Reforming the Church Before Modernity: Patterns, Problems And Approaches (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West)

Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West General Editors: Brenda Bolton with Anne J. Duggan and Michael E. Goodich

About the series The series Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West reflects the central concerns necessary for any in-depth study of the medieval Church – greater cultural awareness and interdisciplinarity. Including both monographs and edited collections, this new series draws on the most innovative work from established and younger scholars alike, offering a balance of interests, vertically though the period from c.400 to c.1500 or horizontally across Latin Christendom. Topics covered range from cultural history, the monastic life, relations between Church and State to law and ritual, palaeography and textual transmission. All authors, from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, share a commitment to innovation, analysis and historical accuracy.

About the volume Reforming the Church before Modernity considers the question of ecclesial reform from late antiquity through to the 17th century, and tackles this complex question from primarily cultural perspectives, rather than the more usual institutional approaches. The common themes are social change, centres and peripheries of change, monasticism, and intellectuals and their relationship to reform. This innovative approach opens up the whole question of how religious reform took place and challenges existing ecclesiological models that remain too focussed on structures in a manner artificial to premodern Europe. Several chapters specifically take issue with the problem of what constitutes reform, reformations, and historians’ notions of the periodization of reform. Presenting essays from a distinguished international cast of scholars, the book as a whole will make an important contribution to the debates over ecclesiology and religious reform which are being stimulated by the anniversary of Vatican II.

About the editors Dr Christopher M. Bellitto is Assistant Professor in the History Department at Kean University, Union, New Jersey, USA, and Dr Louis I. Hamilton is a Post Doctoral Associate in the History Department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.

Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West General Editors: Brenda Bolton with Anne J. Duggan and Michael E. Goodich

Other titles in the series: Gillian R. Knight The Correspondence between Peter the Venerable and Bernard of Clairvaux A Semantic and Structural Analysis Michelle Still The Abbot and the Rule Religious Life at St Albans, 1290–1349 Sylvia Schein Gateway to the Heavenly City Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (1099–1187) Edited by Brenda Bolton and Anne J. Duggan Adrian IV The English Pope (1154–1159) Studies and Texts Richard Kay The Council of Bourges, 1225 A Documentary History Damian J. Smith Innocent III and the Crown of Aragon The Limits of Papal Authority Edited by Kathleen G. Cushing and Richard F. Gyug Ritual, Text and Law Studies in Medieval Canon Law and Liturgy Presented to Roger E. Reynolds

Reforming the Church before Modernity

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Reforming the Church before Modernity Patterns, Problems and Approaches Edited by

CHRISTOPHER M. BELLITTO Kean University and

LOUIS I. HAMILTON Rutgers University

# Christopher M. Bellitto and Louis I. Hamilton, 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Christopher M. Bellitto and Louis I. Hamilton have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hants GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington VT 05401–4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Reforming the Church before Modernity: Patterns, Problems and Approaches – (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieaval West). 1. Church renewal – History – To 1500 – Congresses. 2. Church history – Primitive and early church, ca. 30–600 – Congresses. 3. Church history – Middle Ages, 600–1500 – Congresses. I. Bellitto, Christopher M. II. Hamilton Louis I. 270.2 US Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Reforming the Church before Modernity: Patterns, Problems and Approaches / edited by Christopher M. Bellitto and Louis I. Hamilton p. cm. – (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Church history – Middle Ages, 600–1500. 2. Church history – 16th century. 3. Church history – 17th century. 4. Reformation. 5. Christianity and culture. I. Bellitto, Christopher M. II. Hamilton, Louis I. III. Series. BR253.R44 2005 262 0.02 00902–dc22 2005000461 ISBN 0 7546 5355 2 This book is printed on acid free paper. Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books, Bodmin, Cornwall

Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction Louis I. Hamilton

PART I:

Church Reform and Society in Late Antiquity Robert A. Markus

2

Gaudium et Spes: Ecclesiastical Reformers at the Start of a ‘‘New Age’’ John Howe

3

4

The Early Scholastics and the Reform of Doctrine and Practice Marcia L. Colish

5

Fides quaerens et non quaerens intellectum: Reform and the Intellectuals in the Early Modern Period John O’Malley

6

7

3

21

The Ideas of Reform and the Intellectuals

Self and Cosmos in Becoming Deiform: Neoplatonic Paradigms for Reform by Self-knowledge from Augustine to Aquinas Wayne J. Hankey

PART III:

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Social Change and Religious Reform

1

PART II:

ix xi

39 61

69

Clerical Reform

Clerical Hierarchy and Imperial Legislation in Late Antiquity: The Reformed Reformers Rita Lizzi Testa To Consecrate the Church: Ecclesiastical Reform and the Dedication of Churches Louis I. Hamilton

87

105

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8 The Reform of the Episcopate in the Libellus to Leo X by the Camaldolese Hermits Vincenzo Querini and Tommaso Giustiniani Giuseppe Alberigo PART IV:

139

The Processes of Reform

9 The Church in the Roman Empire: Changes without Reform and Reforms without Change Claire Sotinel

155

10 Text and Authority in the Formation of the Cistercian Order: Re-assessing the Early Cistercian Reform Martha G. Newman

173

11 Compliance and Defiance: The Daughters of Charity and the Council of Trent Susan E. Dinan

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Index

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Acknowledgements This conference and this book have been the work of many souls. We would like to thank especially the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University, which is not only where we first began the conversations that led to this work, but also provided the very generous funds to bring these contributors and many other esteemed colleagues to New York in August of 2002. That support was unflagging both from Dean Robert Himmelberg and his successor Dean Nancy Busch. The office of the Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Fordham University was also very generous in its support of our efforts. Without their support this conversation would never have taken place. Professors Robert Jones, then Chair of the History Department at Fordham, and his successor Richard Gyug provided early and important sponsorship for the program. Professor Maryanne Kowaleski loaned us her considerable organizational skills and the resources of the Fordham Medieval Studies Program, both of which proved invaluable. Professor Robert Dodaro, OSA, was one of the organizers of the conference and has provided much worthy counsel and direction in guiding the book to publication, for which we are deeply indebted. He also generously assisted the editors in the translation of Giuseppe Alberigo’s article, as did Marco Pascente, Maureen Hanratty and Meagan Alvis of the Dean’s office retained their sense of humor as they filed paperwork from five countries and designed the conference website. Professors Nicholas Agrait, Laura Gathagan, and Kevin Sheets, and Grant Gathagan and Lydia Hamilton helped run the conference and looked after the participants during their stay in New York. Professor Brenda Bolton, an exemplary human being, has been a pleasure to work with as ever, as has Dr. John Smedley of Ashgate. Louis Hamilton would like to thank Rutgers University for providing generous support and stimulating colleagues throughout this project. Christopher M. Bellitto is grateful to his colleagues at Kean University and his audiences at public lectures for allowing him to discuss reform with them. Christopher M. Bellitto Union, New Jersey Louis I. Hamilton New Brunswick, New Jersey

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Abbreviations CCL CCCM CSEL Mansi

MGH

PG PL

Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina (Turnhout, 1953– ) Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis (Turnhout, 1971– ) Corpus scriptorum eccliasticorum latinorum (Vienna, 1866– ) Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. Joannes Dominicus Mansi, cont. Ioannes Baptista Martin, Ludovicus Petit, 53 vols (Florence–Venice, 1758–98; Paris 1901–27; repr. Graz, 1960–61) Monumenta Germaniae Historica, inde ab anno Christi quingentesimo usque ad annum millesimum et quingentesimum (Hanover–Berlin, 1824– ) Patrologiae cursus completes, Series graeca (Patrologia Graeca), ed. J. P. Migne, 161 vols (1857–66) Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina (Patrologia Latina), ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1841–64)

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Introduction Louis I. Hamilton

The conference Ecclesia semper reformanda, held at Fordham University in August 2002, originated with the intention of using multiple perspectives and methods to consider the nature of religious reform before the modern period. The inspiration for this conference was the fortieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. That Council, opened by Pope John XXIII on October 11, 1962 and sweeping in its re-examination of the Catholic Church, must then have seemed especially modern in its conception of both the Church and of reform, as several of our contributors note. From the conciliar documents, the Church emerges as a clearly recognizable structure with a pontifical pinnacle, each aspect of the structure having its own prescribed set of functions. The subsequent response to the Council over the last forty years strongly suggests the limitations of such a mechanical model. Vatican II, as it is commonly known, has its critics: those on the right believing the changes it unleashed to be unprecedented; those on the left accepting the far-reaching nature of those but still considering them incomplete. The debate that surrounds the Council – over issues of clerical celibacy, accusations or celebrations of innovation, exhortations for the return to an earlier imagined ideal of either the first-century Apostolic or sixteenth-century reformed Church, and the authority of Rome – has a familiar ring to the historian. From this perspective, Vatican II appears to fit into a wider history of reforming movements rather than simply raising issues of modernity. In fact, not only does the Council seem connected by historical issues; its very convocation is credited, in some part, to the efforts of historians of the first half of the twentieth century.1 At the same time, the Council took place in a clearly different context than had previous reform movements. Certainly by the twentieth century, the Church was no longer the dominant force within the cultures where it existed; we no longer think of Christendom as one idealized community. Rather, the present Church, even the Second Vatican Council itself, exists within a culture defined, largely, apart from itself and its own ideals. The engagement of an

1

John Van Engen, ‘‘The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,’’ The American Historical Review 91, 3 (June 1986), 519–52, at 522–7.

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institution such as the Church, which is both modern and premodern, with modern culture and society (John XXIII’s aggiornamento) is problematic and requires a better understanding of both.2 The rejection or the embrace of the premodern Church is best informed by a critical historical perspective. For example, one recent reformer has suggested that the Church should restructure itself along the lines of a modern (American) corporation, such as McDonald’s or Wal-Mart. Indeed, part of the problem within the Church, according to this reformer, is that the Church ‘‘operates as a feudal system,’’ with lords (bishops) and a king (the pope).3 But this would-be reform seems blithely unaware of the vastly greater powers exercised by a modern CEO over his or her company as compared to any pope, certainly of the premodern era, or its consequences.4 Nor was concern paid to the vastly greater uniformity in experiences at the retail end of these corporations as compared even to a modern parish (let alone a premodern one). This example, however idiosyncratic, demonstrates both the need to understand properly how premodern institutions governed and the capacity of the modern Church to be overwhelmed by a culture it no longer dominates.5 These problems of continuity and discontinuity between the premodern and the modern Church, and of the issues of reform, motivated us to invite a 2

The question has been posed to what extent it is appropriate to think of ‘‘the Church,’’ or how we are to understand that phrase in the Middle Ages. In addition to Van Engen, ‘‘Christian Middle Ages,’’ see also Gary Macy, ‘‘Was there a ‘The Church’ in the Middle Ages?,’’ in R. N. Swanson, ed., Unity and Diversity in the Church, Papers read at the 1994 Summer Meeting and the 1995 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical Historical Society (Oxford, 1996), 107–16. 3 Frederick W. Gluck, ‘‘Can the Church Learn from Wal-Mart?,’’ America, the National Catholic Weekly (May 17, 2004), 12–15, at 12. He suggests that in addition to enormous savings in costs, the Church would inspire greater devotion and higher job satisfaction (p. 14). 4 On the limits of the early medieval papacy, for example, see Thomas F. X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter (680–825) (Philadelphia, 1984), or Margaret Harvey, ‘‘Unity and Diversity: Perceptions of the Papacy in the Later Middle Ages,’’ in Swanson, Unity and Diversity in the Church, 145–69. One might also consider the effort required for even such an ambitious pope as Innocent III to control the so-called papal states. Brenda Bolton, ‘‘ ‘Except the Lord keep the city’: Towns in the Papal States at the Turn of the Twelfth Century,’’ in Church and City 1000–1500: Essays in Honour of Christopher Brooke, ed. David Abulafia, M. J. Franklin, and Miri Rubin (Cambridge, 1992), 199–218, repr. in Brenda Bolton, Innocent III: Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot, 1995). 5 Mr. Gluck himself was a former executive at both the Bechtel Group and McKinsey & Company. Thus the idealization of his immediate cultural context and suspicion of older models of organization are not surprising. See also his previous article on the topic, ‘‘Crisis Management in the Church,’’ America, the National Catholic Weekly (Dec. 1, 2003), 7–9. On the relationship between Christianity and the modern state, see R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, 1550–1750 (London, 1989) and The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge, 1998).

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distinguished group of scholars to consider, from the vantage of their particular specialties, the phenomenon of religious reform prior to the birth of the modern Church: roughly to the period of the sixteenth-century reforms. Since the purpose was to investigate reform, per se, we arranged the panels by the questions our participants were asked to consider, rather than by historical periods, and allowed the panels to proceed chronologically. The aim was to consider how different methods might open up the question of reform. We suggested a variety of topics loosely inspired by the documents and challenges of the Second Vatican Council that seemed to promise the capacity to highlight aspects of reform history. We did not presume to define for the panel what reform, modernity, or, for that matter, the Church was, as that seemed too teleologically driven and, thus, self-defeating. These are all words and concepts we scholars commonly use, even if we lack common, readily articulated definitions of what they mean. The panels examined reform from the perspective of social change, historical scholarly methods and schools of thought; the clergy, monasticism, the liturgy, and the centers and peripheries of reform, questions of gender, heterodoxy and orthodoxy, and lay leadership also shaped the conversation. By examining the Church via reform we glimpsed the Church in the process of continually defining itself. The results are fascinating and several major themes emerged that now appear central to understanding the questions of reform before modernity emerged. First, it should be noted that while a wealth of scholarship has been written about reform movements during the first 1600 years of Church history, surprisingly little energy has been spent considering how the term is used and how the term might be applied more precisely by historians.6 As John Howe notes in his essay, we now accept a variety of renaissance periods without detracting from the idea of the Renaissance as a recognizable period of history. Indeed, it might be possible to isolate an even greater number of reform movements if we attempt a more precise definition. In fact, the categories of the twelfth-century renaissance and Carolingian renaissance were created precisely because they seemed to stand the test of definitions of rebirth of an ancient aesthetic.7 Second, the same might readily be said for

6 The great exception was Gerhard Ladner, The Idea of Reform, its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge, Mass., 1959). While Ladner’s successors have tended to see the history of the Church as a series of reform movements, the continuities and distinctions among them, or the ecclesiological distinctions, have been less fully developed. 7 These ideas have been explored in such works as Warren Treadgold, ed., Renaissances before the Renaissance (Stanford, 1984); Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1982); and Derek Baker, ed., Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History, Papers read at the fifteenth Summer Meeting and sixteenth Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical Historical Society (Oxford, 1977).

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study of the Church, per se, though this dilemma has received fairly recent and careful consideration.8 The essays that follow raise almost as many questions as they answer, and offer important ways to pose questions of religious reform and new approaches to answering these questions. Historians need to be sensitive to the dynamic reality of the Church’s selfunderstandings, as both a theological (eschatological) reality and unity, on the one hand, and as a localized practiced reality and multiplicity, on the other. As medieval preachers on the dedication of a new church consistently reminded their listeners, the Church was both a local community and the trans-temporal body of Christ (as discussed by Louis Hamilton). The ideal of the Church as body of Christ was itself rooted in Paul’s epistles especially. Reform of the Church was always a process of connecting (or reconnecting) the one practiced reality to the other biblical ideal. The link between this unity and diversity might be found in the relationship between personal transformation or conversion, the conversio of monastic movements (‘‘becoming Deiform,’’ as Wayne Hankey suggests), and widespread social and cultural transformation. The prescriptive sources we use, such as episcopal letters, conciliar decrees, and canon law, create a reality to the Church that becomes more elusive upon closer inspection; indeed, their authority to initiate reform rests upon that created reality. It remains an open question to what extent the Council of Trent (which met between 1545 and 1563), once assumed to have marked the birth of the modern Catholic Church, had in fact created a modern institutional coherence by the seventeenth century (as discussed by Susan Dinan). Robert Markus connects modern scholarship’s lack of a coherent understanding of reform to the nebulousness of early Church unity. The Late Antique Church was conceived primarily as a mystical, heavenly reality, not an institutional, structural phenomenon. Therefore, the language of reform of the Church has been seen properly from the vantage of personal reform from the life of sin. Here, the reader should also consider the discussions of personal reform by Wayne Hankey and Martha Newman. This language of personal sin and an idealized heavenly community of saints, Professor Markus suggests, shaped and was shaped by three critical social transformations of Late Antiquity: the Constantinian revolution, the conversion of the Germanic kingdoms, and the Moslem conquests within the Mediterranean. These transformations launched two responses within Western Christendom, the first being self-critical: the search for an ‘‘authentic’’ Church within 8

Van Engen, ‘‘Christian Middle Ages,’’ on christianitas, esp. at 539. See also David M. Thompson’s introduction to Unity and Diversity in the Church, xvi–xvii, xxi, in which the first fifteen essays address the premodern Christian era, but do not attempt to consider the change over time, especially the idea of unity as an institutional reality.

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the social Church. The cult of the martyrs and the rise of asceticism mark distinct pathways by which personal conversion became a call to a community of ‘‘authentic’’ Christians, that is the community of martyrs, the heavenly Christian community of Revelation 7: 13, the heavenly Christian community. Monasticism itself was, thus, both a reform movement and an innovator of ecclesial structures. The second response was, in a sense, the opposite of the first. As the Western Church was both isolated from dissenting voices through the Moslem conquest (especially with the loss of the African Church) and increasingly the creator of its own social and cultural institutions within Northern Europe, greater emphasis was placed on the correctness of its institutions and practices: less emphasis was placed on making Christians stand apart from society and more emphasis was placed on the triumph of the Christian order. Thus, the waxing and waning of asceticism, of the cult of the martyrs, and of this self-critical mode of personal reform appears to have had wide implications for the Christian community as a whole and on its interaction with society. In turn, it is not surprising that John Howe observes that the search for both social change and reform in a precise form, even in the eleventh century, an era famous for both, leaves one with more questions than answers. The sharp breaks in society, the so-called transformation of the year 1000, seem softer now than they did a generation ago: the emergence of feudal structures, such as incastelamento, appear to be phenomena more varied by time and location. The rapid change within the Church seems to play out over several centuries with a greater debt owed to a variety of monastic movements than was previously thought. Papal authority, on the other hand, as Howe suggests, was less novel. But Howe’s contribution is not a simple retreat from the questions concerning the year 1000; rather, it is a call to restructure the questions we ask. In what ways did contemporaries frame the questions of ecclesial crisis and why did they do so in their particular form? How did the Gregorians conceive of the ecclesial past and did that conception serve to shape their ideals? In fact, Howe’s contribution raises the possibility that the Gregorians tapped into the Antique inheritance discussed by Robert Markus. He argues that the Gregorians recaptured motifs from Late Antiquity, especially those of the Church persecuted and set apart from society, in order to galvanize support for their movement, and to motivate the personal reform that could become the precursor to institutional reform. The broad demographic changes of the eleventh century may have lent credence and impetus to claims of social change, and therefore of religious crisis and calls to reform, even if those claimed crises in retrospect seem much less dramatic. Thus, Howe places reform into the categories of the study of mentalite´, memory, and their consequences.

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From questions of the intersection between social change and mentalite´, we turn to questions of intellectuals in those changing societies. Wayne Hankey considers directly the Neoplatonic tradition of self-reform from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. This process, it has already been suggested, underlay the transformation of the mundane Church into the heavenly one. Through a reassessment of the relationship between the Neoplatonisms of Augustine and Aquinas, Hankey observes that the two have been falsely set against each other and against modernity, at least in so far as modernity is considered to represent a ‘‘turn to the subject’’ as the basis of self-knowledge. That is to say, because both Augustine and Aquinas can be located within the Neoplatonic and Arabic peripatetic traditions of the turn to the self, they share a common basis for knowledge and an ascent via that knowledge to the Divine. The gap, therefore, between the inheritors of Plato and those of Aristotle, most commonly thought of as that between Aquinas and Bonaventure, is likewise narrowed by this reappraisal. In consequence, reform, as Hankey observes, has always been rooted in the pursuit of proper self-knowledge and in the derivative pursuit of ‘‘conversion to deity.’’ From this perspective, all reform at its essence is non-institutional, and can neither be compelled nor prevented. Attempts to lead, direct, or control it, therefore, have been fraught with unintended consequences. This suggests that the study of ecclesial authorities needs to place their reforming ambitions (or lack thereof ) and accomplishments in this much more conditional context. Interestingly, the scholastics do not appear to be effective patron saints of an anti-modern campaign in so far as they were willing to conceive of the Church as disparate and dynamic in its practices – practices they saw, at times, as historically and culturally conditioned. Armed with these understandings they were willing to propose new solutions to ancient problems of doctrine and praxis when they thought ancient authorities were either irreconcilable or inadequate. Thus, Marcia Colish’s essay further diminishes the view of medieval intellectual history under the scholastics as a single and unbending handmaiden of ecclesial unity and authority. If reform is considered as the conscious change of practice with the intention of correcting it, as Colish takes it to be, then the early scholastics can also be considered as active reformers. Here, reform does not have the sense of returning to an earlier ideal practice (reformatio ad pristina) but rather to a better practice (ad melioranda). For this reason, the early scholastics felt free to apply new or revitalized methods (historical or source criticism, for example); to employ ‘‘the most high-tech philosophical tools available’’ (intentionality in ethics, Aristotelianism in Eucharistic theology, or early scholastic nominalism in the doctrine of God); or to yield to the weight of the current practice so as to form consensus. Marcia Colish’s essay brings us face to face with another theme in Church history: the dynamic between

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orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and the manner in which each can narrow and reify the other in surprising ways.9 Turning to the early modern reformers, John O’Malley begins with the observation that students of ‘‘The Reformation’’ have been ‘‘sloppy and unreflective’’ in applying the term that defines their field. He chooses, therefore, to begin by considering an earlier reform movement with a more precise focus, that is, the interest of the Gregorian reform in canon law.10 This turn towards canon law, especially as it represented the deep concern to find coherent and ancient Christian authority to form the basis for Church order, was quintessentially reformist. The authority of that canon law and its concomitant scholasticism was central both to Martin Luther and to the Council of Trent. For Luther, canon law was the impurity that needed to be purged. For the Council of Trent, canon law needed to be reformed as a more precise instrument of social discipline. Thus, we discover a surprising relationship between these reform movements and the emerging modern state. The Council of Trent, in this regard, fostered and employed one of the mechanisms of the state – the expanding authority of the law. Luther, while attacking canon law, turned to and affirmed lay authority within the Christian community. Both, therefore, depended on aspects of, and promoted, the emerging modern state. While Luther and the Council of Trent shared a deep structural approach to reform, Erasmus, formed by monastic tradition and the studia humanistica, placed himself largely outside their approach to reform. For Erasmus, reform was a question of the transformation of the heart (and in this he fits nicely into the Neoplatonic tradition as discussed by Hankey). Most clearly in the dynamic among these three forces working towards reform in the sixteenth century, we see the real tensions emerging between conceptions of the Church and of reform, that attempted but hardly succeeded in engaging a common enterprise of reform. This dynamic between personal reform and broader institutional reform had been a characteristic of the Constantinian reshaping of the Late Antique Church. In part, the Constantinian Church came to reflect the tensions between heterodoxy and orthodoxy. Debates among the bishops of Late Antiquity, their efforts to bring discipline and order to Christian theology, met with the changing circumstances and needs of the fourth-century Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire in helping to foster episcopal hierarchies within the Church. This was not a simple top–down reform, with

Susanna Elm, E´ric Rebillard, and Antonella Romano, eds., Orthodoxie, Christianisme, Histoire: Orthodoxy, Christianity, History, Collection de L’E´cole franc¸aise de Rome, 270 (Rome, 2000), xxi–xxiii. 10 Exemplary in its concise presentation of the ideals of reform is Karl Morrison, ‘‘The Gregorian Reform,’’ Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century, ed. Bernard McGinn, John Myendorff, and John Leclerq (New York, 1993), 177–93. 9

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the emperor imposing his will upon a Church made in his likeness.11 Rather, as Rita Lizzi Testa demonstrates, difficult questions of imperial policy became bound up in questions of episcopal heresy and discipline. As the emperor attempted to forge imperial policy he was at once responding to requests from a variety of bishops yet also seeking out the advice of other bishops. Lizzi Testa perceptively notes how difficult it is to see who is reforming whom. Hence, for her, bishops become ‘‘reformed reformers.’’ The emperor grew increasingly dependent on his bishops to implement the mechanism of Roman government while, in turn, being willing to offer these bishops greater privileges. For their part, bishops argued before the emperor as to how those privileges and responsibilities were to be shared by the clergy. Lizzi Testa examines this dynamic process within the context of the Arian controversy where the debate over orthodoxy created an ecclesial structure that descended right down to the level of those who could draw public salaries or accept bequests. Louis Hamilton further explores the complexity of the dynamics of clerical reform in regard to the liturgical commentaries of Bruno of Segni (d. 1123), cardinal, bishop, and one-time abbot of Montecassino. The liturgy, specifically that to dedicate new churches, was being used by reforming clergy to promote pro-papal reform ideals. Specifically, clerics capitalized on a double metaphor for papal authority contained within the dedication liturgy that carried the implication of Roman authority over the Church. The pro-papal reformers of the late eleventh century portrayed themselves as returning to an older ecclesial ideal, essentially twofold – of Christ’s charge to Peter as found in the Gospel and of the martyrdom, and hence the physical deposit of the bodies of the Apostles Peter and Paul in their Roman tombs. Ideas such as these provided powerful resonances with church construction and dedication from which Bruno and his predecessors could and did view the dedication liturgy as an opportunity to promote papal authority. As symbols become powerful, however, they also become volatile. After 1111, Bruno, having fallen out of favor with Paschal II and being deprived of the abbacy of Cassino, began to promote another model of reform, via another reading of

11 To construct it as such is precisely to misunderstand premodern institutions. For a gross example of this, see James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, a History (Boston, 2001). Carroll presents Constantine as a modern totalitarian subjugating Europe and the Mediterranean to his will via an imagined elaborate state structure, ‘‘When . . . [Constantine] declared a freeze on wages and prices to control inflation, a chaotic system . . . began to operate as one,’’ p. 173. Similarly, Constantine is supposed to have reshaped the Church, ‘‘as if by imperial fiat – or rather precisely by such fiat,’’ p. 174. Interestingly Carroll presents this history as the basis for a third Vatican Council to reform the Catholic Church. See the excellent review by Eamon Duffy, ‘‘A Deadly Misunderstanding,’’ in New York Review of Books 48, 11 (July 5, 2001), 24–7.

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the liturgy of dedication, one that emphasized the role of the episcopacy in guiding the Church. In clear contrast to his own previous writings, and to the previous fifty years of papal rhetoric, Bruno undermined the idea that Constantine’s gift of regalia to Pope Sylvester held any significance beyond the historical fact (its literal sense). Thus the process of reform was a dynamic one that depended on the effective communication of its ideals through the liturgy itself. Reform to a considerable extent relied upon countless such dedications and the religious ideals they could transmit. Even at the highest levels of the Church the zeal for top–down reform was finite and an episcopal model remained an available alternative. Giuseppe Alberigo provides us with a selected text and commentary on the Libellus ad Leonem X of 1513, suggesting that the Libellus provides a unique perspective on the possibility of reform. Reform in this case is not imagined in the narrow sense of moral correction or structural change. Rather the focus is on conversion, especially that of non-Christians, and is, therefore, on the effective preaching of proper doctrine. It is a more subtle type of reform that seems to suggest what we might call ‘‘cultural reform,’’ whereas the authors of the Libellus see this as a confrontation with the libido dominandi, or desire for domination, within the Church. Ultimately reform in this sense is an organic approach to ecclesiology that imagines reform as reforming the customs of the Christian community, and papally led. In this sense, it is of a piece (though broader in scope) with the liturgical focus of Bruno of Segni, whose efforts to reform the clergy depended on right understanding of the liturgy’s moral and ecclesiological significance. It is also of a piece with the Erasmian ideal of reform as presented by Professor O’Malley and may represent an older monastic tradition of personal reform. The question of what becomes of the ambitions for reform once they have been articulated remains an open one; in the case of the Libellus, its ambitious program was overwhelmed by the controversy surrounding Martin Luther. An expressed ideal of ecclesial structure (even one promoted from the center, or apex, of the ecclesial structure) remains only an ideal (or, rather, one of several competing ideals) whose reality needs to be worked out. Our final group of essays returns us to this question, as well as to the distinction of primary importance between the theological reality of the Church and the institution of the Church. Claire Sotinel reminds us that the former was a greater reality in the Late Antique Church than the latter. Local reform depended on the particularities of the bishop and his community, but some commonalities can be found. First, Sotinel finds that there is reform, even surprising amounts of it, as early as the third century. This is reform in the dual sense of reform ad pristina and ad melioranda. Second, she finds an impulse towards establishing universal norms for all Christians and Christian communities. This impulse originates both in the collegiality of the bishops and the Roman legal system (cf. Lizzi Testa’s essay). Third, a connection

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might be established between personal reform and institutional reform through the related phenomena of repentance of sin and the correction of practice (both disciplines led by the bishop). This connection is seen clearly, and was perhaps established, in the debate over the baptism of heretics. (Again we see the creative tension between orthodoxy and heterodoxy.) Sotinel also sees a link between these two types of reform (personal and institutional) via the growing vogue of asceticism and the related call for greater ascetic discipline among bishops as well as the laity, that should be compared with Markus’ statements on asceticism and reform. In the interplay of these different elements, much remains to be answered and clarified: how did ecclesial unity emerge from collegiality and common practice result from the personal reform of confession and self-discipline? Once historians can begin to address that question, then we may have taken the first step towards a much more precise understanding of premodern institutions. It may well be that monastic communities may provide our most important links between personal and institutional ecclesial reform. Monasticism in the Middle Ages also offers us a case study of how unity was created prior to the modern Church, even in the midst of a reform movement. Martha Newman’s essay is a close examination of the shift from the charisma of the Cistercian founders to the legal reality of the Cistercian order. While previous historians have accepted an imposed institutional history of the order that traced its governing structures to its earliest foundation, recent scholarship challenges that model. Newman argues that the ‘‘organizational structure’’ of the early Cistercians was a shared textual experience of common reading and liturgical practices. These were passed throughout the order via precise texts and illustrations that linked the texts to the monks who read them and personalized them. This textual charisma extended to Stephen Harding’s reading of the Benedictine Rule. That text, rather than any individual Cistercian abbot, was to provide the charismatic authority in Harding’s reformation ad pristina. It was one of a core of Cistercian texts that, along with their common reading practices, defined one of the most successful monastic movements of its day in lieu of a precisely articulated constitutional structure. A much later monastic community, the Daughters of Charity, reveal a possible, if complex, contrast between the early modern era, specifically the France of Louis XIV, and our previous discussion. The Daughters of Charity were able to pursue a series of strategies that helped them to avoid claustration, relying on the legal definition of the Daughters as a confraternity. The Daughters, in Susan Dinan’s presentation, thus offer an example of the multiplicity of institutions coherent with the earlier period of Christianity, but in this instance organized along structural lines. In claiming this, Dinan’s presentation is of a piece with that of O’Malley. Even as Luther rejected canon law and Roman authority, but still embraced the growing state

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institutions that surrounded him, so too the Daughters resisted Roman authority by pursuing a legal strategy that made the most sense in a Tridentine Catholic Church. The Daughters of Charity reveal other continuities with the earlier Church for it was their charitable charisma as servants of the poor that enabled their legal protection. ‘‘Ultimately,’’ suggests Dinan, ‘‘clerics in France treated the legislation of the Council of Trent as malleable.’’ And so, while the Council of Trent harbored ambitions for genuine social control, it still ‘‘lacked the mechanisms to impose conformity upon all Catholic Europe.’’ The French clergy’s ability to offer the Daughters their independence, in turn, depended on the strength of the emerging French State. The diversity of the Church appears, in this case, to have been maintained by recourse to those structures (the emerging state) that appear to have been eliminating just such premodern diversities. Several conclusions, therefore, seem possible from our efforts and several questions deserve renewed attention. If we consider ecclesial reform as a phenomenon worthy of study in its own right, we need to begin by setting out the terms of the study. That is, the study of reform ought to address in what sense the term is being used in the sources, whether it is reform of the self, of ecclesial institutions, of religious practice, or of some combination of all these. Is this reform ad pristina or ad melioranda or is all reform, in some senses, an exercise in a reconstruction of the past? To what extent does reform become a debate over memory and the meanings of history? If this is the case, then literature and literary methods have much to offer the study of Church and reform. To what extent does Church reform depend upon ideas about the Kingdom of God? It is a commonplace that the medieval political thought sought, to some extent, a reflection of the divine order on earth. This implies that biblical exegesis is essential to political theory. In turn, if reform depended on notions about the heavenly city, then one would expect eschatological writings to be inherently about ecclesiology (though certainly not exclusively). Three related conclusions are possible. First, we need to consider the resources for and processes of reform before modernity. Since premodern institutions had more limited capacity to govern large areas directly, one should expect a greater divergence between a reform ideal and its local application. Put another way, it is not clear that the consequences of reform activities have a significant relationship to the objectives of the reformers. Second, any examination of the consequences of reform needs to be more sensitive to the dynamic of personal transformation that was often the rallying image of reformers. This suggests the greater extent to which the premodern Church was dependent on local authorities and communities to offer obedience. Third, and related to the second, we ought to consider the dynamic between personal reform and institutional reform in order to reveal the highly elusive workings of premodern institutions. In some ways this goes

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without saying as personal relationships and dynamics help to define premodern institutions and personal reform movements (ascetic or monastic) appear to yield ecclesial coherence. But, if considered seriously, it may mean that studies of the premodern Church relying heavily on prescriptive sources offer us only a limited view, of a narrow, almost entirely clerical mentalite´, rather than that of a more broadly experienced Church. That dynamic between personal transformation and institutional reform requires that we consider the premodern Church from the broader vantage of culture if we are to understand how it was sustained and reformed.

