Fallible Authors - Alastair Minnis The Middle Ages Series

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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.

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