Auctoritas et Potestas Iterum

Ubi Petrus Tweets Back

Above: The Roman Senate, from a 19th-century fresco.

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Author’s note: in response to the following essay, Denny falsely accuses me of dishonesty. See my response here: Adversus Calumniatorem: A reply to the charge of dishonesty.

Introduction

As Lincoln might have said, it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to tweet and remove all doubt.

Denny Sellen, known online as Ubi Petrus, claims that Pope Leo’s use of auctoritas in the Tome of Chalcedon (451 AD) refers to mere “soft power”—non-binding influence based on reputation—in contrast to potestas, which he takes as enforceable and binding. He treats auctoritas and potestas as two degrees of the same kind of power: the former weak, the latter strong. On this view, if Leo had exercised true authority—as Catholics believe—he would have appealed to potestas instead.

As I showed in my Postscriptum—which readers should consult before proceeding—this objection is manifestly absurd. Sellen’s account of auctoritas and potestas is conceptually confused, historically shallow, and methodologically flawed. His argument rests on a false assumption: that what cannot coerce cannot bind. If that were true, the Church’s historic authority would collapse. In fact, auctoritas lies at the heart of early Christian governance, operating not in the sphere of imperium, but in that of sacerdotium—a domain higher, not lower.¹ To say Leo lacked real authority because he lacked enforcement power is to mistake the voice of judgment for the hand of the jailer. But in the Church, as in heaven, it is the voice that rules.

My task remains defensive: not to prove that Leo’s auctoritas was binding—though it certainly was—but to show that Sellen cannot dismiss its binding force by confusing non-coercive with non-binding, or by reducing auctoritas to mere influence (“soft power”) and potestas to true authority.²

He has since tweeted some things in response to Erick Ybarra’s posting my article. Let’s see what he says:

Contra Denny on Definitions

He just discarded dictionary definitions (as if they're divorced from centuries of word studies) simply because they're inconvenient to his point.

It’s clear that either he didn’t read my essay or he’s hoping his followers won’t. Far from “discarding dictionary definitions,” I quoted his article directly and linked to the very definitions he cited from the Lewis & Short Latin dictionary.

I then noted that, according to his own dictionary source, auctoritas can have a wide range of meanings, including but not limited to: will, pleasure, decision, bidding, command, precept, decree. Do you know what isn’t in the dictionary he cited? His favored “soft power.”

Moreover, lexical entries record semantic range; they do not fix contextual meaning. You cannot infer a meaning in a given context purely from one of several possible senses of a term.

Contra Denny on Ullmann

Denny dismisses my Ullmann quotation with a shrug:

Further, the fact that all of you rely on Ullman [sic] to counter this is conspicuous because you can't [sic] better sources since Ullmann's specialty wasn't late antiquity but later middle ages.

Needless to say, Denny’s specialty is neither late antiquity nor Middle Ages, and his dismissal of Ullmann carries no weight without a single good reason to think that Ullmann’s claim—as I quoted it—is mistaken.

Denny addressed the Ullmann claim in an old blog post. He says it “[sounds] impressive until you see the full quotation,” adds a couple extra sentences from Ullmann, then triumphantly concludes:

Ullman [sic] admits the type of binding the pope had is on the same level as that of the Roman Senate, which actually lacked any binding power but could only propose legislation to the magistrates for ratification.

Let’s read that sentence again. Ullmann thinks the pope had the same level of binding power as the Roman Senate, which had no binding power. To avoid refuting himself, he must mean to say that Ullmann believed the Senate had binding authority comparable to that of the pope’s, but he (Denny) thinks Ullmann is wrong: the Senate had none. If that’s the move, Denny will perhaps forgive us for taking Ullmann’s word over his. After all, as Denny told us, Ullmann was at least a trained historian of the Middle Ages—far more than Denny can say for himself.