PART I Social Change and Religious Reform

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Chapter 1

Church Reform and Society in Late Antiquity Robert A. Markus

In 1950 I, like many Roman Catholics, was thrilled by the publication of Yves-Marie Congar’s great work Vraie et fausse re´forme dans l’E´glise. It was like a breath of fresh air, a window being opened after a long winter to allow a whiff of spring to enter. To our despair, it was not long before it was banned by the Vatican; but it was not much more than a decade or so before it, as well as its author, were rehabilitated by Pope John XXIII and his Council. Congar’s book was a foretaste of the gale that began to blow the window wide open. Nowadays much of its argument would be so widely taken for granted as to be almost commonplace. Congar’s was a theological, not a historical, study; he was, however, more than any great theologian I can easily think of, a man of a deeply historical turn of mind, and his theological thinking was utterly penetrated by historical insight as well as a determination to unpack the riches contained in the Church’s tradition and an uncompromising fidelity to that tradition. In any discussion on reform in or of the Church, his voice is one to which we cannot afford to be deaf. The purpose of our conference was to search for possible patterns in premodern reform movements, and I am required to consider reform in relation to social change in Late Antiquity. In this task we are immediately confronted with a paradox: the Fathers, or Late Antique Christians, do not speak of reform in or of the Church. Congar attributed this reticence to several reasons. First, he put it down to what he described as a ‘‘a very mystical notion of the Church,’’ one which saw the Church primarily in terms of heavenly realities, descended to earth, realised among men, but realities ‘‘whose true condition,’’ in Congar’s words, ‘‘is essentially heavenly.’’1 It was seen as a mystery of holiness, an organised body of sacramental and priestly observance which serves as the vehicle of the Spirit. This perspective defined the approach to reform: ‘‘the problem of evil in the Church was above all that

1

Yves-Marie Congar, Vraie et fausse re´forme dans l’E´glise (Paris, 1950), 63–4.

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of sin.’’2 Moreover, Congar argued, in the world as it was before its laicisation in modern times (which began, spiritually, in 1793), the Church was seen as what was most excellent . . . whether faced with a pagan world . . . , or under a Christian re´gime, that is to say a symbiosis of temporal society and the order of faith under the tutelage of the Church, all the actuality of goodness or progress coincided perfectly with the Church and only existed in and through her. Hence the problem of evil in the Church arose only from the Church’s point of view and its own perspective, that is to say in terms of sin.3

In contrast with this ancient view of the problem of evil in the Church, Congar noted, our modern problem is different, and arises in a larger perspective (sur une base plus large): ‘‘rather than the sins of its members, what causes offence is the Church’s incomprehensions, its narrownesses, its retarded ways’’ (on se scandalisera de ses incompre´hensions, de ses e´troitesses, de ses retards).4 Our ‘‘modern’’ view, according to Congar, considers the problem in institutional rather than personal terms. This re-orientation was encouraged by the emergence of a strongly institutionalised sense of ‘‘the Church’’ which, in Congar’s view, did not emerge until the eleventh century, to grow from then until our own time.5 Not long after the appearance of Congar’s book, Gerhart Ladner published his extensive survey of the patristic idea of reform.6 The core of the study was a lexicographical survey of the terminology of reform: the meaning of reformare, renovare and their cognates. The conclusion seemed to confirm Congar’s views: the patristic concepts – and Gregory the Great’s as their final re-statement – circled around the concepts of creation and new creation, of the reformation of the image of God in man by divine grace, the restoration of sinful human beings to their lost integrity. The mechanisms through which reform was to be achieved are, as expected, teaching, preaching and sacramental agency. The strongly personal, individualistic, orientation of the patristic reform-idea implied by Ladner’s conclusion was

2

Ibid., 64. It is worth noting that Augustine’s ecclesiology, shaped by the conflict with Donatism, helped to establish this as the dominant mode of approaching this subject: the holiness of the Church ‘‘without spot or wrinkle’’ asserted by the early Christian tradition, and especially Cyprian, had to be reconciled with the idea of the Church as a mixed body, containing sinners along with saints. A useful study by R. Be´langer, ‘‘Propos d’Augustin sur l’ine´vitable souillure de l’E´glise ici-bas,’’ Studia patristica 22 (1989), 183–7 draws special attention to Augustine’s Tractatus in Iohannis Evangelium 56–57 as expounding this theme. 3 Congar, Vraie et fausse re´forme, 65; the identification of 1793 as the year in which spiritual laicisation began is at 64 and n.1. 4 Ibid., 67–8. 5 Ibid., 69–70. 6 Gerhart B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge, Mass., 1959).

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given added weight by his comparison of Gregory VII’s concept of renewal with Gregory the Great’s in a famous paper that was eventually to follow. Ladner here spoke of ‘‘the personalistic character of Gregory [the Great]’s reform ideology’’ and emphasised that ‘‘the term and the idea of reform are applied [by Gregory the Great] to individuals or groups of persons, not to the Church as a whole, except indirectly in the few cases where the reform of heretics or schismatics is concerned.’’7 In contrast, Gregory VII’s concept, even where the language resembles his great predecessor’s, envisages reform of the Church as such. Ladner concludes thus: the Church reform of the Hildebrandine age went beyond personal or regional or group renewal and was directed toward the entire Church, understood both as the community of the faithful and as hierarchical institution, based on ecclesiastical law.8

Without prejudging earlier medieval reform movements which are discussed in this volume by John Howe, we may provisionally accept Ladner’s conclusion that the patristic language of reform was given a more collective ecclesiastical reference in the language of the eleventh-century reformers. But to assert that notions of reform in Late Antiquity were only seen as Christians’ personal sins could, I think, be misleading. Congar was surely right to assert that the language of personal sinfulness was the only language available to formulate notions of reform; but I am not convinced that this is quite the same thing as denying any form of consciousness of what we might call ‘‘structural’’ or ‘‘institutional’’ sin in the early Christian centuries. We may grant that there was no developed language of ‘‘reform’’ and ‘‘renewal’’ – except in reference to personal morality – and that these were not the terms in which institutional reform could be discussed; but I would wish to suggest that although reform could only be discussed in such personalistic terms, the conditions which made it necessary, and indeed the object that needed to be reformed, were clearly perceived as social, if not institutional, in nature. We need therefore to look further afield and not to be content with recording the use of the language of reform and renewal, and to investigate its meaning, but to consider other, less direct ways in which reforming concerns could appear. The two major upheavals in the Church’s social existence, at any rate in the first millennium and a half, are of course the Constantinian revolution9 and

7 G. B. Ladner, ‘‘Gregory the Great and Gregory VII: A Comparison of their Concepts of Renewal,’’ Viator 4 (1973), 1–31, with quotations at 13 and 17; 27–31 are ‘‘A note on the computer methods used,’’ by D. W. Packard. 8 Ibid., 27. 9 Among modern theologians J. H. Yoder has given much thought to what he calls ‘‘Constantinianism.’’ See, for example, his The Original Revolution (Scottdale, Pa., 1972) and The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, 1984), 145;

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the establishment of Christianity in the Germanic kingdoms, and it is these two transformations in the social conditions of the Church that I shall consider here. I want also to consider a third episode, one that can scarcely be called a social change, but one which nevertheless had, in my view, huge repercussions on the possibilities of reform: the Moslem conquests around the Mediterranean. So I shall concentrate on the post-Constantinian Church, both within the Empire and in the subsequent post-Roman kingdoms in western Europe; but it will be as well to begin with an earlier episode which has often been taken to be an early manifestation of a concern for reform: the Montanist movement in the later second and the third centuries. This has often been characterised as having an ecstatic and charismatic character and is contrasted with the rigidity of the official, institutional Church.10 Tertullian certainly thought the New Prophecy ‘‘a mighty reforming spirit in the Church;’’11 once he contrasted the authentic Church of the Spirit with the Church of the ‘‘troop of bishops’’ (numerus episcoporum).12 Recent scholarship, however, has tended to dismiss, or at least to play down, the idea of Montanism as a reforming or protest movement. What is certainly true is that ‘‘for Montanists authority depended on the ‘vertical’ gift of the Paraclete, not upon the horizontal transmission of authority from pastor to pastor in apostolic continuity, mediating a valid sacramental life.’’13 In the pre-Constantinian world the Church stood out as a sharply defined group. A century ago the great ecclesiastical historian Adolf von Harnack commented on the designation of Christians, common in the early centuries, as ‘‘the third race’’ (tertium genus): It is indeed amazing! One had certainly no idea that in the consciousness of the Greeks and Romans the Jews stood out in such bold relief from the other nations, and the Christians from both, that they represented themselves as independent ‘‘genera’’, and were so described in an explicit formula. Neither Jews nor Christians could look for a more ample recognition, little as the demarcation was intended as a recognition at all.14

cf. also ‘‘The Disavowal of Constantine: An Alternative Perspective on Interfaith Dialogue,’’ in The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. M. G. Cartwright (Grand Rapids, 1994), 245. 10 I have done this myself in Christianity in the Roman World (London, 1974), 68–9. 11 H. Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society: From Galilee to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2001), 116. 12 De pudicitia 21. 13 Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society, 117. 14 Quoted from the English translation, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (London, 1904), i, 349. See on this my ‘‘The Problem of Selfdefinition: From Sect to Church,’’ in Jewish and Christian Self-definition, vol. 1: The Shaping of Christianity in the Second and Third Centuries, ed. E. P. Sanders (London, 1980), 1–15, 217–19; reprinted in my From Augustine to Gregory the Great: History and

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I shall suggest that it is this ‘‘standing out in relief’’ in the surrounding society that is fundamental to the patristic conception of reform. It is this sense of the Church’s identity in the secular world that came under threat in the course of the large-scale Christianisation of Roman society after Constantine, and, to some extent, even in the preceding decades. While Christians were an outlandish minority, suspect to outsiders, liable to sporadic persecution, their identity in the world was amply clear. The lines which marked them off from their world were imposed on them by their sheer foreignness to the world. But as Christians came increasingly to share the education, the culture, the lifestyles and tastes of their non-Christian contemporaries, so the lines of demarcation gradually melted away. As they ceased to be (visibly) aliens in their world and as the profession of Christianity became a passport to respectability, to wealth, and to privilege, so the sense of Christian identity inevitably came to be blurred. I have come to refer to the decades around AD 400, the time when this assimilation of Christianity to Roman society came to its climax, as a ‘‘crisis of identity’’ for Roman Christians.15 The challenge faced by ‘‘reformers’’ was to find a way of making the Church ‘‘stand out in relief,’’ with sharply defined contours in the secular world around it and to restore to Christians their sense of identity in their surroundings. The transformation of Christianity from being the religion of a persecuted sect to that of the Roman establishment is the major social change Christianity was to undergo in the ancient world. What we might call ‘‘reforming impulses’’ were among the responses to this transformation. This is, however, not immediately apparent, and in order to diagnose the way reform ideas surfaced, we need to consider the ways in which Christians adjusted to the Constantinian revolution. Spiritually and intellectually they were not well prepared for the miracle which transformed their condition from that of a persecuted minority to that of a favoured and privileged group, soon to become a dominant majority. By and large, they were very ready to enjoy their new status and to receive the benefits it brought. The vast majority of the bishops and clergy did not hesitate to accept imperial favour and official patronage and, along with it, a degree of imperial influence and control over ecclesiastical affairs. Among Christian preachers and writers the notion came to be widely held that the Roman Empire and the Christian Church were divinely intended to be united and were now, since Constantine, providentially fused in a single, universal, Christian society. The Empire came

Christianity in Late Antiquity (London, 1983), I. On the use of ethnic categories, see now D. K. Buell, ‘‘Race and Universalism in Early Christianity,’’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 10 (2002), 429–68. 15 See my The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990; 1997), ch. 1. Much of my argument in this essay is more fully substantiated in the book.

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to be widely seen as an image of God’s kingdom, ruled by emperors who were God’s representatives governing by his authority. There were exceptions to this readiness to identify the Church with the Empire: most obviously, those who were officially reckoned as heretical or schismatic. It was, however, against the prevailing mood of self-identification with the Christian Empire that the reforming impulses in the Church were aimed. There is ample evidence of unease about this new state of affairs if we look for it. Signs of it sometimes become explicit in the aftermath of Constantine’s inauguration of the new order. Eusebius, the Church historian, voiced this sense of a generation gap having opened between the last of the persecuted Christians and their tolerated descendants: ‘‘We, although not held worthy to have struggled (agonizasthai) unto death and to have shed our blood for God, yet, being the sons of those who have suffered thus and distinguished (semnunomenoi) by our fathers’ virtues, pray for mercy through them.’’16 How could one fail to be struck by the sea-change the Church had undergone, now that being a Christian was not just safe, but advantageous? Writing not long after the conversion of Constantine, Eusebius spoke of the ‘‘hypocrisy of people who crept into the Church’’ in order to obtain the emperor’s favour. The hypocrisy of individuals was by and large reflected in the collective readiness of churchmen to accept the new conditions of the Church’s existence in the world. A century of growing respectability and privilege, to which were added, before the end of the fourth century, the forces of urban mob-violence now directed against pagans, and of imperial legislation, did nothing to check the flood of half-converted Romans into Christian congregations. Almost a century after Eusebius, Augustine was anxious about the hordes of ‘‘feigned Christians’’ who were swept into his congregations by social pressures and official compulsion. How could this Church be seen as identical with the Church of the martyrs? This was the most agonising question lurking beneath the anxieties brought by establishment. The anxieties were to grow more intense as the fourth century drew on and the worldly advantages of conformity did not diminish. We should not mistake it for mere nostalgia for the heroic age of the martyrs. It was a widely diffused sense of bewilderment. The gulf between pre- and post-Constantinian Christianity may be much more obvious to us than it was to fourth-century Christians, but there can be no doubt that they were conscious of it and bewildered by the break between the triumphant Church of their new condition and its persecuted predecessor. At all costs, the past had to be kept alive in the Church’s present and renewed in the novel conditions of its existence. Christians needed every

16

Comm. in Ps. 78.11 (PG 23.949A). On this subject, see my The End of Ancient Christianity, ch. 6, which I summarise in the next two paragraphs.

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device of intellect, imagination and devotion to help them accommodate themselves to their present without an acute sense of having betrayed their past. Not all the means of bringing this about can be reckoned as ‘‘reforms,’’ but it is from this need that reforming impulses in the fourth and fifth centuries spring. I have often stressed the significance of two chief means of closing this permanent generation gap that opened in the Church’s consciousness in the post-Constantinian era. Neither, strictly, can be called ‘‘reforms,’’ but, as I shall argue, they were important sources of reforming ideas: one was the growth of a new historical consciousness among Christians, catered for by works such as Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History and its many continuations and imitations which did something to meet the deeply felt need for continuity with the Church’s heroic past. A mark of many programmes of reform, and not only in Late Antiquity, is an appeal to some past model of the Church as an ideal to be aimed for in the present. The second means of closing the gap between pre- and post-Constantinian Christianity was the cult of the martyrs, which underwent an immense development in the course of the fourth century. The cult came into its own when martyrdom was a thing of the past. It brought that past into the Church’s present, keeping the martyr permanently before the eyes of the faithful in their daily worship. With the cult of the martyr we are very close to the roots of Late Antique reforming instincts. The martyr was the human image of perfection, a model to follow. To be persecuted for the Lord’s sake was the hallmark of the true Christian. But as the fourth century wore on, this heroic image was slipping into a past ever more remote; martyrdom had become an anachronism. In the fifth century, a bishop who lost his life in a riot over the destruction of a pagan sanctuary was described as ‘‘fortunate in having been given the opportunity to die for God.’’17 A hundred and fifty years earlier such an action would have been frowned upon; but now – by a supreme irony of history – the image of the Christian persecutor as a martyr had become an expression of the need to share vicariously in the martyrs’ struggle and their victory. Now that martyrdom was an anachronism, for the ordinary run-of-the-mill Christian the liturgical commemoration of the martyrs would serve as a reminder of less happy but more heroic times; but at the same time Christians who wished to see themselves as real, authentic Christians needed something more to assert their identity as distinct from those who were Christians for worldly advantage or through an easy conformity. A new, updated form of martyrdom, one that could still exist in the post-Constantinian conditions,

17

Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica VII.15.12–15, ed. Gu¨nther Christian Hansen, Fontes Christiani, Bd. 73, 1–4 (Turnhout, 2004).

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could provide the answer to the question: what is it to be a Christian? The new form of martyrdom was the life of self-denial. The idea that peace, too, had its martyrs, became widespread; anything from the life of solitude, poverty, and virginity to mere refusal to resort to charms and amulets against illness, or even just resisting the temptation to get drunk, could count as martyrdom.18 The appeal of asceticism as a means to define authentic Christians distinct from Christians ‘‘in name’’ only grew out of the ‘‘crisis of identity’’ in the decades around AD 400. The explosion of asceticism, especially in the Western Church, gave rise to much opposition and controversy. It worried many churchmen, who viewed with concern the growing gap between the ordinary, work-a-day Christian and a spiritual elite of ascetics. One way of closing this gap was to insist on one single set of standards for all Christians: perfection was demanded of all, virgin or married, lay or cleric. Thus Pelagius insisted that there was one law for all. His attack was aimed at the languid, secondrate Christianity which blurred the line between conventional Christians and their non-Christian Roman fellows whose culture, values, and lifestyles Christians had come to adopt. It was an austere call for perfection, addressed to all. Pelagianism was a reforming movement seeking to impose the exacting standards of the ascetic on the Church as a whole.19 It sought to ensure that the Church would, in Harnack’s words cited above, ‘‘stand out in relief ’’ in the secular society around it. The reformers wanted the line which divided full-blooded, authentic Christianity from mediocrity to become the boundary of a reformed Christianity. Beyond it there was to be only the unregenerate world of paganism; for mediocrity there was to be no room. Clergy were constantly alert to traces of the unregenerate past and they were ready to diagnose its presence in daily practices that seemed innocuous to most people: in anniversary banquets, the shows and races in theatre and circus; in the celebration of the New Year, dancing, processions, the performance of traditional gestures to honour the emperor’s image, and so forth. The festivals 18

For details and references, see my The End of Ancient Christianity, 70–72. On this, see above all the studies of Peter Brown: ‘‘Pelagius and his Supporters: Aims and Environment,’’ Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 19 (1968), 93–114; ‘‘The Patrons of Pelagius: The Roman Aristocracy between East and West,’’ Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 21 (1970), 56–72; and for the background: ‘‘Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman Aristocracy,’’ Journal of Roman Studies 51 (1961), 1– 11; all three reprinted in his Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine (London, 1972). For general surveys of the status quaestionis, see Gerald Bonner, Augustine and Modern Research on Pelagianism (Villanova, 1972; repr. in his God’s Decree and Man’s Destiny [London, 1987]); R. Lorenz, ‘‘Die Anfa¨nge des abendla¨ndischen Mo¨nchtums im 4. Jahrhundert,’’ Zeitschrift fu¨r Kirchengeschichte 77 (1966), 1–61; and F. G. Nuvolone, ‘‘Pe´lage et Pe´lagianisme,’’ Dictionnaire de la Spiritualite´ 12 (l986), 2889–942. 19

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11

of the Roman calendar, observed by Christians unproblematically in the midfourth century, were growing suspect, and by the end of the fifth century were in large measure eliminated from the Christian calendar. Examples could be multiplied. Traditional lay Christians protested they had no idolatrous intention, they were only observing secular custom, not returning to the pagan past. But the bishops would have none of it: ‘‘if you enjoy yourself with the Devil, you cannot rejoice with Christ.’’20 In this way much that had been previously unquestioned was becoming demonised. The boundaries between what was ‘‘pagan’’ and what was ‘‘Christian’’ were shifting. Under the growing influence of ascetic norms the area of what had previously been neutral territory was gradually reduced.21 Monasticism came to be represented as a reforming movement par excellence. The immense solitude of the desert praised by the monastic writers was a potent symbol of a break with the organised societies of Roman city life, its forms, its values and its relationships. To enter the desert was to extricate oneself from the suffocating bonds of that society. Monastic writers sometimes presented their separation in terms of protest against a Church which had betrayed its original calling. In the early fifth century John Cassian claimed to be modelling his famous monastic community in Marseille on the traditions he had studied in the East. The institution of communal monasticism he traced back to the Apostolic community: [T]he whole Church then was such as can now be found only, and with difficulty, in very few communities. But with the passing away of the apostles the multitude of believers began to lose their fervour and especially as crowds began to flock to faith in Christ from foreign nations of all sorts, from whom the apostles, mindful of their rudimentary faith and the tenacity of their pagan customs, required no more than that they should ‘‘abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from fornication and from things strangled and from blood’’ (Acts 15.29) . . . and so the primitive rigour of the faith became attenuated, both among the people and its leaders. As their fervour cooled, many combined their confession of Christ with wealth; but those who kept the fervour of the apostles, recalling that former perfection, withdrew from their cities and from the society of those who thought this laxness of living permissible for themselves and for the Church, to spots on the edges of towns, or more remote places, and there practised privately and in their own groups the things which they remembered the apostles had instituted for the whole body of the Church.22

This view of the Church’s history was clearly capable of being presented in two different ways: for Cassian, at least in this passage, the description of the apostolic community in Acts 4 was a charter for communal monasticism. It

20

Peter Chrysologus, Sermo 155.5. For discussion of one phase of this, see my paper ‘‘L’autorite´ e´piscopale et la de´finition de la chre´tiente´,’’ Studia ephemeridis Augustinianum 58 (1997), 37–43. 22 John Cassian, Conferences 18, V (all translations mine unless otherwise noted). 21

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originated among those who left the main body of believers to ‘‘segregate themselves from the spreading contagion.’’ Monasticism was an institutionalised protest against the life of tepor, the loss of the primitive fervour and rigour of faith. The other application of the Acts story was not so much to give monasticism a grounding in historical myth, but to use the story as a myth of reform for the Church at large.23 If one refused to allow any radical distinction between a spiritual elite and ordinary Christians, then the Acts model had to be read as a permanent challenge to the Church in the world rather than a model for segregated communities. Around the middle of the fifth century the Gallic writer Salvian, for instance, was more interested in the Church at large than in the ‘‘very few,’’ the ascetic elite, mainly monks. His call was uncompromisingly for reform. The example he invoked was that of the apostles reported in Acts 2 and 4, who held all things in common and possessed nothing they called their own. Like many reformers in later Christian history, he used the image of the Church’s pristine perfection to condemn the Church of his day, which in his view had betrayed the purity of its origins. It was not the few, but the Christian people as a whole that was then ‘‘so perfect.’’24 His four books To the Church are perhaps the most blistering attack in Christian literature on the possession of riches, far more savage in its exacting demands than any Christian attack on sexuality. Like some Pelagian writers forty or so years earlier, he saw wealth as the crucial – though not the sole! – bond that tied Christians to the secular world and its vice. And, like Pelagius and his followers, he too insisted on the gap between the nominal and the real Christian: It profits nothing to have a holy name without the morals that go with it . . . Since we see hardly any section of the Christian people, hardly a corner of all the churches, that is not full of the filth and the stain of deadly sin, how can we flatter ourselves by calling ourselves Christians?25

Non nomine sed opere – ‘‘not in name but in action’’: a ceaseless refrain in Pelagian literature, it was by no means the sole property of Pelagius and his followers.26 It remained the core of reforming calls throughout Late Antiquity.27 Ascetic ideas were spreading through the Western Church,

See especially A. de Vogu¨e´, ‘‘Monachisme et E´glise dans la pense´e de Cassien,’’ in The´ologie de la vie monastique (Lyon, 1961), 213–40, who distinguishes two versions of the myth, one of which points to secession from the pagan world, the other to secession both from that and from the Church. 24 Ad ecclesiam III.10.41–3. 25 De gubernatione Dei III.11.60. 26 For example De vita christiana 9. The authorship of this Pelagian treatise is a matter of discussion. Cf. my The End of Ancient Christianity, 43. 27 For example in the sermons of Caesarius of Arles: Sermo 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 157. 23

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boosted by the appointment of monastically trained men to bishoprics, especially in Gaul in the fifth and sixth centuries. Aristocratic lay people and bishops came to share the monastic culture of renunciation and self-denial, and these were the norms they sought to impose on their congregations.28 The spectrum of permissiveness was constantly contracting: one had always to be on guard against allowing too wide a gap to open between ordinary Christians and what a writer early in the fifth century called ‘‘the stricter sort of Christian.’’29 It was not enough to be baptised and to profess Christianity. To be a Christian had become too easy; one needed to be one not only in name, but in reality. It will be useful to summarise the dynamics of this notion as seen in what we can take as a representative sermon at the very end of Late Antiquity, by Pope Gregory the Great. On July 2, the festival of some Roman martyrs, probably in 591, Gregory preached a sermon on the text of Luke 9: 23–7, which begins with the verses ‘‘And he [Jesus] said to all: ‘if any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.’ ’’30 Gregory’s sermon on this text is a classic statement of patristic statements on ‘‘reform,’’ and it will be as well to take a closer look at it, to define the perspective in which he, like most bishops in the two hundred years before him, thought of reform. He begins with Jesus coming into the world as the New Man, who brought new precepts to oppose our old lives rooted in sin. The keynote of all he has to say about reform is the renewal brought by Christ’s incarnation and human participation in that newness through baptism and the Christian life. He passes straight on to Christ’s command: the new life demands renunciation not only of what we have, but of what we are, sloughing off our old habits of sin. A refrain of the sermon is the contrast between the age of persecutions and our times of peace: ‘‘in our Christian people we see many who confess Christ because they see everyone else is a Christian. If the name of Christ were not held in such reverence (gloria) today, the Church would not have so many who profess Him.’’ In these times of easy conformity, professing the ‘‘name’’ is not enough; now that we don’t have the afflictions of persecution to test the reality of our faith, ‘‘there is something else that will show us what we are’’ (est aliud ubi ostendamur

28

The process has been much studied; for general outline, with references, see my The End of Ancient Christianity, chs. 12 and 13. See now also W. E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994), especially ch. 3, and C. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2000). 29 Districtiores Christiani: Consultationes Zacchaei et Apollonii I.28, ed. J. L. Feiertag, Questions d’un paı¨en a` un chre´tien, Sources Chre´tiennes 401, 402 (Paris, 1994). 30 Homiliae in Euangelia (CCL 141) [hereafter HEv] II.32.

