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CHAPTER 1

De officio praedicatoris

Of Preaching, Pardons, and Power

“Three things are necessary for the one exercising an act of preaching,” claims the English cleric Robert of Basevorn in his Forma praedicandi of 1322.¹ And they are: appropriate authority, sufficient knowledge, and fitting attributes or conditiones—including an impeccable moral character and fine reputation. These categories offer an appropriate framework of analysis for many features of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, and we shall be recuperating them in the following chapter. Chaucer displays an interest in all three, though for him the most important category concerns the conditiones of the preacher. Does the moral fallibility of the man corrupt his moral message? If the speaker cannot be trusted, can his words? The poet’s confrontation of these issues constitutes one of his most elaborate and sustained investigations of problems which were at the cutting edge of late-medieval theory of textual authority.

Basevorn’s tria necessaria are, however, the product of a long process of scholastic disputation and discussion, which bears the hallmark of the thirteenth-century University of Paris, wherein the role and function of the preacher enjoyed much scholarly attention. This is hardly surprising, given that Paris was then the preeminent center of theological learning. Many of the most substantial analyses of the officium praedicatoris issued from that intellectual milieu, to spread across late-medieval Europe.² It is important that those intellectual origins be acknowledged, particularly since it was in Paris that the broader theology of priestly authority and fallibility received a remarkably full elaboration, thus establishing the parameters within which the specific magisterium of preacher supposedly functioned or operated in parallel. A fundamental premise of the present study is that medieval discourses of authority, far from occupying autonomous ideological and sociopolitical spheres of operation, implicated each other and were crucially interrelated. Late-medieval ideologies of priestly office in general and the office of preacher in particular amply bear out and support this principle— as does the third major ideology discussed below, which concerns the nature and effectiveness of indulgences. Following a gift of alms and the standard penitential procedures, these “relaxations” or “absolutions” were supposed to pay all or part of the sinner’s debt of punishment out of the Church’s vast spiritual treasury, comprising the immeasurable merits of Christ Himself and replenished with the merits of saints and martyrs both ancient and modern. The Pardoner’s claims as preacher are in many respects inseparable from his claims as pardoner, and the value of his discourse is complexly interrelated with the value of his letters of authorization as a licensed distributor of indulgences on the one hand, and on the other with the value of his indulgences themselves. This can be appreciated only after a comprehensive review of the respective yet often comparable powers of preachers, priests, and pardoners, along with the challenges to their institution which came from both inside and outside Christian orthodoxy.

I. CONSTRUCTING THE PREACHER: AUTHORITY, KNOWLEDGE, ATTRIBUTES

Interest in the officium praedicatoris was precipitated by many factors, including the emphasis placed by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) on the clergy’s obligation to teach and preach, and the development of the new orders of preaching friars, who rapidly became well represented at university level. Furthermore, the thirteenth century saw a considerable growth in the number of preachers’ aids and handbooks: concordances to the Bible, compilations designed to make authoritative doctrine easily accessible, collections of exempla or illustrative stories for use in sermons, and artes praedicandi, treatises on the forms and rhetorical techniques of the sermons themselves.³ The activity of preaching itself was described in the most glowing terms. According to Humbert of Romans (c. 1200–1277), who was elected Master-General of the Order of Preachers in 1254, the office of preaching is apostolic, angelic, and divine; its foundation, which is holy Scripture, excels all the other sciences.⁴ It is little wonder, then, that late-medieval clerics should have analyzed in minute detail the nature, requirements, and responsibilities of the officium praedicatoris.

In discussions of issues of authority and authorization, a firm distinction was made between those who teach by virtue of their public office and those who, lacking such an office, have to be specially licensed. The tensions between the mendicant friars and the secular clergy are clearly evoked by Jean de Pouilly’s quodlibet (1312) on the subject, when someone has the privilege of preaching in the parish of a curate who also wishes to preach, which of them has the priority?⁵ Jean, himself a secular master, predictably decides in favor of the parish priest: the priest preaches as an essential part of his function, whereas the friar must have a special commission. Is it possible, then, for a monk to preach, or a layman, or indeed a woman? An anonymous treatise preserved in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Lat. 455 assures us that, in accordance with canon law, monks and layfolk can preach only with the special permission of a bishop.⁶ The case of women was more clear cut. Our anonymous treatise flatly declares that women cannot preach because of their nature (they are inferior to men, and were led into error by the devil) and because of civil law, which debars them from public office.⁷ (A full account of such attitudes will be included in Chapter 3, below.) It is hardly surprising, then, that the Wife of Bath’s teaching by citation of authorities should have troubled Chaucer’s Friar so much (III(D) 1274–77). And we may feel the full force of the Pardoner’s joke that, in the case of marriage, the Wife of Bath is a “noble prechour” (III(D) 165). Furthermore, this is a spectacular case of the kettle’s calling the pot black, for the Pardoner, like the Wife, has usurped the noble office of preacher—a point to which we shall return.

Moving on to the issues of knowledge and preparation, it may be noted that all the schoolmen insist that the preacher should have adequate learning for his task and prepare himself fully for it. Among many others, Raymond Rigaud took a very dim view of the lazy person who assumes the office of preacher and confessor. Does such a person sin mortally if he chooses not to improve himself through study, though he has the ability to do so?⁸ Applying the Aristotelian theory of causality, Raymond argues that an end or objective ( finis) necessitates those things which lead to that end, and since performance is the end of the office of preaching, the person who assumes this office is obliged to execute it properly. Proper execution is impossible, however, unless there is an adequate disposition of life and learning on the part of the preacher. The preacher, therefore, must have sufficient learning for his teaching. Anyone who neglects such diligent preparation sins, anyone who despises it sins more gravely, and anyone who lazily and thoughtlessly assumes the office sins most gravely. To hold the office without performing it is of no value and ambitious, to perform it without the right disposition is presumptuous, to be unwilling to acquire that disposition is idle and slothful, to carry out the activity without the proper disposition is thoughtless and dangerous, whereas to neglect and contemn the performance of the office and conceal one’s talent is damnable and a great loss. Raymond’s comments are absolutely typical of his time.

Moreover, the schoolmen clearly defined the kind of knowledge necessary for the preacher. He should not impose scholastic subtleties on his audience; indeed, academic theology and pastoral theology were firmly distinguished. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of the “doctrine of preaching, which pertains to prelates,” as opposed to “scholastic doctrine,” with which prelates do “not greatly concern themselves.”⁹ According to the vita which Bernard Gui published shortly after Aquinas’s canonization (1323–25), the angelic doctor put this theory into practice: “To the ordinary faithful he spoke the word of God with singular grace and power, without indulging in far-fetched-reasoning or the vanities of worldly wisdom or in the sort of language that serves rather to tickle the curiosity of a congregation than do it any real good.” In his sermons, Gui continues, Aquinas always used the vernacular; “subtleties he kept for the schools” (note the assumption that subtleties do not belong in the vernacular).¹⁰ Roger Bacon (who entered the Franciscan order at Oxford probably around 1257) made the same point in a characteristically combative way by declaring that it is the job not of the academic theologians but of the prelati to explain the articles of faith and morals to the people and to preach to them. “Indeed,” he declares, “we know for certain and see everywhere that one simple brother, who never heard a hundred theology lectures, [or] if he heard them still did not care, preaches incomparably better than the greatest masters of theology.”¹¹ Another way to make the same point was to distinguish between two fundamental kinds of theological teaching, one confined to the élite clergy and the other deemed appropriate (by that clergy) to the populace at large. Hence Bernard Gui’s remark that “to the people” St. Thomas “gave solid moral instruction suited to their capacity; he knew that a teacher must always suit his style to his audience.”¹²

In sum, to preach was to address oneself directly and publicly to a congregation in order to instruct its members in the basics of Christianity and to encourage them to act well; it implied a “prelacy” in the sense of a cure of souls.¹³ The teaching of academic theology, on the other hand, did not have as its end the moral improvement of the listeners, but rather their acquisition of knowledge. Hence, a quaestio included in Thomas of Chobham’s Summa de arte praedicandi¹⁴ can state that, although sinners should not preach, they may be permitted to “read” (i.e., lecture on) the sacred page.¹⁵ Thomas argues that the preacher, because of his office, is bound to the cure of souls, and therefore he owes his flock his devotion. A lecturer or master in a school, by contrast, is not responsible for the cure of the souls of his audience. Therefore, if he is a sinner, he is not depriving his listeners of anything because, in the first place, he does not owe them his devotion—and so in his lecturing activity he does not sin mortally. Furthermore, lecturing is not the purely spiritual work that preaching is; the officium lectoris is not primarily conducive to the cure of souls but rather to the instruction of the students of some science. Here the roles of the praedicator and the lector are conceived of as being distinct, each office having its special procedures and objectives.

The issues relating to the personal character of the preacher and the attributes (conditiones) which he should possess were much more problematic and produced a rich harvest of quodlibets. In order to catch something of the flavor of those debates we may turn to Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Lat. 3804A, a collection of notes made by a student at the University of Paris around 1240–50.¹⁶ Here are some of the subjects being lectured on at that time, which formed part of the education of the budding preacher:

Whether or not it is sinful to preach with temporal reward as a secondary consideration.

Whether or not it is sinful to preach in a state of mortal sin, having full awareness of that fact.

Whether or not it is sinful to fail to practise what one preaches.¹⁷

Whether or not a fat man (pinguis) sins by preaching about hunger.

Whether or not the mercenary man sins by preaching, and if he is to be valued and tolerated.

Whether or not the preacher who knows that he will scandalize everyone by his preaching, acts badly by preaching to them.

Whether or not vainglory, which is a venial sin, deforms preaching, and makes it a venial sin.

The Pardoner’s implicit quaestio, whether or not a sinful preacher can perform a proper act of preaching, is very much at home in this company of quodlibets, its terms of reference being similar or even identical. It is this intellectual context of scholastic debate, as instigated by the Paris schools, reflected in preacher’s aids and manuals, and exacerbated by the Lollard controversies, in which many of the problems raised by the Pardoner originated and essentially belong. In order to define the common parameters more exactly we may briefly examine three discussions which have been preserved in fuller form than those recorded fragmentarily in the student’s notebook.

The Sinful Preacher: Secrecy, Scandal, and Skill

The first is by the Carmelite theologian Gerard of Bologna, who in 1295 considered the question, is it better to preach and do the opposite of what you preach, than to be silent?¹⁸ After all, man learns better by example than by word. Gerard is adamant that, in absolute terms and with regard to the lesser evil, it is better that an evil preacher should be silent. The act of preaching is indecent in one who acts in a manner contrary to his teaching, and to preach in this way is presumptuous. But what of the person, such as a bishop or curate, who ex officio has the duty of preaching? This is a very difficult matter, Gerard declares, because such people are expected to preach and yet, if they live wicked lives, they preach indecently and unlawfully. In the Cura pastoralis we read that any man who keeps divine doctrine to himself is accursed, yet elsewhere in the same work St. Gregory attacks those who “investigate spiritual precepts with shrewd diligence, but in the life they live trample on what they have penetrated by their understanding,” thereby polluting the clear water of truth for their flocks.¹⁹ It appears from this, says Gerard, obviously relishing the puzzle, that in such a case it is bad to preach and it is also bad to be silent.

Gerard attempts to find a way out of the difficulty by making a distinction according to whether the preacher’s sin is notorious or secret. If the sin is unknown to the listeners, and they actually want preaching and are willing to listen, then it is better, or at least less evil, to preach than to be silent, since the audience is not scandalized or provoked to sin, being ignorant of the preacher’s sin. On the other hand, this action seems definitely bad in as much as the preacher is not rightly and reverently teaching the word of God, such teaching requiring a good life and good works of the preacher. If, the preacher’s sin being concealed, the people do not greatly require preaching, it is better, or less evil, to be silent because in this way no offense is given. Similarly, if the preacher’s sin is public knowledge, and the people do not want his preaching or are unwilling to hear it, then silence is the best policy. But if the sin is public knowledge and the people want preaching and are willing to listen, then it is difficult to see which is the best course of action and which is the worse. That such a person should preach is a source of scandal, scandal being defined in terms of a statement or action which provides the occasion for the ruin of others. Because the audience condemns a preacher of this kind his preaching does not profit them.²⁰ According to St. Gregory, “No one does more harm in the Church than he who, having taken the title or rank of holiness, acts evilly.”²¹ Jerome’s attack on those who fail to practice what they preach is then cited. It is clear, therefore, that if someone’s life is despised his preaching will consequently be condemned, as Gregory says. Yet, continues Gerard, hammering home the point once more, it is also evil that such a preacher should be silent because he has the pastoral care of the people and is supposed to teach them, especially since they want preaching and are willing to listen. The obvious solution, of course, is that the sinner in question should renounce his evil life and thus preach in the appropriate manner. If this is not done, there is no obvious solution. This matter is difficult to determine in disputation, Gerard admits; the particular circumstances of place and time must be considered, and each case should be judged on its merits. But, in conclusion, he offers one general recommendation. If, all circumstances having been considered, it seems that the flock would come to greater peril through their preacher’s silence than through his preaching, then it would appear to be less evil for him to preach. If, however, the people would not suffer much from his silence, then perhaps it would be less evil to be silent and worse to preach.

Our second discussion, part of a quaestio included in Thomas of Chobham’s Summa de arte praedicandi, is of special interest because of its clear definition of the problem rather than for any solution it offers.²² The topic is, whether to preach in a state of mortal sin is itself a mortal sin or not. Three arguments are marshaled in favor of the proposition. It would seem that by no means should such a person preach, since scriptural authority condemns that kind of behavior. For example, in Psalm 49:16–17 God says to the wicked, “What right have you to recite my statutes, or take my covenant on your lips? For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you.” Second, since only the person who is without sin can cast the stone (as John 8:7 teaches), only the good man can cast the stone of preaching. Third, David, after his sin with Bathsheba, did not judge or teach until the prophet Nathan assured him that his sin had been forgiven (II Kings 12:13); hence no-one should preach until he knows that his sins have been forgiven by God. The first argument against the proposition is of particular interest to readers of the Pardoner’s Tale. Just as a man who is in a state of mortal sin may give alms and pray and do other good works, by the same token he can preach and direct the people to good works. Unfortunately, Thomas of Chobham fails to pursue the full implications of this startling yet apparently reasonable idea, being content to offer a version of an argument which we have seen Gerard of Bologna handle with far greater penetration. Distinctions are drawn between preaching ex officio and preaching in special circumstances, and between sins which are public knowledge and those which are secret. The sinner who, not required to preach by virtue of office, actually does so out of devotion or owing to the wish of another, does not sin by preaching, providing that his sinful state is concealed. If, however, his sin is manifest, then, irrespective of whether he is preaching ex officio or not, he sins mortally on account of the scandal he creates.

The implications of the above-mentioned disturbing idea that the sinful preacher is to be valued are, however, fully explored in our third and last major excursus, this being (in my view) the most substantial and challenging of all the thirteenth-century discussions relating to the officium praedicatoris. It forms part of the prologue to Henry of Ghent’s Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, first written circa 1275–76 and edited toward the end of his career, in 1289. Henry’s quaestio on whether or not a sinner can be a teacher (doctor) of theology²³ displays an acute awareness of the relative demands of technical proficiency and skill in preaching on the one hand, and the purity of the preacher’s life on the other. Here Henry brings to bear the apparatus of Aristotelian causality (particularly the theory of instrumental causality) and Aristotelian psychology (particularly the theory of habitus or stable mental condition). He begins by marshaling two arguments in favor of the proposition that the doctor of theology need not be a just man. First is the story of the man who did not walk with Christ. The apostles wished to prohibit him from teaching, but Christ said, “Forbid him not,” on the grounds that “he that is not against you is for you” (Luke 9:50). Insofar as he did not remain with Christ he was evil, but if it was not permissible for him to teach theology he should have been prohibited. The second argument in favor is found in Philippians 1:15–19, where Paul says that some of his brothers who are announcing the message are doing it just out of rivalry and competitiveness (whereas the rest preach Christ with the right intention). The fact that they were evil is emphasized by the Glossa ordinaria.²⁴ And yet, the Apostle rejoiced in their teaching: “But what then? So that by all means, whether by occasion or by truth, Christ be preached: in this also I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice” (v. 18). Two arguments against the proposition are then offered. First, only those who are illuminated by the light of wisdom, obey the precepts of God, and strongly suggest them to others are suitable for the high office (magisterium)of doctor. Second, to teach without acting condemns the teacher, as Chrysostom says concerning Matthew 5:19 (“He that shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven”).²⁵

Henry begins his own response with a crucial distinction. Someone may be said to be a doctor in two different ways: because he is capable of teaching or because he has the office of teaching (officium docendi). In the first sense, one is a doctor by dint of his state or condition (habitus) of knowledge and consequent ability to teach. Such a habitus is not dismissed by the act of sinning, any more than it is acquired by virtuous action—though it may be said (following Averroes in his commentary on Book vii of Aristotle’s Physics)²⁶ that the habitus of virtue disposes one to the acquisition of knowledge. In the passage under discussion Aristotle had explained that knowledge can be acquired only when the soul settles down from the restlessness natural to it. Commenting on this passage, Thomas Aquinas (writing at Paris in 1271) noted that understanding, i.e., speculative thought, and prudence, i.e., practical reason, come to the soul through the rest and abating of corporeal motions and sensible affections.²⁷ The obvious inference is that moral virtue, whereby the restless passions are controlled, is therefore in a sense conducive to intellectual virtue. Through its practice are created the best possible conditions in which knowledge can be acquired. To adopt a metaphor used by Averroes, the process involved is like polishing metal so that it might become a mirror and receive light.²⁸

But Henry is far more interested in the idea that the state of knowledge, once it actually is acquired, is there to stay, and cannot be lost through immoral behavior. In this sense, a man who is evil and a sinner can be called a doctor of the science of theology, for he is able to have correct doctrine just like the righteous man, and indeed he may he better educated than the righteous man in respect of the relevant habitus of knowledge. Thus he is a doctor of another person by dint of his possession of the habitus of this science, and may be compared to the craftsman (artifex) who practices his skill in accordance with the habitus of that art. Aristotle is quoted as saying that it is not necessary for the craftsman to be morally virtuous in order to exercise his craft.²⁹ In order that an artisan might make good knives, Henry elaborates, he requires not moral virtue but mere proficiency in the art of knife making. The “perfection of the art” of knife making is simply— good knives. The inference is that the good doctor (on Henry’s first definition) does not have to be a morally good man.

