Fallible Authors - Alastair Minnis The Middle Ages Series

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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.

      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

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