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nobis).31 An exhortation to living the life of the Christian virtues, above all of charity, follows. We can take Gregory’s statement as a recapitulation of Late Antique reform ideas. For our purpose, the key ideas here are: (i) the new life brought by the incarnation and the need to renounce the old; (ii) the contrast between the age of the persecutions and the times of peace, and its implications for nominal and real Christianity. Although the homily is not addressed to ascetics and does not preach asceticism, the idea of renunciation as equivalent to the martyr’s sacrifice is fundamental to it. The contrast between the real Christian and the Christian in name only had been one of the central points of the Pelagian call for perfection (see above). Around AD 400 the call was addressed to Christians whom Pelagius and his followers saw as too deeply infected by the values of the pagan Roman world, too conformed to its culture and lifestyles, too easy-going to heed Christ’s call for perfection. Two hundred years later, by Gregory’s time, the world around the Church had changed fundamentally. As Gregory said in the sermon we have just been considering (as well as a good many others where the times of persecution and of peace are contrasted),32 everybody nowadays was a Christian. The call for perfection demanded from Christians was no longer to differentiate themselves from the pagan world around them, but from the lukewarm, nominal Christianity of a society in which Christians were no longer made, but born. This way of speaking of the need for reform clearly gives support to the judgement that the idea of reform throughout Late Antiquity was primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with individual or group holiness rather than with ecclesial realities. I shall shortly suggest some qualifications to this view, but, for the moment, I think the judgement is very largely true, and is bound to be, though perhaps not quite for the reasons suggested by Congar. The huge change which dominates the mode of the Church’s existence in its society in Late Antiquity is obviously its transformation from a persecuted minority into a triumphant majority; from martyrdom to establishment. This was itself a long drawn-out development, with phases fairly easily distinguishable with historical hindsight: beginning with growing respectability in the later third century, toleration and privilege in the postConstantinian era, increasing assimilation of Roman culture and lifestyles in the later fourth and fifth centuries. Clerical acquiescence in this historical development was to obliterate the radical instincts basic to Christian teaching and demanded relevant ways of restating the Church’s fidelity to its permanent calling to be, as Archbishop Rowan Williams recently put it,

31 32

Ibid., 5. See among others HEv I.11.3.

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‘‘fundamentally disruptive of pre-existing forms of religious meaning and social belonging.’’33 Throughout Late Antiquity from Constantine onward, this essential Christian disruptiveness entailed taking a critical stance towards a Church too closely identified with the established order of society. What was at stake was the visible holiness of the Christian people, threatened by its assimilation to the prevailing standards of the secular world around it. To meet this threat, the post-Constantinian Church could draw on a rich ascetic tradition to proclaim its need for reformation. Reform would necessarily find expression in calls for individual and personal conversion and renunciation. Before proceeding, we should note, if only in passing, that the selfidentification of Christianity with Romanitas, the Roman ‘‘thing’’ – the Empire, its political authority, its social structure, its culture and its values – also encountered opposition on a level that was less personal, though it may not quite come under our heading of ‘‘reform.’’ Augustine protested against such identification in his City of God,34 and, on a more narrowly political level, we see the sharp dissociation between ‘‘the sacred authority of pontiffs’’ and ‘‘the royal power’’ made by Pope Gelasius I.35 Whether rejections such as these can count as reforming ideas I am not sure. In any case, however, they played a very restricted role in Late Antiquity. Augustine’s dissociation of Christianity from the Empire had no future in the Middle Ages. By contrast, Gelasius’ distinction or some variant of it was much utilised in medieval western Europe, though developed in different directions, either to assert the separateness of two coordinate and complementary powers in Christian society or to claim the supremacy of clerical over lay power. The latter version of the Gelasian doctrine was to play an important part in the programme of medieval reforming movements which lie beyond my chronological limits. Conflict between imperial and ecclesiastical jurisdiction did arise and raised issues cognate with Gelasius’, but his separation of the two powers was not invoked in Late Antiquity in support of reforming movements. On the contrary, projects to reform what were seen as abuses in the Church envisaged legislation by ecclesiastical councils and often invoked the cooperation of secular powers. Gregory the Great’s efforts to get what he called ‘‘simony’’ extirpated in the Frankish Church are a good example of papal expectations of the readiness of royal power to cooperate with ecclesiastical efforts. Concern to avoid confrontation is characteristic of his disagreements with the emperor, which were carefully kept on the level of

33 ‘‘Defining heresy,’’ in The Origins of Christendom in the West, ed. A. Kreider (Edinburgh and New York, 2001), 313–35, at 322–3. 34 See my Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Saint Augustine (Cambridge, 1970; 1988). 35 Epistolae (CCL 31) 12.2 and Gelasius, Tract. 4.11, ed. Thiel.

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personal remonstrance rather than institutional or legal claims to rights.36 This is perhaps one of the most characteristic instances of the tendency in Late Antiquity of reforming ideas to find expression in personal rather than institutional terms. Gregory the Great was the last Late Antique man: his mind moved very largely within the framework of Late Antique social and cultural presuppositions. But increasingly from the end of the fifth century on, the shape of society had changed and with it the possibilities for reform of the Church. This change is to a large extent screened from our sight by the appearance of continuities: for the canons of Church councils and episcopal prescription continued to demand observance of much the same norms as they had earlier. From the time of Caesarius of Arles early in the sixth century to the intervention of Boniface in the affairs of the Gallic Church in the eighth century, the central themes of the reformers had changed very little. Boniface’s interventions in the Frankish Church opened a new era. Here was an outsider with a mind informed by standards imported from elsewhere, which he sought to impose on a Church he thought hopelessly ensnared in its own traditional practices; with an outsider’s clarity of vision, he also saw that the changes he thought necessary would need large-scale, institutional change. But for all that, the content of the reforms he wished to see adopted still owed much to the same ancient ascetic ideals, in effect a redefining of what constituted ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘authentic’’ – as distinct from nominal – Christianity.37 To understand the real novelty of ecclesiastical reform in the societies that were coming into being in Gregory the Great’s time, what we need to consider is not what Church councils, bishops, and reformers said, but the circumstances in which they spoke and whom they were addressing (what the philosopher J. L. Austin would have called the ‘‘illocutionary’’ or ‘‘perlocutionary’’ force of their speech-acts). It is the society in which they were working that had undergone radical change, not the norms they wished to impose on it. One of the most distinguished scholars of Frankish Christianity, the late Michael Wallace-Hadrill, once remarked of the Church of Gregory of Tours: ‘‘it is a Church for Germans, but it has been made for them by Gallo-Romans.’’38 This is true of the Frankish Church as a whole, 36 E. Caspar, Geschichte des Papsttums, 2 (Tu¨bingen, 1933), 467. On Gregory the Great’s attitude to the Empire, see my Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge, 1997), ch. 6; on reforming the Frankish Church, see ch. 11. 37 For seventh-century Gaul, see my paper ‘‘From Caesarius to Boniface: Christianity and Paganism in Gaul,’’ in Le septie`me sie`cle: Changements et continuite´s/The Seventh Century: Change and Continuity, ed. J. Fontaine and J. N. Hillgarth (London, 1992), 154–72, repr. in my Sacred and Secular: Studies on Augustine and Latin Christianity (Aldershot and Brookfield, Vt., 1994), XII. 38 In his The Frankish Church (Oxford, 1983), 54.

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and indeed of the churches of Germanic western Europe in general. In other words, within Roman society the Church had been largely receptive, inheriting ready-made institutions, conforming to social and political structures which had matured over a long period; it had learned to live within a culture which it had little part in creating. In its new role in western societies, the Church was less receptive and more creative: it saw itself as called to impose its own mature traditions, in large part moulded by its Roman legacy, on the developing Germanic nations. A Church shaped by its Roman past was becoming a Church shaping the western European future. The dominant role of Christianity in these conditions exposed it to new dangers and exposed it to new anxieties. Historians such as Gregory of Tours and the Venerable Bede were aware that the conversion of their peoples to Christianity had also done something to the religion to which they were converted. It could not help absorbing at least a part of the culture and the values of the new peoples. Church councils, bishops, clergy, and monks have an impressive record in helping Christianity to adjust to deeply rooted Germanic practice. They performed a crucial task very creditably, in preventing a wholesale takeover of Christian norms by those of a warrior aristocracy. They preserved more or less intact old established institutions such as Christian marriage and managed to keep within limits the dependence of clergy on power and wealth. What the Church in the new Germanic kingdoms lacked were the resources for dealing with its own power and influence in their society. It is at this point that we can see the stark limitations of reforming instincts in a triumphant Church. Ambrose, Augustine, Pelagius, the ascetic movement – all those whom we might loosely bracket together as the ‘‘reformers’’ of Late Antiquity, in the words of our fifth-century writer39 ‘‘the stricter sort of Christians’’ – were agreed that what needed reforming was the identification of the Church with the society within which it had grown up and received its outward form and its dependence on it as its matrix. If the Church had risked becoming too closely identified with Roman society, it now did so even more fatally in Germanic Europe: for its social matrix was now in large measure one that it had shaped for itself. Roman Catholic historians such as Christopher Dawson have laid much stress on the Church’s role in creating a ‘‘Western civilization’’; but they have often failed to see the cost to the Church in becoming thus identified with a culture largely of its own making. If the Church had not been spiritually prepared for its triumph in the Christian Roman Empire, it was even less prepared for its triumph in the Germanic kingdoms. The Church of Late Antiquity, as we have seen, could

39

See above, n. 29.

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draw on a rich tradition, in part inherited from its past, in part developed from its own resources, to define its need for reform; its object had been to mark out Christians as people with a distinct identity in their society. It did not envisage a general critique of the Church’s place in secular society, except in Augustine’s (or other marginalised) isolated protest; and this fell on deaf ears. Late Antique Christianity had no legacy of reforming ideas to bequeath to a Church confident in its ability to mould secular society to serve its needs and purposes. Thus historical circumstances conspired to accentuate the Western Church’s triumphant position in its society, without assisting compensating impulses of self-criticism or reform. The emergence of an increasingly centralised ecclesiastical structure dominated by the Roman see deprived the Church of an element of internal self-criticism that had been encouraged under its earlier condition. In the undivided Roman world no episcopal, metropolitan, or patriarchal see, not even the Roman see, had been immune to the tensions always present in the ecclesiastical structure. Rivalries and conflicts could help to keep ambitions under control. Claims were exposed to the give-and-take of a fruitful tension between the major centres of ecclesiastical authority. No see, not even the Roman, could count on always having its own way. This was to change in the post-Roman centuries. The major misfortune of Western Christendom was its isolation in consequence of the loss of this ancient context of its existence. Its gradual alienation from its eastern sister-churches was compounded by the loss of North Africa with the Moslem conquest. That deprived it not only of a source of intellectual vitality, but of a Church with its own tenacious tradition of autonomy with which popes as well as emperors had always to reckon. Rome became the isolated mistress of a Western Christendom. Western Christianity no longer had anything to learn, was no longer exposed to the reciprocity of tensions among the great ancient churches with their own traditions. The Western Church was deeply marked – it is tempting to say ‘‘scarred’’ – by its triumph. The marks of triumph became permanent features of its entire future until the 1960s. Even the reforms of the Middle Ages – if I may for a moment trespass into a later age that is outside my brief – had to be formulated and promoted within this new context. The Western Church had become identified with a culture, a society, and an ecclesiastical order more constricting than ever, for it was now a more homogeneous order largely of its own making, unlike the variety and tension of the order within which it had grown to maturity. Despite a strong undercurrent of self-criticism, in ascetic circles and in conciliar movements, as well as from its more suspect fringes, the Western Church did not possess the resources for an effective critique of its own

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triumphalism.40 The late Donald MacKinnon once spoke of an ‘‘ecclesiological fundamentalism’’; he had in mind that tendency – one, alas, only too common, especially in the Roman Catholic Church of the last millennium – to accept the Church’s own judgement on itself, without reference to outside norms.41 The tragedy of Western Christendom was its inability to find and its reluctance to seek such an external norm by which its triumph might be judged. You will recall Dostoevsky’s tale of the Grand Inquisitor: it should be a powerful reminder that the Church is semper reformanda: the Grand Inquisitor must always be confronted with the permanent challenge to his ‘‘ecclesiological fundamentalism.’’

40 Roman Catholic theologians have come to lay more stress on the conciliar dimension alongside the papalism of the medieval Church. See, for example, Congar, Vraie et fausse re´forme, 280: ‘‘Cette liaison d’une re´forme eccle´siale et du principe synodal se comprend . . . Une assemble´e, quelle qu’en soit la forme et le nom – chapitre, synode, concile, palabre . . . – est un lieu de dialogue ou` peut se former et s’affirmer une volonte´ commune, ou` l’autorite´ peut agir en rencontrant le consentement vivant du corps entier.’’ See also K. Rahner, ‘‘Basic Theological Interpretation of the Council,’’ Theological Investigations 20 (1981), 77–89, at 89 and ‘‘Opposition in the Church,’’ Theological Investigations 17 (1981), 127–38: ‘‘The Church’s self-understanding and its own faith do not merely permit the Catholic to have an oppositional relationship to the Church . . . or make this unavoidable. An attitude of this kind is actually required of us’’ (129). On shifts in historical scholarship, see J. Van Engen, ‘‘The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,’’ American Historical Review 91 (1986), 519–52. 41 The Listener, March 23, 1967: ‘‘a readiness to accept the historical experience of the Church as self-justifying,’’ ‘‘to find that any external norm by which its development may be judged is unattainable.’’

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Chapter 2

Gaudium et Spes: Ecclesiastical Reformers at the Start of a ‘‘New Age’’ John Howe

Gaudium et Spes seems far removed from questions of medieval ecclesiastical reform and social change. This pastoral constitution, presuming that we have reached a ‘‘new stage of history’’ (} 4), attempts to explain ‘‘the presence and activity of the Church in the World of today’’ (} 2). It is so presentist that it warns faithful Christians to observe posted speed limits when they drive in traffic (} 30). Yet it does acknowledge a role for historians: ‘‘The Church realizes that in working out her relationship with the world she has always had need of the ripening which comes with the experience of the centuries. . . . Historical studies make it much easier to see things in their mutable and evolutionary aspects’’ (} 54). In fact, Gaudium et Spes does wrestle with problems that also concerned the medieval Church. Topics that could have been suitably developed for this commemoration include the question of the medieval Church’s role in politics,1 its hesitating affirmations of the ultimate equality of all persons,2 and its attempts to articulate the ‘‘rights of man.’’3 1

Gaudium et Spes } 42, but contrast } 43. Although perhaps too sharply drawn, the most concise introduction to medieval Church/State conflicts may still be Walter Ullmann, Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn. (London, 1966). On the historiography, see Henk Teunis, ‘‘Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power in the Central Middle Ages: A Historiographical Introduction,’’ in Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power: Western Europe in the Central Middle Ages, ed. Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, Henk Teunis, and Andrew Wareham, International Medieval Research, 6 (Turnhout, 1999), 1–16. 2 Gaudium et Spes } 29. For introductions to aspects of debates on human ‘‘equality,’’ see James A. Brundage, ‘‘Sexual Equality in Medieval Canon Law,’’ in Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal (Athens, 1990), 66–79; John Hine Mundy, ‘‘Equality,’’ subchapter iii of ‘‘Medieval Urban Liberty,’’ in The Origins of Modern Freedom in the West, ed. R. W. Davis (Stanford, 1995), 101–34, at 120–27. 3 Gaudium et Spes } 41. The best overview is Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150–1625, Emory University Studies in Law and Religion, 5 (Atlanta, 1997), which subsumes many of his earlier related studies. See also Janet Colemen, ‘‘The Individual and the Medieval

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But perhaps the best way to help illuminate the problems of ‘‘the mutable and evolutionary aspects’’ of a Church trying to find its place in a ‘‘new stage of history’’ would be to look back at its experiences in an earlier ‘‘new age.’’ One way to set Gaudium et Spes into a broader historical context would be to examine how the Church reacted to a medieval ‘‘crisis of growth’’ (} 4). The High Middle Ages and the twentieth century both experienced rapid change. Historians today recognize that the period stretching from the end of the barbarian invasions in the tenth century to the close of the thirteenth saw tremendous economic and demographic growth. It was an era of land clearance, frontier expansion, urbanization, and long distance trade. Wealth and education greatly increased. In the High Middle Ages, the Latin West created social and economic structures that would lead it to world domination in the early modern period.4 The first result for the Church was tremendous change in its infrastructure. It is hard to improve upon Rodulfus Glaber’s description of how, after the millennium, ‘‘the very world had shaken itself and cast off its old age, and was clothing itself everywhere in a white garment of churches.’’5 The Church received unparalleled donations of land.6 As productivity increased and new lands came under cultivation, tithes, which had become compulsory in Carolingian times, rolled in, providing wealth that included the 25 percent set aside by canon law ‘‘for the fabric of the Church.’’7 In many regions wooden

State,’’ in The Individual in Political Theory and Practice, ed. Coleman, The Origins of the Modern State in Europe 13th to 18th Century, Theme F (Oxford, 1996), 1–34, at 14–18, and Annabel S. Brett, Liberty, Right, and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought (New York, 1997), 9–34. 4 For a somewhat quirky survey of high medieval changes, see David Levine, At the Dawn of Modernity: Biology, Culture, and Material Life in Europe after the Year 1000 (Berkeley, 2001). Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (Princeton, 1993) articulates one aspect, the creation and diffusion of elite social structures. Peter Johanek, ‘‘Merchants, Markets and Towns,’’ in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. iii: c. 900–c. 1024 [hereafter NCMH, iii] (Cambridge, 1999), 64–94, at 64 surveys the ways that ‘‘The beginnings of the European town in the form known to us from the later middle ages lie in the tenth century.’’ Gross economic changes are popularly surveyed in Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Cambridge, 1971), and Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (New York, 1976). 5 Rodulfus Glaber, Historiarum Libri Quinque iii. 13, ed. John France, OMT (Oxford, 1989), 116–17. 6 David Herlihy, ‘‘Church Property on the European Continent, 701–1200,’’ Speculum 36 (1961), 81–105, at 95–7; Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century (London, 1974), 165–6. 7 R. I. Moore, The First European Revolution, ca. 970–1215 (Oxford, 2000), 41 signals the link between Carolingian tithe legislation and high medieval ecclesiastical building funds.

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churches were replaced by stone ones.8 These strove for new eminence, far surpassing the Church buildings of the early Middle Ages, which, except for the greatest, were rarely higher than the old Roman walls.9 The results are highlighted in recent studies. In Burgundy, ‘‘a wave of reconstructions characterizes the period around the year 1000: it touches the religious edifices of all Transjurane Burgundy.’’10 In Normandy, an incredible building campaign took only two generations to turn a particularly devastated region into a showcase of impressive churches.11 In the Empire, efforts to rebuild the churches of their dioceses became part of the usual curriculum vitae of Ottonian bishops.12 In Venice nearly all the monasteries were rebuilt in the tenth and eleventh centuries.13 Such examples could be multiplied. Although much has been lost to later rebuilding, the extant remains are impressive.14 Along with this building activity came a huge investment in ecclesiastical furnishings. In the Ottonian world, scholars have long marveled at the 8 For buildings in Saxon England as timber constructions, note Nicholas Howe, ‘‘The Landscape of Anglo-Saxon England: Inherited, Invented, Imagined,’’ in Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Place in Western Europe, ed. John Howe and Michael Wolfe (Gainesville, 2002), 91–112, at 96. In some areas new timber churches were also part of the building boom: see, for example, Roar Hauglid, ‘‘Features of the Origin and Development of the Stave Churches in Norway,’’ Acta Archaeologia 49 (1979), 37–60. Ultimately, however, even in Scandinavia, stone triumphed to a considerable extent, as described in Ma´gnus Stefa´nsson, ‘‘Churches, Stone,’’ in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano (New York, 1993), 93–4. 9 Donald A. Bullough, ‘‘Social and Economic Structure and Topography in the Early Medieval City,’’ in Topografia urbana e vita cittadina nell’alto medioevo in Occidente, 26 aprile – 1 maggio 1973, 2 vols., Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 21 (Spoleto, 1974), i, 351–99, at 353–4. 10 Gilbert Coutaz, ‘‘La vitalite´ du royaume autour de l’an mil,’’ in Les Pays romands au moyen aˆge, ed. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Jean Pierre Felber, Jean-Daniel Morerod, and Veronique Pasche (Montreux, 1997), 113–14. 11 An overview of Norman late tenth, early eleventh century development can be found in L’architecture normande au Moyen Age: actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle (28 septembre – 2 octobre 1994), ed. Maylis Bayle´, 2 vols. (Caen, 1997), i, 13–48; note also i, 349–67. 12 Lebensbeschreibungen einiger Bischo¨fe des 10.–12. Jahrhunderts, ed. Hatto Kallfelz, Ausgewa¨hlte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, Freiherr vom Stein-Geda¨chtnisausgabe, 32 (Darmstadt, 1973), 8–10; Wolfgang Giese, ‘‘Zu Bauta¨tigkeit von Bischo¨fen und Abbaten des 10. bis 12. Jahrhunderts,’’ Deutsches Archiv 38 (1982), 388–438; Stephanie Haarla¨nder, Vitae Episcoporum: Eine Quellengattung zwischen Hagiographie und Historiographie, Untersucht an Lebensbeschreibungen von Bischo¨fen des Regnum Teutonicum im Zeitalter der Ottonen und Salier, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 47 (Stuttgart, 2000), 200–224. 13 Pier Angelo Passolunghi, ‘‘Origini e sviluppo del monachesimo veneto sino al secolo XII,’’ in Il monachesimo nel veneto medioevale: Atti del Convegno di studi in occasione del millenario di fondazione dell’Abbazia di S. Maria di Mogliano Veneto (Treviso) 30 novembre 1996, ed. Francesco G. B. Trolese (Cesena, 1998), 1–16. 14 Henry Mayr-Harting, ‘‘Artists and Patrons,’’ in NCMH, iii, 212–30, at 212–17.

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splendid codices, ivories, and liturgical vessels.15 Such ostentation was actually quite widespread.16 In England, the episcopal churches of the preConquest Saxons were characterized by a spirituality of conspicuous consumption in which bishops, serving as models of aristocratic largesse, enhanced their status by giving away crosses, liturgical vessels, and books.17 In France, even that most notorious exemplar of the pre-Gregorian ‘‘bad old days’’ Viscount Berengar of Narbonne, whose family had sold the archbishopric of Marseilles to the family of Count Wifred the Hairy for 100 000 solidi, still boasted proudly that under the viscounts of Narbonne the church of Marseilles had not only been ‘‘richly endowed with manors and castles, abounding with estates and allodial lands,’’ but also ‘‘filled with books, adorned with gilded pictures, caskets and crucifixes, and resplendent with golden crowns and precious stones.’’18 Rich churches were bases of operation for ecclesiastical innovators. Liturgical books proliferated in the pre-Gregorian era,19 including such 15

Lists of such treasures from greater Germany are edited in Bernhard Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Schatzverzeichnisse, vol. 1: Von der Zeit Karls des Großen bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts, Vero¨ffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts fu¨r Kunstgeschichte, 4 (Munich, 1967). For an example of how such artifacts fit into particular ecclesiastical programs, in this case those of Archbishop Egbert of Trier, see Thomas Head, ‘‘Art and Artiface in Ottonian Trier,’’ Gesta 36 (1997), 65–82. That these elaborate ecclesiastical furnishings are better understood as a native preoccupation than as an attempt to imitate Byzantine splendor is argued in H. Westernmann-Angerhausen, ‘‘Did Theophanou Leave Her Mark on the Ottonian Sumptuary Arts?’’ in The Empress Theophanou: Byzantium and the West at the Turn of the First Millennium (Cambridge, 1995), 244–64. 16 For a survey of literature on ecclesiastical treasures, see Jean-Pierre Caillet, ‘‘Le tre´sor, de l’Antiquite´ a` l’e´poque romane: bases de la recherche actuelle et e´le´ments de proble´matique,’’ in Les tre´sors de sanctuaires, de l’Antiquite´ a` l’e´poque romane: communications pre´sente´es au Centre de recherches sur l’Antiquite´ tardive et le haut Moyen Aˆge de l’Universite´ de Paris X-Nanterre (1993–1995), ed. Jean-Pierre Caillet, Cahiers de CRATHMA, 7 (Paris, 1996), 5–18, esp. 6–12. For France, see E´mile Lesne, Histoire de la proprie´te´ eccle´siastique en France, vol. 3: L’inventaire de la proprie´te´; E´glises et tre´sors des e´glises, du commencement du VIIIe sie`cle a` la fin du XIe sie`cle, Me´moires et travaux publie´s par des professeurs des Faculte´s catholiques de Lille (Lille, 1910–43), 6, 19, 30, 34, 44, 46, 50, and 53. For Italy, see Franc¸ois Bougard, ‘‘Tre´sors et mobilia italiens du haut Moyen Aˆge,’’ in Caillet, Les tre´sors de sanctuaires, 161–97. 17 Mary Francis Smith, Robin Fleming, and Patricia Halpin, ‘‘Court and Piety in Anglo-Saxon England,’’ The Catholic Historical Review 87 (2001), 569–602. 18 Berengar of Narbonne, Querimonia, in Histoire ge´ne´rale de Languedoc avec des notes et les pieces justificatives, ed. Claude Devic and Joseph Vaisette, 15 vols. (Toulouse, 1872–92), v, 497. 19 Rosamond McKitterick, ‘‘The Church,’’ in NCMH, iii, 145–6 and 156–9 cites some outstanding examples of liturgical book production. See also Joachim Wollasch, ‘‘Monasticism: The First Wave of Reform,’’ NCMH, iii, 165–6. A census of manuscripts from England is presented in Helmut Gneuss, ‘‘Liturgical Books in Anglo-Saxon England and Their Old English Terminology,’’ in Learning and

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grand volumes as the illustrated sacramentary of Bishop Warnemund of Ivrea (969–1010/1014?),20 the Pru¨m troper (dating from around 1000),21 and the benedictional of Bishop Aethelwold of Winchester (963–84).22 Liturgical chant was the focus of ‘‘some of the most creative episcopal activity of the tenth century.’’23 Guido d’Arezzo (d. post-1032), a popularizer of the new line-staff musical notation (and of the solmization that gave rise to our ‘‘Do Re Mi’’), specifically links the rebuilding of the cathedral of Arezzo by Bishop Theodaldus (1023–36) to his own program to improve the singing there: Just as you created by an exceedingly marvelous plan the Church of St. Donatus [completed in 1032] . . . so likewise by a most honorable and appropriate distinction you would make the ministers of that church cynosures for all churchmen throughout almost the whole world. In very truth . . . even boys of your church should surpass in the practice of music the fully trained veterans of all other places; and the height of your honor and merit will be greatly increased because, though subsequent to the early fathers, such great and distinguished renown for learning has come to this church through you.24

Indeed the connection between the glories of the new churches and the glories of the new music is concretized in what has been called a ‘‘spate of organs.’’25 Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. Michael Lapidge and Gneuss (Cambridge, 1981), 91– 141; elucidated in David N. Dumville, ‘‘Liturgical Books from Late Anglo-Saxon England: A Review of Some Historical Problems,’’ in Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of late Anglo-Saxon England: Four Studies (Woodbridge, 1992), 96–152. Many of the deluxe German ecclesiastical codices are described and illustrated in Hartmut Hoffmann, Buchkunst und Ko¨nigtum im ottonischen und fru¨hsalischen Reich, 2 vols., Schriften der MGH, 30/i–ii (Stuttgart, 1986). 20 Le miniature del Sacramentario d’Ivrea e di altri codici warmondiani, ed. Luigi Magnani (Vatican City, 1934). See also Bonifacio Giacomo Baroffia and Ferdinando dell’Oro, ‘‘L’Ordo Missa’ del vescovo Warmondo d’Ivrea,’’ Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 16 (1975), 795–823. 21 Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale MS. Lat. 9448. Discussed in Janet MarquandtCherry, ‘‘Ottonian Imperial Saints in the Pru¨m Troper,’’ Manuscripta 33 (1989), 129– 36. 22 London, British Library, Additional MS 49598. Described as ‘‘certainly the greatest surviving artistic monument of the Anglo-Saxon monastic reform movement,’’ by J. J. G. Alexander, ‘‘The Benedictional of St. Aethelwold and Anglo-Saxon Illumination of the Reform Period,’’ in Tenth-Century Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and Regularis Concordia, ed. David Parsons (London, 1975), 169–83 and 241–5. For a complete analysis and bibliography, see Robert Deshman, The Benedictional of Aethelwold (Princeton, 1995). 23 McKitterick, ‘‘The Church,’’ 156. 24 Guido of Arezzo, Micrologus, prol., in Hucbald, Guido, and John on Music: Three Medieval Treatises, trans. Warren Babb, Music Theory Translation Series, 3 (New Haven, 1978), 47–83, at 57–8. 25 Mayr-Harting, ‘‘Artists and Patrons,’’ 212–13. Debate on organ construction at the millennium has centered on the Winchester organ, which Wulfstan of Winchester described in 992–94 as a 400-pipe monster played by two brethren ‘‘of concordant

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The reformers who ultimately came to criticize or even reject this wealthy pre-Gregorian order were its sons. Early property consolidation and building campaigns in the Lorraine provided bases of operation for John of Gorze and his friends.26 Romuald of Ravenna, the inspirer of the Camaldolese, launched his career at Sant’Appolinare, under the shadow of its new campanile, before moving to Cuxa, where his friend Abbot Oliba was engaged in mammoth building projects.27 John Gualbertus, before he moved out to found the Vallombrosans, had started his career as a monk at shiny new San Miniato.28 Today it is generally recognized that revolutionary elites are more likely to come from the aspiring comfortable classes than from the abject poor; what is less recognized is how much this same generalization held true for the ecclesiastical reformers who emerged in the eleventh century. Leaders such as Peter Damian and Hildebrand grew up in the newly flourishing cities. They were associated with, but at the margins of, the ruling classes. They were connected to newly prosperous churches. It may be more than coincidence that the major polemicists of the Investiture Controversy would be liturgical commentators.29 Thus the new order both benefited and disquieted eleventh-century radical churchmen. Did they try to change it? Did they seek to create the new society of the High Middle Ages? Is this an age where the clerical leaders of the

spirit.’’ Scholars have tended to emphasize the hyperbolic and symbolic aspects of Wulfstan’s description: see James W. McKinnon, ‘‘The Tenth-Century Organ at Winchester,’’ The Organ Yearbook 5 (1974), 4–19; repr. in The Temple, The Church Fathers, and Early Western Chant, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 606 (Aldershot, 1998), same pagination; Christopher Page, ‘‘The Earliest English Keyboard,’’ Early Music 7 (1979), 308–14, at 309, repr. with same pagination in his Music and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Studies on Texts and Performance, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 562 (Aldershot, 1997); and Kees Velekoop, ‘‘Die Orgel von Winchester: Wirklichkeit oder Symbol?’’ Basler Jahrbuch fu¨r historische Musikpraxis 8 (1984), 183– 96. Nevertheless, this literature offers a good introduction to the evidence for the increased presence of organs in churches at this period. 26 The connection between property and reform is detailed in John Nightingale, ‘‘Beyond the Narrative Sources: Gorze’s Charters 934–1000 AD,’’ in L’Abbaye de Gorze au Xe sie`cle, ed. Michel Parisse and Otto Gerhard Oexle (Nancy, 1993), 91–104; more extensively in his Monasteries and Patrons in the Gorze Reform: Lotharingia c. 850–1000 (Oxford, 2001), 114–73. 27 Peter Damian, Vita Romualdi ii and iv, ed. Giovanni Tabacco, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 94 (Rome, 1957), 15–18 and 25. 28 Anna Benvenuti, ‘‘San Giovanni Gualberto e Firenze,’’ in I Vallombrosani nella societa` italiana dei secoli XI e XII, Vallombrosa, 3–4 settembre 1993, il colloquio Vallombrosano, ed. Giordano Monzio Compagnoni, Archivio Vallombrosano, 2 (Vallombrosa, 1995), 83–112, esp. 89–92. 29 Roger E. Reynolds, ‘‘Liturgical Scholarship at the Time of the Investiture Controversy: Past Research and Future Opportunities,’’ Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978), 109–24, esp. 109–10.

