In the meantime, the fanatically religious Ikkō sect held out against Nobunaga's attempts to unify the country by retaining the loyalty of minor local lords, extending its secular power, by aiding Yoshiaki, and by allying its members with the powerful daimyo of many provinces.
Everywhere it must make compromises with the secular power.
But if the government cannot determine religious authority, surely no lesser secular power could.
Innocent understood the dangers of a pope exercising secular power, however.
And now Turkey's secular power elite has drowned under the chants of "Istanbul is Jerusalem".
Cardinals today do not enjoy the same secular power Boston's Cardinal Richard Cushing did in the 1960s.
Friar Paolo Sarpi wrote mordant tracts that defended the right of the secular power to punish them.
It's abstracted from the church but charged with a secular power, no matter how icy and distant it is.
While such religious architecture dominated the Middle Ages, there were also important architectural expressions of secular power.
Like the other early Chosŏn kings, Sejong took steps to reduce the secular power and wealth of the Buddhist hierarchy.
Religion, he preached, does not need the secular power to live, but in serving that power, it may die.
