held by the Crown in the Kingdom of Sicily during the early modern age was very often translated into jurisdictional competences precisely among the ecclesiastical courts: each of them tried, indeed, to extend his own prerogatives over forists and crimes in harm of the others, putting its "falcem in alienam messem". The defendants themselves, often clerics, were well aware of this jurisdictional competition and tried, often successfully, to take advantage of it, sometimes involving Roman Congregations and Courts. Other times it was the same Holy See to tackle the Sicilian caesaropapism head on, sending commissars and apostolic vicars in quarrelsome dioceses (bishop against urban communities). The consequences are well resumed in an anonymous Discurso – caused by a controversy occurred in the ‘20s and ‘30s of the seventeenth century in the archbishopric of Messina – which this article focuses on, putting it in relation to the contemporary historical context.