The second sense in which someone may be said to be a doctor relates to the audience’s reception of the teacher rather than his mental state and personal abilities. On this definition, a teacher is someone who holds the office of public teaching (officium publice docendi). For this, the approval of the taught is essential. Here the analogy is with the doctor of medicine rather than with the craftsman. No matter how experienced (peritus) a medical doctor was in his profession, or however good were the medicines he dispensed, he would not be acceptable to his patients if he was not disposed to make them well. So, if he were irascible, and thereby provoked all his patients to anger, which inevitably would endanger their health, he would not be permitted to practice. Likewise, with the doctor of theology: no matter how skilled (peritus) he may be, if he cannot exercise his officium doctoris without imperiling his audience, then he should by no means be permitted to teach or to be a teacher of theology. It is necessary to have both the habitus of knowledge, as explained above, and a good reputation ( fama bone vitae). Therefore, in the doctor who de iure and ex officio can and ought to teach this science, two things are required: knowledge (scientia) by dint of which he can teach, and a life by dint of which he can teach wholesomely.

Henry proceeds to develop this argument by enlisting the aid of the Aristotelian theory of causality and instrumentality. A doctor of sacred Scripture is, as it were, an instrument and organ (instrumentum et organum) of the word of God,³⁰ inasmuch as he teaches the faithful with regard to their spiritual health or profit(utilitas). Hence the Gloss on Matthew 3:3 (“a voice crying in the wilderness . . . ”) identifies John the Baptist as the voice and Christ as the Word which cries in John.³¹ For just as with an instrument or organ, the formal disposition and its own constituent material is determined by its objective or end (finis) and the material in respect of which it functions. At this point Henry draws on the second book of the Physics, where Aristotle had explained that certain things are required in order that a given product can come into being, but the product comes into being on account of some end, and not on account of those requirements.³² Aristotle had used the example of a saw, which is designed to carry out something and for the sake of something; this end, however, cannot be achieved unless it is made of the right stuff. If we are to have a saw and perform the operation of sawing, it must be made of iron. As Averroes puts it, the action of sawing cannot be achieved except on account of the form and material of the saw.³³ Thus, to return to Henry, the end determines the material, the end being impossible to attain without the necessary material. Henry gives an elaborate version of the “saw” example and makes his own application of the underlying doctrine. In order that a saw can cut straight through tough wood, it must be made of strong and firm metal and it must have teeth: that is to say, the material out of which the tool is made (strong metal) and its formal disposition, pattern, or shape (its teeth) are determined by its end or objective (cutting the wood) and the material on which it works (the hard wood). The material with which the teacher of holy Scripture has to work are the faithful whom he must instruct; the end toward which he works is their own (spiritual) health or profit and that of others through instruction; the material employed in this work is his knowledge; the formal disposition necessary in himself in order that he might realize his objective is a holy life—he himself must first do the things which he teaches others to do.

Any unlearned man who usurps the office of teaching and does not announce Christ with sincerity deserves utter damnation, Henry continues. The saw, if it is made of soft metal, cannot divide the wood. Likewise, an individual who is learned but unjust in his behavior may be able to instruct the faithful, but is quite unable to “enform” or shape them in holy life or to maintain them therein. As Chrysostom says on Matthew 5:13 (“you are the salt of the earth”), the doctor should be adorned with all the virtues, so that he is able to prompt the lazy and sluggish to perform good works, by his example rather than by mere words.³⁴ The good manner of life of a priest may, irrespective of words, maintain the holy in sanctity by its example, but without words he cannot lead the ignorant to knowledge of the truth. On the other hand, words, without the example of good behavior, can lead a certain ignorant person to the knowledge of truth, but without the example of good behavior such a one could not remain in faith or holiness. A priest whose life does not match his words is a source of scandal. Even though he may perhaps lead the good to the knowledge of truth, he will tend rather to keep bad people away from the truth. As St. Gregory says, the magisterium of pastor is confounded when one thing is done and another is taught; consequently, when someone’s life is despised it follows that his preaching will be condemned.³⁵ To which Henry appends that Aristotelian saw. Just as, if a saw is without teeth it cannot directly attain its end in cutting, so no doctor who is not “enformed” by familiarity with holiness can wholesomely teach others. It must be said, therefore, that the proper teacher of this science must not only be competent to teach the truth but also be good and just, so that he should enact the same. Acts 1:1 tells how “Jesus began to do and to teach,” which the Gloss explains as meaning that the good teacher should first do and then teach, in that order, so that his word is not destroyed by his work.³⁶ On this argument, then, the sinner or unjust man cannot be a doctor of holy Scripture.

However, there are degrees of prohibition, it would seem, some errant teachers being more relevantly sinful than others. For Henry distinguishes between different types of evil and the corresponding types of deviant doctor. Either such a person believes what is contrary to true doctrine, as the heretic does, or he acts against true doctrine, like the man who sins in his behavior. Someone who is a sinner in the first sense cannot teach at all, nor be a doctor of this science, for he is excommunicate and he will corrupt his audience. In the second sense, the sinner is one of the faithful and has sound doctrine, but does not lead a good life.

A further contrast is then posited, between public sin and private sin. Is the deviant teacher’s sin hidden, the man himself being of good reputation? Or is it manifest, the man being infamous on account of his evil life? If it is hidden, the sinner may be teaching to flatter and please, or out of vainglory; here we are dealing with sins perpetrated in the very act of teaching (ex ipso actu docendi).³⁷ Alternatively, he may be a sinner on account of another kind of act (ex actu alio), for example because he is covetous, lustful, or the like. In the first case, we are dealing with sins perpetrated in the very act of teaching. The man who is steeped in those sins should not teach of his own volition, but rather should hold back. Yet it is undeniable that the Gospel should be proclaimed. Philippians 1:18 declares that “by all means,” whether in pretense or in truth, Christ should be preached. This, explains the Gloss, describes the various types of doctor who preach of Christ but not in the same way.³⁸ Henry identifies three types: the good pastor, the mercenary, and the rogue. The good pastor proclaims the truth (of Christ) in truth, the mercenary occasionally proclaims the truth, while the thief and rogue denies the truth and makes away with it. The good pastor is to be valued highly, the mercenary tolerated, and the rogue is to be treated with suspicion. A mercenary is said to be someone who preaches for gain. The heretic who preaches falsehood is rightly called a thief. The (good) pastor, however, is the man who preaches what is true and in accord with God.

Henry then proceeds to make his own view crystal clear. Some treat the mercenary just as if he were a heretic. Their argument is that the mercenary preacher who sins in his behavior, even though this is not done publicly, nevertheless acts contrary to what he teaches, and therefore sins by so doing. Consequently he should not teach, because no-one should do what he himself condemns. But this, Henry declares, is not reasonable. For if a sinner who is living in sin can, by good actions which fall inside the parameters of goodness (de genera bonorum), put himself in the position whereby he could receive gratia de congruo, it would not be right to say that he sins by so doing. Moreover, he may do other things de genera bonorum which are of benefit to others. That is to say, by helping others he might help himself spiritually.

How, then, should we regard the teacher whose sin is secret, if the sin may be judged a matter of personal morality rather than falling within the very act of preaching itself? (Assuming, of course, that such a person does not teach anything against Christian truth—in contrast to the heretic— and is therefore not excommunicate.) Henry’s answer is that, although he secretly fails to practice what he teaches, this type of teacher is useful to others, and because he may make personal spiritual progress by so doing (as with other works of mercy performed in this life), it is perfectly lawful for him to teach, and for him to be a doctor of theology. And what of the teacher whose wicked life is manifest and infamous? He should not, insofar as it lies within his own power (quantum est ex parte sui), teach at all, because by so doing he will scandalize his audience. However, on account of the faithful (but not on his own account) he may be heard, providing that he has sound doctrine and is permitted to teach by the Church, not having been removed from his office. If such a teacher is rejected by the Church, he should not be listened to by any means.

Gerard of Bologna, who produced his own summa between 1313 and 1317, expressed the view therein that Henry of Ghent was unclear in his analysis of the case where a teacher of theology sins in the actual act of teaching.³⁹ Furthermore, he seems to have been concerned that Henry was underrating the culpability of the sinful preacher who sins through another kind of act (ex alio actu).⁴⁰ Sins of both types can be hidden, Gerard argues, and it cannot be said that a man is preaching from wicked intention more in one case than in the other. Why should the preacher who sins ex actu predicandi be deemed to be committing mortal sin while the preacher who sins in a different way be regarded as liable to benefit spiritually from the help which he gives others through his doctrine? Gerard inclines to the view that in neither case should the sinful preacher be able to benefit.

That is a telling point; however, the strengths of Henry’s excursus are considerable. His approach to the problems of public and private morality, of manifest and secret sin, is one of the fullest of its kind, and distinguished by the extent to which it seeks to balance the conflicting claims of idealism and pragmatism. Thereby it affords a good instance of how scholasticism could generate thought about society and take actual society into account in its thought. And it should be appreciated that, like Gerard of Bologna, Thomas of Chobham, and all the other schoolmen who addressed themselves to the knotty problem of the deviant preacher, Henry was struggling to make his ideological apparatus and logical equipment fit the exigencies of actual and probable real-life situations which were—and still are—difficult or even impossible to reduce to order and rule.

Art versus Virtue: The Challenge of Aristotle

Many of the ideas canvassed in thirteenth-century considerations of the sinful preacher/teacher are, however, so startling that their origins demand investigation, particularly the notion that intellect and knowledge need not coexist with moral virtue. Like so many of his contemporaries who worried over the same issue, Henry was heavily influenced by (although he does not mention it in the quaestio under discussion here) Aristotle’s distinction between art and virtue as propounded in the second book of the Ethics.⁴¹ Averroes, commenting on the relevant passage, explains that, for a craftsman to attain perfection in his art it is enough that the artifacts he produces are good.⁴² By contrast, for a man to lead a virtuous life he must be virtuous in himself and perform virtuous actions, these things being equally necessary. For example, he should both perform just and chaste (castus) actions and himself be just and chaste. Similarly, Aquinas, expounding the same passage, describes Aristotle’s central point as being that “there is no similarity in art and virtue since works of art have in themselves what belongs to the perfection of the art,” whereas virtues are principles of actions that do not go out into external matter but rather remain in the agents.⁴³ Hence actions of this kind are perfections of the agents. And that is why, Aquinas continues, Aristotle asserts that, in order that actions be justly and temperately performed, it is not enough that what is done be good, but the agent must work in the correct manner. His account of the three aspects of this “correct manner” follows and elaborates on what Averroes had said in his commentary.⁴⁴ First, the person performing a virtuous action should do it not just by chance or fluke; he should know what he is doing. Second, it should not be done out of passion, as when a man performs a good action out of fear. Neither should it be done for any motive other than the wish to do good, “as when a person performs a good action for money or vainglory.” Rather, good actions “should be done for the sake of the virtuous work itself which, as something agreeable, is inherently pleasing to him who has the habit of virtue.” Third, people should be virtuous consistently, without variation or vacillation.

The wherewithal necessary to distinguish between art and virtue has here been provided. Only the first of these requirements for virtue, namely knowledge, is required in the arts. A man can be a good artist, Aquinas says, even if he never chooses to work according to art and does not persevere in his work. But in the moral sphere, action and perseverance really matter; doing is more important than knowing. Action produces the moral habitus rather than the other way round; by performing just and temperate actions a man becomes just and temperate. Hence, “knowledge has little or no importance in a person being virtuous,” this being Aquinas’s phrasing of Aristotle’s own statement (as rendered by a version of Robert Grosseteste’s translation) that mere knowledge has little or no importance as far as the virtues are concerned: “Ad virtutes autem scire quidem parum aut nihil potest.”⁴⁵ That dictum was to resonate through generations of scholastic treatments of the nature of ethics, of the relative merits of intelligence and action, of the qualities essential for the Christian teacher. Here our main concern is with the crucial point that knowledge and moral virtue are distinct because the end of moral science—like, we may add, the end of the science of theology—is not knowledge alone, “which those enslaved to passion can perhaps gain” (to quote a gloss from an earlier part of Aquinas’s Ethics commentary).⁴⁶ This is a concomitant of the principle that the conditions and operations which produce a moral habitus are quite different from those which produce an intellectual habitus. As Aquinas says elsewhere (in his Summa theologiae), for a human to act well “it is requisite that not only his reason be well disposed through a habit of intellectual virtue, but also that his appetite be well disposed through a habit of moral virtue.”⁴⁷ Socrates’ belief that as long as a man possesses knowledge he cannot sin is, therefore, “based on a false supposition.” (This notion was, of course, criticized in Aristotle’s Ethics.)⁴⁸ Can, then, intellectual virtue exist without moral virtue? After all, “intellectual virtue, which is perfection of reason, does not depend on moral virtue, a perfection of the appetitive part.”⁴⁹ Aquinas’s response is that intellectual virtues can indeed exist without moral virtue (with the exception of prudence). And this—to return to Aquinas’s commentary on the Ethics—is why Aristotle and his interpreters reject the opinion of those who, thinking “they can become virtuous by philosophizing,” talk about virtues rather than exercising them.⁵⁰ Which is like saying that those who hear the advice of medical doctors but disregard it will enjoy good bodily health. Moral virtue is not a matter of theory alone, it requires appropriate behavior of the teacher and of the taught.

Here, then, is the intellectual tradition behind (inter alia) Henry of Ghent’s two definitions of the doctor: someone who is capable of teaching because he has the requisite habitus of knowledge, and someone who has the office of teaching (officium docendi), being acceptable to auditors who, because of his own good life, trust him to do them some good. Henry’s discussion seems to be somewhat unusual, however, when placed in the perspective of the other quaestiones on the same and related issues (as illustrated above), because they tend to focus on the praedicator rather than work with the more inclusive term doctor, and some of them make the relevant Aristotelian distinction between moral and intellectual virtues altogether more cogent by identifying the respective duties of the praedicator and the lector, as in Thomas of Chobham’s treatment of the subject.⁵¹ The lector’s brief is simply to improve the minds, rather than save the souls, of his auditors. Knowledge (scientia) is not a moral virtue, Thomas continues, because, as Aristotle says, it does little or nothing to lead one to the virtues—a reference to the seminal passage from Book ii of the Ethics which we discussed above. Ad virtutes autem scire quidem parum aut nihil potest. ⁵² The fundamental difference between this type of approach and Henry’s is obvious. However, Henry had no hesitation in employing the basic distinction between preaching and lecturing in several other quaestiones. Perhaps in the case of art. XI, qu. 5 he wished to treat the problem of the sinful teacher in its most comprehensive and widest aspect and hence the term praedicator, being too specific for his purpose, was passed over in favor of doctor as the central term.⁵³ However, I find more persuasive the hypothesis that Henry found the praedicator/doctor distinction, as applied in this context, far too reductive and misleading, perhaps even quite at variance with the truth of the matter as he saw it. For an essential part of the message of his quaestio on the sinful teacher is that even an immoral preacher (whether his immorality was concealed or public knowledge) could be conceived of as having some function as a teacher, even though he was certainly not a living exemplum of good conduct. Such a man’s knowledge, in other words, is worth something; it does have value in itself and it may lead certain auditors to the ideal combination of good thinking and good deeds. For the failure of the mercenarius is not one of knowledge; that is the sin characteristic of the heretic. Therefore, these types of teacher should not be put on a par. In spirit, here Henry was following Philippians 1:18 by affirming the supreme importance of proclaiming Christ.

Whatever the truth of that specific matter may be, it should by now be abundantly clear that segregation of the officium praedicatoris from the character of the man who assumes that office is a crucial and consistent feature of the discussions reviewed above. The emphasis was thereby placed, as Jean Leclercq says, on the dignity of the function and on the obligation of the person to act in accordance with it. Concomitant with this was the clear recognition that some actual preachers lamentably fail to live up to their high calling. And here the intellectual machinery ground to a halt. The cogs and springs of Aristotelian psychology (particularly the theory of habitus) and of Aristotelian causality (particularly the theory of instrumental causality) served to bring out the full proportions of the problem but did not produce a solution. Indeed, given the very nature of the problem and the methods of analysis then available, no abstract solution was possible. A rationale could easily be provided for the sinful lecturer instructing his audience in a specific science, but the spectacle of a sinful preacher attempting to preach to his flock was far more problematic. Here the special circumstances had to be investigated: scandal was to be avoided at all costs, the spiritual welfare of the flock being the primary consideration. At which point the problem became a practical one. If the preacher was doing more harm than good in his preaching, then it was up to his bishop or other superior to intervene and silence him. According to the Lollards of late-medieval England, however, the level of ecclesiastical control and policing of preaching was utterly inadequate, and in tacit opposition to attempts to allow some (albeit limited) value to certain kinds of deviant preacher, they produced an ideology whereby the lack of personal righteousness disqualified a sinner from preaching and destroyed his pedagogic authority. Those issues will be addressed later; for the moment our concern is with the transmission of orthodox doctrine concerning good and bad preachers.