Denny accuses Erick of quoting out of context, but he does the same. Let’s look at the entire passage to see what he omits:

Consequently, in this Christian world… the secular power has a mere “potestas”, whilst the principatus of the pope expresses itself in the pontifical auctoritas. And this auctoritas being divinely conferred for the purpose of governing the Christian body corporate, is logically enough sacrata, whilst the emperor’s power is a simple “regalis potestas”. This is a thoroughly juristic terminology employed by Gelasius. Auctoritas is the faculty of shaping things creatively [origination] and in a binding manner, whilst potestas is the power to execute what the auctoritas has laid down. The Roman senate had auctoritas, the Roman magistrate had potestas. The antithesis between auctoritas and potestas stated already by Augustus himself, shows the “outstanding charismatic political authority” which his auctoritas contained. It was sacred, since everything connected with Roman emperorship was sacred emanating as it did from his divinity. It was therefore all the easier to transfer these characteristically Roman ideas to the function of the pope and to his auctoritas. Whilst, however, this fundamental difference between the pontifical auctoritas and the imperial potestas was clear to anyone versed in Roman juristic terminology and ideology, Gelasius superimposed a typical Christian argument upon it: in a Roman-Christian world, the sacred pontifical auctoritas is all the greater, as it has to render an account even for the doings of the kings themselves on the Day of Judgment.

Denny’s correct: that does sound impressive. Unfortunately for him, Ullmann didn’t say that the pope’s binding is “on the same level” as the Roman Senate’s. He said it was “all the greater.” And he didn’t say the Senate couldn’t bind—on the contrary, he clearly implies it could. The logic is simple: if auctoritas is “the faculty of shaping things in a binding manner,” and the Roman Senate had auctoritas, then the Senate had that faculty. It’s a straightforward modus ponens, clear to anyone who reads in good faith.

When Denny says the Roman Senate “lacked any binding power,” he smuggles in the term “power.” If by “power” he means coercive (potestas), then yes, the Senate didn’t have it—but that doesn’t help his argument. If he means authority, then he’s simply wrong. Auctoritas originates and legitimizes action: rightful potestas depends on auctoritas, whether inherent or derived from the Senate’s decrees or the populus Romanus or mos maiorum. That’s why Lintott says that the magistrates had potestas—understood as “a capability legitimized by statute or custom [in particular mos maiorum].”³ As I quoted Muldoon in the Postscriptum: potestas without auctoritas is tyranny, not authority. Potestas executes; it doesn’t originate.

Ullmann’s comparison is about structure, not status. The Roman Senate lacked coercive force but still shaped political life through its auctoritas—its right to guide, advise, and legitimize. That same structure, in a higher realm, applies to the Church: its auctoritas governs not by compulsion, but by divine right and binding doctrinal voice. That’s why Ullmann explicitly calls it sacrata auctoritas, divinely conferred for governing the corpus Christianum. To mistake lack of enforcement for lack of authority is to confuse potestas with what stands above it.

Denny would like us believe that a “divinely conferred” authority “for the purpose of governing” entails no right to bind. But Ullmann’s point matches exactly what I argued in the Postscriptum: the Church’s auctoritas belongs to the sphere of sacerdotium, not imperium—and it binds not by force, but by right.

Also, his claim that I “can’t find better sources” is false—either because Ullmann is the best source, or more likely because he didn’t notice that I also cited historians James Muldoon and Robert Louis Benson. His take on Ullmann is bad enough; as for Muldoon and Benson, if he thinks they’re wrong, he hasn’t said how—and frankly, given the errors he’s already made, I shudder to think what that attempt would look like.

This doesn’t even touch some of the other sources that Erick already cited in his response from 2019, such as the Anglican historian Trevor Jalland:

Here lies a distinction familiar to students of Roman constitutional law. Auctoritas belonged to the ideal and moral sphere, and just because its force was derived from tradition or from public opinion, it was strictly an ethical concept, as in the case of the Roman Senate, and so differed from the physical potestas endowed with executive imperium, which in the republican period belonged to the populus and was entrusted to the magistrates only for the period of their office. There was therefore a clear though undefined sense in which auctoritas if compared with potestas could be regarded as the higher of the two, just as moral influence is superior to physical force.⁴

Denny complains that this

is confusing the term “higher” with the term “juridical” or “more (legally) powerful.” There is no question that a conscience and moral code has to guide one first and foremost above and beyond juridical law but that is not what we are debating here. What we are debating is this: does auctoritas refer to a juridical power to proactively give out orders that must be followed?

The complaint is mistaken. It is higher because rightful potestas requires it, and because it rules from a superior domain (sacerdotium, not imperium) by moral or divine right. In either case, auctoritas implies a rightful standing from which one may act or command. Without that standing, potestas is unmoored and therefore illegitimate. If the reply is that a statute legitimizes potestas, not auctoritas, then it’s no response at all. There are no statutes without auctoritas, so that (to repeat) potestas requires auctoritas, whether inherent or derived.