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Church worked not only toward libertas ecclesiae but also toward a new, right order in society? This is a grand vision. But, alas, today’s historical research tends to undercut it. One problem is that, upon closer scrutiny, the great ‘‘ruptures’’ allegedly marking the start of the High Middle Ages appear less and less dramatic. Concentrated settlement and encastellation seem less novel and more varied.30 In most regions the ‘‘feudal revolution’’ is a difficult concept to sustain.31 Serfs are ‘‘freed’’ in very irregular patterns, and slavery in the Latin West, far from disappearing as scheduled, seems to have had a continuous marginal existence.32 The shift from oral to literate culture, and hence from oral to literate specialists, does not appear so abrupt as it once did.33 The emergence of new mass movements involving crowds, heretics, pilgrims, and

30 On the encastellation debates, a quick overview can be found in John Howe, Church Reform and Social Change in Eleventh-Century Central Italy: Dominic of Sora and his Patrons (Philadelphia, 1997), 10–12. In addition, see ‘‘L’Incastellamento’’: actes des rencontres de Ge´rone (26–27 novembre 1992) et de Rome (5–7 mai 1994), ed. Miquel Barcelo´ and Pierre Toubert, Collection de l’E´cole franc¸aise de Rome, 241 (Rome, 1998). 31 Thomas Bisson, ‘‘The ‘Feudal Revolution’,’’ Past & Present 142 (1994), 6–42, arguing the case for this concept, provoked extensive responses, including his own, in Past & Present, 152 (1996), 196–223, and again, 155 (1997), 176–225, resulting in essays that offer excellent guidance to the debate over rupture vs. continuity. Fundamental continuities are highlighted in Chris Wickham, ‘‘Property Ownership and Signorial Power in Twelfth-Century Tuscany,’’ in Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Wendy Davis and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge, 1995), 221–44; Stephen D. White, ‘‘From Peace to Power: The Study of Disputes in Medieval France,’’ in Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts in Context, Cultures, Beliefs, and Traditions: medieval and early modern peoples, 11 (Leiden, 2001), 203–18; and Constance Brittain Bouchard, ‘‘Those of My Blood’’: Constructing Noble Families in Medieval Francia (Philadelphia, 2001), 175–80. 32 Good introductions to the debates can be found in Wendy Davis, ‘‘On Servile Status in the Early Middle Ages,’’ and Robert Brenner, ‘‘The Rises and Declines of Serfdom in Early Modern Europe,’’ in Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage, ed. Michael L. Bush (London, 1996), 22–46 and 247–76. Note also Steven A. Epstein, Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity, and Human Bondage in Italy (Ithaca, 2001), esp. xi–xiii. How perspectives on medieval slavery have changed is revealed by the contrast between the title of Marc Bloch’s famous posthumously assembled essay on ‘‘How and Why Ancient Slavery Came to an End,’’ in Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages: Selected Essays by Marc Bloch, trans. William R. Beer (Berkeley, 1975), 1–31, and the title of William D. Phillips, Jr., ‘‘Continuity and Change in Western Slavery: Ancient to Modern Times,’’ in Bush, Serfdom and Slavery, 71–88. 33 Patrick J. Geary summarizes current debates on literacy vs. orality in Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 1994), 11–16 and in ‘‘Land, Language, and Memory in Europe, 700–1100,’’ TRHS, 6th ser., 9 (1999), 169–84, at 173, where he dismisses ‘‘the misconception prevalent until recently that the world of the early Middle Ages was an oral culture that transformed into a culture of the written word sometime in the late eleventh or twelfth centuries.’’

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crusaders may still offer a promising distinctive, but it is ultimately an argumentum ex silentio.34 Another difficulty is that social changes that did occur at the start of the High Middle Ages – however great or minimal – do not closely correlate with pre-Gregorian or Gregorian ecclesiastical reform movements. Although reformers often did advocate and practice Christian charity, working to ameliorate the worst consequences of their social systems, they rarely sought to restructure lay society.35 Certain initiatives such as the peace of God, the truce of God, and the crusade movements would seem to be exceptions. However, the involvement of late eleventh- and early twelfth-century popes and reformers in peace movements does not seem to have been entirely consistent.36 The crusades, if they are defined as wars encouraged by papal promises of spiritual benefits, are then by definition ecclesiastical initiatives affecting society. Yet scholars today are backing away from Carl Erdmann’s implicit image of an eleventh-century church suddenly rallying toward violence like Germans at the time of the Nazi Nuremberg rallies. If papal sanctioned violence is what makes a crusade, then crusades, far from being an eleventh-century innovation, include a host of papally blessed defensive actions against Muslim aggressors in Italy and Spain going back to the ninth century. Moreover, if we leave aside the issue of papal involvement and examine ecclesiastically sanctioned violence in terms of sword blessings, masses for victory, clerical participation on the margins of military campaigns, and so forth, then it is a question of traditions already well

34

Although the animated crowds mentioned by writers at the start of the High Middle Ages long ago attracted the attention of German scholars such as Carl Erdmann and Herbert Grundmann, in English scholarship see especially R. I. Moore, who links their awakening to ecclesiastical reforms: note ‘‘Heresy, Repression, and Social Change in the Age of Gregorian Reform,’’ in Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500, ed. Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (Cambridge, 1996), 19–46, at 30, where he emphasizes the roles of the Peace of God movement and of Cluny. Gary Dickson, ‘‘Medieval Christian Crowds and the Origins of Crowd Psychology,’’ Revue d’histoire e´ccle´siastique 95 (2000), 54–75 surveys both medieval and modern literature on crowds. 35 A prominent example of the lack of involvement of churchmen in social restructuring, is their ambivalent attitude toward slavery, described in Gerhart B. Ladner, ‘‘The Impact of Christianity,’’ in The Transformation of the Roman World: Gibbon’s Problem after Two Centuries, ed. Lynn White, Jr. (Berkeley, 1966), 59–91, at 85–7; repr. as ‘‘The Impact of Christianity on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire according to Gibbon,’’ in Ladner, Images and Ideas in the Middle Ages: Selected Studies in History and Art, 2 vols., Storia e Letteratura Raccolta di Studi e Testi, 155–56 (Rome, 1983), ii, 799–824, at 819–21. 36 Werner Maleczek, ‘‘Das Frieden stiftende Papsttum im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert,’’ in Tra¨ger und Instrumentarien des Friedens im hohen und spa¨ten Mittelalter, ed. Johannes Fried, Vortra¨ge und Forschungen, 43 (Sigmaringen, 1996), 249–332, at 260– 69.

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established in the Carolingian world and often rooted in Late Antiquity.37 Marcus Bull’s creative re-examination of crusader mentality argues that crusade enthusiasm may owe less to the exhortations of churchmen than to the peculiar piety of the warrior elite, a piety already formed well prior to the re-conquest of Jerusalem.38 Even the more strictly ecclesiastical changes – the ruptures we most associate with the Gregorian Reform – appear less dramatic upon closer examination. The ‘‘crisis of cenobitism’’ now appears to be less critical.39 Thanks to the work of Jean Leclercq on ‘‘Benedictine hermitism,’’ the reappearance of hermits seems less novel.40 The monks of Cluny now seem more creative,41 the Cistercians less.42 Indeed, according to Giles Constable, the ‘‘new monasticism’’ of the twelfth century can boast of few innovations beyond the military orders and the systematic use of lay brothers.43 Francis of Assisi himself – once hailed by Lynn White, Jr., as ‘‘the greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history’’ – now appears increasingly comprehensible in the context of contemporary Italian eremitical sanctity.44

37 Jean Flori, ‘‘Chevalerie et liturgie,’’ Le Moyen Aˆge 84 (1978), 247–78; Franco Cardini, Alle radici della cavalleria medievale, Il pensiero storico, 76 (Florence, 1981); Janet Nelson, ‘‘Carolingian Violence and the Ritualization of Ninth-Century Warfare,’’ in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, ed. Guy Halsall (Woodbridge, 1998), 90–107. 38 Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony, c. 970–c. 1130 (Oxford, 1993), esp. 285–8. 39 John Van Engen, ‘‘The ‘Crisis of Cenobitism’ Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 1050–1150,’’ Speculum 61 (1986), 269–304. 40 Michael Martin, ‘‘A Bibliography of the Works of Jean Leclercq,’’ in The Joy of Learning and the Love of God: Studies in Honor of Jean Leclercq, ed. E. Rozanne Elder, Cistercian Studies Series, 160 (Kalamazoo, 1995), 415–98 lists the half dozen individual articles by Leclercq on Benedictine hermitism, originally written in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but often since republished and translated. 41 Especially good overviews of current Cluniac scholarship can be found in Giles Constable, ‘‘Cluny in the Monastic World of the Tenth Century,’’ in Il Secolo di Ferro: mito e realta` del secolo X, 14–25 aprile 1990, 2 vols., Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto medioevo, 38 (Spoleto, 1991), i, 391–448, and in Dominique Iogna-Prat, ‘‘Cluny comme ‘syste`me ecclesial’,’’ in Die Cluniazenser in ihrem politischsozialen Umfeld, ed. Giles Constable, Gert Melville, and Jo¨rg Oberste, Vita Regularis, 7 (Mu¨nster, 1998), 13–92. 42 For twelfth-century monasticism as relatively uncreative, see Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996), 169. Constance Berman’s The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-century Europe (Philadelphia, 2000), although often hypercritical, does continue to shift debate toward a more gradual evolutionary perspective. 43 Constable, Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 169. 44 The hyperbolic description of Francis is from the conclusion of Lynn White, Jr., ‘‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,’’ Science (March 10, 1967), often reprinted, perhaps most accessibly in his Machina ex Deo: Essays in the Dynamism of

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One might presume that the quest for a pure priesthood distinguishes Gregorian activism – after all, it was the opposition of Leo IX (1049–54) to simony and nicolaitism that animated his reforming councils. Yet Johannes Laudage has demonstrated that concerns with priestly purity in general and with celibacy in particular appeared much earlier.45 Popes and emperors denounced clerical immorality in councils in the early eleventh century.46 Pierre Toubert has noted that clerical marriage, at least in the sections of Lazio for which we have good documentation, was rare in the late tenth century, and getting rarer as the eleventh century progressed.47 Back in the tenth century, clerical celibacy was already zealously advocated by conscientious bishops such as Atto of Vercelli (d. 961) and Rather of Verona (d. 974).48 It seems likely that the ordination of monks, increasingly routine since Carolingian times, was encouraging a general desire to have priests of monastic purity. We might consider the attempt to return to apostolic order as a distinctive theme of the ‘‘Gregorian Reform’’ – certainly Gregory VII identified his own authority with the authority of St. Peter. Yet this is an ancient Christian theme. France and Italy had dozens of episcopal sees allegedly founded by apostles or otherwise ‘‘apostolic.’’ Discoveries of apostolic origins seem to have begun in Carolingian times and to have peaked around the beginning of the eleventh century.49 German sees accumulated apostolic

Western Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 75–94, at 93. Francis is contextualized in John Howe, ‘‘St. Benedict the Hermit as a Model for Italian Sanctity: Some Hagiographical Witnesses,’’ American Benedictine Review 55 (2004), 42–54 at 51–2. 45 Johannes Laudage, Priesterbild und Reformpapsttum im 11. Jahrhundert, Beihefte zum Archiv fu¨r Kulturgeschichte, 22 (Cologne, 1984). Note the five articles on ‘‘Clerical Celibacy and Reform before the Age of Gregory VII,’’ found in Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform, ed. Michael Frassetto (New York, 1998), 47–175, and also, in that same volume, 239–69, Uta-Renate Blumenthal, ‘‘Pope Gregory VII and the Prohibition of Nicolaitism,’’ which enumerates the precedents animating the campaigns of Gregory VII against nicolaitism. For an overview of the history of clerical celibacy, including excerpts of the major documents, see Georg Denzler, Das Papsttum und der Amtzo¨libat, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1973–76). 46 Benedict VIII, Praefatio and Decretum for the Synod at Pavia on August 1, 1022, ed. Ludwig Weiland, in MGH Leges: Sectio 4 (Hannover, 1983), i, 70–76. This is explicated in Hartmut Hoffmann, Mo¨nchsko¨nig und Rex Idiota: Studien zur Kirchenpolitik Heinrichs II. und Konrads II, MGH Studien und Texte, 8 (Hannover, 1993), 50–60. 47 Pierre Toubert, Les Stuctures du Latium me´die´val: le Latium me´ridional et la Sabine du IXe sie`cle a` la fin du XIIe sie`cle, 2 vols., Bibliothe`que des E´coles franc¸aises d’Athe`nes et de Rome, 221/i–ii (Rome, 1973), i, 779–83. 48 Ross Balzaretti, ‘‘Men and Sex in Tenth Century Italy,’’ in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley (London, 1999), 143–59, at 148–54. 49 The last systematic study of apostolic foundations, now nearly a century old, is Louis Duchesne, Fastes e´piscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule, 2nd edn, 3 vols. (Paris, 1907, 1910, 1915).

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relics.50 The ninth and tenth centuries also saw the beginning of ‘‘apostolic monasteries,’’ houses dedicated to St. Peter and existing in theory as papal proprietary houses.51 Much of the extensive scholarly literature on the ‘‘apostolic life,’’ a major goal of twelfth-century spirituality, postulates a shift from an allegedly traditional equation of the apostolic life with the Jerusalem Church of ‘‘one heart and one soul, with all things held in common’’ (Acts 4: 32) to a new emphasis on apostolic preaching – but further study suggests that both emphases are equally ancient.52 Is the revival of canon law a distinctive? Certainly the Gregorian reformers studied law. But the pre-Gregorian tradition looks much more complex since the late 1990s, now that we have Linda Fowler-Magerl’s computer disk publication of a huge body of non-Italian canon law collections prior to Gratian, work supplemented by Lotte Kery’s manuscript inventory.53 True, canon law was becoming more topically organized and sophisticated during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but that tendency had been underway in the Lorraine long before the Gregorian reformers arrived on the scene.54 Does emphasis on the power of the papacy distinguish the ‘‘Gregorian Reform’’ from earlier local efforts? Rome certainly increased its administrative apparatus and authority. However, the publication of Harald Zimmermann’s collection of the papal letters written from 896 to 1044 makes it very clear that the pre-Gregorian popes were often active and important figures.55 Scholars have been rehabilitating the Tusculaner popes of the early eleventh century, admiring their ability to work well with both the

50

Mayr-Harting, ‘‘Artists and Patrons,’’ 220–21; Head, ‘‘Art and Artiface.’’ Walter Goffart, The Le Mans Forgeries: A Chapter in the History of Church Property in the Ninth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 21. 52 John Howe, ‘‘Greek Influence on the Eleventh-Century Western Revival of Hermitism,’’ 2 vols. (Ph.D. Diss., UCLA, 1979), i, 169–77. Glenn Olsen is writing the magnum opus on the symbol of the primitive Church in the age of the fathers and the Middle Ages, a project noted in ‘‘The Idea of the Ecclesia Primitiva in the Writings of the Twelfth-Century Canonists,’’ Traditio 25 (1969), 61–86. Note also David Ganz, ‘‘The Ideology of Sharing: Apostolic Community and Ecclesiastical Property in the Early Middle Ages,’’ in Davis and Fouracre, Property and Power, 17–30. 53 Linda Fowler-Magerl, Kanones: A Selection of Canon Law Collections Compiled outside Italy between 1000 and 1140 (Piesenkofen in der Oberfalz, 1998); Lotte Kery, Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages: A Bibliographical Guide to the Manuscripts and Literature, History of Medieval Canon Law (Washington, DC, 1999). 54 Recent literature is cited in Roberto Bellini, ‘‘Tra Riforma e tradizione: un abre´ge´ del Decreto di Burcardo di Worms,’’ Aevum 72 (1998), 303–34. 55 Harald Zimmermann, Papsturkunden, 896–1044, 3 vols., Vero¨ffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften, 174, 177, and 198 (Vienna, 1984–89). 51

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German emperors and local noble factions.56 But even back in the tenth century, popes were respected authorities summoned by western churchmen to arbitrate disputes and offer protection.57 Perhaps an ecclesiastical rupture occurred as clerics redefined their roles in regard to lay authority. Did churchmen shift from being advisors of princes toward a new role as independent agents? In some cases. But this criterion would eliminate from the ranks of reformers not only monasteries, such as Cluny, which lived by their patronage networks, but also many reformers, such as archbishops Lanfranc and Anselm of Canterbury, who attempted to work within the old order. It fails to draw a bright line between the old and the new, inasmuch as the traditional ‘‘condominium’’ between ecclesiastical and secular government never really disappeared, even if some abuses were eliminated and the rules of the game became more sophisticated. Thus historians of the Church are tending to see its eleventh-century ‘‘new age’’ as less novel. Despite overwhelming material changes involving new growth and new wealth, the resulting ruptures both within society in general and within the Church itself do not look quite so unprecedented. Discriminators that were once regarded as distinctive now seem to be nothing more than relative degrees of emphasis. Alleged discontinuities look more like evolutionary developments. We are now less certain about the dawn of a new age of ecclesiastical history. Should we then cease to speak about an age of revolution? Or even about a distinctive age of reform? I would say no. Although today’s historians may see evolution, certain eleventh-century churchmen emphatically did not. They perceived an unprecedented crisis requiring radical action. Peter Damian (d. 1072), for example, claims about society in general that Everything in the world is confused, and all decrees of piety and faith are disarrayed. Justice is sold by judges. Truth is blackened by lawyers through obscure legal quibbles. Indeed, laws are on sale and money justifies criminals . . . Currency through its oil of impiety softens judges’ hearts toward the rich, but encourages rigorous sentences for the poor. Now greed, the root of all evil, sprouts up further, and now, like the branches of an evil growing thing, its monstrosities of fierce vices spread over the world.58

In this situation Peter Damian feels a tremendous sense of urgency, because

56 For the rehabilitation of the popes prior to Leo IX, see Howe, Church Reform, 20–21, and Kathleen G. Cushing, Papacy and Law in the Gregorian Revolution: The Canonistic Work of Anselm of Lucca (Oxford, 1998), 15–18. 57 McKitterick, ‘‘The Church,’’ 137–42. 58 Peter Damian, De Contemptu Saeculi (Letter 165), ed. Kurt Reindel, Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, 4 vols., MGH Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, 4/i–iv (Munich, 1983–93), iv, 221–2.

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We, who know so many volumes of sacred eloquence, who keep in front of us with assiduous discussion the lives and precepts of innumerable holy fathers from the golden age of the apostles (illud aureum apostolorum saeculum), what excuse will we be able to put forward before the tribunal of Christ, what argument will we be able to find for evading our responsibilities?59

Gregory VII, writing to Matilda of Tuscany on October 16, 1074, just before his epic fight with Emperor Henry IV, despaired, in atrociously mixed metaphors, that [in] our accustomed labors and our endless anxieties, we suffer hour by hour, as it were, the pangs of a woman in labor, so that we scarce hold the rudder of the ship that is sinking before our eyes. The law and the religion of Christ have almost everywhere so completely gone to ruin that Saracens or whatever pagans you please are holding more firmly to their usages than those who have received the Christian name and for whom is prepared an inheritance of eternal glory in their Father’s kingdom are guarding the precepts of the law of God.60

Or, again, to Rudolf of Swabia and Berthold of Carinthia on January 11, 1075: We are aware that you are giving intelligent consideration to the wretched desolation of the religion of Christ, which in these days has, for our sins, been brought so low that no man living has ever seen a more unhappy time, nor can such be found recorded since the days of our blessed father Silvester. But the chief and primary cause of these calamities is in us, who have been raised to govern the people or have been called and established as bishops for the welfare of their souls. From the leadership of those who have taken upon themselves either civil office or spiritual rule comes, as from certain first principles, the weal and woe of their subjects. If, then, they seek only their own glory and the lusts of this world, they cannot live without confusion to themselves and to their people. Pursuing their own evil desires they both bind the laws of their own authority and loose the reins of sin to others by their example. Nor do they go wrong through ignorance or without thought, but resisting the Holy Spirit with presumptuous obstinacy they reject laws which they understand and set at naught the apostolic decrees.61

For the reformers, absolute crisis existed – at least until they took things in hand. The Church itself, according to Bruno of Segni (d. 1123), had participated fully in the disorder: ‘‘The whole world was placed in wickedness, sanctity had failed, justice had perished, and the truth lay buried. Iniquity was king, avarice was lord, Simon Magus held the Church,

59

Ibid., iv, 175–6. Gregory VII, Registrum ii, 9, ed. Erich Caspar, in MGH Epistolae Selectae, 2/i–ii (Berlin, 1920–23), i, 138; trans. Ephraim Emerton, The Correspondence of Pope Gregory VII, Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies (New York, 1932), 45. 61 Gregory VII, Registrum ii, 45, ed. Caspar, i, 138; trans. Emerton, 62–3. 60

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bishops and priests were given over to pleasure and fornication.’’62 Now society had to be reformed back to apostolic and other precedents. As Gregory VII wrote in his lost letter to Guitmund (of Aversa), ‘‘Christ did not say ‘I am custom,’ but rather he said ‘I am the Truth,’ ’’ and His truth must triumph, regardless of the consequences.63 Such were the views of a small but dedicated body of clerical reformers centered on Rome, the churchmen traditionally seen as personifying the ‘‘Gregorian Reform.’’ These men were so eager to document their vision of the Church that they rummaged through not only the ancient codices of canon law but also the old papyrus scrolls in the Roman archives.64 They were such a tightly knit party that opponents could label them ‘‘Hildebrand and his disciples.’’65 Did they face a new age? They thought they did. Their perceptions are significant, whatever the reality. We historians have been willing to treat ‘‘the Renaissance’’ as a discrete historical period, even though historical scrutiny has discredited most of the distinctive characteristics of the Renaissance cited by Jakob Burckhardt, largely because the Renaissance humanists thought that they themselves were the cutting edge of a new age. In the same way, even though we may conclude that the eleventh-century reformers judged their predecessors with undue harshness, we recognize that their perspectives may have been influential. Insofar as a Gregorian reform or revolution affected law and justice, authority and society, it would have done so largely by reconceptualizing reality. It is to this mental world that we should look, to the intellectual hegemony the Gregorian reformers ultimately established. In the 1990s, the ‘‘history of memory’’ emerged as an important topic, especially in regard to the tenth and eleventh century. Scholars have analyzed how, after archives had been destroyed and old boundary markers changed, monasteries, territorial

62

Bruno of Segni, Libellus de Symoniacis i, ed. Ernst Sackur, in MGH Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, 3 vols. (Hannover, 1891–97), ii, 546, as trans. by William North, ‘‘Bruno of Segni: A Pamphlet on Simoniacs,’’ in Medieval Source Book, ed. Paul Halsall (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/11brunosegni-simony.html). 63 On Gregory VII’s contrast between ‘‘custom’’ and ‘‘truth,’’ see Gerhart B. Ladner, ‘‘Two Gregorian Letters on the Sources and Nature of Gregory VII’s Reform Ideology,’’ Studi gregoriani 5 (1956), 221–42, repr. with addenda in his Images and Ideas in the Middle Ages, ii, 665–86 and 1031–2. For Gregory’s approval of the ‘‘ancient custom of the Church,’’ in contrast to ‘‘the time when the government of our Church passed to the Germans,’’ see R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1953), 140. 64 Cushing, Papacy and Law, 97–8. 65 I. S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Conest: The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century (Manchester, 1978), 39–49.

Ecclesiastical Reformers at the Start of a ‘‘New Age’’

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principalities, and nations had to reconfigure their identities.66 But the ‘‘history of memory’’ has not been systematically applied to the Gregorian reformers, whose ecclesiology, intensely studied a generation ago, needs to be re-examined in the light of the present debates. How exactly did the reformers of the Church re-conceptualize Christendom? How did their ecclesiology differ from that of their predecessors? What was distinctive about their vision of divine action in this world? Of sainthood and new saints? And what impact did their reconstruction of Christendom, their reform ideas, have on their successors? And on their society? One suspects that this influence was significant, given that even today historians are still trying to sort out the realities underlying their pejorative denunciations of the ‘‘bad old days’’ of the pre-Gregorian Church.

What lessons, therefore, might historians of the central Middle Ages offer to a Church self-consciously entering a ‘‘new age’’? Perhaps the observation that dramatic material and technological changes can make ‘‘new ages’’ seem more novel than they really are. The presentist temptation is to consider our own challenges unique and unparalleled. Yet people of other ages also faced what the Council called ‘‘crises of growth.’’ They logged their successes and their failures. The Church continued on, both flawed and glorious. Another lesson may be to recognize that adaptations of Christian principles to practical realities may depend less upon the actions of a few prophetic ecclesiastical leaders than upon the actions of the people of God as a whole. In the long run, paradoxically, the pre-Gregorian rebuilding of the ecclesiastical infrastructure, the molding of the religious component of chivalric mentality, and the development of pilgrimages and new popular cults of contemporary saints, may have caused more immediate religious and social changes than the later theoretical arguments of the ‘‘Gregorian’’ reformers. But those reformers did manage to affect to some extent how the physical and social worlds were envisioned. Historians attempting to study the witness of reformers, Gregorian and twentieth-century, might find it especially profitable to emphasize their ecclesiology and spirituality, their own explicit and implicit definitions of what constitutes the Church. Yet another lesson is that historians should proceed cautiously inasmuch as reformers and revolutionaries must necessarily define themselves against their predecessors, a process of definition that can oversimplify complex historical tapestries.

66 Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, and Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, ed. Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried, and Patrick J. Geary (Washington, DC, 2002).

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PART II The Ideas of Reform and the Intellectuals

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Chapter 3

Self and Cosmos in Becoming Deiform: Neoplatonic Paradigms for Reform by Self-knowledge from Augustine to Aquinas Wayne J. Hankey

The means by which I shall approach our topic is modest: I seek only to update the oldest and the best known of stories about the history of philosophy in the Latin Middle Ages, providing some new footnotes drawn from the scholarship of the last sixty years. These will place the move from the self-conscious Platonism of Augustine to the Aristotelianism of the thirteenth-century theologians within the histories of Neoplatonism and Arabic Peripateticism. Although only footnotes, they have significant consequences. They enable us to understand the turn to the natural cosmos, which the retrieval of Aristotle entailed, both as constituting philosophy’s independence vis-a`-vis sacred doctrine and also as occurring within the conversion of the soul to deiformity by way of self-knowledge. In consequence, it becomes evident that the turn to nature and to a complete Aristotelian account of the cosmos remains within obedience to the Delphic Gnothi seauton. The divine demand to ‘‘Know yourself,’’ conveyed by the oracle, is transformed so as to remain the essence of spiritual reform for the religious, philosophical, and theological traditions which are the heirs of Hellenism.1 The story, both in its older and in its new telling, is about reform in two senses and involves markedly opposed processes of ecclesiastical reform. Above all, it is about what must be the most fundamental reform for Christians insofar as their religion retains its original Hellenistic character: the journey to God is a personal transformation toward deiformity by self-

1 For a partial history see my ‘‘ ‘Knowing as we are Known’ in Confessions 10 and Other Philosophical, Augustinian and Christian Obedience to the Delphic Gnothi Seauton from Socrates to Modernity,’’ Augustinian Studies 34, 1 (January 2003), 23– 48. In what follows I frequently refer to my own published work in order to reduce the citations otherwise required.

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knowledge. My aim will be to show how reform in this sense is as much Thomistic as it is Augustinian. Further, the story is about how, in the course of a millennium, Latin Christianity, both in reaction to changed circumstances, and also by interior self-development, shifted radically from one understanding of the psychic structure of this itinerarium, and from one understanding of how philosophy stands to sacra doctrina, to their contraries. In the course of our retelling, we shall notice that the old story was loved within a reform of the Church’s intellectual life initiated from its Roman center as a reaction against modernity. The Second Vatican Council was, in considerable part, a response to this neo-Neoscholasticism; it rebalanced the Church after the distortion caused by the ecclesiastical manipulation of its intellectual life following Vatican I. A revered progenitor and peritus of the Council, Pe`re M.-D. Chenu, persecuted by the Holy Office for attempting accurate historical study of the period we are considering, judged that the Leonine use of Aquinas as a weapon against modernity entailed a ‘‘mise´rable abus.’’2 When studying reform in the Catholic Church, we must remember that the innovative doctrines of St. Thomas, by which he effected the most fundamental and radical of medieval metamorphoses, were condemned by the episcopal authorities of his time. The most fundamental of reforms, the spiritual and intellectual, can be neither compelled nor prevented by authority. As the Church undergoes yet another millennial shift which shows signs of requiring thorough transformations, I retell the old story, first, so that we are reminded of which reform is essential in the Church; second, because hearing it again encourages us when we recollect how greatly we have been transformed even in the ‘‘Dark Ages’’; and last, because the story manifests the limits of ecclesiastical power in respect to what is most important in the Church. Remembering this reduces both expectation and fear.