Theory into Practice: Codes of Conduct in Preachers’ Handbooks

The preacher’s appropriate codes of conduct and conditiones, as defined in (largely Parisian) scholastic debate, constituted discourses which exercised considerable influence and enjoyed wide dissemination, appearing in various forms in many preachers’ aids and reference books, including the artes praedicandi and exempla collections.⁵⁴ The genre of ars praedicandi flourished particularly in England, and such works as Thomas of Chobham’s ambitiously pioneering Summa de arte praedicandi, Robert of Basevorn’s Forma praedicandi (1322), Thomas Waleys’s De modo componendi sermones (c. 1338) and Ralph Higden’s Ars componendi sermones (c. 1340) include treatments of the three types of issue which have been defined above, concerning authority, knowledge, and personal character.⁵⁵ “Three things are necessary for the one exercising an act of preaching,” said Robert of Basevorn—and here we return to the quotation with which the present chapter began. The tria necessaria are defined as purity of life, competent knowledge, and authority. With regard to the last of these, Robert emphasizes the importance of having the preacher properly licensed, by either a bishop or the pope. The preacher must be “sent out” with the proper authority, by the Church. As St. Paul asks, “How will they preach, unless they be sent?” (Romans 10:15). Wherefore we learn that “No lay person or Religious, unless permitted (licentiatus) by a Bishop or the Pope, and no woman, no matter how learned or saintly (docta et sancta), ought to preach. Nor is it enough for one to say that he was commissioned by God (a Deo missus), unless he clearly proves this, for the heretics are wont to make this claim.”⁵⁶ In Chapter 3 below we will consider the extent to which one group of “heretics,” the Lollards, made just such a claim, and also the manner in which some of them questioned the received wisdom that “no woman, no matter how learned or saintly, ought to preach.”

The second thing which Robert of Basevorn deems necessary for one engaged in the act of preaching is—predictably enough—competent knowledge (scientia). The preacher “must at least have explicit knowledge of the articles of Faith, the Ten Commandments, and the distinction between sin and non-sin; otherwise, ‘the blind leads the blind, and both fall into the ditch’” (cf. Matthew 15:14; Luke 6:39). However, Robert spends more time on the first of his requirements, purity of life, where he defers to the opinion of the doctores, which I take to be a specific reference to debates of the kind discussed above as opposed to a vague general remark.⁵⁷ What we are offered is an elaboration of the distinction (as found in Thomas of Chobham’s Summa de arte praedicandi) between the teacher who can discharge his duty while in a state of mortal sin and the preacher who cannot. It is necessary to have “purity of life, without remorse of conscience with respect to anything grievous; otherwise, according to the doctors, the preacher sins grievously.” For God demands of the sinner, “Why dost thou announce my justice?” adding that He “will accuse you and stand against your face” (Psalm 49:16, 21).

The necessity for puritas vitae in the preacher, Robert explains, is because he has taken upon himself an officium whose end (finis) in itself is to make others good. “In this there is a great, indeed a very great, presumption that he is initiated into hierarchical acts, yes divine acts”; he publicly show himself to be, as it were, divine and godlike, although—in the case in which he is a sinner—he is actually deformed. Now, a person may say that he is good when he is not, and this may not be a mortal sin, because he is not engaged in a hierarchical act. Robert proceeds to contrast the very different objectives of the lector and the predicator:

Thus a lecturer in a school (lector in scholia) may be in mortal sin and teach in it, and because his act of itself is not immediately directed to making others good as such I do not believe that he sins mortally [i.e., in his act of teaching.]⁵⁸

Robert concludes that we must say concerning the immoral preacher exactly what we would say concerning the immoral priest who is obliged to administer a sacrament:

But as it seems to me, we must say on this subject [i.e., of the immoral preacher] what we would say about one administering some sacrament in mortal sin, that if he can refuse ministering it without confusion, scandal, or ultimate danger to him to whom the sacrament ought to be administered, by all means he ought to do so; otherwise he commits a new mortal sin. If he cannot refuse, he ought to be sincerely contrite, and in that case the saying applies: “I said: I will confess, and you forgave” (Psalm 31:5). Thus refraining for the most part from that sin, he can administer the sacrament. This is what I believe should be said here.

Sic credo hic esse dicendum. So did most others. Here is one area in which there was little debate, Robert’s predecessors and contemporaries being confident about drawing parallels between the situation of the immoral preacher and that of the immoral minister of one or more of the sacraments (while, of course, recognizing that preaching was not itself a sacrament, but rather one of the duties consequent on the sacrament of ordination). On certain occasions certain aspects of the conditiones praedicatoris may look like a subsection within the larger discussion; on others, they seem to be fuelling debate on different but related issues. Often it is intellectually difficult if not impossible—and indeed fatuous—to try to determine which argument inspired which other. For one and the same argument could function as both producer and product, instigator and instigated.

What is abundantly clear is that many of the arguments concerning the relationship between institutionally conferred authority and personal righteousness that have become familiar during the preceding discussion also feature crucially in accounts of the valid administration of the sacraments. In order to pursue this line of inquiry our analysis must go beyond the specific dilemmas concerning the immoral preacher to trace the larger parameters of sacerdotal office, within which the ideals and deviancies of preaching were constructed—and, furthermore, to bring into play the controversial theology of indulgences, or “pardons” as they were known vulgariter, which are the main stock-in-trade of that “noble ecclesiaste,” Chaucer’s Pardoner.

II. CONSECRATING THE SACRAMENTS: PRIESTLY POWER AND THE KEYS TO HEAVEN

The “sacrament of the altar” was deemed to be of the first importance for the Christian faith, and hence its ministers were subjected to close scholastic scrutiny. Thomas Aquinas explains that “in an absolute sense” (simpliciter loquendo) the Eucharist is the greatest of all the sacraments,⁵⁹ and priests are consecrated in order that the corpus Christi may be “confected” (the Latin verb conficere being regularly used in this context).⁶⁰ “Take away this Sacrament from the Church,” exclaims Bonaventure, “and what is left in the world besides error and unbelief? The Christian people would be scattered like a herd of swine and given to idolatry. . . . Instead, by the presence of this Sacrament, the Church stands firm, faith is strengthened, the Christian religion and divine worship are kept alive.”⁶¹

Little wonder, then, that concerns about priests who were aberrant in one way or another (because they were known fornicators, heretics, schismatics, excommunicates, or whatever) came into sharp focus in discussion of the minister who confected the sacrament of the altar and of the correct manner of its ministration. From our point of view, therefore, this body of doctrine affords a crucial means of placing the specific responsibilities of the preacher within the cultural construction of clerical privilege and prerogative in general. Here is a controversial site on which all the major academic theologians of the later Middle Ages worked out their rationalizations of the power of the priesthood and sought to consolidate their control over Christian belief. The ideological structure they built seems solid and secure. But it had weak spots—soon to be put under extreme pressure by the arguments of John Wyclif and the followers who often transformed rather than merely transmitted his thought in vulgari. More foundationally, Peter Lombard himself, the Master of the Sentences, had raised but failed to resolve a burning issue, which was to trouble generation after generation of his commentators, concerning the limits of the sacerdotal capacity for confection and the point at which it may cease to exist.

Sin versus Sacrament: Evil Ministers of the Mass

The highly influential Summa theologiae which was begun by Alexander of Hales O.F.M. and completed by others after his death in 1245 provides an excellent point of departure, given the popularity it enjoyed and the fact that Alexander was the schoolman who inaugurated at Paris the tradition of lecturing on Peter Lombard’s Sentences.⁶² In this Summa the question is posed, can a priest who lives an evil life consecrate the Eucharist? It would seem so, according to Augustine: “Within the Catholic Church, in the mystery of the Lord’s body and blood, nothing greater is done by a good priest, nothing less is done by a bad priest.” In fact, these words are not Augustine’s, but he had said identical things in his writings against the Donatists,⁶³ though there the crucial sacrament was baptism—its universal validity and integrity, the fact that people baptized by members of the Donatist sect did not have to be re-baptized when they came within, or returned to, the fold of orthodox Christianity. Peter Lombard alleges this auctoritas in his defense of the Eucharist confected by the evil minister; its strong anti-Donatist message ensured it would be reiterated again and again in scholastic discussions of all kinds of aberrant priest.⁶⁴ “Donatism” is not, it should be noted, the lead concept or banner headline in such discussion; the situation is rather that issues which originated (or at least received full attention) in that ancient controversy were recuperated and redeployed within the scheme of a textbook which became essential reading for every trainee theologian. No matter what the usage of the term may have been, the relevant arguments were very well known.

For the moment let us stay with the Alexandri summa and some of the “contrary opinions” it sets against the proposition that the deviant priest can consecrate the Eucharist. If God confers his benefits on the worthy, there seems no reason to doubt that He withdraws them from the unworthy (Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 are brought in as supporting evidence); furthermore, anyone who misuses power deserves to lose it, and this principle applies to both divine and human law. The Summa’s response is that a bad priest has the potestas conficiendi as much as a good one, (pseudo-) Augustine being quoted at more length: “it is not by the merits of the consecrator that the sacrament is wrought, but by the Creator’s word and the power of the Holy Spirit.” But, is not a bad priest improperly disposed under his Lord God, and thus not functioning with the necessary divine power? This objection is dismissed with the statement that even though such a man is deficient in goodness of life, nevertheless he is properly disposed by dint of holy orders and office. Whatever he lacks, Christ will supply.

Thomas Aquinas takes the same line, emphasizing that “the priest consecrates this sacrament, not by his own powers, but as Christ’s minister in whose person he acts.”⁶⁵ One does not cease to be Christ’s minister because one is wicked, “for the Lord has good and bad ministers as servants.” The fact that “a man may be Christ’s minister even though he be not righteous” is deemed to be “part of Christ’s greatness”; He receives service from both good and bad, since by His providence all such actions “are to His glory.” Of course, persons who are blemished should not approach the altar. But “this does not prevent them from offering a true sacrifice if they do.” But what, then, may be said concerning Malachi 2:2, “I will curse your blessings”? (This is an auctoritas of crucial importance in scholastic confrontation of the evil minister and the consequences of his actions, to which we shall be returning again and again.)⁶⁶ And the view of Dionysius the Areopagite that the words uttered by one who has fallen away from the priestly order cannot rightly be called prayers? Aquinas’s answer is that “the blessing of a sinful priest inasmuch as he acts unworthily is deserving of a curse,” and is reputed a blasphemy rather than a prayer, “yet inasmuch as it is pronounced in the person of Christ it is holy and effective for salvation.” The crucial point, then, is that valid consecration of the Eucharist is not dependent on the life (whether good or bad) of the celebrant but rather on divine power and authority, the requisite amount and type of which is conferred on the priest at his ordination.⁶⁷ In sum, an admirably succinct refutation of the fundamentals of Donatism.

To be sure, the evil-living priest who dares to consecrate while in a state of mortal sin brings down the divine wrath upon his own head. This is made abundantly clear in Bonaventure’s Tractatus de praeparatione ad missam. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31), which is what happens to those who approach the altar without due contrition, a firm intention to amend, and proper confession of sins.⁶⁸ “Alas, how many today are those wretched priests who, unmindful of their salvation, partake of the Body of Christ at the altar as if they were eating the flesh of a mere animal; and who, entangled and contaminated by abominations—which it would be indecent to mention—are not afraid of touching and kissing with their criminal hands and their polluted lips the Son of God and of the Virgin Mary!”⁶⁹ Even worse is the fact that “in our days” some priests have reached “such utter perversion and irrationality (perversitatem et stultitiam)” as to imagine that their “crimes and impure sins, which they repeat every day and intend to repeat,” will be expiated, without penance or confession having been performed, by the mere fact of their daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Cleanliness of mind must be assured—and also of body. Here Bonaventure has in mind not only “willful impurity, which is a mortal sin, but also any nocturnal or accidental stain,” which is definitely a possible impediment to the celebration of Mass if one is celebrating voluntarily, i.e., if the priest had the option of excusing himself from approaching the altar, there being no “grave necessity or binding command” to necessitate and justify his involvement. However, if the nocturnal emission was genuinely accidental, and not the result of “previous impure desires or excessive drinking,” then it may be said that “the soul is not seriously befouled by the memory and imagination of carnal dreams.”⁷⁰ But there is no ambiguity about what awaits the individual who is guilty of some impurity in his soul or flesh: “Out of sheer disgust, Christ vomits such a man, and expels him as an evil-smelling corpse to be devoured by wild beasts and birds of prey. He abandons this unfruitful soul to the devil’s tortures . . .”⁷¹

None of this, however, is the recipient’s problem.⁷² No matter how much the wicked celebrant has incurred the divine wrath, there is no question whatever of the validity of his sacrament in itself. This point is made abundantly clear in a host of quaestiones, the discussions of Albert the Great (c. 1200–1280), Bonaventure, and Aquinas being among the most cogent.⁷³ Is the mass of a bad priest worth less than the mass of a good priest? Albert and Bonaventure cite (pseudo-) Augustine’s anti-Donatist statement that in confecting the Eucharist, “nothing greater is done by a good priest, nothing less is done by a bad priest” (cf. p. 55 above). Bonaventure adds that if one priest’s mass is said to be better than another’s, this would give some men the impression that they had, so to speak, a better deal than other people, which would be inconveniens—an inappropriate and unfitting idea. Both theologians firmly distinguish between the substantial and the additional aspects of the mass. In respect to the former, that being the confection of the body and blood of Christ, there is utter uniformity and equity between priests. In respect to the latter, the work of man rather than of God (as Albert puts it), there is inequality—and from that point of view the mass of the good priest may be regarded as better.⁷⁴ Those additional aspects or “adjuncts” which can admit of inequality include such things as petitions, prayers, obsecrations, and the manner of devotion and devout affection. The Mass of a good priest is more stimulating in the arousal of devotion.⁷⁵ Albert emphasizes that in no way does he wish to censure anyone for preferring to hear the good priest’s Mass, because “frequently the bad man irreverently treats the body of Christ”—for example, by covering it with a dirty cloth or leaving it unattended on the altar. Similarly, Bonaventure remarks that “if a person more willingly hears the mass of the more devout priest, I believe that he acts well, providing he believes that, as far as the substantial aspect is concerned, this priest does not far exceed the sinner; otherwise he [that person] would err perilously.”⁷⁶

Aquinas also addresses the issue of the quality of priestly prayer,⁷⁷ citing the Decretum as stating that “the worthier the priest the more readily is he heard in the needs for which he prays.” The authority of Augustine would seem to go against this, he notes, inasmuch as the saint says that “the wickedness of ministers cannot redound to Christ’s mysteries.”⁷⁸ In resolving this apparent contradiction, Aquinas contrasts the sacrament itself with “the prayers offered therein for the living and the dead.” As far as the sacrament is concerned, “the mass of a bad priest is worth no less than the mass of a good priest, for by both the same sacrament is wrought.” In this case, an individual’s “private evil” (malum privatum) cannot harm anyone else. As far as the prayers are concerned, however, a further distinction must be made. “In so far as they have efficacy from the devotion of the priest who prays” then there is no doubt that the prayers of a better priest are more fruitful. But, “in so far as they are said in the person of the whole Church, of which the priest is the minister,” it must be said that “the prayers even of a sinful priest are fruitful” and this includes not only the prayers of the mass but also the other prayers he says while performing his ecclesiastical office. In contrast, his “private” prayers are not fruitful.⁷⁹

The level of consensus here reached concerning the substance of the mass and the adjuncta of personal prayers is striking, the standards and methodologies of analysis remarkably uniform. And yet: in the event it did not take much pressure to reveal the cracks in the edifice. By way of example, we may consider the Lollard treatise De precationis sacris—not from an extreme wing of Wycliffite thought, by any means, but thus all the more indicative of how relatively small conceptual shifts could produce quite strikingly different—and threatening—results.⁸⁰ The prayers of the wicked are here said to be an abomination to the Lord (cf. Isaiah 1:10); indeed, “preire wiþouten goode dede is nout.”⁸¹ Therefore when a priest who is “out of good lif and charite” dares to say mass, “he etiþ and drynkiþ his owen dampnacion.” That is perfectly orthodox, as is the idea that “a cursed man doþ fully þe sacramentis, þou it be to his dampnynge, for þei ben not autouris [authors] of þes sacramentis, but God kepiþ þat dygnyte to hymself.”⁸² The anonymous writer, however, angrily attacks the suggestion that this same valorization might apply to the prayers of wicked priests: “þe fend techiþ a newe glose, to seie þat þou men ben not worþi to be herd in preisynge for here owene good lif, it here preiere is herd in merit of holy Chirche, for þey ben procuratours of þe Chirche. Certis þis is a foul soffyme [sophism], a foul and a sotil discet [deceit] of Anticristis clerkes, to coloure here synne þerbi.” The implication here is that such “discet” makes the evil priest utterly untrustworthy, not a fit guide for those people who seek “a trewe servaunt of God, and clene of lif, and devout, to helpe hem aenst here synnis and combraunce of þe fend.”

The author of De precationis sacris quotes canon law copiously to make the point that no-one should hear the mass of a priest who publicly and “wiþouten ony doute” keeps a concubine. Such evil individuals must not “entre into holy Chirche, and seie masse”—but if they presume to do so, their congregations “schullen not here her servyce.”⁸³ The strident totalizing of such statements opens up the prospect of layfolk boycotting church services if they do not approve of the ministers who are officiating at them—a far cry from the restrained manner in which, for example, Thomas Aquinas tackled the question, “is it lawful to receive communion from or assist at masses of heretical, schismatic, or sinful priests?”⁸⁴ Here Augustine is quoted as saying, “one should not shun God’s sacrament be the man good or bad.”⁸⁵ After all, sinners, heretics, and excommunicates seem to have the power to effect a valid sacrament. Is this true also, Aquinas then asks, of the priest who is a fornicator? On the one hand, it is not forbidden to hear the masses of priests who have sinned in far worse ways—so why should the fornicator be singled out for rejection? On the other, according to canon law a man should not hear the mass of a priest “whom he knows beyond doubt keeps a concubine.”⁸⁶ In resolving the problem, Aquinas affirms that, while all these kinds of sinful priests do have the power of consecrating the Eucharist, they do not rightly exercise it, and sin in so doing.⁸⁷ If the Church has specifically debarred them from performing such a priestly function, then no-one should participate in it, whether as assistant or recipient—otherwise they commit sin. Until such times as the Church’s sentence is pronounced, however, it is quite lawful to receive communion from them and assist at their mass. What, then, of the fornicator in particular? There are indeed worse sins than fornication, yet men are more prone to it “owing to the lusts of the flesh. Consequently this sin is particularly forbidden to priests by the Church, lest anyone assist at the mass of one living in concubinage.” But Aquinas is anxious to point out that “this is to be understood of one who is notorious (notorio), either from being convicted and sentenced, or ‘by an acknowledgement of guilt in judicial form, or by plain evidence of the facts from which he cannot shuffle away.’”⁸⁸

His teacher Albert the Great had stated that no-one should hear the mass of a deviant priest (whether a heretic, simoniac, or schismatic) who was notorious—here defined as one who had admitted his guilt in the presence of a judge or had it legally proved by a witness.⁸⁹ And, if a person hears such a deviant’s mass with full knowledge of his deviancy, then that person sins mortally; if this is done in ignorance, of course, a more lenient view may be taken. Concerning the fornicator, Albert continues, the same distinction between what is “notorious” and what is “secret” (occultus) applies; an individual who is infamous for his vice should have the full rigor of the law applied to him, and following his trial, his mass should not be heard. Before such a sentence is passed, however, the fornicator-priest may be listened to—and anyone who does not do so is a contumax, an obstinate or unyielding person. A high standard of proof is here being applied. And the judgment of such deviants rests with the ecclesiastical authorities; congregations cannot, so to speak, take the law into their own hands.

