Pelagius, Alvarus

Pelagius, Alvarus a noted Spanish Franciscan, flourished in the first half of the 14th century. He was a scholar of Duns Scotus, and first became grand penitentiary of pope John XXII (1316-34), and later bishop of Silves, in Algarve. He is noted especially as the defender of extreme Ultramontanism by his De planctu ecclesiae (Ulm, 1474; Lyons, 1570; Venice, 1560). He regarded the power of the pope as limitless, and not even bound by the laws he might himself have given. Everything is subject to the pontiff, of course all councils included, even the oecumenical. The tribunal of Christ and of the pope on earth are one. Pelagius's work belongs to the classical documents of the curialistic system of the Middle Ages. See Schwab. Johannes Gerson (Wurzburg, 1855).