When Denny asks whether auctoritas gives someone “the juridical power to proactively give out orders that must be followed,” he again smuggles in the term “power.” As above, if by “power” he means potestas, the answer is no—and irrelevant. No one claims auctoritas implies potestas. But if he means authority, then the answer is yes—though his question becomes somewhat circular. If one possesses auctoritas, then by definition one has the right to decree, regardless of one’s ability to compel what is decreed; and the party that exercises potestas on the basis of the decree does so legitimately, not tyrannically. And that is what makes auctoritas higher, whether with the Roman Senate or the Church.

Denny also complains:

Further, several times in his reply, Mr. Ybarra ridicules the idea of God having auctoritas in the sense of soft power. To that, Professor Karla Pollman, who specializes in early Christianity with a focus on St. Augustine of Hippo [sic] says…

The quote he cites is too long to include, but I address the relevant parts of it later in this essay. The problem is that Denny here begs the question by assuming that God’s auctoritas, as Pollmann uses it, means “soft power.” But that’s precisely what he needs to prove—and doesn’t. Pollmann never uses the phrase “soft power” and never says that auctoritas could never be binding. As you will see below, even her description of divine auctoritas—as something that legitimates action and unites potestas with clementia—shows it bears real moral and juridical weight.

Not only that, but she describes auctoritas in ways that align perfectly with everything I and my sources have said. An example:

Ambrose uses the term auctoritas in good Roman fashion as an entity between violence and request, which in this way, for instance, guaranteed the power of the Roman Senate for centuries.

Either “soft power” includes the authority to originate, guide, or command—even to confer or ground potestas—in which case it’s not coercive but also not meaningfully “soft”; or it doesn’t, in which case it’s not what Pollmann means by auctoritas at all.

If Denny thinks historians like Ullmann are too medieval, then perhaps we should go more ancient. Perhaps the time of Augustus will do. In his book From Imperium to Auctoritas,⁵ Michael Grant says that auctoritas was not coercive like potestas, but it was nonetheless binding, juridically effective, and constitutionally central. In fact, Augustus ruled by the supremacy of his recognized standing—his auctoritas principis—which, through the tribunician power (tribunicia potestas), enabled him to initiate laws, direct the Senate, and govern provinces without relying on formal coercion. This auctoritas displaced imperium in practice, not because it imposed, but because it commanded assent by right. It functioned as the executive core of the principate: not symbolic, not optional, but binding by virtue of legitimacy. In an ecclesial context—within the sphere of sacerdotium rather than imperium—this dynamic becomes even more potent. For when auctoritas rests not merely on Roman precedent but on divine backing, it governs not just by institutional standing or personal prestige, but by sacred right. The Church does not bind by compulsion, but by the moral and theological force of divinely conferred auctoritas—a higher rule that commands not through the sword, but through truth.

Contra Denny on Pollmann

Dictionaries inform interpretation, but they do not replace it. Meaning is determined by historical, theological, and rhetorical context. To that we now turn.

He also ignored the article called “On Auctoritas” by Prof. Pollman [sic] on our website & the entire scholarly corpus on those terms.

How can I ignore an article that I have never seen or heard of? In any case, I’m grateful that Denny brought Pollmann’s article to our attention.⁶ Ironically, it confirms what I’ve argued, as the quotation above illustrates. What it does not do is support his claim about auctoritas as non-binding “soft power.”

Another irony is that Erick Ybarra emailed Pollmann a few years ago, when she was on faculty at the University of Bristol, asking:

It seems from the 5th century going forward, the Popes used this word [auctoritas] to almost mean something entailing more binding authority than the early usages. Does this ring true at all for you, and is there any literature on this precise question that you know of?

To which she responded with a single sentence before recommending further sources:

I agree with your assessment below but the notions of authority continue to be wider with many nuances.

So Denny’s own source agrees that the Popes used auctoritas to mean a more binding authority than early usages. We all await a flourishing pivot: “Look, he said ‘almost’! So she agrees that they used it to almost mean something more binding, but not quite!”

Now, I have said that the distinction between auctoritas and potestas is not one of degree (e.g., soft vs. hard coercion) but of kind (e.g., right vs. force). Auctoritas may be non-coercive, but it need not be merely influential; it may be the right to command—grounded in status, office, or standing—even when one lacks the means to enforce the command.

Let’s take a close look at Pollmann, Denny’s preferred source, and ask whether her chapter makes any sense when read through Denny’s mere “soft power” lens. We will see that we don’t need the email confirmation at all; the text is clear enough.