Again, apparently a seamless web of orthodox consensus on a controversial issue. Behind this, however, lay an embarrassing fact. Peter Lombard had sharply distinguished between fornicator priests and those who were heretics and excommunicates, apparently believing that members of the latter group were unable to confect the Eucharist: “Indeed, those who are excommunicated, or manifestly designated as heretics, do not appear to be able to confect this sacrament, even though they are priests.”⁹⁰ If he thought otherwise, as some apologists have suggested, then all one can say is that he made a thoroughly bad job of expressing his personal opinion. What happens in the relevant passage in the Sentences is, in my view, due to Peter’s (perfectly understandable) desire to deny the validity of sacraments performed outside the Church. Hence he makes great play with the Lord’s statement as reported at Malachi 2:2, “I will curse your blessings”: if the blessings of such deviants are cursed, how much more so is their host!⁹¹ (There is a major irony in the fact that this doctrine is attributed—quite falsely—to St. Augustine, the theologian who had done so much to accommodate the sacrament of baptism as conferred by one particular group of heretics, the Donatists.) Thus the Lombard left a legacy of toil and trouble for the legions of students who were obliged to comment on his Sentences as part of their theological training. Albert the Great tackled the problem with typical directness. “The Master says this falsely in his text,” he declares; “the Master is not to be supported.”⁹² “The divine sacraments require in their maker” only ordo and intentio—that is, the holy orders whereby one is a Christian minister and the correct intention or genuine objective of making the sacrament in question. And that is the truth of the matter, Albert asserts. Certain doctors may hold the view that heretics, schismatics, simoniacs, or open fornicators cannot confect the Eucharist, but they are simply wrong (“simpliciter falsum est quod dicunt . . .”).

Albert does soften his stance somewhat in proceeding to suggest that the Lombard may be supported if it is assumed that he is talking of heretics and people living outside the Church who do not follow the Christian manner and rite of celebrating the sacraments. However, to be on the safe side Albert devotes a (short) quaestio specifically to the meaning of Malachi 2:2, “Maledicam benedictionibus vestris.”⁹³ That word vestris proves crucial— it is plural and therefore must refer to the blessings of mere mortals rather than to the sacraments of the singular God. En passant Albert asks, which of two equally evil priests sins the worse, the one who celebrates with full knowledge of his mortal sin, or the other who, terrified, only pretends to celebrate?⁹⁴ His answer is that it is the first, because he has contempt for the sacrament and, insofar as he has the power to do so, defiles it.

Such underlying controversy may help us to understand why the distinction between sin which is known or “notorious” and sin which is secret⁹⁵— a distinction which, as we have seen, appeared frequently in discussion of the officium praedicatoris—has in this case hardened into a matter of public legal pronouncements, of sentences duly passed by a church court, which bar a priest from carrying out some or all of the duties of his office. Indeed, it is remarkable how often the same arguments, with the same discourses pro and contra, appear and reappear in the Lombard-commentators’ discussion of various aspects of priestly power and responsibilities, as the Donatist threat (if we may be permitted this shorthand phrase) is addressed and averted. In particular, the methods of analyzing and resolving difficulties which are characteristic of discussions of the confection of the Eucharist (as reviewed above) are often paralleled in discussions concerning the ministration of baptism. This is hardly surprising, given that the Lombard had provided parallel discussions of the deviant minister of the Eucharist (with the schismatic or heretical priest being left problematic) and the deviant minister of baptism (with the universal validity of this sacrament being defended, in terms which recall, and sometimes actually draw upon, Augustine’s anti-Donatist writings).

Furthermore, given that these sacraments vied with each other in terms of order of importance, much effort was put into their complementary definition. Thomas Aquinas summed up the matter neatly by explaining that in absolute terms, the sacrament of the Eucharist is the greatest, but if viewed from the point of view of necessity (ex parte necessitatis), it must be said that baptism is the most important.⁹⁶ “Baptism is necessary absolutely and unconditionally”;⁹⁷ no-one can be saved without it, and hence if a priest is not present, the task may be delegated to others. Indeed, in extreme situations—as when, for example, a newborn child is at the point of death—it can be conferred by a layman, indeed by a lay woman (an old woman, they often say), or even by a heretic, a schismatic, or a non-Christian. In this special circumstance any water will do; it does not have to be holy water. But the proper form of words is essential—of far greater importance than who says them. The power to baptize, then, was conferred very widely, in marked contrast to the power of confection and the power of absolution within the tribunal of penance. And this was justified by its special, indeed unique, importance.

Vetula baptizat, et baptizatum est: The Power to Baptize

In bringing out that special importance, the Parisian dominican Peter of Tarantasia (who was elected Pope Innocent V shortly before his death in 1276)⁹⁸ asked questions of a form familiar to us from our discussion of the sacrament of the altar: can baptism be conferred by evil ministers?⁹⁹ and, may a better baptism be had from a better minister?¹⁰⁰ In part adapting materials which Aquinas had used in his more general quaestio, “can the sacraments be conferred by evil ministers?”¹⁰¹ Peter puts forward these opinions: a bad man is not a fit minister of the sacrament of baptism, a dead member does not serve others as an effective channel, and no-one can serve two masters (cf. Matthew 6:24), the devil and Christ together. Hence an evil minister cannot confer baptism. On the other hand, Peter continues, Augustine says that baptism may be given by a man who is a drunkard, a murderer, given to whatever evil (this actually follows Peter Lombard’s review of the problem). And it is held that in extremis baptism can be conferred by a Jew, a pagan, or a heretic: therefore it can be conferred by any type of sinner.

Peter’s responsio explains that certain things pertain to the substance of the sacrament while others pertain to propriety, i.e., the behavior which is appropriate for its conferral. If substantial things are lacking, the sacrament is not valid; if things relating to propriety are lacking, the sacrament is unaffected. Furthermore, in time of necessity probity is relatively unimportant, and as far as the “dead member” is concerned, the influx involved is not internal (relating to the person’s own spiritual situation) but external, as coming from God. Besides, in certain actions to be a servant of the devil is to serve God, or to be his minister. But does an evil minister really confer an effective sacrament? Ecclesiasticus 34:4 rightly asks, “who can be made clean by the unclean?” An evil minister is not an effective mediator; and nothing can give what it hasn’t got itself. Against all this, however, is the argument that water may be conducted to the plains by a stone channel;¹⁰² similarly, grace may be conveyed by a bad minister to the recipients of the sacrament. Furthermore, an individual’s salvation should not be dependent on the life of someone else. And a doctor who has a corporeal infirmity is nevertheless able to cure someone else corporeally; the same is true of the spiritual doctor, who effects spiritual healing.

Can a better baptism be had from a better minister? After all, the better the agent the better the action. A multiplicity of causes results in a multiplicity of effects; when a holy man baptizes, the cause of grace is multiplied and therefore the effect is multiplied, and should not one desire as many good effects as possible? Furthermore, whoever is more enlightened is better able to enlighten others, and the more learned person is better able to teach others. However, as Augustine says, a better person does not give better baptism. This actually follows Peter Lombard’s own statement, “Nec melior est baptismus qui per meliorem datur,” which the Lombard had backed up with a summary of part of Augustine’s fifth tractate on the Gospel of John.¹⁰³ Furthermore, Peter of Tarantasia continues, a good minister does not dispense better alms than a bad one. And, if the evil of a bad minister doesn’t diminish the effect of his baptism, therefore the goodness of a good one doesn’t augment the goodness of his. Peter’s utterly predictable answer is that in substantial matters the operation of a good minister isn’t of greater value than a good one, because God here operates as auctor, and the man as mere minister.

Peter then moves on to ask if baptism can be given by those who do not have holy orders, whether lay people or angels.¹⁰⁴ His responsio brings out the fact that baptism is the sacrament of maximum necessity, because neither children nor adults may be saved without it. In extremis any kind of water suffices for baptism, and any man can give it. Indeed, Peter had said a little earlier that in the case of necessity even an old woman (vetula) can perform an efficacious baptism.¹⁰⁵ That view was commonplace. Albert the Great, for instance, had affirmed that “When an old woman baptizes, the baptism actually does take place” (vetula baptizat, et baptizatum est), emphasizing that in casu necessitatis the person performing this rite does not have to be of the masculine sex, have holy orders or jurisdiction, or be living a good life.¹⁰⁶ However, no-one actually recommended this course of action, or thought for a moment that it should be the norm. Ideally, an ordained minister should do the deed, just as proper holy water should be used, as Peter of Tarantasia (typically) emphasizes. He sums up by saying that the bestowal of baptism may be justified on two grounds: either with reference to authoritative office, which applies solely to a priest, or ex iuris permissione (i.e., in accordance with what is legally permitted), which applies to others, chiefly in case of necessity. But what about angels? They cannot baptize or consecrate ex officio, Peter explains, but only by special divine mandate. And, the angel in question must be a good one— in this very special case, it would seem, individual goodness does matter after all.

As far as lay people are concerned, however, personal virtue or vice is irrelevant in the emergency conferral of baptism. The schoolmen are utterly unanimous on that point, and there is little variation in how the issue is handled.¹⁰⁷ However, Thomas Aquinas isolates and treats separately the specific question, can a woman baptize?¹⁰⁸ He begins by quoting the Council of Carthage’s prohibition: “A woman, no matter how learned and holy, should not presume to teach men in public assembly or to baptize others.”¹⁰⁹ Given that it is perfectly clear that women cannot teach publicly (it being “shameful for a woman to speak in church”; I Corinthians 14:35), it would seem that they cannot baptize either. Moreover, baptism belongs to the prelatical office (the officium praelationis), and thus should be dispensed by priests who have the cure of souls. Because women cannot hold this office (“I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men”; I Timothy 2:12), they lack the authority to baptize. Aquinas then embarks on a somewhat bizarre excursus. In the spiritual rebirth of baptism “water seems to take the place of the maternal womb.” But the person who baptizes “seems rather to have the task of father (patris officium)”: this is not fitting for a woman, and therefore a woman cannot baptize. This assertion is set up only to be knocked down, of course, but its deficiency as an argument is particularly glaring: a woman’s material possession of a womb means that a body-metaphor relating to spiritual matters works against her, destroying her case to be allowed to baptize.

Not one of Aquinas’s better moments. Still, he does invoke the contrast between the material and the spiritual in his response. In human generation, male and female function in accordance with their different natures, the male being active and the female passive. “So a woman cannot be the active principle of generation but the passive only.” But in spiritual generation people work not by their own powers but as instruments of the power of Christ, and therefore both men and women can baptize in casu necessitatis. One might interrogate this position further, and ask, if in certain spiritual matters men and women operate not in accordance with their different and distinctive natures but as the equal instruments of a higher agency, is there not a basis here for treating male and female equally in respect of their right to preach and indeed to confect the Eucharist?

But of course Aquinas does not go down that route; for that sort of argument we will have to await the Lollard theology of Walter Brut and John Purvey (as discussed in Chapter 3 below). What Aquinas does say here is that a woman, although not permitted to teach publicly (publice docere), can nevertheless “instruct and admonish privately” (potest tamen privata doctrina vel monitione aliquem instruere): on the same argument, while she may not baptize publicly and solemnly she can baptize “in case of necessity.” For the purposes of this argument, then, baptism in necessitate is put on a par with private teaching. And the emphasis is very much on what is permissible in the most extreme of circumstances. If there is a capable layman present, then he should perform the baptism rather than a woman; if there is a cleric present the layman should defer to him; and of course if an ordained priest is available, he must do the job. Aquinas cites I Corinthians 11:3 in justification: “the head of a woman is man and the head of man is Christ.” So, if and only if there is no supposedly superior individual available, should a woman act. The rigidity of this hierarchical system somewhat undermines the apparent inclusiveness of the auctoritates with which Aquinas had started his responsio. There it had been affirmed that Christ principally baptizes, so the person of whatever sex “on whom you see the spirit descend and remain” (John 1:33) can perform the physical action, particularly in view of the fact that “in Christ there is neither male nor female” (Galatians 3:28). The force of that Galatians passage was further circumscribed and muted when orthodox theologians came to ponder the question of whether women can preach, as we shall see.

Indeed, many of the thirteenth-century quaestiones on the proper ministry of the sacraments have a curiously prophetic quality—they indicate the shape of things to come in late-medieval England. This need not surprise us, given that the Church had considerable experience of dealing with earlier versions of heresies espoused by Wyclif and his followers, within Catharism and Waldensianism.¹¹⁰ Certain “contrary opinions” which were canvassed in the course of the affirmation of orthodoxy, allowed a brief span of life within the firmly controlled thought structure of the quaestio, were to return to haunt the establishment. Excellent examples are afforded by discussions of the relationship between the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist included in the Alexandri summa¹¹¹ and Bonaventure’s Sentences commentary,¹¹² particularly since both address the issue of the moral goodness of the person administering the sacraments, whether priest or layman. The Alexandri summa lists inter alia the following arguments against the proposition that priests alone can confect the Eucharist. The works of a man who is just and good are pleasing to God, so why can’t he consecrate? Also, the sinner loses all dignity, and if such dignity is necessary for consecration, then surely the just layman possesses the potestas consecrandi? If the unjust priest is said to have this power, does not the just layman have it to an even greater extent? Then there is the telling parallel with the sacrament of baptism. Priests are given this power ex officio, yet nevertheless if a lay person baptizes, the sacrament is efficacious. Although priests have the power of baptizing, laymen can do it also: so, the same argument would seem to apply to the consecration of the Eucharist. Since the power of baptizing is widely granted, so also should be the power of consecration. At I Peter 2:9 God says to all just men, “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood”; it follows that priestly privilege belongs to all just men, and hence they can consecrate.¹¹³

Naturally, the Alexandri summa gives these arguments short shrift. Unjust priests do possess the potestas consecrandi: after all, the works of the unjust may actually may be pleasing to God, as when they afflict those who have turned away from Him. Then again, while it’s true that whatever the just man does is pleasing to God, his justice does not enable him to consecrate—holy orders are required. Concerning dignity, it may be said there are two kinds: dignity of merit and dignity of office or authority. If a priest lacks the dignity of personal merit he does nevertheless possess the dignity of office and authority; on the contrary, the just layman lacks the dignity of office and authority though he enjoys the dignity of merit. But the power of consecrating depends on the power of authority and not on the power of personal merit, and hence the just layman cannot consecrate. What, then, of the analogy with baptism? The answer is that this is a quite different case. Baptism is a sacramentum necessitatis, and thus, although the office of baptizing is given spiritually to priests, it is conceded to everyone in time of need. The Alexandri summa is unequivocal in its affirmation that the power of consecrating belongs to priests alone, because it is related to sacerdotal orders. This is the teaching of the church, as transmitted by the Apostles who were instructed by Christ Himself, and anyone who asserts otherwise is deviating from the truth of the faith.

In similar vein, Bonaventure claims that this is a matter of faith, as received from the Apostles and from the Lord Himself. The sacrament of the altar is held in great reverence and hence only specially commissioned persons may legally dispense it. Such a commission rests on one of two possible bases, sanctity or authority. Heretics (obviously Bonaventure has Donatists in mind here) say it depends on sanctity. But that raises a major difficulty: in the case of a bad priest’s mass one could not be sure if the Eucharist was certainly made, and our salvation would be dependent on the goodness of another. However, if the commission rests on authority, and of course Bonaventure believes that this is the case, it is evident that authority can be granted to the bad as well as the good—auctoritas potest tam bonis quam malis concedi. Both bad and good priests possess the authority of holy orders, and hence both can confect the Eucharist.

But if a lay person can baptize, why can’t he confect? Bonaventure’s predictable answer is that unlike things are being compared here, because baptism is the primary sacrament, and necessary for salvation, and not held in such veneration as is the sacrament of the altar. He had given space to the contrary opinion that “The good layman is more worthy to be a minister of God than the impious priest”: magis dignus est ministrare Deo bonus laicus quam impius sacerdos. If at the invocation of a bad priest God converts bread into body, surely this is done far more securely on the word of a good layman? This argument is rejected on the grounds that individual goodness is not crucial for the power of consecrating, whereas authority is—and priests possess such authority by reason of the character (an imprint, mark, or stamp) which they receive at ordination.

At least some of Wyclif’s followers were not willing to accept that the argument from character resolved all the problems attendant on conceding authority to good and bad alike, suspecting that what was at stake was indeed a matter of personal sanctity. Some went so far as to claim that the virtue of the Eucharist was in some way related to the virtue of the priest who had confected it, a potentially Donatist viewpoint which some of Wyclif’s own (rather more subtle) remarks in De Eucharistia could easily have been taken as supporting.¹¹⁴ A related Lollard view was that the works of a righteous layman are worth a lot more than those of the bad priest; indeed, just men are ipso facto a chosen race, members of the royal priesthood (to adopt the idiom of I Peter 2:9). In such arguments, the fact that baptism can be conferred by a lay person, whether male or female (albeit in necessitate), is seen as a weak link in the orthodox theologians’ case, insofar as it opens up the possibility of people other than officially ordained priests having sacramental power and authority.¹¹⁵ Clearly, the comparison between the sacrament of the altar and baptism was troubling inasmuch as it raised the specter of the legality of lay ministry of all the sacraments. But the theologians had two powerful weapons in their armory, namely, the doctrines of the priestly character and the power of the keys.