I.

The Old Story: From Augustine’s Platonism to the Aristotelianism of Aquinas

The old story is relatively straightforward, remains what most people who know a little about medieval philosophy think to be true and, altered, can still be told with verisimilitude. Augustine, partly through his Christian teachers

M.-D. Chenu, ‘‘L’interpre`te de saint Thomas d’Aquin,’’ E´tienne Gilson et Nous: La philosophie et son histoire, ed. Monique Couratier (Paris, 1980), 43–4. On the character of Chenu’s work, see ‘‘Hommage au pe´re M. D. Chenu,’’ Revue des sciences philosophique et the´ologique 75, 3 (1991); ‘‘Le projet historique du P. Chenu,’’ in Penser avec Thomas d’Aquin: Etudes thomistes de Louis-Bretrand Geiger OP, pre´sente´es par Ruedi Imbach, Pense´e antique et me´die´vale (Paris–Fribourg, 2000), xvi–xviii. 2

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of whom the most important was Ambrose and partly through a direct encounter with Neoplatonism by way of translations of the libri platonicorum, including at least some of the Enneads, chose a Platonism that certainly enabled his Christian baptism and is supposed by some to have been confused with it.3 His reading of Aristotle was probably confined to the Categories, of which he made a crucially important negative and characteristically Neoplatonic use in coming to his doctrine of the Trinity, but for which, like Plotinus, he had not a high regard. While much of Plotinus is echoed in Augustine, the bishop does not adopt his characteristic doctrine of the One and his Platonism is in general more intellectual than that of the founder of what we call ‘‘Neoplatonism.’’4 Later Greek Neoplatonism entered the Latin intellectual world in the sixth century by way of Boethius and, in the ninth through the Dionysian corpus, translated and doctrinally assimilated by John Scottus Eriugena. The Platonism of Boethius was sufficiently generalized to be compatible with that of Augustine, as were the Platonisms of Calcidius and Macrobius.5 Because of Eriugena’s following of the pseudo-Areopagite’s negative theology, and his deeply philosophical mind, both of which got his work condemned, Latin theology remained altogether dominated by Augustine at least until the time of Anselm of Canterbury. Indeed, the textbook by Peter Lombard, which ‘‘did more than any other text to shape the discipline of medieval scholastic theology,’’6 was so deeply formed structurally, doctrinally, and through quotation by Augustine that Josef Pieper called it ‘‘a systematically organized Augustinian breviary.’’7 Soon after the Four Books of Sentences were completed in the middle of the twelfth century, things changed very rapidly. Translations from Greek and Arabic provided so much Aristotle that, by 1268,8 Thomas Aquinas gave, as 3

For example, Augustine, Confessions 7, Contra Academicos 3, De Civitate Dei 8. Augustine, Confessions 4.16 and De Trinitate 5; for a survey of the scholarship on Augustine’s Platonism and a judicious treatment of his intellectualism, see R. D. Crouse, ‘‘Paucis mutatis verbis: St. Augustine’s Platonism,’’ in Augustine and his Critics, ed. R. J. Dodaro and G. P. Lawless (London and New York, 1999), 37–50; Phillip Cary, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist (New York, 2000) makes the case but overstates it. 5 See on the Latin Platonic tradition, Stephen Gersh, ‘‘The Medieval Legacy from Ancient Platonism,’’ The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages: A Doxographic Approach, ed. Stephen Gersh and Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen, with the assistance of Pierter Th. van Wingerden (Berlin–New York, 2002), 3–30. 6 Marcia Colish, ‘‘Peter Lombard,’’ The Medieval Theologians, ed. G. R. Evans (Oxford, 2001), 168–83, at 182. 7 J. Pieper, Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval Philosophy, trans. R. and C. Winston (London, 1961), 98. 8 For the most part, when dating the works of Aquinas, I rely on G. Emery, ‘‘Bref catalogue des oeuvres de saint Thomas,’’ in J.-P. Torrell, Initiation a` saint Thomas d’Aquin. Sa personne et son oeuvre, Pense´e antique et me´die´vale, Vestigia 13 (Paris– Fribourg, 1993). 4

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his philosophical beginning point, a complete account of the cosmos offered by reason apart from faith. The very first article of the first question of the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae, asking whether there is a need for sacra doctrina, begins with the argument that: ‘‘whatever is not above reason is fully treated in philosophical science. Therefore, besides philosophical science, there is no need of any further knowledge’’ (ST I.1.1 obj. 1).9 The philosophical sciences providing this complete account are attributed to Aristotle, but, in fact, the establishment of a philosophical world over against the theological was owed to the genius of the Arabs. They mediated the texts of Aristotle to the Latins as ‘‘a total philosophic corpus, into which the whole of Hellenistic thought, profoundly neoplatonised, had surreptitiously crept.’’10 Augustine had spoken of Christianity as ‘‘true philosophy.’’11 Following him, when philosophy is identified with intellectus or wisdom, an identification Eriugena explicitly made on Augustine’s authority, and when fides gives us the same content but in a form inadequate to reason, we arrive at Anselm’s fides quaerens intellectum, which quotes Augustine, though silently.12 The silence of Anselm in respect to authorities is intentional; intellectus surpasses what we know on authority. When, in its inward and upward quest for God, the soul finds its deiform rationality, it knows through the structure of its own reasoning the content of faith according to rationes necessariae. The existence and attributes of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation become a series of intelligibilia known independently of faith.13 Only thus known are they properly known. Aquinas dealt with the massive invasion of the new philosophy by treating it in the opposite way. For the Arabic philosophers, faith belonged to 9 For the significance of this beginning within Thomas’ world, see Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford, 2002), 12–14. 10 Alain de Libera, Penser au Moyen Aˆge (Paris, 1991), 20. For brief description of this Aristotelianism, see his La querelle des universaux: De Platon a` la fin du Moyen Age, Des travaux (Paris, 1996), 117 and 68–124. 11 Augustine, Contra Julianum 4.14.72; see De Vera Religione 5.8. 12 Eriugena, De divina predestinatione I, PL 357–8 (Treatise on Divine Predestination, trans. Mary Brennan, Notre Dame texts in Medieval Culture, vol. 5 (Notre Dame, Ind., 1998) c. 1, } 1, pp. 7–8) and Anselm, Proslogion c. 1 (S. Anselmi cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera amnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1946) [hereafter Schmitt], i, 100). 13 See Anselm, Proslogion c. 4 (Schmitt, i, 104) in respect to the existence of God; the Monologion deduces the Trinity and the Cur Deus Homo the Incarnation. For method, see the Prooemium of the Monologion (Schmitt, i, 7); in the Prooemium of the Proslogion the requirement of deiformity is made. For an analysis of the logic of the quest see W. J. Hankey, ‘‘Secundum rei vim vel secundum cognoscentium facultatem: Knower and Known in the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius and the Proslogion of Anselm,’’ Medieval Philosophy and the Classical Tradition in Islam, Judaism and Christianity, ed. John Inglis (Richmond, 2002), 126–50, at 134–41.

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representation and to a faculty inferior to reason. Thomas followed both them and his Augustinian predecessors by distinguishing between the modalities of faith and reason. This done, he turns the tables in respect to both. For the first time in the Latin Middle Ages, a theologian engaged the philosophers on their own terrain as a separate, limited, and subordinate sphere, and, in opposition to both the Arabs and the Augustinians, Thomas made a humbled but quasi-autonomous philosophy into the servant of revealed theology.14 Faith now knew things philosophy could never reach. In Aquinas’ view, the demand of his Augustinian adversaries that things which only faith could know – the temporal beginning of the world, the Trinity, a universal, individual, and immediate providence – be rationally proved only brought error and disrepute on theology. The ladder of the philosophical sciences constitutes them as praeambula by which the human mind, for which the understanding of the intellectual beings is unnatural, gains the strength for knowing, in the very limited measure of which it is capable, the mysteries standing both above scientific ratio and above the metaphysical wisdom toward which reason ascends. Very many others in the thirteenth century were not convinced that the threat to Christian faith posed by Aristotle could be overcome intellectually, nor were persuaded that Aquinas had made him serve it. Thus, from 1210, when a synod at Sens forbade Aristotle’s natural (as opposed to his logical) treatises, we have persistent, though ineffective, bans on teaching Aristotle’s works. Condemnations followed, most importantly those of 1270 and 1277 by the archbishop of Paris, which included articles held by scholars for whom the Arab Peripatetic tradition defined what reason knows; some of the condemned propositions may be held to touch Aquinas himself.15 In 1284, the Franciscan archbishop of Canterbury, John Pecham, had the Oxford divinity faculty confirm the condemnation in 1277 of a list of propositions issued by his Dominican predecessor.16 Two years later, furious about the

14 See Alain de Libera, La philosophie me´die´vale, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1993), 411; W. J. Hankey, ‘‘Why Philosophy Abides for Aquinas,’’ The Heythrop Journal 42, 3 (2001), 329–48; on Aquinas, Summa Theologica [hereafter ST] 1.5 ad 2, see R. D. Crouse, ‘‘St. Thomas, St. Albert, Aristotle: Philosophia Ancilla Theologiae,’’ Atti del Congresso Internazionale Tommaso nel suo settimo centenario, i (Naples, 1975), 181–5. 15 For a brief history of the condemnations of the thirteenth century, including those against the Greeks and Eriugena, see de Libera, La philosophie me´die´vale 413–17; also there are La Condamnation Parisienne de 1277, new edn of the Latin text, trans., intro. and commentary David Piche´, Sic et Non (Paris, 1999) art. 89, 107; F.-X. Putallaz and R. Imbach, Profession philosophe: Siger de Brabant, Initiations au Moyen Aˆge (Paris, 1997), 171–2; J. F. Wippel, ‘‘Thomas Aquinas and the Condemnation of 1277,’’ The Modern Schoolman 72 (1995), 233–72; and Isabel Iribarren, ‘‘ ‘Responsio secundum Thomam’ and the Search for an Early Thomistic School,’’ Vivarium 39, 2 (2001), 253–96. 16 Fergus Kerr, ‘‘Thomas Aquinas,’’ in Evans, The Medieval Theologians, 201–20, at 208.

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‘‘destruction and erosion’’ of ‘‘the whole teaching of Augustine,’’ Pecham, with Thomas as well as others in his sights, declared heretical a teaching central to Aquinas which derived from Aristotle.17 Scholars group as ‘‘Augustinian’’ the opposition to this new scientia because of its doctrines of how soul and body are united, of how humans know, of how faith and reason are related, and of what reason owed to faith, as well as because of its explicit partisan alliance with the preeminent Latin Father.18 There are problems with this designation, not the least of which is the enthusiasm for Dionysius among those covered by it, but, in general, the opposition was reacting both against much of what the new philosophy taught and against the moral stance implied by its independence.19 In fact, these so-called neo-Augustinians had imbibed a great deal of Aristotle. The first two of the seven steps by which Bonaventure, the Minister General of the Franciscans, described the mind’s ascent in his Itinerarium Mentis in Deum depend upon an Aristotelian turn to the sensible cosmos below the soul. Nor are these outwardly turned steps in the soul’s deification the last places where Aristotle’s thinking underlies Bonaventure’s account of its journey. Historians no longer follow E´tienne Gilson in judging Thomas to have occupied the summit at the height of medieval philosophy, which, after him, fell into decadence in the fourteenth century. Diversity, intense conflict, and innovation continued. Dante, the greatest medieval heir of the independence that intellectuals attained in the thirteenth century, rightly depicts the complex contrariety essential to scholastic thought in the Heaven of the Sun of his Paradiso. There the circle of Bonaventure balances that of Aquinas, who is seated next to the same Siger of Brabant whose Arab Aristotelianism he had opposed so fiercely in the Parisian Faculty of Arts. Dante portrays Aquinas as reconciled in heaven with Siger.20 Thomas had to wait until the 17

Peckham to the Bishop of Lincoln, quoted in Alain Boureau, The´ologie, science et censure au XIIIe sie`cle. Le cas de Jean Peckham, L’aˆne d’or (Paris, 1999), 31. The crucial passage is also quoted in F.-X. Putallaz, Figures Franciscaines de Bonaventure a` Duns Scot, Initiations au Moyen Aˆge (Paris, 1997), 46–7, which criticizes scholarly characterizations of the supposed ‘‘neo-Augustinianism’’ of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and endeavours to ‘‘de´centrer l’analyse traditionnelle’’ (p. 17). 18 For the complex historiography, see Putallaz and Imbach, Profession philosophe and Putallaz, Figures Franciscaines. 19 For problems with the designation, see W. J. Hankey, ‘‘ ‘Magis . . . Pro Nostra Sentencia’: John Wyclif, his Mediaeval Predecessors and Reformed Successors, and a pseudo-Augustinian Eucharistic Decretal,’’ Augustiniana 45, 3–4 (1995), 213–45, at 235–9. 20 J. Marenbon, ‘‘Dante’s Averroism,’’ Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, ed. J. Marenbon (Leiden, 2001), 349–74, at 366–9 and R. D. Crouse, ‘‘Dante as Philosopher: Christian Aristotelianism,’’ Dionysius 16 (1998), 141–56 use different arguments to draw this conclusion: on Dante see Ruedi Imbach, Dante, la philosophie et les laı¨cs, Initiations a` la philosophie me´die´vale (Paris– Fribourg, 1996).

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Counter-Reformation to become generally authoritative, being named Doctor of the Church in 1567.21 Nonetheless, he was canonized in 1323 and, in 1325, the archbishop of Paris annulled the condemnation of 1277 so far as it touched him.22 In 1346, Pope Clement VI blamed some of the masters and students of Paris for ‘‘disregarding and despising the time-honoured writings of the Philosopher’’ and, shortly thereafter, the study of Aristotle was effectively required as part of the preparation of theologians.23 Practicing philosophy as commentary according to methods he learned from Greek and Arab Neoplatonists and Peripatetics, Thomas rectified philosophy from within its own logic and history.24 Great dispute continues about whether philosophy for Aquinas and Christian medievals had any real autonomy or what kind it had. These controversies are moved largely by our own questions about the relations of religion and reason as Pierre Hadot’s reasons for asserting that philosophy lost its capacity to be a way of life in the western Middle Ages exhibit.25 The ‘‘Christian philosophy’’ of E´tienne Gilson’s antimodernism has been succeeded by the postmodern efforts of Jean-Luc Marion, and John Milbank, and many others, which endeavor an even more radical reduction of philosophy to theology.26 Nonetheless, Thomas’ sortie 21 On the distortion of the understanding of medieval philosophy consequent on placing Thomas at its summit, see, for example, Pierre Magnard, ‘‘La Recherche en la philosophie me´die´vale et renaissante,’’ La Recherche philosophique en France. Bilan et Perspectives, rapport de la commission pre´side´e par Pierre Magnard et Yves Charles Zarka (Paris, 1996), 162–71; W. J. Hankey, ‘‘From Metaphysics to History, from Exodus to Neoplatonism, from Scholasticism to Pluralism: The Fate of Gilsonian Thomism in English-speaking North America,’’ Dionysius 16 (1998), 157–88, at 178– 88; Putallaz, Figures Franciscaines; de Libera, La philosophie, 420; for alternative approaches, see Philipp W. Rosemann, ‘‘A Change of Paradigm in the Study of Medieval Philosophy: From Rationalism to Postmodernism,’’ American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72, 1 (1998), 59–73, at 63–7. 22 Torrell, Initiation, 471–5. 23 E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1st edn. 1955; London, 1980), 471. 24 For what he did, and how he did it, see Thomas d’Aquin, L’Unite´ de l’intellect contre les Averroı¨stes suivi des Textes contre Averroe`s ante´rieurs a` 1270, Latin text, trans., intro., biography, chronology, notes and index A. de Libera, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1997). 25 See Pierre Hadot, ‘‘Philosophy as a Way of Life,’’ in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, ed. and intro. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford, 1995) 264–76, at 270; Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2002), 253–61; and my ‘‘Philosophy as Way of Life for Christians? Iamblichan and Porphyrian Reflections on Religion Virtue and Philosophy in Thomas Aquinas,’’ Laval The´ologique et Philosophique 59, 2 [Le Ne´oplatonisme] (June 2003), 193–224. 26 See J. Milbank and C. Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas, Radical Orthodoxy (London and New York, 2001); J.-L. Marion, ‘‘Saint Thomas d’Aquin et l’onto-the´o-logie,’’ Revue thomiste 95, 1 (1995), 31–66; W. J. Hankey, ‘‘Denys and Aquinas: Antimodern Cold and Postmodern Hot,’’ Christian Origins: Theology, Rhetoric and Community, ed.

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into philosophy’s camp de Mars in the Faculty of Arts was crucial to the expansion of the mind of Western Christendom that made it the mother of secular modernity.

II.

Why we love to tell it

This, then, is the millennium-long road by which Latin theology turned from a Platonism in which God and the soul engaged in a face-to-face dialogue, allowing direct access to the intellectus fidei, to an Aristotelianism in which deiformity requires passage by way of the cosmic order, known in the philosophical sciences that human reason constructs, serving faith beyond reason’s power.27 A significant part of the attraction of this story, especially for Catholics, who, in the nineteenth century, revived scholasticism, and who remain those primarily interested in medieval philosophy,28 was its account of the escape from the subjectivity associated with the inward turn and selfcertainty of Augustinian Platonism. This subjectivity was supposed to be at the root of what is problematic in modernity. Thomas’ Aristotelian anthropology, with its outward movement to the sensible followed by a cosmological ascent, and the objectivity of his metaphysics, countered this. His acceptance of ancillary philosophical sciences would come to be seen as conceding to modern rational autonomy what is proper to it, but equally as limiting it vis-a`-vis revealed theology and mystical union, and became central to the Church’s anti-modern campaign.29 When the beginning, middle, and end of this account are examined in light of scholarly developments, the result will be to change, indeed, almost to reverse some of the reasons for which it has been told. Before going on to Lewis Ayres and Gareth Jones, Studies in Christian Origins (London–New York, 1998), 139–84; Hankey, ‘‘Theoria versus Poesis: Neoplatonism and Trinitarian Difference in Aquinas, John Milbank, Jean-Luc Marion and John Zizioulas,’’ Modern Theology 15, 4 (October 1999), 387–415 and ‘‘Why Philosophy Abides.’’ 27 There is a succinct account of these sciences in Bonaventura, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum c. 3, } 6; Thomas gives his doctrine of the hierarchy of the sciences and their relation to the soul’s powers of abstraction in questions 5 and 6 of his Super Boetium De Trinitate (Leonine 50). 28 Hankey, ‘‘Denys and Aquinas’’ and ‘‘From Metaphysics to History’’, 165–6, and de Libera, Penser, 49–50. 29 Perhaps the best telling of the story with these reasons is E´tienne Gilson, Le Thomisme in several importantly different editions, translated once as The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and again as The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. For critical accounts, see W. J. Hankey, ‘‘ ‘Dionysius dixit, Lex divinitatis est ultima per media reducere’: Aquinas, hierocracy and the ‘augustinisme politique’,’’ in Tommaso D’Aquino: proposte nuove di letture. Festschrift Antonio Tognolo, ed. Ilario Tolomio, Medioevo. Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale, 18 (Padova, 1992), 119–50, and ‘‘From Metaphysics to History’’, passim.

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these revisions, let us linger in order to note something of the reform, in the sense of life-preserving and enhancing self-transformation, contained in what remains of the old story. Because of problems we shall confront later, I leave aside the question of whether, or in what sense, there is, in fact, a move from Platonism to Aristotelianism as the philosophical prism through which the light of the gospel is seen and refracted. Nonetheless, in the thousand-year shift just sketched, we have a move which is not only an adaptation to new circumstances, but also an interior development of the Christian self. Generalizing very roughly, Augustine, in contrast with Aquinas, served the Latin Church when its intellectual life was centered in the episcopal curia and monastery, when it passed from the declining Latin Roman Empire to the Europe of the barbarians. The Benedictine monastery, whose multifaceted history in this period is a story of reform, is the foundation of Christian culture in this Europe, and may serve as its symbol. Despite what is represented by Normans and Venetians, by Charlemagne and Eriugena, this Latin world was largely cut off from or threatened by the Byzantine and Islamic. In contrast, Aquinas belongs to a Europe which has not only re-established connection with the Greek and Arabic, but also is engaged with them both positively and negatively. The physical, economic, aesthetic, intellectual, and religious worlds have all increased enormously in size and diversity; the other is within as well as without. The wandering mendicant accommodates the Church to this new reality. A Dominican will be found in the East learning Greek and Arabic and translating Aristotle, Avicenna, or Proclus; or he will have found his mission among the Cathars or in northern cities bursting with the new trade and commerce; or, like Aquinas, he will be teaching at a university where nations, faculties, intellectual, and ecclesiastical parties meet and fight in the manner both represented by and enacted in the disputatio.30 The university, and even Christendom itself, replaces the monastery as the dominici schola servitii.31 This adaptation and development is more than institutional and formal; there are fundamental transformations of the content. Some of them have already been suggested: the establishment of philosophical reason in a relation of mutual limitation with the revealed, the soul as form of the body 30 For Aquinas in relation to these realities, see John Inglis, ‘‘Emanation in Historical Context: Aquinas and the Dominican Response to the Cathars,’’ Dionysius 17 (1999), 93–128; W. J. Hankey, ‘‘Thomas’ Neoplatonic Histories: His following of Simplicius,’’ Dionysius 20 (2002), 153–78; Kerr, After Aquinas, 210. 31 Regula Sancti Benedicti, prologus; Aquinas, Contra Impugnantes (Leonine 41), c 3, } 7, p. A 68 where the pope is treated as head of a universal Christian republic; G. B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform, rev. edn. (New York, 1967), 424; Hankey, ‘‘ ‘Dionysius dixit’,’’ 147–50; de Libera, Penser, 12–13; Hadot, ‘‘Philosophy as a Way of Life,’’ 269– 70; and What is Ancient Philosophy, 237–52.

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and, by nature, turned to the sensible, and so on. Rather than repeat and elaborate these, I point to what seems most basic and most radical: the move from human knowing as seeing to knowing as making. For Aquinas, in opposition to Augustine, we do not know through the ideas seen above us in the Divine Word in virtue of an illumination from outside ourselves of which the sun is the image. Instead, he judges that we know by the activity of an inherent intellectual light, a power essential to each human soul and given each by God.32 This light creates the universal in our minds, which are passive as well as active.33 Fergus Kerr, situating Thomas’ understanding of how we know in relation to twentieth-century epistemological debates, brings out the radical character of its assimilation of self and cosmos strikingly: for Thomas, the objects out there in the world become intelligible in the act of awakening the intellectual acts on our part which manifest our intelligence. . . . [What] we find in Thomas may be put in terms of a contrast between a ‘‘subjectivist-observing’’ perspective and an ‘‘objective-participant’’ one. . . . [He pictures the mind] as the actualization of intellectual capacities by potentially significant objects, according to the axiom ‘‘intellectus in actu est intelligibile in actu’’: our intellectual capacities are the world’s intelligibility realized.34

The power of each mind is increased by reaching higher levels of abstraction, by rising to and becoming one with higher levels of reality.35 The human power and mode of knowing is situated midway in a spiritual hierarchy; the most revealing and determinative account of the universe is as a hierarchy of

32 Knowing as making enters the Latin Christian tradition with Boethius and takes its most radical form in Eriugena, see Hankey, ‘‘Secundum rei vim.’’ 33 See Hankey, ‘‘Why Philosophy Abides,’’ 336–40 and Houston Smit, ‘‘Aquinas’s Abstractionism,’’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology 10 (2001), 85–118. Aquinas gives somewhat different accounts of how his own doctrine of an inherent intellectual light and the opposing doctrine of an external illumination of the ideas relate to the history. In De Veritate 10.6, five of the nine objections to his doctrine are drawn from Augustine; at De Spiritualibus Creaturis 10 ad 8, Augustine and Plato are put on the other side. The account in ST 1.79 makes it a dispute between Plato and Aristotle. Smit very insightfully shows how Aquinas ‘‘is aiming to reconcile his empiricism with an Augustinian doctrine of internal illumination, on which God teaches us everything through this light (ST 1a 84.5)’’ (p. 88); on this I shall say more below. For exact texts of some of Thomas’ sources, see Quaestio Disputata de Spiritualibus Creaturis, ed. J. Cos (Leonine 24, 2), 112–13. 34 Kerr, After Aquinas, 27. 35 For a presentation of Thomas’ doctrine which rescues it from Neoscholastic mechanism and the anti-modern campaigns, finds a reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle in it, and shows how it belongs to the conquering strength of the ‘‘l’esprit humain,’’ see L-B. Geiger, ‘‘Abstraction et se´paration d’apre`s saint Thomas In de Trinitate, Q. 5, A. 3’’ as reprinted with updated references in Penser avec Thomas d’Aquin: Etudes thomistes de Louis-Bretrand Geiger OP, 139–83 and xxi–xxiii.

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intellectual powers.36 Within our own world, which the vast Secunda Pars of the Summa Theologiae describes, the sciences are a hierarchy of abstraction and separation. Constructing them is a common work,37 like that of the university, and involves accepting the validity of human, temporal truth.38 In helping the Western Church to accept and develop this kind of human, communal, temporal, philosophical investigation, Aquinas made his greatest contribution to modern secularity. For Thomas, creating and ascending the ladder of the sciences is the work of education, a spiritual itinerarium toward deiformity, and an activity necessary for understanding God’s speech to us (ST I.1.5 ad. 2). In accord with the Islamic philosophers and Moses Maimonides, he judges that otherwise believers have supposed, and would continue to imagine, God to be corporeal and mutable.

III.

Recent Precisions

As I indicated earlier, every part of the old story requires alteration in the light of scholarship, and we cannot make, or even note, all of the changes here. I shall try to indicate those essential for placing the shift from Augustine’s move inward and upward as the way to deiformity to Aquinas’ turn toward the sensible for the same end within Neoplatonic paradigms for reform by self-knowledge and within the Arabic systemizing of the Aristotelian corpus. In the last section of my essay, I shall draw out some of the changes these alterations demand in the reasons for which we might continue to tell this story. My revised narrative distinguishes two traditions within Neoplatonism as it governs philosophical theology and the paradigms of spiritual ascent in Latin Christianity during the millennium and a half from Augustine until the seventeenth century. Both derive from Plotinus and they are emphases which demonstrate their mutuality both by their common father, and by being united within Western Christianity.39 One of these is the Plotinian tradition as 36 See W. J. Hankey, ‘‘Aquinas, Pseudo-Denys, Proclus and Isaiah VI.6,’’ Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litte´raire du Moyen Aˆge 64 (1997), 59–93, and Smit, ‘‘Aquinas’s Abstractionism,’’ 97–103. 37 Aquinas, Contra Impugnantes c. 3 (Utrum religiousus possit esse de collegio secularium licite), } 4, Leonine A64–A65 (secular here refers to secular clergy, but the principles used by Thomas to make his answer would extend to the university community generally). 38 Aquinas, ST 1.16.8 ad 1: ‘‘Veritas autem intellectus nostri mutabilis est.’’ The objections in those articles of Questio 16, De Veritate which show that truth is in minds not in things, is multiple, created, and changeable, are overwhelmingly taken from Augustine and Anselm. 39 In Plotinus, compare Ennead 6.8 and Ennead 6.9; Werner Beierwaltes, ‘‘Eriugena’s Platonism,’’ Hermathena 149 (1990), 58–72, ‘‘Unity and Trinity in Dionysius and

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developed by Porphyry and Victorinus, and which, largely through Augustine’s influence, dominates the Latin West. Activity, freedom, and supremely simplified being: the ‘‘to be,’’ einai, or esse, are all attributed to the First Principle. The human soul, drawn by love, ascends through itself from sense and discursive reason by way of intellect to the higher faculty by which it has union. When knowing truly, it has immediate access to the ideas in the divine mind. In general, Thomas’ doctrine of God – what he gives as the primary name of God and his trinitarian doctrine – derives from this tradition.40 The other Neoplatonic tradition began in the criticism by Iamblichus of Porphyry, is most influential in the West through the pseudo-Areopagite, and gives Greek Christianity many of the characteristics differentiating it from the Latin. Its most telling features are the entire descent of the individual soul into the realm of sensible becoming, and a corresponding insistence on the transcendence of the unknown One or Good, beyond all attribution.41 In consequence, whereas the tradition in which we may locate Augustine emphasizes the intellectual, the alternative insists on the primacy for our ascent on the theurgic or sacramental. The self which most deeply mirrors the absolute source, and finds its rest there, is not that of a reflexive rationality, but of what underlies thought and moves us to union beyond knowing. One way develops a negative theology of Being; the other way develops a negative theology of the One or the Good.42 One arrives at intelligibilia. The other requires system: both because the Principle, always beyond being known, is manifested only by the totality of the whole in its difference and connection, and also because the self, immersed in the sensible, comes with difficulty to self-knowledge, which it must also surpass for the sake of the ultimate union it seeks. Crucially for our narrative, the Iamblichan–Proclean tradition

Eriugena,’’ Hermathena 157 (1994), 1–20, Platonisme et ide´alisme, Histoire de la philosophie (Paris, 2000), generally and ‘‘Postface a` la traduction franc¸aise,’’ 219–26, particularly; Hankey, ‘‘Denys and Aquinas,’’ 166–8. 40 W. J. Hankey, God in Himself, Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae, Oxford Theological Monographs/Oxford Scholarly Classics (Oxford, 1987/2000), 3–6. 41 See Iamblichus, De Anima: Text, translation, and commentary, by John F. Finamore and John M. Dillon, Philosophia Antiqua (Leiden–Boston–Ko¨ln, 2002). 42 See the groundbreaking article by Pierre Aubenque, ‘‘Plotin et le de´passement de l’ontologie grecque classique,’’ Le Ne´oplatonisme (Royaumont 9–13 juin 1969), pre´sente´es par Pierre Hadot, Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche scientifique, Sciences humaines (Paris, 1971), 101–8. J.-M. Narbonne, He´nologie, ontologie et Ereignis (Plotin-Proclus-Heidegger), L’aˆne d’or (Paris, 2001) 41–70 traces ‘‘the metaphysics of pure being’’ or a ‘‘negative theology of being,’’ from Aquinas to Pico della Mirandola and then back to Porphyry and Victorinus, and ultimately to Plotinus. Narbonne’s work considers what Neoplatonic henology and ontology have in common.