She opens and closes with several important caveats:

It is difficult to find a clear definition of auctoritas in antiquity, and for the most part, one has to work out the term’s meaning from its context. [158]

I have outlined analytical overview of various forms of authority in the early church, which ranges from examples in Tertullian to those from Augustine but is by no means comprehensive. [160]

It has become clear throughout that Christian authority was not a monolithic and static entity, but a dynamic concept that could change, and could be adapted to varying external circumstances. [171]

Next, she rightly distinguishes auctoritas from potestas:

Moreover, one has to distinguish it [auctoritas] from potestas, which denotes magisterial power and control by virtue of an office, while auctoritas signifies the influence which is conceded voluntarily to a person, institution, or text. [159]

Her phrase “conceded voluntarily” signals the key distinguishing mark: affirmation of a non-coercive mode of operation, not the absence of moral or juridical weight, which may apply but need not always apply. This is clear by noting that even institutions, such as the Roman Senate or the Church, enjoy auctoritas.

Auctoritas can compel assent—not by force (potestas), but by its rightful standing. To use Denny’s own analogy: insofar as neither the Roman Senate nor the Roman people could legally force a magistrate to act, it’s because they lacked potestas. The magistrate’s obedience had to be voluntary—but that doesn’t mean the command wasn’t binding. It was; otherwise, the magistrate would have no license or justification to exercise potestas.

Pollmann’s chapter explores auctoritas as a form of binding authority in Christian thought—authority that operates through moral, theological, or institutional recognition, especially in relation to divine truth, apostolic succession, and doctrinal integrity.

The earliest usages concern rightful authority and influence based on standing:

the term [auctoritas] first occurs in Latin in a legal context, more precisely in the Twelve Table Laws, where it denotes the legal right of ownership and an owner’s liability in case the owner wants to sell his property. But soon we can also find instances where auctoritas denotes the personal influence of an individual that is based on… reputation or prestige. [158]

As for who possessed auctoritas, she writes:

For the context of this essay, people as bearers of authority include leaders, experts, apostles, bishops, martyrs and saints, God and Jesus Christ; institutions include the church, tradition, councils, augury, reason, and academic disciplines; and texts include the Bible, the Creed (regula fidei) or creeds, pagan and Christian authors, laws, and a canon of books. [160]

Christ, Scripture, and the Creed? Looks like a bunch of softies to me! Let’s keep going:

Tertullian introduces into Christian thought the notion of Roman private law according to which every owner has the power of ownership (auctoritas) over his property… the principle of legal ‘ownership authority’ is thus becoming the central criterion for authenticating the Christian message. [162]

The legal “ownership authority” implies a right standing as a basis on which to act and speak. This is not mere soft power. It is a juridical claim, exactly as I had argued.

The apostles, she writes,

as the first receivers of this Christian message, pass it on to the congregations or to their leaders, and those in turn pass it on to further generations. The legitimized order of succession guarantees the true faith and the continuation of Apostolic auctoritas. The latter is defined in a quasi-legal form, as a liability, guarantee, and obligation on the one hand, and as right of ownership on the other, not only over the property as such, as in the case of Roman private law, but also over the authenticity and validity of its content and its efficacy. [162]

Only the rightful owners of the depositum fidei may pass it on to their successors.

Now, this auctoritas was so soft that even some Fathers viewed it as the basis of power:

Cyprian defines the authority of bishops as office holders in legal terms and comes close to potestas, with their episcopal power being based on their cathedrae auctoritas. [163]

Saint Ambrose was “reluctant to use the term auctoritas with regard to bishops and the church,” but when he did, it was “to accentuate the preservation of the apostolic tradition of faith.” [164] Does the apostolic preservation of the faith amount to mere soft power?

But we’re not done. Pollmann says that for Saint Augustine

they [auctoritas and ratio] are not so much antithetical opposites but rather parts of an epistemological spiral that has the knowledge of God as its ultimate goal. The role of authority is auxiliary, focusing on giving moral precepts and orthodox doctrines. [165]

Clearly, “giving moral precepts and orthodox doctrines” presupposes rightful standing—auctoritas in the true sense—regardless of any power to compel assent.

Augustine employs pretty much the same institutions [as the Pelagians], namely the opinions and utterings of catholic doctors (catholicorum sententiae sermonesque doctorum), reason (ratio), and the authority of Holy Writ (sanctarum scripturarum auctoritas). [166]

Aren’t you glad he included the first two? If he had relied solely on sanctarum scripturarum auctoritas, that feeble “soft power” wouldn’t have been binding enough—and we’d all still be Pelagians!