What exactly made a priest so special? At ordination he received an imprint or character which indicated that he was marked off to perform certain spiritual functions. “It has been customary,” Aquinas explains, “that whenever anyone is deputed to some definite function he is marked off for it by means of some sign.” Thus “in ancient times” soldiers on enlistment for military service were “marked with some form of physical ‘character’ in recognition of the fact that they were deputed for some function in the physical sphere. In the same way, therefore, when in the sacraments men are deputed for some function in the spiritual sphere pertaining to the worship of God, it naturally follows that as believers they are marked off by some form of spiritual character.”¹¹⁶ Thus the sacrament of ordination—which was instituted by Christ himself—leaves a particular imprint on the soul, which indicates that those in holy orders are marked off to perform certain spiritual functions. It is not in itself a sanctifying gift, being of a legal and official nature rather than a moral one. Empowered by the character a man can enjoy all the privileges and carry out all the duties of priesthood, including preaching and the ministry of the sacraments.

Once a priest, always a priest; having been conferred, the character is there to stay. This is made abundantly clear in the many quaestiones which defend the validity of that supreme sacrament, the Eucharist, as confected by the priest who has become either a heretic, schismatic, or excommunicate. The Alexandri summa canvasses the various opinions in some detail.¹¹⁷ Some say the consecration of a heretic is not valid. Others believe that a notorious heretic who has been damned by the Church cannot consecrate, whereas a man who is secretly a heretic can do so. Others say that heretics can consecrate because, although they are separated from the Church, they retain their priestly orders, which give them the necessary power. The last of these views is affirmed by the Alexandri summa, which enlists the support of Augustine, who argued that just as baptism remains in such men, so too their holy orders remain entire.¹¹⁸ A comparison is offered with the situation of a married couple who separate. Their marriage is not dissolved, even though they are cut off from conjugal works. Aquinas draws on the same passage from Augustine, adding the saint’s statement that when those separated from the church return to it they are not reordained, indicating that they had not lost the power to consecrate. Of course, during their period of separation they did not act rightly, and sinned, if they consecrated: but that does not mean that their sacrament was invalid. Discussing the situation of the canonically degraded priest, Aquinas affirms the indelible nature of the character or sacramental imprint which the priest receives at his ordination.¹¹⁹ This is “perpetual, and cannot either be lost or repeated”; more specifically, it cannot be taken away by a bishop, just as “neither can he who baptizes take away the baptismal character.”

To sum up: the position generally held was that a lay person can (in extremis, to be sure) confer the sacrament of baptism, imposing its distinctive, and permanent, character; however, since he lacks the character of ordination, that same layman is unable to consecrate the sacrament of the altar. On the other hand, the sacraments—including the confection of the Eucharist—which an ordained priest administers, are equally genuine whether they are administered by an evil priest or one who lives a holy life and is in good legal standing. Anyone can baptize if need be; even an old woman—that extreme test-case—could do it. Vetula baptizat, et baptizatum est.¹²⁰ But only a priest should do it. The ecclesiastical hierarchy is duly affirmed, its power maintained through that most exclusive of sacraments, the sacrament of holy orders.

Authority and Agency in the Tribunal of Penance

With the bestowal of the character came the gift of the power of the keys,¹²¹ as bequeathed by Christ to St. Peter and his successors in perpetuity: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). This awesome legacy constituted the very basis of Christian priesthood, and legions of schoolmen sought to comprehend its grave responsibilities and celebrate its high prestige. “We have no doubt that we must entertain the most magnificent and lofty sentiments about the keys of the Church, their power and their priestly office,” says William of Auvergne (d. 1249), who taught first arts and then theology at the University of Paris and became Bishop of Paris in 1228. “For the keys have been given to the Church and their office and power to priests for the purpose of dispensing the riches of God’s mercy,” that they might make them open to those who knock, and lead in those who wish to enter.¹²² Pope John XXII succinctly defined the keys as “a special power of binding and loosing by which the ecclesiastical judge should receive the worthy into the kingdom of heaven and exclude the unworthy therefrom.”¹²³ But is the door of heaven not already open to Christians, especially in view of the fact that Christ Himself is the door (cf. John 10:7)? Yes indeed, explains Aquinas; the door of heaven “considered in itself ” is indeed open, but it is said to be closed to someone in the sense of there being some obstacle which prevents entry. That obstacle is sin, both original and actual. “Hence we need the sacraments and the keys of the Church.”¹²⁴ The sacrament of baptism removed original sin; the sacrament of penance was there to effect absolution from the guilt of sin (culpa) as committed by errant mortals after baptism. In the “tribunal of penance,” the penitent has to do his part, in being sincerely sorry for his sins and wishing to make amends, and the priest must do his, in judging the spiritual state of the sinner and, if he thinks fit, pronouncing the formula of absolution and imposing an appropriate punishment. On the part of the minister, the sacrament presupposes, in the first instance, valid reception of the order of priesthood. Not even the pope himself, declares Peter of la Palud O.P. (c. 1275/80–1342),¹²⁵ can give a nonpriest the power of absolution in foro poenitentiali. Second, it requires legal jurisdiction over the recipient; hence a priest is not supposed to hear the confessions of people who do not belong to his diocese. On the part of the recipient, the sacrament presupposes contrition, confession, and at least the promise of satisfaction. Generations of theologians agonized about the respective roles of priest and penitent in the remissio peccatorum.

Peter Lombard had, not for the first or last time, presented a crucial theological problem in a challenging way. He describes remission of sin as a gift of God that is given in the contrition stage of penance, before confession or satisfaction: “in contritione iam deletum sit peccatum.”¹²⁶ Sins are effaced by contrition and humility of heart, without oral confession of the mouth and payment of the external penalty.¹²⁷ No-one who has a contrite and humble heart lacks charity, and he who has charity is worthy of eternal life.¹²⁸ Thus he is not freed afterward from eternal wrath by the priest to whom he confesses, since he was already freed from it by the Lord. God alone cleanses a man inwardly from the stain of sin, and absolves him from the debt of eternal punishment. True, priests have the power of the keys, but this does not mean that a priest has power to absolve from sin (a peccato), that is from guilt (culpa), so that he wipes away the stain of sin.¹²⁹ That does happen in the sacrament of penance, to be sure; what is at issue is the part played by the priest. According to the Lombard, that role is declarative: priests merely show men to be bound or loosed, and declare that the guilt of sin has been remitted by God through contrition.¹³⁰ This doctrine has several important concomitants, potentially subversive of sacerdotal authority: in the first instance one should confess to God, and if a priest is not available one may confess to a wise layman.

For all these reasons the Lombard has been termed a “staunch contritionist.”¹³¹ And he certainly differs from those twelfth-century “confessionists” who stressed the importance of the priest’s role in achieving absolution. Gratian, for example, while noting the necessity of contrition, had emphasized the importance of the external, juridical form of confession; “the moment when the penitent’s sins are remitted” being located at “the point when the priest pronounces the words of absolution.”¹³² Yet Peter Lombard was no naive believer in contrition. True, confession should be offered first to God. But, he adds, subsequently it should be offered to a priest, if the sinner has the opportunity to confess—“nor can the sinner otherwise approach the entrance of paradise.”¹³³ “He is not truly penitent who does not have the desire to confess”;¹³⁴ “it does not suffice to confess to God without the priest, nor is the sinner truly humble and penitent if he does not desire and seek the judgment of the priest.”¹³⁵ The full context of his remarks about the substitution of a layman for a priest is particularly revealing. Such a substitution should be done only if a priest is lacking; in general “the examination of a priest should be zealously sought.” And if one does confess to a companion, that action is given value by the evidence it affords of one’s “desire for a priest.”¹³⁶

The Lombard’s thirteenth-century commentators reviewed the competing authorities the magister sententiarum had marshaled, and sought to mitigate the possible dangers of some of his remarks. They had at their disposal the Aristotelian ideology of causality, which offered invaluable discourses relating to instrumentality and the relationship between formal and material causes. Hence Bonaventure could elevate the priest’s absolution as the formal element (the forma sacramenti), with the penitent’s expression of contrition, confession, and satisfaction constituting the material element.¹³⁷ To say that culpa is remitted before the power of the keys operates would be as absurd as saying that the sacrament of baptism operates before the actual baptism has taken place. For Bonaventure, the priest—“he who has the key”—is a necessary mediator between God and man. “Through him the sinner mounts to God, and thus the priest is the mouthpiece of the sinner, speaking on behalf of the sinner; through him God descends to man, and thus the priest is the angel of God, in fact, the mouthpiece of God.”¹³⁸ Similarly, Aquinas argued that the absolution of the priest is the forma sacramenti, and consequently confession, contrition, and satisfaction must in some way constitute the matter of the sacrament.¹³⁹ “God alone on his own authority absolves from sin and pardons sin,”¹⁴⁰ but He uses the instrumentality of absolution which, with confession, contrition, and satisfaction, concurs in obtaining forgiveness, in opening the kingdom of heaven. Delegated power this may be, but it is profound, substantial, indispensable. The Aristotelian theory of causality confers genuine agency on instrumental causes which operate under the primary efficient cause, which in this case is the prime and unmoved mover, God Himself.¹⁴¹

Echoing Peter Lombard, Aquinas argues that the power of forgiving sins was entrusted to priests—“not that they may forgive them by their own power, for this belongs to God, but that, as ministers, they may declare the operation of God who forgives.”¹⁴² Now, such doctrine is very useful in, for example, reassuring the faithful that a priest’s personal wickedness does not destroy his official use of the keys: “the priest is no more than a minister. Therefore he cannot by his wickedness take away from us the gift which God has given through him.”¹⁴³ But this is very different from the Lombard’s restricted sense of the power of the keys, as is manifest by Aquinas’s treatment of the question, “whether holy men who are not priests have the keys.” “No manner how much grace a man may have,” Aquinas affirms, “he cannot produce the effect of the keys, unless he be appointed to that purpose by receiving holy orders.”¹⁴⁴ What, then, of the Lombard’s statement concerning confession to a layman? This may be done in case of necessity, Aquinas admits—but since a priest is not involved this is “not a perfect sacrament,” and only a priest can perfect it. The penitent may well have received forgiveness from God, but “he is not yet reconciled to the Church”; therefore he must confess again to a priest, as soon as there is one at hand.¹⁴⁵ Anyone “who is not a priest can never absolve in the tribunal of penance.”¹⁴⁶ Clearly, the sacramental role of a properly ordained priest, who has received the requisite character and possesses the power of the keys, is crucial. The keys, as Aquinas puts it in the Summa contra gentiles, derive their efficacy from the passion of Christ, and confession was instituted “in order to make the fault of the penitent known to the minister of Christ. The minister, therefore, to whom confession is made must have judiciary power representing Christ, “who was appointed to be the judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42).¹⁴⁷ “For those sinning after baptism there can be no salvation unless they submit themselves to the keys of the Church,” which entails actual confession or the desire to confess when opportunity permits.¹⁴⁸ In this way Aquinas seeks to avoid “the error of some”—no doubt he has the Lombard’s contrary authorities in mind—“who held that a man can achieve forgiveness of sins without confession and without the purpose of confessing”: in fact, one cannot “achieve the remission of his sins without confession and absolution.”¹⁴⁹ Here the priest’s role is clear, his power secure.

It was precisely this power which Wyclif’s followers sought to diminish, and they found an unlikely ally in Peter Lombard, who is quoted with approval in the Lollard Rosarium theologie (a late fourteenth-century compilation).¹⁵⁰ Here “absolucion” is defined “in þre maneres”: “auctoritatiue,” which accords to God alone; “denunciatiue or schewyng of office” which is limited to priests, and “dispositiue or disposyng,” by which a man disposes himself by “verey contricion for to lose his oune bondes of synne.”¹⁵¹ These ideas in themselves are quite orthodox,¹⁵² but in the Rosarium in particular and in Lollard theology in general great emphasis is placed on the direct relationship between the absolving God and the contrite man, with the dispositive role of the priest (“trewe schewyng of Godis absolucion goyng afore”)¹⁵³ either being downplayed or dispensed with entirely. Anti-sacerdotal trends loom large in lists of heretical propositions attributed to Wyclif and his followers. For example, the 1382 Blackfriars council condemned the view that “if a man be truly contrite, all exterior confession is superfluous for him or useless,”¹⁵⁴ while in 1430 Hawisia Moone recanted the belief that “confession shuld be maad oonly to God and to noon oþer prest, for no prest hath poar to remitte synne ne to assoile a man of ony synne.”¹⁵⁵ Richard Wyche (who was arrested by the bishop of Durham c. 1402) believed that if confession is necessary one should not approach a vicious priest, but instead find a discreet confessor who is living a good life. If you confess fully to him, you will be absolved as fully as if St. Peter himself had descended from heaven to perform the absolution!¹⁵⁶ Even more memorably, John Sprat (in 1472) preferred to confess to a tree rather than to a priest.¹⁵⁷

Hawisia Moone was one among many Wycliffites who rejected the priestly power of the keys outright; however, Lollardy being (so to speak) a very broad church, one need not be surprised at the basically orthodox definition of the two keys in the Rosarium theologie, which in this respect remains true to Peter Lombard. They are described as being “of konnyng and of pouer,”¹⁵⁸ the first denoting the priestly authority to interrogate the penitent and thus gain knowledge of the facts of the case, and the second, the authority to grant or refuse absolution. Another understanding of the keys, however, had come to prominence in the thirteenth century, namely, the distinction between the power of order (i.e., power exercised in regard to priestly ministry) and the power of jurisdiction. Aquinas explains that the key of order “reaches to heaven itself directly, by remitting sin and thus removing the obstacles to the entrance into heaven.” And priests alone have this key. The key of jurisdiction, by contrast, may be exercised by those who are not ordained priests, for example, by archdeacons and bishops elect (i.e., who have not yet received holy orders).¹⁵⁹ Women, Aquinas continues, cannot have either key, because “woman is in a state of subjection” (cf. I Timothy 2:11, Titus 2:5), and therefore “she can have no spiritual jurisdiction” since, as Aristotle also says, “it is a corruption of public life (corruptio urbanitatis) when the government comes into the hands of a woman [Ethics viii].” In sum, all priests, no matter how good or bad their personal lives, possess the power of the keys, while no woman, no matter how good, can have it. What, then, of abbesses, who seem to exercise some sort of spiritual power over their subordinates? Somewhat awkwardly, Aquinas adds a rider to the effect that a certain—very limited—use of the keys may be allowed to women in that position, “such as the right to correct other women who are under them, on account of the danger that might threaten if men were to dwell under the same roof.”¹⁶⁰ The prospect of the priestly character being imprinted on a woman was, of course, quite unacceptable within the orthodox late-medieval theology of ordo; a woman’s body was deemed incapable of receiving such a mark of distinction.¹⁶¹

The key of ordo, then, was the key of ministry, as “conferred on priests when by being anointed they receive power from God.”¹⁶² And “the power of orders” was established for “the dispensation of the sacraments.”¹⁶³ The key of jurisdiction functioned differently, and was put to other uses: in particular, it constituted the authority for the issue of indulgences, or “pardons” as they were popularly called in English. Indulgentiae autem facere pertinet ad clavem iurisdictionis, non autem ad clavem ordinis, to quote William Lyndwood (c. 1375–1446),¹⁶⁴ Bishop of St. Davids and right-hand man of Archbishop Chichele in his proceedings against the Lollards.

Since the sacramental forgiveness of sin was believed to extend both to the guilt and to the (potential) eternal punishment thereof in hell, it followed that the Church could also free the penitent from the lesser, “temporal” or temporary punishment (i.e., punishment in this life—as imposed by the priest following confession—and also in purgatory, where sinners were incarcerated for a fixed and finite term).¹⁶⁵ An extra-sacramental means of doing this was devised, in the form of indulgences, the term indulgentia deriving from the Latin verb indulgeo, meaning to be kind or tender: hence indulgences were favors dispensed to the spiritually needy. The pope or bishop who “made” indulgences—the verb facere being commonly used in this context, as is concedere, meaning “to grant”—acted not in any personal manner, but in his official capacity as having jurisdiction within the Church. In other words, he was authorized by his possession of the key of jurisdiction; technically, he did not have to possess the other key (the key of ordo) to perform this specific action, which was not a sacrament and therefore did not require ordination and the priestly character on the part of its maker.

Since Christ left the Church the power to forgive sins (through penance) the power of granting indulgences may be deemed a logical inference. But it was a deeply problematic one—difficult to explain even in the most distinguished schools of medieval theology, and impossible to communicate with sufficient clarity to the public at large (assuming, of course, that those who “published” or preached the terms of references of pardons actually wanted their audiences to know the whole truth). Conflict between the spiritual and the material economies was rife, the depth of confusion extraordinary. Such were the conditions in which the real-life models of Chaucer’s Pardoner thrived.

III. MAKING INDULGENCES: SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL ECONOMIES

An indulgence may be understood as the remission—or, better, the payment by others—of a sinner’s debt of punishment (poena) for sins already forgiven through the sacrament of penance, wherein moral guilt (culpa) was removed. An indulgence, then, was concerned solely with the satisfaction due for the requisite penitential punishment.¹⁶⁶ The debt was paid out of the Church’s vast spiritual treasury, as filled superabundantly with the merits of Christ and His Saints.¹⁶⁷ This may be seen as a development from the Church’s belief in the Communion of Saints and the unity of Christians within Christ’s mystical body. The principle of vicarious satisfaction goes back to the early Church;¹⁶⁸ the practice of saying masses to help the souls of sinners pass the more quickly through purgatorial fires was also of long standing. From the eleventh century onward, however, we have clear evidence of indulgences being granted as remissions in whole or in part of the penance which a priest would normally have imposed—or which he already had imposed—following a person’s confession of his or her sins.¹⁶⁹ Thus, indulgences were believed to alleviate the “temporal” punishments which the sinner would have to undergo whether in this life or in the next—that is, in purgatory (where time existed also).¹⁷⁰ Their power certainly did not extend to the eternal punishments of hell. The “birth” of purgatory¹⁷¹ was utterly essential for the growth of the theology of indulgences.

