Fallible Authors - Alastair Minnis The Middle Ages Series

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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

      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,

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