Abstract
In his XXX quaestiones super libros Regum Claudius of Turin, contrary to his habit, adds a commentary of his own on the reforms of the king Ezechias (4 Reg 18,4): When an old institution, good in its origin, becomes bad, it must be suppressed whithout loss of time (Claudius aims at the cult of images). This sentence, repeated with or without its biblical context, had a large audience in the Middle Ages, but always anonymously. As a small return to Claudius, this much criticised opponent, it became an official maxim in ecclesiastical politics when it was received successively by Placidus of Nonantola, Gratian the canonist (who gave it in a paradigmatic form), and afterwards in the xivth cent. by William Durandus the Young, Guillaume Le Maire, Friedrich von Göttweig, William of Occam, and Conrad von Megenberg, and ultimately in the xvth century by Antoninus of Florence and by pope Paul II. Thus the sentence was useful to various causes (defence of the Church and of Pontifical elections against the Empire; abrogation of excessive privileges or of inappropriated decisions; limitation of the papal power; suppression of the Templars) and contributed to the evolution of the Canon Law to pragmatism in helping to formulate the idea that it is necessary to adjust law to the times.
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