A sinner could give alms for some charitable work, such as the building and/or upkeep of a hospital, school, or church; in return he or she would receive an indulgence. Indulgences were also granted to those who went on certain approved pilgrimages, visited important churches—or, indeed, served in Palestine in one of the campaigns to recover the Holy Land for Christianity. At the Council of Clermont (1095) it was proclaimed that anyone who had “set forth for the liberation of the Church of God in Jerusalem” who was motivated by “devotion alone, and not for the purpose of gaining honours and wealth” was to have that journey “reckoned in place of all penance.”¹⁷² Urban II exhorted bishops to preach this project to their congregations with eloquence and enthusiasm, thereby ensuring a good supply of “battlers for God’s people”—but he emphasized the importance of confession and true repentance for gaining “speedy pardon from Christ.”¹⁷³ The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 extended this indulgence, granting full pardon of sins—i.e., a plenary indulgence, meaning a release from all poena¹⁷⁴— not only to those who personally went on crusade but also to those who sent “suitable men” at “their own expense and in accordance with their means”; furthermore, some degree of pardon was promised to those who had made a “suitable contribution from their property.” Once again, the “spirit of devotion” which the participants had to possess was insisted upon—but it is difficult to avoid the impression of a sliding scale of pardon which functioned in relation to the amount of material contribution, whether militaristic or monetary, which one was able or willing to offer.

Henry Charles Lea found “grandeur and consolation in this noble theory of the solidarity of mankind for good and not for evil as long as it had not assumed the shape of a fund out of which the Church could arbitrarily for money compound the sins of an individual.”¹⁷⁵ But that is what it seems to have become. True, the traffic in indulgences helped to ensure that churches were constructed or repaired, that schools and hospitals received adequate funding, and the roads and bridges which enabled access to them were well maintained—the practical benefits could be considerable and should be given their due.¹⁷⁶ But the system could all too easily be abused by both high and low, from the supreme pontiff to the lowliest pardoner or priest who had been ordered to advertise the issue of some new indulgence.

“Little can be said about indulgences with certainty,” said Durandus of St. Pourçain O.P. (c. 1275–1334) with masterly understatement, “because nothing is said expressly about them in Scripture.” Besides, the saints, such as Ambrose, Hilary, Augustine, and Jerome, have little to say on the subject.¹⁷⁷ This lack of guidance was exacerbated by many sources of confusion, one of which concerned the distinction between poena and culpa: the very different powers of the two keys (of ordo and of jurisdiction) could easily be muddled. Boniface VIII’s genuine bull promised “the most total forgiveness of all sins” to those who filled the conditions for the indulgence associated with the first Roman Jubilee (1300).¹⁷⁸ Yet contemporary chroniclers went further. The Nuova Cronica of Giovanni Villani (c. 1276–1348) spoke of a “full and entire pardon of all sins . . . both of guilt and punishment (di culpa e di pena),” while the Chronicon Astense of Guglielmo Ventura di Asti (1250–1310?) supposed that all the recipients of the indulgence would be “as free, as from the day of their baptism, of every sin, both from guilt and from punishment (tam a culpa, quam a poena).”¹⁷⁹ Even the doctor resolutus, John Baconthorpe (c. 1290–1346), who rose to become head of the English Carmelites, could make the unwary remark that in a jubilee year the pope may absolve a culpa et a pena, in the course of affirming that simple priests possess the power of penitential absolution but not of full absolution, that being the pope’s prerogative.¹⁸⁰ Catherine of Siena (1347–80) could suppose that the indulgence she had received from “the holy father” himself (in this case Gregory XI) afforded remission from both “sin and punishment” (di colpa e di pane).¹⁸¹ Francis of Meyronnes O.F.M. (c. 1285–after 1328) went so far as to remark that it is commonly taught (“communiter docetur”) that indulgences a pena et a culpa may be granted. In fact, he explains, this cannot be, because culpa is a matter repugnant to indulgences, and can be remitted only through contrition and confession.¹⁸² Similar treatments of the topic are afforded by Bonifatius de Amanatis and William of Montlaudun,¹⁸³ both of whom seek to blame the confusion on a failure of comprehension by the uneducated. According to Bonifatius, the belief that indulgences can deliver absolution a pena et a culpa is a vulgar misunderstanding rather than a legal fact (est non a iure, sed a vulgo), and William speaks of how such remission of sin as was granted by jubilee year indulgences offered absolution merely from pena, though “vulgarly” they were supposed to afford release from both guilt and punishment (vulgo a pena et a culpa dicitur).

Such confusion was, to be sure, often castigated. Clement V included in his list of abuses committed by quaestores their claim to absolve people from all kinds of horrendous sin, including perjury and murder, and to absolve from both punishment and punishment (“a pena et a culpa absolvunt”), those being the very terms they used.¹⁸⁴ But all the blame may not be placed at the feet of the pardoners, any more than it may be put down to “vulgar” misunderstanding. Some popes themselves went beyond the limits of strict theological propriety—as when, for example, Celestine V, on the occasion of his consecration (in 1294) in the church of St. Maria of Collemadio, said that anyone who visited this church on that day should receive an indulgence a poena et a culpa for all sins committed since infancy.¹⁸⁵ True, he did say that the recipients had to be truly repentant and confessed, but the phrasing was certainly misleading. Then again, one of the charges brought against Pope John XXIII on 25 May 1415 (in the course of the Council of Constance) was that he had acted scandalously in authorizing the sale of indulgences a culpa et poena.¹⁸⁶

In other cases the confusion probably arose from the failure of papal bulls to spell out the necessity of contrition on the recipients’ part, with phrases such as “vere poenitentibus et confessis” or “corde contritis et ore confessis”;¹⁸⁷ thus a plenary indulgence (from poena alone) could easily be mistaken as a release a poena et a culpa. The phrase a poena et a culpa seems to have come into common (though of course misguided) use with reference to plenary indulgences in particular,¹⁸⁸ and the fact that Boniface IX (1389–1404) finally bowed to pressure and revoked all indulgences which contained it is clear evidence that many such misleading documents were in circulation.¹⁸⁹ He did not cease dispensing pardons for the greater glory of St. Peter’s, however, and the traffic in indulgences was so widespread and well established that effective regulation was impossible.

John Wyclif and his followers found indulgences an easy target for condemnation. Such “marchaundise of shriftes and graunting of indulgencis” is evidence that the pope is setting himself up over and above God, declares a typical account. The truth of the matter is that “no man mai foryve synne but if Crist foryve it first,” and if Christ’s vicars sell indulgences rather than tell the will of Christ they “chaffaren [barter] wiþ Goddis power, and gabben [practice deceit] as fendis on her God”; they may claim that Christ has absolved the sinner, yet the sin is left worse than it was before.¹⁹⁰ Many Lollards were particularly exercised by the fact that, during the great schism, the rival popes Urban VI (1378–89) and Clement VII (1378–94) blatantly issued indulgences in their own political interests, promising, as the Lollards saw it, “assoilinge” of sin as a reward for killing fellow-Christians.¹⁹¹ The doctrine of the spiritual treasury of supererogatory merits, of which every each and every pope was “maad dispensour . . . a this owne will,” was dismissed as a “fantasye”—why, this would make the pope into a “lord” who ruled over “Crist and oþere seyntis in hevene”!¹⁹²

Matters came to a head, as is well known, with Martin Luther’s virulent reaction against Julius II’s bull Liquet omnibus (1510), which offered “the fullest remission of all sins” to those who contributed financially to the restoration of St. Peter’s.¹⁹³ Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses (of 1517) hypothesized that in this regard the pope lacked the power of the keys, and was able only to remit any penalties which he himself had imposed.¹⁹⁴ These are followed by the proposition that “any Christian who is truly contrite has full remission of both punishment and guilt as his due, even without a letter of pardon.” “If the pope knew the demands made by the pardon-preachers,” Luther continues, “he would prefer to have St. Peter’s basilica reduced to ashes than built with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep.” Their practices provoke “slander” and “shrewd questions” from the laity.¹⁹⁵ For instance, if the pope is willing “to redeem an infinite number of souls for the sake of sordid money for building a basilica, the most trivial of causes,” why does he not “empty purgatory for the sake of holy charity and the great need of souls, the most just of causes?” Most provocative of all is the suggestion that it is “madness” to “hold the view that papal pardons are of such value as to be able to absolve even a man who (to assume the impossible) had violated the Mother of God”—raped the Virgin Mary! Here Luther becomes violently outrageous to ridicule the notion that punishment for any sin, however abominable, may be avoided through the mere purchase of a pardon.

The “wanton preaching of pardons,” Luther postulated, made it difficult even for learned men to defend the pope from “calumnious charges or even from the shrewd questioning of the laity.” During the previous three centuries, church councils, individual theologians, and indeed individual popes had felt the strain of defending a system which was, in certain respects at least, well-nigh indefensible. One did not have to be a Lollard or a Luther to be troubled deeply by the exchange of earthly profit for spiritual, to feel the tension between the relatively trivial preoccupations of Christ’s church on earth—no matter how worthy certain projects funded by indulgences could be—and the holy mystery of human redemption together with the inexpressible glory of the heavenly Jerusalem. Was the principle of vicarious satisfaction really secure? Did wealthy people have an unfair advantage? Could they buy their way out of purgatory, while the poor (as on earth) had to suffer and endure for their allotted time? Did the indulgence-system not bring the church into disrepute, and how could one answer those who found it ridiculous or laughable? All those questions, and more, were confronted by the major theologians of the later Middle Ages. There was a widespread recognition of the gulf between abstract justification of the doctrinal issues, and the semi-comprehensions of the humble priests who were obliged to explain the complicated system to layfolk. To their credit, the schoolmen are aware of the communication gap. And yet, they seem powerless to do anything about it.

Marketing the Divine Mercy

Over and over again, the deeply disturbing thought presented itself to medieval theologians: were the makers and distributors of indulgences engaged in some sort of market economy, which demeaned the whole notion of posthumous reward and punishment by confusing earthly with heavenly matters, and, worse, created the impression that salvation was up for sale? Albert the Great, among many others, worried about the spiritual arithmetic—it seemed as if an enterprising sinner could get a great deal for a mere obolus (meaning a very small monetary unit, and hereafter translated as “halfpenny”): “Let us suppose that a fast of seven years was injoined on someone, and that he comes on one day seven times to a church which has from the pope the power of granting an indulgence of one year, and each time he makes an offering of a half-penny. Therefore that man is absolved on one day, for seven half-pennies, from the seven years of penance justly injoined upon him! It would be amazing if even infidels did not laugh at this state of affairs.”¹⁹⁶ The point of that last sentence seems to be that, if even infidels can laugh this situation, how much more ridiculous must it seem to believers. Albert’s answer is that “there is no delusion in the truth.” It is not simply a matter of the church receiving a meager offering, “as those mockers believe.”¹⁹⁷ The sinner’s own means and spiritual situation must be considered, along with the powers of the Church.

William of Auvergne employs the same monetary metaphor, in reporting the ridicule of those who say that, for a single penny, halfpenny, or even an egg given to a church, a man might obtain remission of a third of the penance which had been imposed on him. Thus it seems that God is defrauded, for two years of penance are commuted with the paltry offering of one egg or halfpenny.¹⁹⁸ Furthermore, long and severe penances can be bought off with little effort and lightly, a penny or halfpenny being reckoned as equal to a third part of remission and penance. Those who hold such stupid opinions think that divine grace is being made venal. No matter how gravely men sin, they can obtain remission in a way which is facile and ridiculous, the gift of three pennies being put on a par with pilgrimage to Jerusalem or any other major undertaking against the enemies of the faith. People would be crazy to endure long penances and laborious pilgrimages, when they could get the same result with three eggs or three halfpennies! William counters this stultitia opinionis with the argument that venality is not involved since the prelate who gives an indulgence of the type under discussion is acting not for money but for the honor of God and the benefit of souls. A church is built not on account of money (propter pecunia) but by money (per pecuniam), and without money the building could not be undertaken. Similarly, an indulgence is issued not for money but solely for the glory of God, although money is not absent from the transaction. William proceeds to offer a comparison with the sacrament of baptism. Here remission of sins is achieved not for water (pro aqua) but by water (per aquam) and not without water (non sine aquam). Just so, indulgences function not on account of money (non pro pecuniam) but by money (per pecuniam) and not without money (non sine pecuniam).¹⁹⁹ As for the concern that one and the same price or cost (pretio) will pay for both major and minor penances: people who talk in that way reveal their ignorance of the strength (virtus) of God and the power of the keys. For, just as a greater remission of sin is not gained by the person who has been baptized with more rather than less water, so the person who offers more money does not have greater remission than the person who offers less. And this is so because, just as in baptism remission comes not from water but from divine virtus, so in the case of indulgences remission comes not from the giving or from the gift but from the keys and the ministration of prelates. William proceeds to argue that prelates are perfectly entitled to augment or diminish the satisfaction due for the sins which a penitent has acknowledged in confession.

But, could the sale of indulgences not be regarded as a kind of simony, which is to be understood as the exchange of a spiritual for a temporal thing? Thomas Aquinas asserts that indulgences are granted not “for the sake of temporal matters as such, but in so far as they are subordinate to spiritual things,” such as the suppression of the Church’s enemies, “the building of a church, of a bridge, and other forms of almsgiving.” Therefore, “there is no simony in these transactions, since a spiritual thing is exchanged, not for a temporal but for a spiritual commodity.”²⁰⁰ Albert the Great also answers with a firm negative: what we are dealing with here is not a mere purchase of some commodity but rather an exercise of the bounty of the Church, which encourages her children to good.²⁰¹

There was some discussion of the actual sources of that bounty, the exact constitution of the spiritual treasury. The Alexandri summa focuses on the merits of the united Church and of its head, who is Christ;²⁰² Albert the Great says that it comprises the wealth of the merits and the passion of Christ, and of the glorious Virgin Mary, and all the apostles, martyrs, and saints both living and dead.²⁰³ Thomas Aquinas initially emphasizes the unity of the “mystical body in which many have performed works of satisfaction exceeding the requirements of their debts,” and hence much surplus merit is available to those who are in need of it, but the preeminent source is soon identified as the merits of Christ, who acts through His sacraments yet is in no way obliged to operate exclusively through them. “So great is the quantity of such merits that it exceeds the entire debt of punishment due to those who are living at this moment”—there is no danger whatever, it would seem, of those vast resources running out.²⁰⁴ An even more eloquent affirmation of the merits of Christ is found in the papal bull which at last (as late as 1343) proclaimed as dogma the existence of an infinite treasury of merits, Clement VI’s Unigenitus. “Christ shed of His blood not merely a drop, though this would have sufficed . . . to redeem the whole human race, but a copious torrent,” thereby “laying up an infinite treasure for mankind. This treasure He neither wrapped up in a napkin nor hid in a field, but entrusted to Blessed Peter, the key-bearer, and his successors, that they might, for just and reasonable causes, distribute it to the faithful in full or in partial remission of the temporal punishment due to sin.”²⁰⁵ Powerful words, which express well the emotive force of the foundational theology of indulgences, the strength of its confidence in the bottomless depths of divine love.