But what if the Pelagians refuse to submit to the authority of Scripture and the rest? I guess it proves Scripture isn’t binding. It should have coerced the Pelagians.

In the end this quarrel [between Augustine and Julian the Pelagian] will have to be decided by a higher instance of authority. [167]

If auctoritas is merely “soft power,” how could a higher instance of it settle anything? If it can’t bind, it can’t settle. And if settling a matter required potestas, no appeal to authority would ever suffice. But it does.

In the Pelagian debates, Pollmann notes the “double function” of auctoritas:

to make a position unassailable and unquestionable… [or] to strengthen a position that is still fighting for acceptance, which then means that the sense of obligation to persuade the other side and make a position more plausible is stronger than in the first scenario. [167]

Either function, in the context of ecclesial and conciliar operation, requires right and standing, and also confers them. This is implied in Augustine’s famous statement:

ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas (“Indeed, I would not believe the Gospel, would not the authority of the catholic church incite me to do so”). [168]

When it comes to God’s auctoritas, Pollmann writes:

In Tertullian, auctoritas divina denotes the divine will that reveals itself to humans and gives them moral instructions. Such an auctoritas divina can legitimate the actions and initiatives of a human being. [170]

So, our auctoritas can receive its standing and legitimacy from auctoritas divina.

Augustine differentiates this further by demonstrating that God’s auctoritas is revealed to perfection in the humilitas of Jesus Christ: the combination of superior potestas and merciful clementia is the essence of divine auctoritas. [170]

This emphasizes

that the authority of the Christian God is more intimately linked to humility and compassion than to coercion and control, and that the emphasis lies more in the consent and self-fulfilment of the believers than on their being overpowered. [170]

The Christian God is a confirmed softy! There goes the Church. We really needed potestas!

She notes that in Ambrose,

humans have auctoritas with God. It is faith… a good conscience… or morally good behaviour… which lends the authority to a believer to trust in God’s succour. The subtle difference from potestas is vital, as such behaviour cannot, of course, force God to react in a favourable way. But auctoritas augments the position of those who bear it, validated by extraneous activity, in these cases not pertaining to social hierarchy but to ethical behaviour. Ambrose uses the term auctoritas in good Roman fashion as an entity between violence and request, which in this way, for instance, guaranteed the power of the Roman Senate for centuries. [170]

Auctoritas, then, concerns your standing—the position from which you may appeal to God with confidence. It is not force, but the moral right that grounds influence and confers legitimacy. And far from mere soft power, Pollmann says it “guaranteed the power of the Roman Senate for centuries.” That aligns exactly with the argument I have made here and in my Postscriptum.

Conclusion

Denny’s appeal to Pollmann backfires. Her email to Erick and her chapter recognize auctoritas as something that can be (and often was) binding—juridically real, doctrinally normative, and spiritually decisive.

Denny’s confusion perhaps owes to the phrase “conceded voluntarily.” As noted already, Pollmann is not saying auctoritas lacks right standing or juridical content. She is saying that its recognition is not imposed by force, but arises from its intrinsic claim to legitimacy. This is fully compatible with juridical standing. Judges are recognized not because they can enforce verdicts (that’s potestas), but because of the office and right they bear (that’s auctoritas).

Pollmann’s later reflections on Augustine clarify this: divine auctoritas functions by persuading the conscience—not because it lacks authority, but because its authority is higher, grounded in truth and love, not force.

1. Sacerdotium refers to the Church’s spiritual, sacramental, or priestly authority, which is grounded in divine mandate, while imperium denotes secular, coercive power.

2. All bold emphasis in quotations is mine throughout.

3. Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 67.

4. The Church and the Papacy: A Historical Study (London: SPCK, 1944), p. 327.

5. Michael Grant, From Imperium to Auctoritas: A Historical Study of Aes Coinage in the Roman Empire, 49 B.C.–A.D. 14 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946). See especially the chapter titled “Rule by auctoritas principis 27 BC-14 AD” Parts C. (Auctoritas) and D. (The Vehicle of Auctoritas—Tribunicia Potestas).

6. Karla Pollmann, “Christianity and Authority in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of the Concept of Auctoritas,” in Being Christian in Late Antiquity: A Festschrift for Gillian Clark, ed. Carol Harrison, Caroline Humfress, and Isabella Sandwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 156–174.