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replaces the hostility toward Aristotle, which we find in Plotinus and Augustine, with a positive attitude. Iamblichus and his followers not only reconcile Plato and Aristotle, but also insist on the Aristotelian sciences in the education of the soul by which she ascends toward deiformity by selfknowledge.43 Aquinas’ anthropology, negative theology, Aristotelianism, systemizing, and subordination of philosophy to sacramental religion belong in this tradition.44 At least as important as identifying the characteristics of the two Neoplatonic traditions in order to account for the differences at the poles of our history, is placing both within a single differentiated – even internally conflicting – movement. This is especially important when treating the Latin Christian West, because, after Anselm, with the twelfth-century ‘‘renaissance’’ anticipated by Eriugena, it became common for its greatest speculative and mystical theologians to unite these two opposed pagan traditions. One consequence of treating our story within the history of Neoplatonism is that we can no longer look directly to Plato and Aristotle to understand adequately what is philosophical in Augustine or Aquinas. Both are on our side of the Hellenistic and Neoplatonic turn to the subject. Both are primarily concerned with the quietude, salvation, or rest of the human soul, and, for both, the account of the nature of that soul – whether as the form of the body and turned to the sensible, or the contrary – is determinative. For both, because of this care for the self, philosophy needs religion, and, just as Porphyry is more bound up with religious questions and practice than is Plotinus, Augustine is moving beyond both in the direction of Iamblichus.45 Despite his polemics, Plotinus is as much an Aristotelian as a Platonist, and Augustine follows him in placing Plato’s ideas within Mind, and in conceiving knowing through the interior production of a word.46 Aquinas knows Plato almost entirely indirectly – first by way of Aristotle and Augustine – and what he understands as Platonism, though sophisticated and wide-ranging, is Middle and Neoplatonism.47 When it comes to the spiritual hierarchy, the treatise on the divine names, and very much else, Aquinas is in the tradition

43

My ‘‘Between and Beyond Augustine and Descartes: More than a Source of the Self,’’ Augustinian Studies 32, 1 (2001), 65–88, ‘‘Self-knowledge and God as Other in Augustine: Problems for a Postmodern Retrieval,’’ Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch fu¨r Antike und Mittalter 4 (1999), 83–123, and ‘‘ ‘Knowing as we are Known’ ’’ provide references to the texts and literature relevant to these assertions. 44 This is the argument of my God in Himself. 45 See Hans Feichtinger, ‘‘Oudeneia and humilitas: Iamblichus and Augustine on Grace and Mediation,’’ Dionysius 21 (2003), 123–60. 46 On which see Claude Panaccio, Le Discours inte´rieure de Platon a` Guillaume d’Ockham (Paris, 1999), 94–119. 47 See W. J. Hankey, ‘‘Aquinas and the Platonists,’’ in Gersh and Hoener, The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages, 279–324.

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of Proclus mediated through the Liber de causis and Dionysius. Crucially for our purposes, in virtue of the quasi-Apostolic authority of Dionysius, Thomas is able to place his Aristotelian turn to the sensible within a Christian ascent to God (ST 1.1.9). On this and other matters, including the doctrine of God, Aquinas associates Aristotle and Dionysius from the beginning to the end of his writing, although how he does so changes in ways determined by his ever-growing knowledge of the history of philosophy.48 Altering the beginning and end of our story, also alters its middle. The influence of later Neoplatonism on Boethius, the enormous role of Dionysius, and even positive contributions by Eriugena come to be seen as necessary to understanding Aquinas – as does the assimilation of the Peripatetic and Neoplatonic traditions toward one another in the forms under which they are mediated to Thomas.49 The general principles of Neoplatonic reform or conversion of the soul toward deiformity are that the cause is in the effect, and the effect in the cause. The twofold discipline by which Plotinus would have us come to the knowledge of our origin and dignity depends on this. For him, as also for Augustine, we discover this connection and ascend the ladder toward union by turning away from the sensible, because with Augustine the soul is a mutable creature and with Plotinus the soul is the lowest level of divinity, for each of them the movement is both inward and upward to greater likeness to God by self-knowledge.50 Crucially, the alternative Proclean–Dionysian– Aristotelian anthropology, within which we locate Thomas, will still come to deiformity by discovering God within, but must first turn outward.51

48 For very significant associations from near the end of his writing, see Aquinas, Super Librum De Causis Expositio, ed. H.-D. Saffrey, Textus Philosophici Friburgenses 4/5 (Fribourg–Louvain, 1954) prop. 3, 25, l. 21–4; prop. 5, 38, 1. 14– 20; prop. 10, 67, l. 19–68, 1. 28; prop. 13, 83, l. 8–17; prop. 18, 103, l. 16–23. I treat this question at some length in ‘‘Aquinas and the Platonists’’ and in ‘‘Thomas’ Neoplatonic Histories.’’ 49 See G. Endress, ‘‘The New and Improved Platonic Theology: Proclus Arabus and Arabic Islamic Philosophy,’’ in Proclus et la The´ologie Platonicienne. Actes du Colloque International de Louvain (13–16 mai 1998) en l’honneur de H. D. Saffrey et L. G. Westerink, ed. A. Ph. Segonds and C. Steel, Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Wulf–Mansion Centre, Series 1, XXVI (Leuven/Paris, 2000), 553–70; E´.-H. We´ber, Dialogue et dissensions entre saint Bonaventure et saint Thomas d’Aquin a` Paris (1252– 1273), Bibliothe`que thomiste 41 (Paris 1974), 460–84; Hankey, God in Himself, 33–4 and 55, n. 74 and ‘‘Secundum rei vim,’’ 128; E. C. Sweeney, ‘‘Three Notions of resolutio and the Structure of Reasoning in Aquinas,’’ The Thomist 58, 2 (1994), 203–4, 215–28; de Libera, La querelle, 68–124. 50 Phillip Cary’s opposition between Augustine and Plotinus on this twofold movement in Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self, 35–44 is false. 51 Best on the Proclean–Dionysian–Aristotelian connection is E. Booth, Aristotelian Aporetic Ontology in Islamic and Christian Thinkers, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought III, 20 (Cambridge, 1983).

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Because only the simple has immediate self-knowledge, Proclus, following Iamblichus, does not regard soul as having direct knowledge of its own essence: the soul is not immediately conscious of its own essential logoi, and possesses them as if breathing, or like a heartbeat. In order to make this hidden content of its own ousia explicit to itself, the soul must draw them forth through what Proclus calls projection.52

This is a gradual temporal process, which involves making present to the soul what is in it owing to its derivation from Nous. From the time of the efforts of Syrianus to bring concord between Plato and Aristotle on this point, among the Neoplatonists this process is a reconciliation of Aristotelian abstraction and Platonic reminiscence. Put crudely, abstraction from the sensible is the means by which the soul comes to remember the logoi it contains. The ideas in Nous may be spoken of as illumining the logoi immanent in the soul so that we know by them. Among the Arab Peripatetics this structure and language are used in respect to how human knowing stands to the Agent Intellect.53 This unification of abstraction and innatism, of making and contemplation, of reasoning and illumination sets us on the path to a self-knowledge leading to the highest union that religion seeks. J. J. O’Cleary writes of how, for Proclus, the soul has knowledge of itself and the One: Proclus cites Socrates in the (First) Alcibiades as saying that the soul, by entering into herself, will behold all things including the deity itself . . . At first the soul beholds only herself but when she penetrates more profoundly into the knowledge of herself she finds in herself both intellect and the orders of beings. However, when she proceeds . . . into the ‘‘sanctuary’’ . . . of the soul, she perceives with her eyes closed the genus of the gods and the unities of beings.54

The gods and ‘‘the unities of beings’’ to which he refers are above knowledge in themselves; the soul knows them only as they are in soul. The kind of knowing proper to soul is dianoia, the discursive logic of science.55 Logismos, or ratiocination, will not apprehend the god within. Crucially, however, ‘‘the genus of the gods and the unities of beings’’ cannot be apprehended without 52 D. G. MacIsaac, ‘‘Projection and Time in Proclus,’’ in Inglis, Medieval Philosophy and the Classical Tradition in Islam, Judaism and Christianity, 83–105, at 96; see also Carlos Steel, ‘‘Breathing Thought: Proclus on the Innate Knowledge of the Soul,’’ The Perennial Tradition of Neoplatonism, ed. J. J. O’Cleary, Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Wulf–Mansion Centre, 1.XXIV (Leuven and Paris, 1997), 293–309. 53 See de Libera, La querelle, 103–9. 54 J. J. O’Cleary, ‘‘The Role of Mathematics in Proclus’ Theology,’’ in Segonds and Steel, Proclus et la The´ologie Platonicienne, 65–90, at 75–6. For a much mediated doctrine from the Alcibiades known to Aquinas, see de Libera, L’Unite´ de l’intellect, 264, n. 256. 55 MacIsaac, ‘‘Projection and Time in Proclus,’’ 99–101.

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these modes of knowing. Active according to these modes, the soul awakens and discovers what is hidden in its potency by making the logoi come to be out of itself. In this way, Proclus has brought the Aristotelian teaching that the ideas belong to, and come forth from thinking – a doctrine embraced by Plotinus and Augustine – into the operations of the soul, and he made this projection, or self-creativity, essential for its rise to contemplation and union. In consequence, the hierarchy of the sciences is an anagogy. Proclus is the greatest systematizer of the sciences for the sake of the self-knowledge leading to the knowledge of God, creating a ladder of spiritual ascent which endured until, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was deconstructed for the sake of what we call modern science.56 Science, including metaphysics, is spiritual ascent, but it is also only a preparation. In his Commentary on the First Alcibiades, Proclus lists the conditions of self-knowledge. Philosophy is given a role comparable to that of purifications, rites of ablution, and expiation in the Mysteries, so that ‘‘philosophy constitutes a preliminary purification and a preparation for selfknowledge and the immediate contemplation of our own essence.’’57 This subordination is important, because by making philosophy an ancilla not just of metaphysics as wisdom, but also of what the gods graciously reveal, something like Thomas’ thirteenth-century developments are anticipated. Proclus is clear that we can only wait for what exceeds knowledge. I quote O’Cleary again: Like the initiate of the mystery cults, one must wait in the outer darkness for the gods to illuminate the soul, so as to bring it into direct contact with the One. This is why prayer and theurgy are necessary supplements to the scientific way, according to Proclus.58

There is a comparable transcendence of reason’s work in order to arrive at contemplative union in Plotinus. His last description of illumination by the

56 For a brief outline of the hierarchy, see Proclus, A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements, trans. G. R. Morrow (Princeton, 1970), Book 1, ch. 1, 3–4 and A. Charles-Saget, L’Architecture du Divin: Mathe´matique et philosophie chez Plotin et Proclus (Paris, 1982), 191–205. For the structure of reasoning, see D. G. MacIsaac, ‘‘The Soul and Discursive Reason in the Philosophy of Proclus’’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, Ind., 2001). For a treatment of part of the history with a note about Thomas’ place in it, see I. G. Stewart, ‘‘Mathematics as Philosophy: Barrow and Proclus,’’ Dionysius 18 (2000), 151–82. 57 Proclus, Sur le Premier Alcibiade de Platon, ed. and trans. A. Ph. Segonds, vol. 1 (Paris, 1985) prooemium 9, p. 7, ll. 1–7. 58 O’Cleary, ‘‘The Role,’’ 88. J. Bussanich, ‘‘Mystical Theology and Spiritual Experience in Proclus’ Platonic Theology,’’ in Segonds and Steel, Proclus et la The´ologie Platonicienne, 291–310, at 306 refuses to isolate ‘‘ecstatic states and visionary experiences’’ from ‘‘the entire way of life pursued by the Neoplatonic mystic.’’

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One is denuded of any rational self-elevation. He speaks of belief in a way that may have inspired Proclus’ teaching on faith59 – it, significantly, is our faculty for union beyond knowledge – when describing the ‘‘sudden reception of a light’’ which compels the soul ‘‘to believe’’ that ‘‘it is from Him, it is Him.’’ There is a breaking in; the illumination ‘‘comes.’’ With this arrival of the ‘‘true end of the soul,’’ it ‘‘contemplates the light by which it sees.’’60 To indicate what this discussion of Proclus and Plotinus has to do with Aquinas, I shall not give the elaborate answer scholarship would now enable about what Thomas knew of their positions.61 Rather I point to historical considerations which indicate how what is fundamental here comes to Aquinas. The first is a well-known aspect of Aquinas’ position, recently reexamined by Kevin Corrigan in order to connect it with the Iamblichan– Proclean understanding of how the soul comes to self-knowledge, namely, that, for Aquinas, the soul does not know its own essence directly. Corrigan puts Thomas’ doctrine this way: The immediate self-reflection of incorporeal beings is the essence of self-knowledge . . . this does not exclude some inferior forms of self-knowledge, even by means of perception and reasoning, but they are not the essence of self-knowledge. Whence arises the position of Aquinas for whom the incarnate soul does not know itself by its own essence but only by its acts.62

The next pieces in making the connection are studies by Alain de Libera, on the one hand, and Claude Lafleur on the other. The first considers the movement ‘‘Du ne´oplatonisme grec au pe´ripate´tisme arabe’’63 and shows how in Late Antiquity a spiritual ladder of the soul’s ascent from the work of abstraction to the contemplation of separate substances as its bliss comes to be constructed. De Libera goes on to consider in what ways this spiritual ladder is transformed by al-Faˆraˆbıˆ into the hierarchy of abstractions and separations through which the sciences are constituted. Claude Lafleur makes evident that this doctrine became general in the Faculty of Arts at Paris in the

59 Ph. Hoffmann, ‘‘La triade Chaldaı¨ que e;roj, avlh,qeia, pi,stij de Proclus a` Simplicius,’’ in Segonds and Steel, Proclus et la The´ologie Platonicienne, 459–89, at 469; see Ham’s comments in Plotin, Traite´ 49 (V.3), intro., trans., commentary and notes Bertrand Ham, Les E´crits de Plotin (Paris, 2000), 274. 60 Ennead 5.3.17; Plotin, Traite´ 49, p. 17, ll. 29–38. 61 For this see Hankey, ‘‘Aquinas and the Platonists.’’ 62 K. Corrigan, ‘‘L’auto-re´flexivite´ et l’expe´rience humaine dans l’Enne´ade V, 3 [49], et autres traite´s: de Plotin a` Thomas d’Aquin,’’ E´tudes sur Plotin, ed. M. Fattal (Paris– Montreal, 2000), 149–72, at 157. For the argument, see Hankey, ‘‘Between and Beyond Augustine,’’ 84–5. 63 De Libera, La querelle, 67–124.

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thirteenth century, and that the doctrine derived from al-Faˆraˆbıˆ , and common in the Faculty, is taken over by Aquinas.64 Finally, Houston Smit makes evident how for Aquinas the abstraction by which humans understand is an act of mental creation so that what the soul contains becomes known to itself. He demonstrates that the ‘‘conceptual empiricism’’ attributed to Aquinas in the old story by scholars like E´tienne Gilson is false. In showing ‘‘that the forms which the agent intellect impresses on the possible [intellect] . . . do not inhere in the senses at all, and that the agent intellect must in abstracting . . . produce a content not present in any sensible cognition,’’65 Smit wishes to reconcile Aquinas with Augustine’s innatism and doctrine of illumination. This is a proper correction of the old story. When to Smit’s account we add the developments outlined above within Neoplatonic and Peripatetic traditions which unified them, the context is supplied enabling Thomas’ reconciliation of Aristotle’s abstractionism and Augustine’s Platonism. Smit asks us to attend to Thomas’ ‘‘identification of the agent intellect with the ‘connatural light of our souls’ (SCG II 77 [5]).’’ For Aquinas, ‘‘this light . . . is ‘nothing more than a participating likeness in the uncreated light, in which all the divine ideas are contained’ (ST Ia 84.6).’’66 Smit begins with an account of Thomas’ views on the limitations of sensory cognition. Continuing on this Platonic road, he goes on to the ‘‘Hierarchy of the Spiritual Light and the Nature of the Intellect,’’ which in effect gives us Thomas’ version of the Neoplatonic hierarchy of being as a graduated series of participated intellectual acts. This helps, he says: to clarify how, by identifying the agent intellect with the human share in spiritual light, and spiritual light generally with the actuality of intelligere, Thomas combines an Augustinian theory of internal illumination and an Aristotelian conceptual empiricism within his metaphysics of act and potency.67

The creation of abstracted universals in the soul is a participation in the divine self-knowledge insofar as the power which makes this divine-human act possible is an uncreated light which we possess in a created participation. ‘‘[T]he agent intellect can make sensible forms actually intelligible only in

64

See C. Lafleur, ‘‘Abstraction, se´paration et tripartition de la philosophie the´ore´tique: Quelques e´le´ments de l’arrie`re-fond farabien et artien de Thomas d’Aquin, Super Boetium < > , question 5, article 3,’’ Recherches de The´ologie et Philosophie Me´die´vales 67, 2 (2000), 249–69; and ‘‘Abstraction, se´paration et objet de la me´taphysique,’’ Actes du XXVIIe Congre`s de l’ Association des Socie´te´s de Philosophie de Langue Franc¸aise. La me´taphysique: son histoire, sa critique, ses enjeux, ed. L. Langlois and J-M. Narbonne, Collection Zeˆteˆsis (Paris–Que´bec, 2000), 217–23. 65 Smit, ‘‘Aquinas’s Abstractionism,’’ 87 and n. 6. 66 Ibid., 88. 67 Ibid., 102.

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virtue of its containing virtually, as a participating likeness in the divine light, cognition of the divine being’’ in the soul’s knowledge of the transcendentals.68 Professor Smit concludes: the intelligible forms that come to inform our intellects . . . are . . . produced through our share in the divine spiritual light. This connatural light of our souls produces these forms . . . only because all scientia pre-exists in it virtually and universally, in partial active potency. . . . [the intellect] requires phantasms not because they already contain what we represent abstractly in concepts, but because . . . phantasms provide enough information to render distinct the content which pre-exists in its light in a ‘‘general and confused way.’’69

Crucially, in virtue of the changes Aquinas made with respect to both the Augustinians and the Arabs (who are remarkably close on this issue70), arriving at self-knowledge and rising toward the knowledge of God by which we become deiform are simultaneous in us. Because, for Aquinas, when abstracting the forms of sensible things, we make the greatest and most common universals emerge in our minds, we strengthen the power by which we can approximate the knowledge of separate divine intellect. Because the light by which these makings come to be is not only derived from the divine uncreated light, but is also the agent power of each of our own minds – every individual human soul is stamped with this divine power by God himself – what we know in and by the divine light is ourselves. By this long and complex route St. Thomas comes back to that identification of self-knowledge and the knowledge of God which Plato set out in the Alcibiades,71 a dialogue Iamblichus set at the beginning of the curriculum for those entering the Platonic school.

IV.

Some Consequences and a Conclusion

This updated version of the old story breaks down its polar oppositions. Something very significant does happen insofar as Latin Christianity embraces Aristotle, the university, an independence for philosophy vis-a`-vis sacred doctrine, the descent of the soul into the sensible, and the cosmological ascent up the ladder of the sciences as included in the way to deiformity. Nonetheless, through placing both saints within the history of Neoplatonism and Arabic Peripateticism, Aquinas is drawn back toward Augustine. This 68

Ibid., 105 and 112–13. Ibid., 118. 70 See Richard C. Dales, The Problem of the Rational Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden–New York, 1995). 71 See David M. Johnson, ‘‘God as the True Self: Plato’s Alcibiades I,’’ Ancient Philosophy 19 (1999), 1–19. 69

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comes into view in a recent essay by Dominic O’Meara with the significant title ‘‘La science me´taphysique (ou the´ologie) de Proclus comme exercice spirituel.’’ This is a consideration of Proclus’ Elements of Theology which O’Meara shows to be the equivalent in Proclus of the metaphysics of Aristotle, and also to be a rigorously demonstrative science functioning as an ‘‘entraıˆ nement anagogique’’ of the rational soul, preparing it for access to Nous.72 The soul comes to self-knowledge because it is discovering Nous within herself. O’Meara concludes with some suggestions about the historical consequences of the Neoplatonic conception of ‘‘metaphysics as anagogic conceptual introspection’’ and mentions Augustine, Boethius, the Proslogion of Anselm, and Descartes as belonging to the tradition.73 We can now extend this list. Both Bonaventure’s Itinerarium and Thomas’ Super Boetium De Trinitate teach that we climb the spiritual itinerarium by the steps which order the complex of the sciences. These two theologians draw together Augustine with the Pseudo-Dionysius, who religiously enables, and philosophically requires, their acceptance of the Aristotelian sciences as media of the selfknowledge leading us to God. Eriugena was the first Latin to think with Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius at once. It begins to appear that, to a remarkable degree, the scholastics of the thirteenth century are more his successors than they are his opponents. Before considering what this history tells us about ecclesiastical reform, let me remind you that reform has meant at least two things in this essay. First, I have spoken as if Western Christendom were a growing and developing organism which was required to cope with changes in its environment. In this context reform appears as a life-preserving and enhancing self-transformation which depends upon and enables drawing the other within the living being. To speak in terms of Anselm’s predominant logic, the aliud is drawn within the per se.74 Second, reform is what I take to be the essence of Christianity as a Hellenic and Hellenistic religion, namely, the conversion toward personal deiformity by self-knowledge. The old story was told as it was because we lacked, or refused to see, features of the history which would have enabled us to tell it otherwise. More interestingly, we loved telling it as we did because it seemed to provide a way of embracing a reform which displayed innovation in medieval Christianity, but crucially, innovation which arrived at the always-true philosophia perennis. The pattern of medieval thought thus became an ideal for our own age. Its self-transformation could be represented as one which allowed

72 D. J. O’Meara, ‘‘La science me´taphysique (ou the´ologie) de Proclus comme exercice spirituel,’’ in Segonds and Steel, Proclus et la The´ologie Platonicienne, 279–90, at 289. 73 Ibid., 290. 74 See Hankey, ‘‘Secundum rei vim,’’ 134–41.

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Catholics both to engage modernity and also to fight the modern, constructed, by those who told the story, as the polar opposite of the Thomistic summit of the High Middle Ages – a summit which once achieved it had always to regain. The revised story cannot be told in this way. The new footnotes make evident that the Hellenistic turn to the subject, and the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic conversion to deiformity by selfknowledge govern the millennium between Augustine and Aquinas, uniting its poles. These two saints cannot be set against each other for the sake of a war against modernity understood as a turn to the subject.75 The logic by which modern and premodern are connected had the paradoxical and ironic result that in waging the anti-modern war Thomism was transformed into a species of modernist rationalism.76 Further, in retelling the old story we have come upon the positive, as well as the critical, relation of Aquinas to the development of philosophy among the Arabic Peripatetics. When he encompassed this assertion of a total scientific reason by engaging and correcting philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and within his own writings, he contributed to the establishment of an independent and laı¨ c intellectual life in the Middle Ages. The modern university, and much else characteristic of modernity, have their roots here. If Aquinas cannot be set against Augustine because, within the Neoplatonic traditions, they have the turn to the subject in common, neither can we set Thomas against the Augustine who underlies the autonomy of philosophy in Descartes.77 Finally, it is worth noting that, at least in this case, the ecclesiastical authorities opposed genuinely significant innovation in the short term. To a considerable degree, they identified themselves with a reactionary party. In the longer term, the authorities lost control over Christendom’s selftransformation, and had little choice except to embrace the innovations. During two other periods of ecclesiastical fright – the Counter-Reformation, and the reaction of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Church against modernity – attempts were made to represent what Aquinas accomplished so

75

See W. J. Hankey, ‘‘The Postmodern Retrieval of Neoplatonism in Jean-Luc Marion and John Milbank and the Origins of Western Subjectivity in Augustine and Eriugena,’’ Hermathena 165 (Winter 1998), 9–70, at 67–70, ‘‘Self-knowledge and God as Other,’’ 122–3, and ‘‘Denys and Aquinas,’’ 172–3. 76 The irony of anti-modern neo-Neoscholasticism has now been pointed out by many; I note Rosemann, ‘‘A Change of Paradigm’’; E. Tourpe, ‘‘Thomas et la modernite´. Un point de vue spe´culatif sur l’histoire de la me´taphysique thomiste,’’ Revue des sciences philosophiques et the´ologiques 85, 3 (July, 2001), 433–60; and Kerr, After Aquinas, esp. 17–51. 77 See S. Menn, Descartes and Augustine (Cambridge, 1998); Z. Janowski, Index Augustino-Carte´sien: Textes et Commentaire, Histoire de la philosophie (Paris, 2000); and Hankey, ‘‘Between and Beyond Augustine.’’

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as to domesticate and use it. The second of these was only effective in the short term. Moreover, evaluated in light of the reaction of the Second Vatican Council and its consequences, the imposition of neo-Neoscholasticism turned out to be extremely costly, necessitating sudden and confusing reversals.78 In the end, fundamental intellectual and spiritual reform happens independently of, or in opposition to, attempts to control it. Reactionary interventions are more disruptive and destructive than effective. It is hard to know what practical lessons we can draw from these observations. It is unlikely they will have any effect on the authorities, and no one who studies Scholasticism can in conscience recommend that the bishops should listen to endlessly squabbling academics. However, the millennial-long reform we have reexamined seems to me to show both how conservatively determined the fundamental psychic structures of Western Christendom are and also how successfully they have been transformed to include their own alterities. Whether the Holy Spirit will renew our minds in still more radical ways, we cannot know in advance. The strength the western psyche acquired in the self-transformation we have traced enabled it to bring both modern and postmodern forms of itself to birth. Such strength may also bring about its own gigantic self-overcoming.79

78 For remarks, see my ‘‘Making Theology Practical: Thomas Aquinas and the Nineteenth Century Religious Revival,’’ Dionysius 9 (1985), 85–127 and ‘‘Practical Considerations about Teaching Philosophy and Theology Now,’’ Restoring Faith In Reason, A New Translation of the Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II together with a commentary and discussion, ed. Laurence Paul Hemming and Susan Frank Parsons (London, 2002), 199–205. The Jesuits were crucial to both the Counter-Reformation and the Leonine Thomisms; on the latter, see J. Inglis, Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Mediaeval Philosophy, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 81 (Leiden–Boston–Ko¨ln, 1998). 79 See W. J. Hankey, ‘‘Dionysian Hierarchy in St. Thomas Aquinas: Tradition and Transformation,’’ Denys l’Are´opagite et sa poste´rite´ en Orient et en Occident, Actes du Colloque International Paris, 21–24 septembre 1994, ed. Ysabel de Andia, Collection des E´tudes Augustiniennes, Se´rie Antiquite´ 151 (Paris, 1997), 405–38, at 437–8.

Chapter 4

The Early Scholastics and the Reform of Doctrine and Practice Marcia L. Colish

One major dynamic prompting the development of doctrine and practice in the Church has been heresy. In the patristic period, we see this process at work in the framing of creeds by ecumenical councils and in the polemical writings of bishops. On the other hand, during the scholastic age, only one ecumenical council, Lateran IV, met to legislate on doctrine and praxis. The voice of the Church’s magisterium spoke less from episcopal thrones than from the classrooms of theologians and canonists in the schools and universities. This shift began to occur in the twelfth century and typified the High Middle Ages. Like their predecessors, early scholastics promoted the clarification of doctrine in order to defend orthodoxy against heresy. At the same time, they sought to update and adjust the teachings and praxis of the Church in order to respond to more strictly internal contemporary needs. Basic to both concerns was their methodology, combining the critical analysis of authorities with a sense of historical context. They were aware that the Church was a historical phenomenon whose theological and canonical traditions were neither static nor monolithic. Consequently, authorities sometimes conflicted with each other. At times, these conflicts could be reconciled. But, at times they could not be reconciled without distorting the authorities’ sense. When this was the case, authorities were put to the test. The scholastics saw it as their professional right, and duty, to weigh the cogency of positions that conflicted and to explain their rationale for choosing those they favored. If none of the existing authorities proved adequate, they could be set aside and an alternative solution proposed by a master himself. We can observe this methodology at work in three of the theological contexts in which early scholastics called for reform in doctrine, praxis, or both. The first of these areas is sacramental theology and it reflects, largely, the scholastics’ application of historical criticism. Largely, but not entirely, for the single most important change rung in sacramental theology in this period was Hugh of St. Victor’s replacement of the Augustinian definition of

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sacrament in general, the sign of a sacred thing, with his own definition, the sign of a sacred thing that effects what it signifies.1 More typically, however, reform proposals focused on individual sacraments. For example, Roland of Bologna argued for a change in the administration of confirmation, resting his case on the difference between Church life in his own day and in the ecclesia primitiva.2 Early popes, he notes, had dispensed with the rule that bishops alone could confirm, allowing them to delegate this function to priests. The dispensation, then, made sense, he observes, since Christians were thin on the ground and bishops might have to minster to a widely scattered flock. But, he continues, ‘‘nowadays this is not the case,’’ and concludes that the earlier dispensation should be scrapped. A sacrament whose administration evoked much more controversy was baptism. One dispute focused on single versus triple immersion. The most interesting argument for single immersion comes from an anonymous follower of Gilbert of Poitiers.3 His analysis yokes historical criticism, of the sort just seen in Roland, with source criticism. Baptism by triple immersion in the Easter season was widespread in the early Church, a practice made mandatory in the fifth century by Pope Leo I, he notes. But, he asserts, we should abandon this rule, on grounds of pastoral utility. Back then, most baptizands were adult converts, and the mild Mediterranean climate made their triple immersion at Easter unproblematic. Nowadays, however, most baptizands are infants, born in a cold climate, whose health is extremely fragile. They should be immersed only once, to minimize the risk of exposing them to chills. The master then wields another patristic authority to trump Leo’s ace, Gregory the Great. Gregory had opened the door that Leo had nailed shut. Leander, bishop of Seville, on taking office, had discovered that in some parts of his diocese baptism was being administered by triple immersion while single immersion prevailed elsewhere. He wrote to Gregory as pope, seeking his advice. In his response, after observing that there was good symbolic warrant for each practice, Gregory concluded, ‘‘diversity of practice in the Church does not impede the unity of faith.’’ Seizing on this point, illustrating as it does both the development of doctrine and the need for flexibility, the Porretan master uses it to delegitimize Leo’s ruling. But he has another argument to make before resting his case. He has done his homework. He notes that the first authority to pronounce on the matter had

1 Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis fidei christianae 1.9.2, PL 176: 317C–318D; for literature on this definition, see Marcia L. Colish, Peter Lombard, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1994), ii, 523, n. 125. 2 Roland of Bologna, Die Sentenzen Rolands, ed. Ambrosius M. Gietl (Amsterdam, 1969 [repr. of Freiburg im Breisgau, 1891 edn.]), 214. 3 Nikolaus M. Ha¨ring, ed., ‘‘Die Sententie magistri Gisleberti Pictavensis episcopi I,’’ 7.4, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litte´raire du moyen aˆge 45 (1978), 149.

