Fallible Authors - Alastair Minnis The Middle Ages Series

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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.

      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

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