But what was a “just and reasonable cause”? Albert the Great suggested that the cause moving the maker of an indulgence should be not private but public (non privata, sed publica). There are two types of public cause, he explains, which involve legitimate exigency (necessitas) and public advantage (utilitas) respectively.²⁰⁶ Examples of the former include the liberation of the Holy Land and perils which threaten the faith; of the latter, relieving poverty, hearing the word of God, and visiting relics. Bonaventure compares the spiritual treasury with the treasuries of earthly kings. We see in political matters and human affairs that a state’s resources are deployed for two main reasons: the glory of the prince and the good of the community or because of what is necessary for it, as when something strikes at the state, stipends and donations are produced in order that its soldiers may go out to fight. Similarly with the Church, there is a twofold cause for dispensing from the treasury. First, is the praise of God and His Saints, which is done through the construction and visitation of churches in their honor and the commemoration of their virtues in sermons. Second, the general good of the Church involves the defense of the Holy Land, the defense of the faith, the promotion of study, and suchlike. Bonaventure concludes that indulgences are appropriately directed to such ends.²⁰⁷ These points (and many others concerning penance and indulgences) are made in almost identical terms in the Alexandri summa—a reminder of the fact that this highly influential treatise was completed by Alexander’s pupils after his death.²⁰⁸ It is asserted that the place of Christ’s passion must not be bartered away to the infidels; the memory of the passion must not slip from the minds of the faithful. Indulgences may reasonably be made by a pope if the necessity of the Church requires it, and especially for the defense of the faith.²⁰⁹

A host of legalistic questions arose—and not just in the rarefied atmosphere of the Sentences commentaries and summae—concerning people who genuinely wanted to travel to places of pilgrimage but were unable to do so, through no fault of their own. For instance, if a crusader dies before he can take the journey across the sea, has he full forgiveness of sins? That all depends on the form of the papal letter, Aquinas explains. If “an indulgence is conceded to those taking the cross in aid of the Holy Land, a crusader has an indulgence at once, even if he dies before he takes the journey.” But if the letter specifies that an indulgence will be “given those who cross the sea, he who dies before he crosses lacks the cause of the indulgence” and hence does not benefit from it.²¹⁰ Bonaventure wondered if a person who takes the cross, makes the vow and has the perfect intention of going overseas, obtains remission of all sins by dint of that alone, i.e., what is crucial being the intention rather than the act. His answer is that, according to the experts (periti) and despite what certain “vulgar preachers” say, such a person does not have a total indulgence. Indulgences are not given just because one wishes to do something; actual performance is also necessary. Only the penitent who combines both will enjoy the full indulgence, though Bonaventure concedes that one with the desire alone may gain great merit through his devotion.²¹¹

However, despite what the periti said, on numerous occasions the desire was taken for the deed. We have already noted how the Fourth Lateran Council had granted plenary indulgences to those who sent “suitable men” to Palestine at “their own expense” rather than going themselves.²¹² Furthermore, despite Pope Clement VI’s initial efforts to ensure that people actually went on pilgrimage to Rome to earn the benefits of the indulgences he had issued for the 1350 jubilee, he found it expedient to dispense with this in the case of Queen Elizabeth of Hungary.²¹³ The same privilege was bestowed upon King Edward III of England, his wife, his mother, Edward prince of Wales, and Henry earl of Lancaster—not to mention the entire population of Mallorca. (Confusion was heaped upon confusion by the fact that the bull proclaiming the jubilee, Unigenitus, circulated in a forged version which offered far more generous terms than had the original.)²¹⁴ The extravagant commutations of vows associated with the antipope, Clement VII, were mocked by Lollard writers, as in the caustic remark that a man might stay at home and get himself forty thousand years’ pardon by noon.²¹⁵ In desperate need of money, Boniface IX recklessly offered indulgences ad instar, meaning that many minor (indeed some quite insignificant) shrines were allowed to dispense the indulgences of major ones; hence, as Jonathan Sumption says, “most Christians were able to win the [papal] Jubilee Indulgence of 1390 at churches within a few miles of their homes.”²¹⁶

The schoolmen were engaged in a major effort of retrospective rationalization: indulgences had and were being issued, and their efficacy had to be maintained. The Universal Ruler of the Church is not believed to be fallible, declares Albert the Great, particularly with regard to those things which the whole Church receives and approves. Since he has ordered indulgences to be preached, they must be valid.²¹⁷ Likewise, Aquinas is confident that “the universal Church cannot err”; if it approves and grants indulgences, it may be assumed that they must “have some value.”²¹⁸ Everyone admits this, he continues, “for it would be blasphemy to say that the Church does anything in vain.” Above all else, the conviction that what God’s Church on earth unbinds is also released in heaven was consistently affirmed, the schoolmen being anxious to make the point that there was no risk of deception. Bonaventure attributes to “some” unnamed men of straw a dangerous distinction “between God’s tribunal and the Church’s tribunal” and the belief that “relaxations do not take place in, nor are they understood of, God’s tribunal, but only of the Church’s tribunal.”²¹⁹ This opinion, says Bonaventure, is destructive of the very concept of relaxation, for if the earthly Church relaxes what God does not relax, it must be adjudged “a deception rather than a relaxation, and it must be called cruelty rather than piety, since by lessening the penance in this life it induces sufferings more severe in the life to come” (the pains of purgatory being more acute, according to common belief, than anything that one could experience in this life). The same point is made in almost identical terms in the fourth and final part of the Alexandri summa.²²⁰ Relaxatio cannot be made solely in the tribunal of the Church; God alleviates what the Church alleviates.

The shocking suggestion that indulgences might be some sort of pious fraud was also confronted. One of the “ancient opinions” concerning their use, Albert explains (though without naming authorities), is that they are not valid at all, and thus we are dealing with a well-intentioned deception of the type which a mother practices with her sons, which in the case of the Church induces its members to good actions, such as pilgrimages, almsgiving, hearing the word of God, and the like.²²¹ Albert develops the exemplum of a caring mother who wants to encourage her children to walk, since this is good for their health. Thus she promises an apple as a reward for going on an expedition—which afterward is not given. But this comparison with a “children’s game” degrades what the Church actually does, concludes Albert; indeed, it smacks of heresy. The Church would not be believed in anything, if deception were discovered in those things which are preached to the people and which they are exhorted to do. Bonaventure and Aquinas also address the exemplum of the mother’s white lie, and are equally dismissive. This is a very dangerous assertion to make, says Aquinas, for, as Augustine says, “if any error were discovered in Holy Writ, the authority of Holy Writ would perish”; by the same token, “if any error were to be found in the Church’s preaching, her doctrine would have no authority in settling questions of faith.”²²² For Bonaventure the suggestion that the Church engages in a sort of lying, and in activity which is inane, childish, and facetious, is highly demeaning of its activities.²²³

That comment of Bonaventure’s forms part of his quaestio on the issue of whether indulgences really have the value with which they are credited in preaching.²²⁴ The pope (who has commanded such preaching) is certainly not given to lying, he assures us. Moreover, if a certain bishop is able to give indulgences of twenty or forty days, and the pope has more power than any bishop (in that he has the plenitude of power over and above all others), therefore it would seem that for him, so to speak, the sky is the limit. Bonaventure also engages in arithmetical reductio ad absurdum of a kind reminiscent of Albert’s. Given that in certain indulgences a third of the due repentance is involved, then if first one denarius is given and secondly another and thirdly a third, it would appear that a person who had committed a thousand sins would be completely freed for three halfpennies or denarii—which would not only be false but would be judged as ludicrous by all those of right mind. Furthermore, if a sinner who owes nine years has three years remitted, on the same reckoning those who owe thirty should have ten remitted: it would seem that sinfulness is treated as a commodity. Then again, is it fair that a person who lives near a church should get the same benefit as the person who lives a long way away, and expends considerable effort to visit it? And that a rich man, in paying his halfpenny, should get the same benefit as a poor woman, for whom that money means a lot more?

Bonaventure responds with what “is said generally according to the doctors,” that in order for indulgences or relaxationes to be effective, there must be a twofold condition on the part of the giver and a twofold condition on the part of the receiver. The giver must have the appropriate power and a cause which is honest and reasonable. The receiver must have confessed with true contrition and have faith with true devotion, so that he is truly repentant and confident that the pastor’s indulgence will be valid for him. “Others say,” continues Bonaventure, that in absolute terms indulgences are worth what they are said to be, because their conferral is not adjudged a purchase but rather an exercise of the Church’s liberality, and this is equally allotted to all those who dispose themselves to receive it. A rich man, going to a tavern, receives the same wine as does a poor old woman (vetula paupercula), the price being the same for both. The argument is that indulgences should be understood in the same way. But this seems to be making “too great a market of indulgences” (magnum forum facere de indulgentiis), and results in their vilification rather than their praise. Bonaventure suggests that the person who actually gives the indulgence to the recipient must consider the cause for which the indulgence was issued; to the extent, more or less, that the recipient approaches near that cause, he can participate more or less in the indulgence. For example, in the case of the stations of Rome there are set indulgences instituted by the holy fathers, who were mindful of pilgrims who came from remote places. They did not estimate a person living near the church to be worthy of such grace; hence the locals are to receive a lesser indulgence. Bonaventure may not have been wholly comfortable with the idea that a given indulgence is not worth the same to everyone but must be calibrated with reference to what the recipient has done or has to do. For he declares that it is “not becoming” to teach this doctrine openly,²²⁵ because all the faithful should believe in their hearts that the gifts of the holy Spirit are given with equal value to all.

Thomas Aquinas took issue with Bonaventure’s discussion. The argument that a man may “obtain remission in whole or in part” according as he approached near to “the cause for which the indulgence was granted” simply does not explain “the custom of the Church,” he declares, which assigns “now a greater, now a lesser indulgence, for the same cause.”²²⁶ For the pope may grant “now a year’s indulgence, now one of only forty days” to people visiting one and the same church on different occasions. The effective cause of the remission of poena, Aquinas continues, “is not the devotion, or toil, or gift of the recipient,” or indeed “the cause for which the indulgence was granted.” We cannot, therefore, estimate the quantity of remission by any of these but “solely by the merits of the Church—and these are superabundant.” In other words, the scope and scale of an indulgence depends not on man but on God, whose liberality is dispensed by His authorized representatives on earth. Hence “we do not have too great a market of the divine mercy”— a clear allusion to Bonaventure’s statement as quoted above. Aquinas sides rather with the views of certain “others”—among whom may be numbered William of Auvergne and Peter of Tarantasia²²⁷—who believed that “indulgences have precisely the efficacy claimed for them,” providing that he who grants them has the necessary authority, the recipient has charity, and there is a pious reason for the grant, involving “the honour of God and the profit of our neighbour.”²²⁸ Aquinas proceeds to argue that a person who lives near the church, along with its priest and clergy, gains the associated indulgence “as much as those who come perhaps a distance of a thousand days’ journey, because the remission . . . is proportion ate not to the toil, but to the merits which are applied.” His desire to celebrate the vast riches of the spiritual treasury, and the generous operation of the divine mercy, is evident.

But, of course, caveats and conditions must be admitted. It is duly noted that sometimes a distinction may be expressed, as when the pope specifies that an indulgence of five years may be granted “to those who come from across the seas,” but only one of three years “to those who come from across the mountains.”²²⁹ Furthermore, Aquinas continues, when an indulgence is given in a general way to anyone who helps toward the building of a church, this must be understood as meaning “a help proportionate to the giver.” Consequently, “a poor man by giving one halfpenny (denarius) would gain the full indulgence,” but “not so a rich man, whom it would not become to give so little to so holy and profitable a work”—that difference is, as it were, assumed within the original grant of the indulgence, wholly in accord with the giver’s intention. In sum, the indulgence has the full value as set by the individual who makes it, and this may accommodate certain distinctions (as just illustrated) or changes (say, from one time period to another). Of himself the recipient does not have the power to maximize or minimize that value, to alter it in accordance with the degree of effort he may have put into attaining the indulgence—the point being that the merit involved comes not from him but from the spiritual treasury.

Aquinas’s reference to the forty days’ limit on standard indulgences recalls a restriction which the Fourth Lateran Council had sought to impose. But there was an apparent loophole: if a man visits a church several times a day, does he not gain its forty-day indulgence on each and every occasion, thereby accumulating an extraordinary number of spiritual credits? It is all a matter of wording, explains Aquinas. If the indulgence is granted for a fixed term, as when it is said that “Whoever visits such and such a church until such and such a day, shall gain so much indulgence,” then the pardon can be gained only once. (Peter of la Palud disagreed—it can be gained once daily, he thought.)²³⁰ If, on the other hand, the indulgence is continuous—“as in the indulgence of forty days to be gained in the church of the Blessed Peter”—then “a person gains the indulgence as often as he visits the church”: quoties vadit aliquis, toties indulgentiam consequitur.²³¹ Clearly, living in Rome had enormous advantages. Little wonder that “Our Lord Jesus Christ” instructed St. Bridget of Sweden (d. 1373) to “go to Rome, where the streets are paved with gold and reddened with the blood of saints” and where there is “a shorter way” to heaven “because of the indulgences that the holy pontiffs have merited by their prayers.”²³²

What, then, of St. Paul’s assertion that before Christ’s tribunal each one will receive what he has won, according to his works, whether good or evil (II Corinthians 5:10)? Or the psalmist’s statement that God repays to all according to their works (Psalm 61:13)? If people are impenitent, surely granting them indulgences cannot be defended, William Lyndwood speculates,²³³ because while they still retain the guilt (culpa) it is impossible to remit the punishment. The power of binding and freeing was handed down to ministers for edification and not for destruction. But an indulgence, which is a gratuitous remission of sin, tends to destruction, because by this process sin remains unpunished. Indeed, the facility of pardon encourages men to sin. In response to these arguments Lyndwood stresses the importance of contrition on the part of the penitent, which relates to justice, and the satisfaction which is rendered through the Church’s communication of the merits of the saints, which relates to mercy. Therefore both justice and mercy are given their due. More elaborate treatments were on offer. Bonaventure and the Alexandri summa make a crucial distinction between the punitive and medicinal aspects of penance.²³⁴ Indulgences relate only to the former. If, however, we talk in terms of medicinal healing of the soul, the penitent must personally shoulder his or her own burden. The punishment of damnation or spiritual death is not sustained on another’s behalf. Those who are irrecoverable beyond charity cannot derive any benefit from souls existing in charity and within the united Church. Thomas Aquinas also believed that an indulgence “does not take the place of satisfaction as medicinal,”²³⁵ but struggled to address one of the difficulties which seemed to follow. While feeling the force of the argument that indulgences do not avail those who are in mortal sin, he was obliged to admit that in certain forms of indulgence-grant the saints’ merits were applied in a way which might well allow such a sinner to gain some benefit.²³⁶

Thus Aquinas cum suis sought to reconcile the two rival economies, secular and sacred; to bridge the gap between human giving and divine grace, bringing together deficient sinners and superendowed saints in a business transaction which was to the spiritual advantage of the former and the material advantage of those who presumed to manage the immaterial resources of the latter.

Authority and Jurisdiction in the Dispensing of Pardon

But who exactly possessed the awesome power of dispensing such a vast treasury and relieving so much retributive suffering? Where did the requisite authority lie? Did it extend to the ordinary parish priest? The Alexandri summa starts its consideration of these issues with a statement of the utterly uncontentious point that every priest possesses the power of the keys.²³⁷ But, can every priest draw on the treasury of the Church? It may be said that every priest has access to the spiritual treasury of his own parish, just as the bishop has of his diocese. Thus it would seem that both priest and bishop can make relaxationes from their respective treasuries. But the Summa proceeds to refute this hypothesis. Indulgences come from the supererogations of the members of Christ’s body and mainly from the supererogatory merits of Christ himself, which constitute the spiritual treasury of the Church. And this treasury is not for all to dispense, but is the prerogative of those who chiefly bear the office of Christ (i.e., the bishops). All bishops can make indulgences and relaxations, and chiefly the summus pontifex, the pope. So, concludes the Summa, making indulgences is denied not only to layfolk but also to priests and inferior prelates such as abbots and priors. The importance of hierarchy is affirmed—the church hierarchy is disposed in a way which follows the angelic hierarchy, wherein the superiors can do more than the inferiors.

For his part, Albert the Great emphasizes the fact that, while a simple priest has at his disposal the spiritual treasury that comprises the merits of his own parishioners, these are unsufficient—a very substantial treasury is needed for the granting of indulgences.²³⁸ Furthermore, while a simple priest possesses the power of the keys, he does not have the necessary power of jurisdiction. Hence the plebani or “lower orders” cannot give indulgences. But what if someone were to say, I myself have seen simple priests giving indulgences without episcopal permission—therefore, why can’t a lay person? Albert thinks that this reasoning is flawed. In the first instance, we are dealing with the pronuntiator of the indulgences, the mere “announcer” who recommends them in his preaching, rather than the authoritative person who actually makes them. Furthermore, giving indulgences requires jurisdiction in giving, the right to give. A lay person does not have the requisite jurisdiction and therefore he cannot give them.

Aquinas also was concerned to affirm the principle of jurisdiction, but for him it means locating the authority firmly at the top of the hierarchy: “he alone who is at the head of the Church can grant indulgences.”²³⁹ Thus, “parish priests or abbots or other like prelates” cannot do so, inasmuch as their status and orders neither confer the relevant authority nor bring with them a sufficient treasury of merit. However, Aquinas goes on to affirm the principle of delegation. Subject to the pope’s authority, and not by any authority of their own, bishops can indeed issue indulgences: “they can grant them within fixed limits and not beyond.”²⁴⁰ Furthermore, deacons and others who are not priests can enjoy delegated jurisdiction and thus grant indulgences, even though they lack the power of the keys (which priests do have) and hence lack the power of absolution in the tribunal of penance. More precisely, as Aquinas explains elsewhere, they lack the key of ordo, which brings with it sacramental agency.²⁴¹ A priest forgives a fault (culpa) through the authority of his ministry “insofar as he confers a sacrament of the forgiveness of sins.” But the making of pardons works on a different principle. An indulgence “is not extended for forgiveness of a fault because it is not something sacramental—it results not from orders but from jurisdiction. For a nonpriest can also grant an indulgence if it is committed to him to do so.”

But does the person who grants an indulgence have to be of good moral standing? What of the “character issue,” which (as has been illustrated above) loomed so large in scholastic discussion of the requisite worthiness of the preacher and of the minister of the sacraments? Albert the Great presents the matter in a quite sensational form by asking if a pope living in mortal sin can give indulgences to those who are living in mortal sin.²⁴² It would seem not, the argument goes, because works performed in mortal sin are dead, and dead works do not vivify. Since indulgences are ordained to vivi-fication and spiritual life, it would appear that such a sinner’s indulgence would not be valid. Furthermore, a river which has no source to feed it cannot flow. But a pope in mortal sin is a river whose source, the Holy Spirit, does not flow, because “a holy and disciplined spirit will flee from deceit” (Wisdom 1:5) and “wisdom will not enter a deceitful soul, or dwell in a body enslaved to sin” (Wisdom 1:4). Therefore it cannot flow to others. Finally, a ray of sun blocked by a cloud does not reach us. St. Dionysius calls the grace of the Holy Spirit a ray, and sin is called a cloud in Isaiah. Thus it may be said that the grace which is hindered by sin is effectively blocked. The indulgence issuing, or which should issue, from a sinful pope is grace intercepted by sin, and so is not valid.

