Paulus Vladimiri (Paweł Włodkowic)

Works

• 1415Treatise on the Power of the Pope and the Emperor with Respect to Unbelievers

  Presented at the Council of Constance: non-Christians possess their states and goods by natural law, and neither pope nor emperor may wage war on them only because of their unbelief.

Position

Włodkowic combined canon law with Aristotelian and Thomist natural law. Following Thomas Aquinas and the canonist Pope Innocent IV, he argued that dominion and property belong to all peoples by natural law, not by grace; pagans and other non-Christians therefore hold their states and goods legitimately. Neither pope nor emperor may make war on them or take their lands only because of their unbelief, and faith may not be imposed by force, since belief requires free assent. War is just only in defence or to recover what was unjustly taken. With these arguments he contested the claims of the Teutonic Order and the imperial and papal privileges on which they rested, and defended the Polish-Lithuanian union and its non-Christian allies. Stanislaus F. Belch (1965) and Ludwik Ehrlich’s edition of his writings (1966–69) presented him as an early theorist of international law and of the rights of peoples; later comparisons place him beside Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de las Casas, who argued in similar terms about the peoples of the Americas a century later. Historians caution that his treatises were advocacy for one side in a political and military conflict, and that his universalism remained bound to the medieval framework of Christendom.

Life & context

Paweł Włodkowic, in Latin Paulus Vladimiri, was born around 1370 in Brudzeń in Dobrzyń Land, Masovia; the exact year is not known. He studied the arts in Prague and canon law in Padua, where he received his doctorate in 1408 as a student of Francesco Zabarella. Back in Kraków he taught canon law at the university, refounded in 1400, held canonries and was rector in 1414. He represented the Kingdom of Poland in its legal dispute with the Teutonic Order, which justified its wars against Lithuania and Poland as a mission against unbelievers. At the Council of Constance (1414–18), as a member of the Polish delegation led by Archbishop Mikołaj Trąba, he presented in 1415 his treatise on the power of pope and emperor with respect to unbelievers and further writings against the Order. When the Dominican John Falkenberg circulated a pamphlet calling for the killing of the Polish king and the Poles, Włodkowic demanded its condemnation; the council did not reach a formal verdict. In the following years he served as an envoy of King Władysław II Jagiełło in the continuing dispute, including at the papal curia. He died in Kraków in 1435.

Further main works

• Opinio Hostiensis (treatise against the canonist Hostiensis’ view that unbelievers lost all dominion, Constance, c. 1416)
• Writings against John Falkenberg’s “Satira” (Constance, c. 1416–17)
• Selected Writings (Pisma wybrane, ed. Ludwik Ehrlich, 3 vols., 1966–69)