Fallible Authors - Alastair Minnis The Middle Ages Series

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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.

      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.

      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

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