Against these arguments, however, may be posited the idea that prophecy, which may be identified as a divine ray, comes from grace, which is, so to speak, no respector of persons. It flowed through Caiaphas, who was “high priest that year,” as says the Evangelist John (11:51): the point being that, by dint of office, a priest has certain powers conferred from above, despite any personal iniquities he may have. Aquinas makes the same point by saying that indulgences are granted by virtue of conferred power, and since mortal sin takes away not power but goodness it does not interfere with their operation.²⁴³ Albert cites Numbers 22, 23, and 24 to the same end: there we read of how a most iniquitous man, Balaam, received a most clear prophecy, which flowed through him to the whole Synagogue and Church. Albert’s conclusion is that indulgences, whether they are given by an evil man or by a good man, are equally valid. They function through grace freely given (gratia gratis data), which is a matter of (divine) power, not of goodness of life, and all such gifts flow equally well through good and bad men. Despite his mortal sin, this (hypothetically immoral) pope is sourced by the power of the Holy Spirit. Aquinas sharpens up this argument considerably, by saying that the prelate who, while in a state of mortal sin, grants an indulgence, is not actually pouring forth anything of his own. A man does not lose jurisdiction through sin. “Consequently, indulgences are equally valid, whether they are granted by one who is in mortal sin, or by a most holy person; since he remits punishment, not by virtue of his own merits, but by virtue of the merits laid up in the Church’s treasury.”²⁴⁴

Is an evil bishop able to grant indulgences? That is the form in which the same fundamental issue was raised by Richard of Middleton O.F.M. (c. 1249–c. 1308).²⁴⁵ It would seem not, because no wise lord entrusts anyone who is against him with the power of dispensing from his treasury. The evil bishop is against God, and since God is the wisest lord of all, He should not entrust such a man with that power. On the other hand, absolving in the tribunal of penance is a greater thing than absolving by means of indulgences, which release only from pena, not from culpa. Since an evil bishop can absolve in foro poenitentiali, surely he should be able to issue indulgences? Richard’s answer is that the evil bishop may indeed issue indulgences, for the good reason that he does not make them from his personal merit (de proprio merito), which may be diminished by mortal sin, but rather from the treasury of the church, which is unaffected by the bishop’s sin (and, indeed, does not absolve it).²⁴⁶ Thomas of Strasbourg (who read the Sentences 1335–37) sums up the fundamental point well by explaining that here we are dealing with “ministerial” action, as when someone dispenses a certain effect non de suo sed de alieno; thus a good lord may receive a good gift which is passed on to him by an evil minister. The pope or bishop who gives the indulgence does not issue it de suo merito but from the merit of Christ and the saints.²⁴⁷

In all these discussions, we see anti-Donatist arguments which were widely deployed in defending the sacraments of deviant priests now being applied in defending the indulgences of deviant officials who have the requisite authority to issue them. We may have moved from the key of ordo to the key of jurisdiction, but the same rationalizations and justifications hold good. The upshot would seem to be that anyone who possesses a genuine indulgence can be confident of its efficacy—providing that he, truly penitent, also plays his part. But can that really be true? If an official steeped in sin can issue an indulgence, surely it can benefit a recipient who is in exactly the same state? If mortal sin isn’t repugnant to making indulgences, does it not follow that it isn’t repugnant to receiving them? So asks Thomas of Strasbourg, going on to reject this alarming inference with the aid of the imagery of flow and blockage which we already have illustrated from Albert the Great. Just as a dead body-part does not benefit from the life which flows from the other (living) members of the physical body, so mortal sin obstructs a man from receiving the benefits of an indulgence, which issue from the merits of the living head (Christ) and the living members (the saints) of the spiritual body which is the Church.²⁴⁸ That is to say, although a person in mortal sin may materially possess a major indulgence, he is far less disposed to receive its benefits than is the person who is without mortal sin. No remission of punishment can occur if culpa remains, as Richard of Middleton succinctly puts it, and since indulgences do not remit the culpa of those living in mortal sin, therefore none of their poena is remitted either.²⁴⁹

Honoring Becket: The Case for Canterbury

The relentless rationalism, the measured weighing of arguments pro and contra, of such discussion is in marked contrast to the muddle which faced churchmen in the world beyond the schools. Indulgences were multiplying with alarming frequency; every major shrine, hospital, or church wanted one or more.²⁵⁰ Of particular interest to Chaucerians is the controversy concerning the status of the plenary indulgence associated with the shrine of “the holy blissful martyr,” St. Thomas à Becket, at Canterbury, the objective of Chaucer’s pilgrims. A Latin treatise written shortly after the fifth Canterbury Jubilee (1420),²⁵¹ perhaps by Richard Godmersham, argues that the indulgence granted by Honorius III on the occasion of the translation of the martyr (7 July 1220) was indeed a plenary one, valid each successive jubilee year.²⁵² In fact, the evidence for this is very dubious. Godmersham (supposing for the moment that he is indeed the author we are dealing with) assumes that a forged bull of Honorius III (Quanto venerabilis martyr)is genuine, but even that document does not include a clear description of a plenary indulgence, and in any case such grants were still very rare at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Boniface VIII granted one to those who visited the basilicas of Sts. Peter and Paul. True, in 1216 Honorius III was supposed to have given St. Francis a particularly valuable indulgence in respect of his church of the Portiuncula,²⁵³ and hence that pope might be expected to have shown similar generosity to St. Thomas à Becket’s shrine just a few years later. But, once again, the exact terms of the original bequest are a matter of scholarly controversy; the so-called Portiuncula indulgence is almost certainly a later elaboration of what—if anything— Honorius actually had given.²⁵⁴ No trace of such skepticism troubles the surface of Godmersham’s treatise: a robust defense of Canterbury’s honor is mounted, with the reader’s consent being demanded rather than invited.

General principles already familiar to us are applied to the specific case of Becket. His martyrdom acquired many supererogatory merits for the Church, constituting a major contribution to the spiritual treasury. Support for the Canterbury Jubilee is sought in the figures and significations of the Old Testament jubilees. But there is much ad hoc argument, which is remarkable for its aggression rather than its logic. Godmersham begins by affirming that the indulgence conceded to Becket’s shrine by Honorius III is not inferior to the crusade indulgence, as given by the previous pope, Innocent III.²⁵⁵ Furthermore, the Canterbury indulgence fulfils the conditions of validity laid down by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Sentences commentary.²⁵⁶ There it is explained that indulgences are indeed worth what they are said to be worth, providing that he who grants them has the requisite authority, that the recipient has charity, and that, as regards the cause, there is piety which includes the honor of God and the profit of one’s neighbor. All these conditions are met by the Canterbury indulgence, Godmersham asserts, and therefore it indeed has the efficacy which preachers profess, and which has been claimed for it on many occasions, five jubilees having elapsed without rejection of the belief that it is genuinely a plenary indulgence. Furthermore, affirmation of the value of this indulgence is a true and healthful thing to do. And since we are not dealing here with a matter of opinion or something which is deniable, it follows that anyone who argues the opposite is not a faithful Christian. Godmersham then goes so far as to say that the Canterbury indulgence derives from the authority of the Church on the same basis as does the Gospel; thus every faithful person should believe in this indulgence just as he believes in the most authoritative books of the Bible.

The plenitude of papal power is then invoked. The pope grants indulgences not in propria persona but rather in the person of Christ, from whom his power derives, as is intimated by the words of St. Paul: “I have pardoned, if I have pardoned any thing, for your sakes have I done it in the person of Christ” (II Corinthians 2:10). The Glossa ordinaria on this text explains that Paul’s pardons are as valid as if Christ Himself had done the deed. Therefore what Pope Honorius III conceded was given as if Christ had given it; for his part, the pope would not have dispensed this indulgence had not Christ first given His promise prophetically to the blessed martyr. While living in exile in France, Becket experienced a vision in which the Lord Jesus appeared to him and said, “Thomas, Thomas, my Church will be glorified in your blood.”²⁵⁷ This is to be understood as a prophetic promise,²⁵⁸ because He who is the sum of truth and cannot lie promised that His Church would be glorified, in the sense that it would be justified and given grace by the plenary remission of sins and the grace and merit mediated by the blood of the blessed martyr. And this is a great glory for the Church Triumphant. Presumably part of the point here is that, through Becket, Christ wished to glorify the Church Triumphant every bit as much as He wished to glorify the Church Militant. If one pope (Innocent III) could grant an indulgence which glorifies the latter, in promoting a crusade, then it seems utterly appropriate that his successor (Honorius III) should have granted an indulgence which glorifies the former.

From all these arguments it is abundantly clear, Godmersham concludes, that Pope Honorius III did not grant the aforesaid indulgence merely from himself alone (ex se) but rather from divine inspiration, and he prescribed that it be granted by the universal Church; thus a promise first made by Christ was gloriously implemented by the Pope. Honorius could therefore say with the Apostle Paul, “Yet not I” alone have given or conceded this plenary indulgence of sins, “but the grace of God with me” (cf. I Corinthians 15:10). The truth of the indulgence is therefore clear to all faithful believers—and those who attack it are sinning against the Holy Spirit, concerning which sin Christ inveighs in Matthew 12:32, “it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.” According to the doctors, to attack acknowledged truth is a sin against the Holy Spirit. The Canterbury indulgence is acknowledged truth because it has always been preached as Catholic truth, because it has consistently been authorized by the Church and never revoked, and because the universal Church has selected and made it law. Therefore anyone who attacks it attacks acknowledged truth and sins against the Holy Spirit. Such people have much to fear: the wrath of God will come upon them and they will go down alive to hell (cf. Psalm 77:31 and Numbers 16:30). Godmersham certainly thought of Wyclif’s followers in those terms:²⁵⁹ at one point he denounces those who are “infected with the execrable dogma of the carping Lollards.”²⁶⁰ More generally, here is a treatise which brooks no dissent, the tone of the discussion being very different from that found in the Sentences commentaries and summae which we have discussed above. Refusal to believe in the Canterbury pardon is not an option, its truth being placed on a par with that of Holy Writ and St. Thomas à Becket being afforded the same honor as God showed to Sts. Peter and Paul.

Maybe Godmersham’s vehemence is a reflex of insecurity. At least the literal truth of the matter was put out of contention by Pope Paul II, who declared unequivocally that a plenary indulgence was on offer during the jubilee year of 1420. One wonders what visitors to Canterbury in the previous jubilee year of 1370 thought they were getting; I see no reason to doubt that they expected a plenary indulgence. Certainly the 1370 jubilee was a highly successful one for the shrine,²⁶¹ a fact which Chaucer may well have been aware of during the gestation of his Canterbury Tales. The issue of plenary indulgences apart, Canterbury did very well in respect of pardons of shorter duration, receiving awards from Nicholas IV in 1291, John XXII in 1328, and Boniface IX in 1395. The real-life equivalents of Chaucer’s creations would, one may presume, have returned home well satisfied with their spiritual acquisitions.

But, to be sure, voices were raised in protest against what was becoming an inflationary spiral, fed by the proliferation of indulgences and the increasingly generous terms which they offered—or were supposed to offer.²⁶² The most vociferous protest known to me figures in Simon of Cremona’s Disputationes de indulgentiis (c. 1380).²⁶³ Arriving in Cremona from Paris, Simon was astonished to discover that a nearby church was offering on Ascension Day an indulgence a pena et a culpa. There was no written evidence that such an indulgence was granted by the papacy—and in any case, Simon says, Rome’s plenary indulgences simply do not go that far. He argues that anyone who absolves a pena et culpa incurs instant sentence of excommunication, and that this is an appropriate punishment for anyone who publishes an “indiscreet indulgence”²⁶⁴ which justifies such practice. Indulgentiae indiscretae have no papal privilege or any other legal justification to support them; anyone who publicizes them is foolhardy and presumptuous, and sins gravely and mortally: indeed, they are speaking against the Holy Spirit. Simon goes so far as to label those who stubbornly believe and pronounce such a dogma as heretics—for heresy involves two things, an error in reasoning and a stubbornness of will, blatant deviation from the truth (a veritate deviare).²⁶⁵

Simon’s adversaries protest that the pope knows full well that Franciscans preach the existence of an indulgence a pena et a culpa at St. Francis’s Portiuncula church near Assisi; because the supreme pontif has not said anything against the practice he tacitly is condoning it. Thus a clear precedent exists for the similar claim made concerning the Cremona church of St. John of the Desert. Simon replies that many things are tolerated which, were they subjected to strict legal examination, would not be countenanced. He identifies several ways in which something may be said to be “permitted,” the last of which is relevant here: something illicit may be allowed in order to avoid a more serious illegality (thus, adultery may be “permitted” so that murder is avoided). But this most certainly does not mean that the lesser evil is approved in any way. In accordance with this type of “permission,” Simon concludes, many things are patiently tolerated. Simon does not spell out what, in the case of the Portiuncula indulgence, the greater evil actually is, but we may assume that he has in mind the scandal that would ensue if the pope were to do anything other than “patiently tolerate” the Franciscan claim. He is, however, anxious to make abundantly clear that the pope is in no way lending his approval or allowing his approval to be assumed. If the pope were to name me “Bishop of Cremona” this would not actually make me the Bishop of Cremona, Simon remarks; due legal process must be observed in making such an appointment. By the same token, when the pope hears about a certain indulgence being offered in Assisi, and is silent, that does not constitute approval of the indulgence, particularly since “the pope says” is a lot more efficacious than “being silent,” and the latter is here the case.

Bartholomew of Mainard put forward the dubious argument that a certain kind of deception can have pious advantages: if one were to say, “go to a certain place because you will find a hundred florins and, on going there, the person finds only ten”—well, is that not still a good outcome, albeit not as good as expected? (Here one may recall the arguments relating to the “mother’s promise” exemplum, as deployed by Albert, Aquinas, and Bonaventure; cf. p. 83 above.) Simon will have none of it. There is no piety here but rather cruel deception; by such practice the authority of the keys of the Church is brought into contempt. You don’t make people good by lying to them. Master Dominic O.Carm. opposed Simon with the argument that something which is not prohibited seems to be permissible, inferring that the Assisi indulgence (and presumably the Cremona indulgence also) falls into this category. Publica fama does not doubt that such an indulgence is on offer. The logic here is false, Simon retorts; that is the sort of argument the Jews make when they defend usury. On the contrary, such an indulgence is implicitly prohibited everywhere and anywhere, given canon law’s warning, with the threat of eternal curse, against its publication (publicatio). Only indulgences with impeccable credentials should be “published”—and those impeccable credentials do not include any reference to absolution a pena et a culpa. Dominic’s point about public fame is dismissed with the argument that such fame exists only among those who are deceived and ignorant, and not among people of understanding. Would that it had been so simple. Simon’s own record shows that certain Franciscans were preaching a Portiuncula indulgence a pena et a culpa,²⁶⁶ and of course his Franciscan opponents in the three Cremona debates were keen to uphold the honor of their order. Simon’s elitist disdain for the deceptos et ignorantes cannot mask the extent of the deception and ignorance concerning indulgences which permeated Western Christendom in his day.

Returning to the English scene, one attempt to keep the terms of indulgences “discreet” and appropriate may be taken as representative. Archbishop John Pecham’s Lambeth conference (1278) decreed that, “since it has been decided that prelates, to whom the mystical treasury is entrusted, should not exceed the number of forty days in conferring indulgences, lest the keys of the Church be contemned,” those who preach or expound those indulgences should do so as accurately as possible, not bringing disgrace on the indulgence-makers by “pouring out in their preachings more indulgences than the bishops do, lest those who are subject to those keys cause them to be held in slight esteem.”²⁶⁷ The fundamental concern here is the appropriate and accurate communication of the scope of a given indulgence, with special reference to the limit of forty days’ remission from purgatorial punishment (as described above, p. 86). William Lyndwood’s fifteenth-century commentary on this canon brings out well the difficulties which could ensue. The indulgence granted by a bishop applies only to those under his jurisdiction. But if an archbishop and his subordinate bishop were both to grant forty days of indulgence, would whoever was under the bishop’s jurisdiction gain eighty days’ release in total (forty from the archbishop and forty from the bishop), whereas a person under a different bishop but under the same provincial would gain only forty days? Lyndwood quotes this as the opinion of Hostiensis (Henry of Segusio; d. 1271), then cites a contrary view—one and the same indulgence cannot exceed forty days, no matter how many people grant it. Furthermore: if all the bishops in a province granted an indulgence, along with their archbishop, it would follow that each of them gave forty days and the archbishop also gave forty days, which would result in anyone in the province having the option of gaining eighty days of indulgence. This, believes Lyndwood, is against the literal understanding of the relevant canon laws. He proceeds to consider the results of successive granting of one and the same indulgence. If the Bishop of London were to grant forty days for a pious work and his successor also granted forty days, the quantity would not be increased but would remain at forty days. If the same bishop granted in succession the same forty-day indulgence for one and the same reason, this is to be seen simply as a renewal of the first indulgence, not as an adjunct to it. All very clear and reasonable, but—in its entirely Lyndwood’s disquisition makes it abundantly clear that the room for legal contestation and challenge was vast.²⁶⁸

If the most learned men in the western world could disagree over such matters, what might one expect of lesser mortals, particularly in view of the enormity of the problem? Some indulgences were well worded but confusingly expounded (whether by accident or design); others were incautiously (or unscrupulously) worded. Then there were the forgeries. Were pardons which were fake nevertheless efficacious for those who had received them in good faith? In considering that question, William Lyndwood remarks that a common error may function in the same way as a truth.²⁶⁹ Furthermore, in many articles of the law opinion is preferred to truth, and God judges by intention rather than by works. These arguments are easily demolished with the proposition that truth generally is preferred to opinion, and especially in spiritual matters. If a fake pardon functioned as well as a genuine one, then the recipient would not have been deceived—and it is deception which is at issue here. So, then, Lyndwood believes that such forgeries are not valid. But is a person who buys one of them entitled to get his money back? Maybe, says Lyndwood. On the one hand, if money was extorted through the sale of forged pardons, it should not remain in the hands of the deviant quaestores concerned. On the other, if the money has been put to the good use of the Church, then probably the Church should keep it. Caveat emptor.

Such confusion was ripe for exploitation—and exploited it was, by learned and lay, by high and low, by popes and pardoners. Our next chapter will consider the modes and mechanisms of exploitation which Chaucer attributes to his Pardoner. Here is a figure who, as I hope to show, far exceeds his authority as a mere announcer or pronuntiator of indulgences, in claiming the officium praedicatoris and quasi-sacerdotal powers of absolution which had no basis whatever in his letters of appointment. Pace the best efforts of the schoolmen, and the compilers of the priests’ handbooks who transmitted their determinations, too much of a market was indeed being made of the divine mercy. For Chaucer’s character that represented a major business opportunity, which never rises above the level of the material. This mercantile preacher risks eternal damnation through deviancy of a type (and on a scale) which, in my view, goes far beyond the much-discussed matter of his problematic sexuality.