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been the third-century bishop of Carthage, Cyprian, who had imposed single immersion. Augustine had cited Cyprian, but had garbled his text, substituting triple for single immersion. In turn, Leo had cited Augustine; failing to cross-check his sources, he had thus perpetuated Augustine’s corruption of Cyprian. In addition to its current pastoral irrelevance, Leo’s rule was based on faulty patristic research; thus, the master concludes, it has no merit. In comparing this final argument to the one based on Gregory’s advice to Leander, we may note that, while both have the goal of undermining Leo’s authority, their respective paths to that destination differ. In the Gregory-toLeander case, a later pope’s ruling replaces that of an earlier pope. In the Cyprian-to-Augustine-to-Leo case, the earliest authority maintains its force against the misreading and misconstruction of later authorities. However, the bottom line, for the Porretan master, is neither the development of doctrine nor the priority of antiquity as the norm establishing the rule of faith. Rather, the criterion of his argument is: which authorities best support the aggiornamento of baptismal practice that he advocates? Updating sacramental practice, in the foregoing examples, stemmed from the scholastics’ explicit awareness of the differences between the early Church and the Church of their own day. The general thrust of the reforms they proposed appealed to administrative coherence, or flexibility, in improving the Church’s sacramental ministry to Christians. The second subhead under which we can see theological reforms emerging involves critiques of past views that are ventilated less explicitly. They reflect the existence of deepseated twelfth-century sensibilities, deemed to need little or no explanation or justification. One authority who came in for a good measure of this type of criticism was Augustine, particularly the late, anti-Pelagian Augustine. Twelfth-century theologians quietly but consistently junked the late Augustine’s doctrine of the irresistibility of grace.4 They preferred his much earlier, anti-Manichean insistence on free will, to which they joined other patristic rationales for free will as well as arguments of their own devising. Another late Augustinian doctrine that reformers among the scholastics rejected was the necessary damnation of unbaptized infants. They saw this position as too harsh and as incompatible with divine mercy.5 In this case, the reformers’ position faced opposition from other scholastics, although it did win out by the following century. The most elegant argument among twelfthcentury reformers on this issue comes from the Porretan master we have just met.6 Reprising opinions of other reformers, he agrees that baptism by blood and baptism by desire are valid alternatives to sacramental baptism, for 4

Colish, Peter Lombard, ii, 289, 383–5, 389, 472, 730, 733–4, 746–7. Ibid., ii, 533–8. 6 Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 7.6–7, 7.9–11, 7.19–20, 7.25, 7.28, pp. 148–9, 150, 151, 152. 5

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infants as well as adults. With respect to the former, we have the example of the holy innocents, deemed saints, whose feast we celebrate in the church’s liturgy. With respect to the latter, as with sacramental baptism, it is the faith of the infant’s elders, not the infant’s own, that is normative in any case. The master’s clinching argument is his alone. It pits Augustine on predestination against Augustine on the necessity of infant baptism. God has chosen His elect from all eternity, and nothing can change God’s eternal decree. Therefore, God will save His elect, baptized or not. The first of these reforming critiques of Augustine was an uncontroversial consensus position in the twelfth century; the second encountered contemporary resistance which it eventually overcame. Another area in which current sensibilities encouraged the development of a new theological outlook was ethics. Twelfth-century theologians emphasized intentionality as the norm in ethics,7 a phenomenon we can document in literature and jurisprudence as well. To be sure, this principle is found in the Bible, in the Church fathers, in Roman law, and in Greek philosophy, especially Stoicism, so it had been available all along. But it received little attention until its revival in the twelfth century. At that time, scholastics agreed that virtue and vice lie in fixed intentionalities directed toward good or evil. These moral states are controlled by the mind, not the body. Temptations to sin or inclinations to virtue may, to be sure, arise in any part of the human constitution, or from outside it. It is not these temptations or inclinations themselves, but the mental decisions that moral agents make about them, that count. We first experience temptations or inclinations. Then, we consider and evaluate them rationally. Then, we make a deliberate choice, accepting or rejecting them. The third stage, in which the moral agent makes a rational and deliberate choice, is what defines his ethical state as virtuous or vicious. In articulating his century’s consensus view on this issue, Peter Lombard takes it one step further.8 What, he asks, is the relationship between good and bad intentions and good or bad deeds? Since they are directionalities, he responds, intentions always have destinations in view. He adds that acts are not good or evil per se; rather, they are good or evil in the light of the intentions that inform them. And, he concedes, some acts are objectively evil. But, such acts aside, intentionality prevails, and good or bad intentions determine the moral agent’s moral state even if these intentions are never manifested in external acts. As he puts it, ‘‘All human actions are judged good or bad according to their intention and cause, except those which are intrinsically evil, that is, those which are unconditionally prohibited.’’9 7

Colish, Peter Lombard, ii, 473–89. Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae 2. d. 38–39, 3rd rev. edn., ed. Ignatius C. Brady (Grottaferrata, 1971–81), i, 547–61. 9 Ibid., d. 40. c. 1.2; i, 560–61. 8

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Paradoxically, this principle, although generally held in ethics, was not applied consistently to sacramental theology by early scholastic reformers. Two debates that reveal this discrepancy involve marriage and penance. At what point are spouses judged to have formed a sacramental and indissoluble marriage? At what point, in the sequence of contrition, confession, and satisfaction, has the status of a penitent been changed in God’s eyes? In each case, one group of scholastics stressed the critical importance of the internal over the external state of persons receiving these sacraments, while their opponents did the reverse. For the first group, present consent of the spouses made the marriage whether or not it was ever consummated; for the second, consummation was determinative.10 On penance, the same groups opted for contritionism on the one side and confessionism on the other.11 These debates thus have close parallels and they enlisted the same scholastics, respectively. It is clear that the consent position in marriage formation and contritionism in penance are applications of intentionalism, while consummationism and confessionism are not, although proponents of these latter views did not perceive the discontinuity between their positions on them and their own intentionalism in ethics. Two findings can be drawn from these observations. First, twelfth-century reformers were not necessarily reformers across the boards; their would-be reforms in some areas could be inconsistent with their reform views in other areas. This is certainly the case with both marriage and penance. Whichever side scholastics and canonists took on the debates noted, they agreed that marriage ought to be sacramentalized and brought under the Church’s jurisdiction, and that Christians should receive penance as often as was needed, as opposed to the early Church rule that post-baptismal sin could be forgiven only by a single, solemn, public penance.12 The second finding is that the same contemporary sensibilities that led to a resolution of one of these debates, yielding a victory for the consent theory of marriage formation by the late twelfth century, did not yield a parallel triumph for contritionism. The debate on penance continued and was not resolved until the thirteenth century, when confessionism emerged as the consensus position. One major reason for these disparate outcomes was the problem of heresy. Many of the heresies of the twelfth and thirteenth century criticized the institutional Church, rejecting its sacraments and the priests needed to administer them. The felt need to underscore the importance of the penitent’s auricular confession to a priest and reception of his absolution thus factored into the decision to support the confessionist view. In this sense, timing, and what was going on at the moment, needs to be taken into account in grasping why reformist intentionalism triumphed with respect to marriage but was 10

Colish, Peter Lombard, ii, 630–40, 642–52. Ibid., ii, 588–604. 12 Ibid., ii, 583–8, 601–2, 628–9. 11

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relegated to a required but not determinative role in penance. Reform, in this period, was as much a response to historical circumstances as it was to the attractions of pastoral need or logical consistency in sacramental teaching. Heresy also looms large as a factor informing the third and last of the contemporary sensibilities that led early scholastics to reshape doctrine, clarifying and making more precise those doctrines contested by dissidents. Eucharistic theology is a signal case in point. If heresy was the challenge, the response of scholastics was to make use of the Greco-Arabic science and philosophy, above all Aristotelianism, now being translated into Latin, and the resources of their own developing refinements in the fields of logic and semantic theory. They now had more sharply honed conceptual tools with which to reformulate and defend Eucharistic doctrine, especially in areas such as the real presence and concomitance.13 By the mid-twelfth century, the anonymous authors of the Sententiae divinitatis and Summa sententiarum, along with Peter Lombard, concluded that it was vital to invoke the Aristotelian language of form and matter, substance and accident, in treating the real presence, laying the foundations for the reframing of this doctrine as transubstantiation at Lateran IV.14 On concomitance, the notion that each of the species equally contains the body and blood of Christ led to the question of why utraquism, a practice in place since the early Church, should be continued.15 Scholastics departed from the traditional explanation, namely that all Christians should receive communion in both kinds because that is the way Christ instituted the Eucharist in the Bible. Instead, they invoked sign theory to explain this practice: the wine signifies the nourishment needed by the soul while the bread signifies the nourishment needed by the body. Despite the clarity of this explanation and the weight of liturgical custom, other events, notably a rash of ‘‘bleeding host’’ miracles, moved scholastics and lay people alike away from utraquism and toward a new consensus limiting the laity to the host alone by the end of the twelfth century.16 This fact tells us something else worth considering when we contemplate the reform of doctrine and praxis. The principle of lex orandi, lex credendi is at work in forming religious and theological tolerances, no less than the external threat of heresy. In this case, the percolation upward of the Church’s devotional life and religious experience was just as important as the trickle13

Ibid., ii, 551–83. Bernhard Geyer, ed., Die Sententiae divinitatis: Ein Sentenzenbuch der Gilbertischen Schule, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 7, 2–3 (Mu¨nster, 1909), 131* –33* ; Summa sententiarum 6.4, PL, 176: 141A–D; Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 8. c. 4, d. 10, d. 11. c. 1–2, d. 12. c. 1–3; ii, 282, 290, 296–9, 304–5. 15 Colish, Peter Lombard, ii, 567–70. 16 Gary Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist in the Early Scholastic Period: A Study of the Salvific Function of the Sacrament according to the Theologians, c. 1080–c. 1220 (Oxford, 1984). 14

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down of reformist theology in engendering the new consensus on lay communion. A final example, under my third sub-heading, the felt need to update the formulation of doctrine using the most high-tech philosophical tools available, can be seen in the debate between Peter Abelard and Peter Lombard on whether God can do other, and better, than He does.17 Both theologians made use of a new semantic theory called the nominalist argument. Let me stress that this has nothing to do with the later label ‘‘nominalism’’ as a position on universals. In its twelfth-century sense, nominalism taught that nouns and verbs consignify the same things or actions, in oblique cases or different tenses, voices, and moods, as they signify in the nominative case and present tense. The same applies to nouns when joined in propositions with verbs in past, present, and future tenses. The conclusion to which this theory leads is that what was true once is true now and will always be true. Abelard argued that, since God is perfectly good, He always acts in the most perfect way as a necessity of His own nature; thus, His creation is the best creation possible. Further, God’s perfection is compatible with His eternal foreknowledge of the future contingent events that will occur in His perfect world. The Lombard attack on Abelard uses the nominalist argument to liberate God from any necessity at all, by distinguishing between what was later called God’s absolute and ordained power. As the Lombard sees it, we cannot reduce God’s power to His actual deployment of it in His creation. True, the choices He made in creation were good ones. But this fact imposes no constraint on what God yet might do. He concludes, ‘‘God’s power is always the same. What He could do in the past, He can do in the present or the future.’’18 The Lombard use of the nominalist argument against Abelard accomplished two things: it wiped the Abelardian position off the agenda of scholastic theology, and it contributed significantly to the elaboration of the distinction between God’s absolute and ordained power, a doctrine with a long and important career ahead of it in political theory as well as theology. In that sense, the development of doctrine was a significant dimension of aggiornamento in early scholastic theology. To conclude: the kinds of reform of doctrine and praxis advocated by twelfth-century scholastics were diverse, both with respect to the range of topics at issue and to the concerns, both intramural and extramural, inspiring them. Also diverse were the targets, ancient or contemporary, against which reformers launched their criticism. What ties them together is the willingness of early scholastics to think outside the box, to question their authorities, and 17

Marcia L. Colish, ‘‘Peter Lombard and Abelard: The Opinio Nominalium and Divine Transcendence,’’ Vivarium 30 (1992), 139–54 and Peter Lombard, i, 275, 287, 290–302. 18 Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 44, c. 2.4; i, 306.

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to use the most up-to-date analytical methods and high-tech auxiliary arts and sciences, all in aid of advancing theological understanding and enabling the Church to minister more effectively to its flock. In all cases, contemporary sensibilities, needs, and tolerances informed the scholastics’ understanding of their work. If their success as reformers was not always total, or immediate, the goals they set were high. Transposed into other keys and attuned to the needs and tolerances of other ages, the lesson they teach remains one worth heeding: by analogy, an understanding of how Christianity has been enculturated in past times and places helps us to see how it can best be enculturated in the here and now, emancipating us from the tyranny of a false, and ahistorical, present.

Chapter 5

Fides quaerens et non quaerens intellectum: Reform and the Intellectuals in the Early Modern Period John O’Malley

The ‘‘early modern period’’ has since the nineteenth century been known in Anglophone historiography as the Age of the Reformation and CounterReformation. That very designation indicates how dense a period it is for the subject under discussion and, indeed, in the person of Martin Luther it produced the reformer par excellence, the David who took on the Goliath not so much to destroy him as to remake him according to a deeper authenticity. But Luther was only one of dozens upon dozens of men who lived in the sixteenth century to whom the term reformer has been applied, often without much reflection about what the term might mean or even whether it is appropriate.1 For a devout Christian to have assumed any kind of leadership role in the sixteenth century almost automatically has meant, as if by osmosis, becoming known as a reformer. Among these persons many, perhaps most, can be considered in some sense an intellectual – Karlstadt, Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer, Contarini, Borromeo, Pole, Carranza, and so forth; the list seems endless. In trying in a few pages to say something sensible about such a sprawling and controversial phenomenon I must, of course, be highly selective, even idiosyncratic. I must, moreover, be bold; otherwise, we are lost amidst the trees and will never see the great forest. I will proceed in this daunting task by limiting myself to three ‘‘usual suspects’’ – Luther, Erasmus, and the theologians/canonists of the Council of Trent. To try to make sense of them, I will judge them against the same foil, that sea-change in Western Christianity that took place between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. I specify two imperfectly distinct aspects of this change: the Gregorian Reform and the subsequent development in the universities of the faculties of theology and 1

See, for example, my ‘‘Was Ignatius Loyola a Church Reformer? How to Look at Early Modern Catholicism,’’ The Catholic Historical Review 77 (1991), 177–93.

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especially canon law. Although the genesis of the universities does not lie directly with the Gregorian movement, that movement gave great impetus to the scrutiny of texts, especially canonical texts, that promoted a development that even otherwise seems bound to have happened. As I have already intimated, I have over the course of the years come to believe that one of the problems in dealing with religious or ecclesiastical reform has been the sloppy and unreflective way the term ‘‘reform’’ has been applied. To compensate for that problem, I will delineate the bold outlines of what everybody agrees was a reform, namely the Gregorian movement. I will then say a word about the mode of discourse in the university enterprise, which will help us understand ‘‘reform’’ in the sixteenth century. By taking these phenomena of the High Middle Ages into account I hope to throw the three suspects into a slightly new relief. The three represent three classic ways of responding, first, to what the Gregorians, broadly understood, produced and, second, three ways of relating to the scholastic, university mode of discourse. I say this even though my three protagonists were sometimes unaware or minimally aware that that was what they were doing. I will conclude with a few brief comments on Vatican Council II. For me the Gregorian Reform represents the combustion that occurred when the electric charge of the radically prophetic impulse in Christianity, ready since John the Baptist to denounce corruption in high places, sent its energies into the inert corpus – or corpora – of canon law.2 The prophets or even firebrands of the Gregorian Movement like Humbert and Gregory himself found their weapons in the ‘‘writings of the fathers,’’ foremost among which were canons of the ancient Church (genuine and forged) that told them how things were supposed to be. From these writings and from certain passages of Scripture they constructed a blueprint for world order, which was essentially a blueprint for Church order. To turn that blueprint into reality, they were ready to risk even death. The unquestioned assumption was that the writings, including the canons, as interpreted of course by themselves, provided the norm according to which the present was to be judged and, if found wanting, changed. Their holy goal was to effect the needed change. Three specific results of the movement are well known but must be mentioned: a newly stringent insistence on clerical celibacy that made this period a defining moment for that issue, the emergence of the papal monarchy with new and bolder claims regarding Church polity, and, third, a sharper

2 The literature on the subject is immense. See now especially H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) (Oxford, 1998), and Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Gregor VII.: Papst zwischen Canossa und Kirchenreform (Darmstadt, 2001), with extensive bibliography. Still useful is Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1964).

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distinction between the roles of clergy and laity in the Church, with the latter role in Church polity much reduced, at least in theory. For our purposes the more general upshot is just as important, which goes as follows. First, recourse to the ancient canons becomes even more firmly established as the norm according to which reform was to be accomplished. Second, reform was therefore concerned with the responsibilities and public behavior (mores) especially of Church officials, for that is what canon law is largely concerned with. The result was the emergence of an ever stronger profile of what we have come to term the institutional Church, as the monastic dominance of the preceding centuries declined. This resulted, third, in a more systematic study of the canons that, as I said, became an impulse towards the development of the faculties of law in the universities, which emerged in the next century. The development of the universities, fourth, produced a newly academic approach to all subjects, including theology, in which clarity of concept, comprehensiveness of coverage of all the pertinent questions, and the internal coherence of all aspects of the subject became the criteria for truth. It was a system wherein reasons of the heart played no role. Credo ut intelligam. Intellectual understanding came to be the primary goal. Those bold strokes will have to suffice for my foil. To that foil Luther, Trent, and Erasmus relate in three strikingly different ways, yet all three of them rightly deserve to be called reformers. They evinced different ecclesiologies, different appreciations of the Bible, and, perhaps most profoundly, different styles of discourse that implied three different appreciations of religious reality. If they relate so differently to my foil, they in so doing emerge also as three foils for helping us understand Vatican II. Luther. There are many ways of understanding this complex figure, but I believe a fruitful one is to look at him as representing the long-delayed backlash to the Gregorian Reform. His reform, as it finally developed, jettisoned precisely what the Gregorians worked so hard to establish. While he was willing to use the first four ecumenical councils as a guide to Christian faith, he was not inclined to accept the mass of disciplinary materials from that same period, especially those emanating from the papal chancery and interpreted by medieval canonists as criteria for right order in the Church. When on December 10, 1520, he burned along with the bull of his excommunication a book of canon law, he symbolically rejected the distinctive basis on which the Gregorians based their case. I say ‘‘distinctive basis’’ because the Gregorians of course believed that their program was Scripture-based, but it was a Scriptural basis translated into the canonical tradition of Church order. In rejecting the canons and thus the ecclesiastical structure they presupposed, Luther opened the way for new visions of Church order, supposedly based more directly on Scripture. Calvin would later articulate

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that order with more precision than Luther was ever able to muster, but Luther shifted discourse on the subject of ‘‘Church reform’’ to a different foundation from the Gregorians, from the Council of Constance, and, as we shall see, from the Council of Trent. In so doing, he rejected for all practical purposes structures and institutions of the Church, especially the papacy, that the Gregorians had dramatically forced to the forefront and whose prerogatives Gregory VII himself had exalted beyond all his predecessors. Luther also rejected the celibacy of the clergy. For the Gregorians celibacy was the foundation stone for the reform of the clergy, whereas for Luther it was the aberration that, besides being contrary to Christian liberty, fostered clerical debauchery. The canons might sanction celibacy but Scripture, the sole criterion, did not. Although the abolition of obligatory celibacy was not at the center of Luther’s reform, from the viewpoint of its social implications it was extraordinarily important. It created a new social class that would resist all efforts at reconciliation with the traditional Church until assurance was given that wife and children would not have to be abandoned in the performance of ministry. In the subsequent history of the Catholic–Protestant divide, it became a powerful symbol of the radically different meanings of reform in the two traditions, more important, except in the classrooms of theologians, than the justification issue. If the Gregorians wanted to reduce the role of lay leaders in the polity of the Church, Luther moved in the diametrically opposite direction. In his ‘‘Appeal to the Nobility’’ of 1520, he called upon the emperor and other secular leaders to take upon themselves and carry through the hottest ecclesiastical task of the day, the reform of the Church. He in that document explicitly called for tearing down the wall between clergy and laity that the ‘‘Romanists’’ had erected, for we are all equally Christian.3 Luther’s underscoring of the priesthood of all believers was a corollary. No Romanists were more responsible for raising of the wall, or at least for raising it notably higher, than the Gregorians. Luther’s most radical move regarding institutional reform, however, was his rejection of the canonical tradition as norm and foundation for it. Nothing in that regard set him off more fundamentally from the Gregorians and from an assumption hallowed and unquestioned regarding reform since the earliest centuries. In rejecting its canonical basis, he redefined what reform was. Reform would be based directly on Scripture. The core and wellspring of Luther’s reform lay in his Tower Experience, in his heartfelt conviction that the Gospel consisted in the simple message of justification by faith alone. From that conviction flowed the institutional 3 Luther, ‘‘To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate,’’ in Selected Writings of Martin Luther, ed. Thodore G. Tappert, 4 vols. (Philadelphia, 1967), i, 262–9.

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ramifications just described. That conviction was based, moreover, on the clear teaching of Scripture, which contradicted what reason, what philosophy, that is, what Aristotle taught, namely, that by doing good deeds one developed good habits called virtues and thus became a good person. Aristotle’s position made sense in human terms, even to Luther, but it did not correspond to the Gospel, whose teaching on this absolutely crucial issue did not make sense. Luther’s battle cry of ‘‘Scripture alone’’ was not as such a rejection of ‘‘Tradition,’’ as one still hears Catholics affirming, but a rejection of Aristotle’s doctrine on the virtues as it was appropriated by the mainstream scholastic theologians. Since the doctrine of Scripture did not make sense from our human viewpoint, it could only be clung to by faith. That faith was an acceptance of a darkness that, paradoxically, flooded the soul with light, warmth, and joy. Luther’s creed is not Credo ut intelligam, at least not in the way Anselm and the scholastics would have understood it. It is closer to Credo quia absurdum. Although Luther had been trained in scholasticism, he early on came to reject the foundation on which it was built, a reconciliation in ‘‘sacred doctrine’’ between reason and revelation. That foundation engendered an intellectual style that did not conform to the transcendent character of the Good News. Luther thus had to reject the scholastics’ attempts to structure their truths in the comprehensive schema of a Summa, as if the Gospel could be reduced to a system, with all parts fitting in tight and exquisite coherence. Luther rejected an enterprise that accepted for ‘‘sacred doctrine’’ Greek teachings on logic and believed the syllogism would yield truths about justification. ‘‘No syllogistic form,’’ he countered, ‘‘is valid when applied to divine matters.’’4 In 1521, in his long reply to Latomus, a scholastic theologian from the University of Louvain who had attacked him, Luther challenged the scholastic method by adducing divine inspiration as the test for authenticity of teaching. ‘‘My advice has been,’’ he said, ‘‘that a young man avoid scholastic philosophy and theology like the very death of the soul. . . . I have the strongest doubts as to whether Thomas Aquinas is among the damned or the blessed. . . . He wrote a great deal of heresy and is responsible for the reign of Aristotle, the destroyer of godly doctrine.’’5 Whereas the scholastics tried through definitions and distinctions, through ever greater refinement of concepts, to arrive at resolution among seemingly incompatible realities, Luther preferred paradox.6 He explicitly framed his

4

Luther, ‘‘Disputation against Scholastic Theology,’’ in Selected Writings, i, 38. Luther, ‘‘Against Latomus,’’ in Selected Writings, ii, 198. 6 See, for example, Denis R. Janz, ‘‘Syllogism or Paradox: Aquinas and Luther on Theological Method,’’ Theological Studies 59 (1998), 3–21. See also my ‘‘Erasmus and Luther: Continuity and Discontinuity as Key to Their Conflict,’’ The Sixteenth Century Journal 5, 2 (1974), 47–65. 5

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theses for his ‘‘Heidelberg Disputation,’’ 1518, as a set of ‘‘theological paradoxes.’’7 Luther’s paradoxes were to sustain contrary positions in antithetical disjunction. In the Eucharist both bread and body are contained, yet they remain distinct and without transformation, or transubstantiation, of one into the other, as in justification the Christian emerges at one and the same time (simul ) as righteous and sinner. The lion lies down with the lamb. The simul of Luther’s paradoxes is a paratactic adhesive, not a metaphysical solvent. The antithetical character of his paradoxes indicates his keen consciousness of disjunction and discontinuity. It helps explain his antipathy to the unitary vision of the universe implied by the best of the Summae. Those Summae in their complacent, academic serenity conveyed none of the strife that is the Christian’s lot in the world, where for the most part the Devil calls the shots. Luther by contrast described his writings as ‘‘confused lucubrations’’ and a ‘‘crude and disordered chaos.’’8 To the reasoned conclusions of the scholastics he reacted with bold assertions that neither needed human argumentation nor were susceptible to it. He informed Erasmus, ‘‘The Holy Spirit is no skeptic, and what he has written into our hearts are no doubts or opinions, but assertions, more sure and certain than life itself and all experience.’’9 He thus cannot subscribe to any ‘‘middle way,’’ but, as he said about his position on the slave will, we must go to extremes. ‘‘We neither accept nor approve a moderate, middle way.’’10 It is not surprising his contemporaries called him the doctor hyperbolicus. Luther the reformer was an intellectual, a university professor. He was an intellectual, however, who created a style of discourse that set him apart from the intellectual mainstreams and rendered him almost unintelligible to them. His prophetic mode of discourse that prized paradox and assertion, that gloried in hyperbole, and that rejected any logic-based coherence entailed a total rejection of the theological agenda of the scholastic enterprise and even of the rhetorical, Fathers-inspired ‘‘philosophy of Christ’’ of Erasmus. The discourse was radical. To it corresponded an intellectual stance and a correlative reform program that were just as radical. The theologians of the Council of Trent had thrust upon them the twofold task of dealing with the doctrinal errors of the Protestants, particularly Luther, and then undertaking the reform of the Church. In the very first months of the Council the bishops and theologians came to realize that justification was the crucial doctrinal issue facing them, and they soon set to

7

Luther, ‘‘Heidelberg Disputation,’’ in Selected Writings, i, 65–96, esp. 65. Luther, ‘‘Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings,’’ in Selected Writings, i, 17. 9 Luther, ‘‘The Bondage of the Will,’’ in Luther’s Works, ed. H. C. Oswald et al., 55 vols. (St Louis and Philadelphia, 1955–86), xxxiii, 24. 10 Ibid., 245. 8

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work on it. They dedicated some seven months to the task, producing finally the most considered doctrinal statement of the Council. Stung by Luther’s criticism that Catholics believed their ‘‘works’’ justified and saved them rather than the grace of God, the Council sedulously insisted that justification was accomplished always and everywhere under the inspiration of grace. It also taught, however, that in some mysterious way human beings played a role in their justification. In the Fall the will was wounded but not totally corrupted. The Council spoke of the grace-filled person in glowing, optimistic terms. The decree is intellectually satisfying. It considers all aspects of the subject, and it evinces an harmonious internal coherence. Within the framework of its assumptions, it makes sense. Credo ut intelligam. The language, moreover, is careful and measured. Not a word is wasted. Every word is present that needs to be present, and no word present is superfluous. The decree is comprehensive. It presents its teaching in two forms, chapters and canons. The former were designed as positive statements of Catholic teaching, so that preachers and apologists might make use of them. The latter were terse condemnations of erroneous positions, some thirty-three of them. All these qualities make for a long document, some seventeen pages in English translation.11 The decree was, moreover, constructed by a committee of scholars and evinces the impersonal stance of statements constructed in that way. It carefully tiptoed around differences of opinion among Catholic schools of theology. Whereas Luther could sum up his teaching in a slogan of six words – faith alone, grace alone, Scripture alone – Trent did not and could not do that, for it moved within the assumptions of ‘‘science’’ so central to the scholastic system. It was the neat answer of the academic to the anguish of tortured conscience. For all its merit, the decree does not grab one’s attention or pack a rhetorical punch. The same could be said, perhaps a fortiori, about the rest of Trent’s doctrinal decrees. About half of the official decrees of Trent, however, are de reformatione. They have two striking qualities. First, unlike the doctrinal decrees, they do not directly confront Luther’s reform program. Indeed, they dodge some of the hottest practical issues. Luther abolished obligatory clerical celibacy. Trent in effect refused to pronounce on the subject. In the two canons it issued related to the issue, the Council affirmed neither its necessity nor its desirability as a condition for ordination.12 We know that some of the theologians at the Council believed clerical celibacy was an apostolic tradition, which therefore the Council was not free to change, but there is

11 I refer to the translation by H. J. Schroeder, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford, Ill., 1978), 29–46. For another translation, with facing Latin text, see Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1990), ii, 671–81. 12 See Tanner, Decrees, ii, 755, canons 9 and 10.

