The king, the pope and the emperor: the problem of legitimation of the secular power in the “Siete Partidas” and the gloss composed by Gregorio Lopez

This article refers to conception of legitimacy of politic power in medieval Castile and later, in early modern Spanish Empire, reflected in the “Siete Partidas” of Alphonse the Sage, king of Castile and Leon (1252-1284) and in its gloss composed by Gr. Lopez - court lawyer and counsellor of the king Carlos I (the emperor Charles V in the case of Holy Roman Empire). Jurists of the 13th century construing the well-known legal maxim “Rex est imperator in regno suo” (Decretals “Per venerabilem”, 1205, by Pope Innocent III) insisted on the supremacy of royal power not only in relation to imperial but also to papal power. Thereby a king, according to jurists of Alphonse the Wise, was represented as supreme sovereign of his kingdom either in secular and spiritual affairs. In the 16th century the court lawyer of a Spanish emperor, Gregorio Lopez, emphasized the supremacy of imperial power in the secular affairs and papal - in the spiritual. Yet he marked the possibility for the emperor to be deposed by the Roman people, who gave him his power and, by means of the renovated social contract, could recall it.