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no hint of this position in the decrees. On vernacular liturgy, Trent says (contrary to the rigid and regressive position often attributed to it) only that it did not ‘‘think it advantageous that the mass should everywhere be celebrated in the vernacular.’’13 This statement is hardly an insistence on Latin. Luther demanded that the Eucharist be administered under both forms, bread and wine, and, though the issue might seem minor to us today, it was and continued to be almost into the present, a great symbol dividing Protestants and Catholics. The Council hesitated back and forth over the question and finally left the decision about the cup to the discretion of the pope.14 I think we see in these decisions, or non-decisions, the scholar’s caution, the avoidance of ‘‘extremes’’ even amidst the fireworks of controversy. Trent was of course not about to call in the laity to reform the Church, but the bishops were keenly aware that the emperor was just as responsible for the original convocation of the Council as was the pope. Many bishops were present at Trent by allowance of their sovereigns, and it was because of the consistent obstruction of the Council by Francis I of France that the delegation of French bishops did not arrive at Trent until 1562, half-way through the final period. At its very last Session, December 4, 1563, the Council issued a chapter (paragraph) reprehending bishops for behaving with undue deference towards secular rulers, as if bishops were their ‘‘lowly altar servers,’’ but in another chapter it called upon ‘‘the princes’’ to do their traditional duty of protecting the Church, churchmen, and Church goods, of thus safeguarding ‘‘the liberty of the Church.’’15 The latter chapter, with its generic language, did not inhibit Philip II from believing that the implementation of reform in Spain lay principally in his hands. All the bishops present at Trent believed in papal primacy. Otherwise they would not have answered (eventually) the summons to attend the Council. Yet surely one of the most ironical features of the Council is the absence of a decree on the authority of the papacy. The Council did not even reiterate, as it did for Purgatory, the statement on primacy published at the Council of Florence in the previous century. Yet this was one doctrine Protestants of every stripe, without exception, vociferously repudiated. The Fathers of the Council believed in the primacy, but they very much disagreed among themselves on what practical prerogatives it entailed and especially on the relationship between the papacy and the episcopacy and, most pointedly, on the relationship between the papacy and the Council itself. True, in one of the very last acts of the Council the bishops stated that

13

Ibid., ii, 735 and 736 (ch. 8 and canon 9). Ibid., ii, 741. 15 Ibid., ii, 794 (ch. 17) and 795–6 (ch. 20). 14

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nothing the Council enacted was to be interpreted as compromising the authority of the Apostolic See, but they did not specify further.16 They could not specify further without hopelessly tying up the Council, which had in fact happened for months over the obligation of bishops to reside in their diocese. Why over this issue? The most ardent reformers at the Council believed that getting bishops back to their diocese was the lynchpin of the Council’s reform. They feared that in the future papal dispensations from the obligation would undermine the reform, just as those dispensations were principally responsible for the present, deplorable situation of episcopal absenteeism. As the reformers tried to limit papal authority in this regard, the Council ground to a halt. Through the diplomatic skills of Cardinal Giovanni Morone, the impasse was broken, but fundamental questions about the papacy had to be left unaddressed. The second striking characteristic about the decrees de reformatione is that without second thought the Council accepted the canons as norm and basis for what it was about. It therefore accepted as its focus the institutional framework of papacy, episcopacy, and pastorate that the Gregorians and the subsequent development of canon law made so prominent in the minds of academics and churchmen. As we now know from recent scholarship, some of the liveliest manifestations of Christian life, practice, and even ministry took place outside that framework in the collegiate churches of the mendicant friars, in the friars’ Third Orders, and especially in the various forms of confraternities whose seeming ubiquity and overwhelming importance we were only vaguely aware of until the reality began to burst upon us some twenty years ago. Trent, moving in the canonical framework, took some account of problems with the friars that related to episcopal authority but practically ignored the Third Orders and confraternities, even though its general legislation de reformatione would in time have a significant impact on these bodies. Trent saw its task, then, as reforming first and foremost three offices in the Church: papacy, episcopacy, and pastorate. The Council not only skirted the problem of papal authority but was also consistently frustrated in its attempts to undertake the reform of the papal offices and curia, a desideratum that was as lively in Catholic circles as in Protestant. Except for a basically traditional chapter admonishing bishops to a simpler lifestyle and forbidding the enrichment of relatives with Church property that made mention of ‘‘the cardinals of the holy Roman Church,’’ it had to give up the project.17 Thus neither in its doctrinal nor disciplinary decrees did the Council address the institution that all Protestants rejected outright and that most Catholics,

16 17

Ibid., ii, 796 (ch. 21). Ibid., ii, 784–5.

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including the great secular leaders, thought most in need of reform. By being forced to say nothing, however, Trent, by virtue of the law of unintended consequences, furthered developments in the papacy along the lines that came into special prominence with the Gregorians. After the Council the popes set up apparatus to interpret and implement the Council, and they thus recovered prestige and increased the range of their authority. By the third period of the Council, 1562–63, the bishops, unable to reform the papacy, resolutely and courageously set about reforming themselves and, with that pattern established, did the same for the pastorates. Their goal was to enhance the authority of the bishop and to restore to the office its proper dignity, as was also their goal, mutatis mutandis, for the pastors of parishes. In the eyes of the reformers at Trent the first and most crucial issues in that regard were to force bishops and pastors to surrender incompatible benefices, for example being bishop of more than one diocese, and then to reside in their diocese or parish. Once these two goals were accomplished, the elements of a proper job description could be elaborated. Thus the reform decrees of Trent are concerned with the mores of bishops and pastors, with mores meaning not so much their morality as the public behavior in the performance of their offices, which is for the most part what canon law is all about. What the Council did in this regard is, however, less important for our purposes than how it did it. The reform was solidly based on traditional canons, sometimes now updated and further elaborated, but, most tellingly, reinforced by stringent penalties, many of them monetary. This means that much of the reform legislation of Trent reads almost like a penal code. ‘‘Surveillance and punishment,’’ as Michel Foucault’s famous title has it, can seem like the leitmotif of the Council. This is social disciplining, loud and clear. In trying to replace deeply imbedded attitudes and practices with others deemed more pastorally apposite, the Council could hardly have proceeded otherwise. No realistic person thought exhortations would do the job. Moreover, the chief target for the bishops’ aim was themselves. In any case, by basing themselves on the canonical tradition the bishops and theologians gave a further boost to the canon law industry that ever since the eleventh and twelfth centuries had had such increased impact on the ethos of the Western Church. Luther rejected canon law and the traditional structures whereas Trent directly or indirectly reaffirmed them. They both did this in the name of reform. We must remember that Luther, for all the radical changes he later underwent, was educated as a friar and a scholastic, like many of the theologians of Trent, and one can never really rid oneself of one’s education. Calvin criticized Luther for neglecting ‘‘discipline,’’ that is, Church order, and he was correct. Yet in a peculiar way Luther was caught up in the same structural issues as was the Council.

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Erasmus came, however, out of the monastic tradition and out of the rhetorical and literary tradition of the studia humanitatis and thus had been formed in quite different cultures and values. Whereas both Luther and Trent fit in radically different ways into the tradition of issues raised by the Gregorian Reform, Erasmus was only peripherally concerned with those issues. In the conservative ethos of the humanistic paideia, for instance, he accepted the structures of the Church as a given. He advocated neither their abolition nor a stringent discipline for their reform. As he showed in his remarkable treatise De matrimonio christiano, he had a more than competent grasp of certain aspects of canon law.18 In that treatise he implicitly criticized the canons for the complexity into which they had devolved, and he exposed the nitpicking of commentators on them. Yet he saw the canons neither as shackles imposed by papal tyranny nor as sure remedies for abuses. Luther and Trent focused principally on Church issues and Church institutions almost independently of the larger culture and society in which the Church lived and moved. Erasmus, true to the impulse of the humanistic tradition, focused beyond Scripture to include pagan literature as helpful to the Christian life, and he advocated humanistic schooling as perhaps the most effective instrument for the ultimate bettering of the Church. His was one of the great, though somewhat belated, voices that helped create the humanistic primary and secondary schools that exercised such profound influence on western society from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The aim of the schools was to instill in the students pietas – pietas as understood in its classical meaning of an upright life but imbued now as well with Christian virtues and ideals. The classroom texts for accomplishing this goal were largely works of pagan literature. Both Luther and Trent approached reform in confrontational styles – Luther with the cry of the prophet that cannot accept compromise and must go to extremes, the canonists at Trent with threats and penalties. Erasmus’ approach to the betterment of society was through rhetoric, the art of persuasion, the art of winning consensus. Whereas for Luther conflict was a sign the Word was being properly proclaimed, for Erasmus peace was its surest indicator. ‘‘The sum and substance of our religion is peace and concord.’’19 If rhetoric was the crowning subject in the humanistic paideia, poetry was the foundational one. Both the prophet (like Luther) and the dialectician (like Trent) prize clarity and despise ambiguity, but the poet glories in the fuzziness

18 Erasmus, ‘‘The Institution of Christian Matrimony,’’ in The Collected Works of Erasmus: Spiritualia and Pastoralia, vol. 69, ed. John W. O’Malley and Louis A. Perraud (Toronto, 1999), 256–74. 19 Letter to Jean de Caronelet, #1334, January 5, 1523, in Collected Works: The Correspondence of Erasmus, vol. 9, trans. R. A. B. Mynors (Toronto, 1989), 252.

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of metaphor and the ambiguity of ‘‘My love is like a red, red rose.’’ Only through metaphor and image can the mystery of life – and the mystery of God – be caught. To deepen our appreciation for those mysteries we engage in colloquy, in dialogue, so that each speaker can quicken our minds and hearts in a quest that includes Socrates and Cicero as well as Christian believers. The Church itself is best understood through images, especially through the image of the Body of Christ, in which each member has an important role to play. Erasmus speaks in a style different from Trent and different from Luther. We should not try to define everything, Erasmus warns, for they are not all susceptible to it, and, besides, few are the truths really important in life. We should not try to prescribe remedies for all situations, for the complexity of human situations will not be contained in such bounds.20 He in that regard stands midway between Luther’s ‘‘Christian liberty,’’ which would throw off all the constraints of canon law, and Trent, whose hundreds of disciplinary canons enjoined and through punitive measures tried to enforce particular behaviors. If rhetoric was the crowning discipline, what was its function? It was, obviously, to teach eloquence, communication skills – more precisely, to teach the art of persuasion. Its function was to win internal consent on some subject of public interest. In the tradition of Cicero and Quintilian it had a strong ethical dimension. ‘‘We are not born for ourselves alone,’’ Cicero insisted, and in so doing gave forceful expression to that fundamental orientation of the humanistic tradition towards learning for the sake of public service.21 This was an orientation towards the vita activa that the Renaissance humanists contrasted with the vita contemplativa of university folk, lost in their books and notions. Persons engaged in ‘‘the active life’’ of the commonwealth do not have to make decisions so much about abstract principles as about contingencies – to go to war or not to go to war, whether it is better to do this or that under these circumstances, here and now? The leaders of society, whose duty is to urge the course of action that is probably the best, must have the ability and the virtue to listen to all the arguments pro and con, and then to weigh them against one another, so as finally to come to a decision that seems the more prudent. In moving into the world of rhetoric and poetry, we have left the world of prophet and the world of the academic/dialectician/canonist, both of which produce neat solutions. In Erasmus’ world the style of discourse, that 20

See, for example, letter to Paul Volz, #858, August 14, 1518, in Collected Works: Correspondence, vol. 6, trans. R. A. B. Mynors and D. F. S. Thomson (Toronto, 1982), 74–5, 77. 21 Cicero, De officiis I.7.22.

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symptom and conveyer of profoundest values, is utterly different. Instead of the assertions of Luther and the canons of Trent, Erasmus speaks most characteristically through his Colloquies, that is, through dialogues in which different viewpoints emerge as a result of conversation. Although it is generally clear which viewpoint Erasmus favors and thinks most sound, all speakers are allowed to present their best case. This is done, usually, in a calm atmosphere of mutual respect and will, presumably, lead to a resolution that is more just than its alternatives and thus more productive of peace, the precondition of all other goods. The radical solution to the problems of Church and society, the solution that will produce the pax et unanimatos Christ promised, is to be accomplished first and foremost by inspiring and instilling in every Christian a heartfelt love for ‘‘the philosophy of Christ,’’ the core of what Erasmus meant by pietas. That ‘‘philosophy’’ – really that ‘‘theology’’ – professed the great central verities of Christianity like the Trinity and the Incarnation but then moved most comfortably to another realm of Christian verity that concerns relationships among human beings. Erasmus eloquently detailed that latter aspect of the ‘‘philosophy’’ throughout his writings but perhaps nowhere more effectively than in the ‘‘Paraclesis,’’ his preface to his critical edition of the New Testament: ‘‘To me they are truly theologians who teach not by skill with intricate syllogisms but by a disposition of mind.’’ That disposition leads, among other things, to disdaining riches, trusting not in worldly goods and success but in God, and then to not avenging wrongs, to wishing good for all men and women, to knowing that the brokenhearted are close to God, to cherishing all Christians as members of the same Body.22 Luther radically simplified the Bible into Law and Gospel, in which the latter was essentially an idea, the idea of justification by faith, formulated as an apodictic proclamation. For the scholastics the Bible remained the database from which to construct a harmonious intellectual design. For Erasmus it was essentially a vehicle by which Christ is rendered present, ‘‘so fully present,’’ as he says, ‘‘that you would see less if you gazed upon him with your very eyes.’’ In Scripture we discover, indeed, ‘‘the living and breathing likeness of him,’’ so that Revelation becomes the communication and selfpresentation of a person.23 The result of the interaction between Christians and this ‘‘living and breathing’’ reality was transformation. After that interaction Christians are different from before, with different ‘‘disposition of mind’’ and different behavior patterns. They have appropriated in the depths of their being ‘‘the philosophy of Christ.’’ They are moved to act for the benefit of others. A 22 See Erasmus, ‘‘Paraclesis,’’ in Christian Humanism and the Reformation, ed. John C. Olin (New York, 1965), 98. 23 Ibid., 105–6.

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great energy source for such action in the city of this world is the transformation deriving from the encounter with Christ in the Scriptures. This means that Erasmus, too, had his creed. It would go something like this: Credimus ut transformemur et moveamur ad actionem – we believe with the result that we are transformed and moved to act. As with Credo quia absurdum and Credo ut intellegam, I use ‘‘creed’’ not to indicate a statement confessing certain articles of the Christian faith, as in a Calvinist’s creed or a Catholic’s, but to indicate how believing functions differently in each case. Here the shift to first person plural indicates the essentially social dimension implied in much of the humanistic tradition, and the ut designates result rather than purpose as in Credo ut intelligam. Faith seeking and not seeking understanding – that is one of the devices I have used to explore three approaches to reform in the sixteenth century. Like all such devices, its limitations are many, but none perhaps more obvious than that my three creeds find a certain verification in all three of the approaches. For Luther it was indeed faith that gave understanding, an understanding in darkness, it is true, and an understanding that ‘‘reason’’ (Aristotle) could not give or justify, but it was nonetheless an understanding. That enlightenment in darkness, though it did not come from good works, moved the justified person to perform such works. The Fathers at Trent were perfectly aware that they were dealing with mysteries and that at a certain point understanding had to throw up its hands in surrender, and, though they in their disciplinary canons prescribed external behavior, they surely hoped their injunctions would help conversion of heart in the recalcitrant. Erasmus prized clear thinking and precise theological formulations, and he moralized about the need sometimes for strict discipline. The creeds cannot be taken, therefore, in an absolute sense. They indicate three types. These types can be utilized, I believe, to help us understand a little better the three approaches to reform that Luther, Trent, and Erasmus embodied. We have here, consequently, three notably different ecclesiologies. The most ‘‘modern’’ for Roman Catholics, I suppose, is Trent, but what we must be especially aware of in the dynamics of the Council is the radically episcopal, implicitly unpapal, character of that ecclesiology of law and order. We also have here three radically different styles of discourse, if we take them in their pure forms: the prophetic style of Luther (at least when dealing with his Catholic enemies), the academic style of the scholastics, and the discursive/rhetorical and dialogical style of Erasmus. If we take style not as ornamentation but as ‘‘the final elaboration of meaning,’’24 we are not dealing here with superficial differences. We have three quite different

24

Donald Bryant, as quoted in Neil R. Leroux, Luther’s Rhetoric: Strategies and Style from the Invocavit Sermons (Saint Louis, 2002), 19.

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appreciations of the Bible – as battle-cry and proclamation of the one truth necessary, a truth that utterly transcends all human reasoning (credo quia absurdum), as database for an intellectually satisfying understanding (credo ut intelligam), and as a book of spiritual truths that inspires the heart, makes Christ present, and enables us to put on a new person (credimus ut transformemur). Our conference was convoked on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the opening of Vatican Council II and our deliberations were meant to provide background for better understanding the Council. In that regard I have long maintained that Vatican II is essentially an Erasmian council.25 I continue to be struck by how remarkably its concerns, its style of discourse, and to a great extent even its content, coordinate with the Prince of the Humanists. I am not the only person to have made this correlation.26 The understanding of Revelation as God’s self-communication in the decree Dei verbum bears remarkable similarities to what Erasmus says in his ‘‘Paraclesis.’’ The decrees of the Council on ecumenism and on non-Christian religions are closer to Erasmus than to either Luther or Trent. There are other specific similarities, but the most impressive similarity is a much more general one: the style of the discourse the Council adopted. That style echoes the style of Erasmus, who himself in large measure tried to echo the style of the Fathers of the Church. That style was new in formal ecclesiastical documents, an implicit rejection of the art of winning an argument by replacing it with the art of winning assent. The Council was thus a major Language-Event. If style is ‘‘the final elaboration of meaning,’’ the style of the Council was perhaps the most radical move the Council made. The style modeled and promoted a new style of Church – a Church that was dialogical in its procedures and in its attitudes to realities outside itself.27 It was no longer the style of a hostilely aggressive debater or even of a stern and distrustful parent but the style of a friend. Vatican II is of course an immensely complex phenomenon, but one aspect of it has struck me ever more in recent years, an aspect pervasive but expressed most vividly in Gaudium et Spes. That is, the insistence that Catholicism is friendly to all cultures, can enrich them, and can be enriched by them. This sounds bland and platitudinous today, but it was a dramatic shift from the isolated, anti-modernity stance that reigned supreme in 25

See my ‘‘Erasmus and Vatican II: Interpreting the Council,’’ in A Melloni et al., Cristianesimo nella storia: Saggi in onore di Giuseppe Alberigo (Bologna, 1996), 195– 211, as well as my ‘‘The Style of Vatican II,’’ America 188, 6 (February 24, 2003), 12– 15. 26 For example, J. Coppens, J.-P. Massaut, and L.-E. Halkin. For full references, see my ‘‘Erasmus and Vatican II,’’ 199, n. 5. 27 See my ‘‘The Style of Vatican II,’’ and ‘‘Vatican II: Official Norm,’’ America 188, 11 (March 31, 2003), 11–14.

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Catholicism from the early nineteenth century into the mid-twentieth in the wake of the French Revolution, the Risorgimento, and the Liberal offensives against Christianity. My three types do not directly deal with this issue. They certainly could not be anti-modernity before the idea of modernity emerged. Catholics and Protestants accepted the culture of their times. But among my types Luther, the prophet, implicitly takes the most cautious stand in that regard. Thomistic scholasticism as such tends to be culture-friendly, but in the reforms of Trent the Church seems to stand in solitary splendor (or solitary disarray), apart from ‘‘the world.’’ In Erasmus the issue is a non-issue. What other could we expect from somebody who wrote, I suspect with a wry smile, ‘‘St. Socrates, pray for us.’’28

28

Erasmus, ‘‘The Godly Feast,’’ in Collected Works: Colloquies, vol. 39, trans. Craig R. Thompson (Toronto, 1997), 194.

PART III Clerical Reform

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Chapter 6

Clerical Hierarchy and Imperial Legislation in Late Antiquity: The Reformed Reformers Rita Lizzi Testa

It may seem paradoxical to treat the ascendancy of the bishop in Late Antiquity as an effect of institutional change. In fact, Constantine probably would not have written a letter to Carthage’s Christian community in the first place unless the latter had had a bishop. Nevertheless, in order to find out exactly when bishops received formal, civic recognition, we must determine when the Church was first recognised as a legal institution. The exercise of episcopal power has been a historical variable, but its foundation was already implied by the juridical status that clerics had at the time when Christianity was considered a religio licita. The recognition of the Church as a legal institution was, therefore, a crucial phase in its growth and reformation. My research concentrates on two episodes concerning the institutional and economic development of the Church in Late Antiquity: the first was exactly at the beginning of the fourth century, the second, in the latter half of the same century. They are both important for the institutional and economic establishment of the clerical hierarchy, even though they offer different approaches to a main topic of this volume, that is, to what extent the hierarchy was the focus and/or the source of reform. As stated above, the first episode coincides with the definition of the public identity of Christian priests. In 313, Constantine decided to exempt bishops and other clerics in the north African Church governed by Caecilian from the munera civilia.1 We understand that this was the meaning of the Eusebian 1

Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica [hereafter HE ], 10, 7, 2. A terminus ante quem is established by the mention of this rescriptum to Anullinus (proconsul Africae in AD 313: A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, J. Morris, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (A.D. 260–395) (Cambridge, 1971), [hereafter PLRE ] I, s.v. Anullinus 2, 78–9), in a Relatio (Aug., Ep. 88) dated 15 April 313. The Syro-Roman lawbook (Leges Saeculares 117, ed. Riccobono et al., Fontes Iuris Romani Anteiustiniani, 3 vols. (Firenze, 1941–43), 2, 794) credits Constantine with complete immunity for clerics: they would be freed from payment of all taxes in money, and even from the potestas of

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expression avpo. pa,ntwn leitourgiwˆ n by comparing other constitutions which Constantine promulgated at about the same time. They refer to omnia munera or nominationes, and to susceptiones.2 At that time these were munera civilia or publica, which concerned those compulsory activities required from individuals to the advantage of the cities or the State, such as the collection of taxes, the carrying and distribution of supplies to soldiers, maintenance of public buildings, and other similar jobs. Since, for the most part, these activities were the responsibility of the curials, they were also called munera curialia.3 A few months before sending his rescriptum to Anullinus, the African proconsul, Constantine had ordered him to assist the bishop of Carthage in distributing money he had given in order to support the Catholic clergy.4 While it is true that the legal status of Christian churches was implicitly recognised by the Empire when goods and properties expropriated during the last persecution were given back to Christians,5 these imperial deeds clearly defined the public dimension of ecclesiastical ministers. Released from munera civilia, clerics were assimilated, as far as fiscal responsibilities were concerned, to the ranks of those prominent municipal residents who obtained an identical exemption because they held a militia palatina. Those who officiated at Christian worship now also acquired the right to receive a salarium. Clerical status was thus moulded by fiscal privileges and a stipend of sorts.6 Since these privileges attributed to clerics a status equivalent to that of the their fathers. But already Constantius II was uncertain about which exemptions exactly his father had given. In Codex Theodosianus, ed. Th. Mommsen (Berlin, 1954) [hereafter CTh], 16, 2, 8, the phrasing ‘‘Iuxta sanctionem, quam dudum meruisse perhibemini’’ suggests that the sanctio which the clerics had invoked was unknown to the Palatine legal staff. Although the author of the Syro-Roman lawbook had at his disposal more legislative material than we have, we should not necessarily believe what he says without close examination. 2 CTh 16, 2, 1 (31 oct. 313 [?]) and 16, 2, 2 (21 Oct. 319). They have to be interpreted as answers to the reactions which a general law about the clergy exemptions could have aroused in different regions. 3 Concerning this kind of munera, which, from the Severan period onward, had become a duty connected with the functioning itself of the State, see M. Nuyens, ‘‘La the´orie des munera et l’obligation professionelle au Bas-Empire’’, Revue Internationale des Droits de l’Antiquite´ 5 (1958), 519–53 and Le statut obligatoire des de´curions dans le droit constantinien (Louvain, 1964); more recently, Ch. Bruschi, ‘‘Les munera publica. L’e´tat et la cite´ au debut du Bas-Empire,’’ in Sodalitas. Scritti A. Guarino 3 (Napoli, 1984), 1311–31; L. De Salvo, ‘‘I munera curialia nel IV secolo. Considerazioni su alcuni aspetti sociali,’’ in Atti dell’Accademia Romanistica Costantiniana [hereafter AARC] X (Perugia, 1995), 291–318. 4 Eus., HE 10, 6, 1. 5 Eus., HE 10, 5, 15–17. 6 Details in R. Lizzi Testa, ‘‘The Bishop, Vir Venerabilis: Fiscal Privileges and Status Definition in Late Antiquity,’’ in Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies (Oxford, 16–21 August 1999), Studia Patristica 34 (Leuven, 2001), 125–44.

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highest of the curiales, and gave their social profile public visibility, they obviously played an essential role in establishing the real power of the bishop within towns. From this time, bishops were able to act in civic life beside, and in competition with, major local authorities.7 Hence, it could appear as though the Emperor Constantine – a lay leader – promoted renewal in such a manner that the hierarchy appeared to constitute simply one area of his reforms. However, if we read Constantine’s letters granting these benefits, a different perspective emerges. According to the emperor, worship which conforms to the law governing Christian cult, now regarded as holier than all the others, procured immense fortune and benefits for the State. The privilege was granted in order that those who presided at that divine cult would not be distracted by worldly problems.8 These were the same reasons cited by Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage in the middle of the third century, in explaining why those ordained in the Church had to be supported by the faithful, just as the Levites had once received tithes of the land belonging to other tribes.9 Cyprian also spoke of the contributions offered by the community as a salarium for deacons, presbyters, and lectors. That was a system already sufficiently well organised by the year 250, so much so that it continued even during the harshest persecutions.10 We know then that clerics’ payments comprised money and provisions. The first of the two components (divisiones mensurnae) was perhaps a regular monthly contribution, while the second (sportulae) was given occasionally, since it depended on the offerings of the faithful.11 In order to pay the former, the bishop could dip into his personal patrimony as well as into the community funds which he managed.12

7

W. Liebeschuetz, ‘‘The Rise of the Bishop in the Christian Roman Empire and the Successor Kingdoms,’’ in Electrum 1 (Krako´w, 1997), 113–25. 8 Eus., HE 10, 7, 2. 9 Cypr., Ep. 1, 1, 2 with commentary by G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage (New York, 1984), II, 193 ff.: ‘‘Quae nunc ratio et forma in clero tenetur, ut qui in ecclesia Domini in ordinationem clericam promoventur in nullo ab administratione divina avocentur, ne molestiis et negotiis saecularibus adligentur, sed in honore sportulantium fratrum tamquam decimas ex fructibus accipientes ab altari et sacrificiis non recedant et die ac nocte caelestibus rebus et spiritalibus serviant.’’ 10 Cypr., Ep. 34, 4, 2; 39, 5, 2; 13, 7; 41, 2, 1. 11 The two terms occur in Cypr., Ep. 1, 2, where sportulae are offerings in kind from the faithful, and divisiones mensurnae seem to be a monthly cash payment to the clergy. See also Cypr., Ep. 39, 5, 2 (‘‘honorem presbyterii ut et sportulis idem cum presbyteris honorentur et divisiones mensurnas aequatis quantitatibus partiantur’’). Cypr., Ep. 34, 4, 2 orders the monthly payment to be withheld from two subdeacons and an acolyte (‘‘se a divisione mensurna contineant’’), suspected of laxity. 12 Cypr., Ep. 13, 7. Concerning the clerical salaries during the third and fourth centuries, see M. Re´veillaud, ‘‘Pastorat et salariat au cours des premiers sie`cles de l’Eglise,’’ Etudes de Theologie et Religion 41 (1966), 27–41; S. L. Greenslade,

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Such a salarium was given to various members according to their rank.13 In this sense, besides a purely material meaning, the stipend had a high symbolic value, since it distinguished the ministers from the congregation and, within the clerical group, the various ranks of the hierarchy. The salarium was a matter of honos, which helped to define dignitas.14 In fact, the bishop ceased payment to those clerics who had deviated from the true faith, using it as a discriminatory factor against them.15 Some Christian communities, such as that of Cyprian, had grown during the third century by adopting the contemporary mechanisms of the imperial administration, such as the payment of imperial officials, which had just been founded on the dual basis of salaria militiae and sportulae.16 The stipend given to clerics contributed to establishing a hierarchy that was regulated by age and distinguished by different salaries, as in the public cursus.17 Since it was the bishop who decided the amount paid to the different offices, clerics were totally dependent on his favour and were subservient to him.18 By Shepherding the Flock (London, 1967), 44 ff.; Clarke, ‘‘The Epistles of Cyprian,’’ in Auckland Classical Essays Presented to E. M. Blaiklock (Auckland, 1970), 208 ff. See also G. Sco¨llgen, ‘‘Sportulae. Zur Fru¨hgeschichte des Unterhaltsanspruchs der Kleriker,’’ Zeitschrift fu¨r Kirchengeschichte 101 (1990), 1–20. 13 In Cypr., Ep. 39, 5, 2 (after Ep. 37, dated to 251), Celerinus and Aurelius, two confessores still too young to be ordained presbyters, were made lectores, but with the obviously higher salary of presbyters. Different salary grades and amounts of gifts in kind are also indicated in Tert., De ieiuniis 17 (‘‘duplex apud te praesidentibus nos binis partibus deputatur’’) and in Didascalia Apostolorum 9 (syriac) / 26 (latin), which prescribes different levels for bishops and other clergy. 14 Note the double significance of sportulae – as not merely actual gifts, but also symbolic status indicators – implied by Cypr., Ep. 1, 1, 2, ‘‘in honore sportulantium tamquam decimas’’, where sportulans should be translated ‘‘he who offers sportulas.’’ 15 Cypr., Ep. 34: ‘‘se a divisione mensurna tantum contineant, non quasi a ministerio ecclesiastico privati esse videantur, sed ut integris omnibus ad nostram presentiam differantur’’; cf. Ep. 41, 2, 1: during the schism of Novatus, only those who had remained in the church of Cyprian could continue receiving a stipendium from the bishop. 16 S. Mazzarino, Aspetti sociali del IV secolo. Ricerche di storia tardoromana (Roma, 1951), 162 ff. concerning the public salary during the Diocletian age, ‘‘La democratizzazione della cultura nel ‘basso impero’,’’ in Rapports du XIe Congre`s Int. des Sciences Historiques (Stockholm, 1960), 35 ff. ¼ Antico, tardoantico ed e`ra costantiniana I (Bari, 1974), 74–98, in part. 96, and L’Impero romano, 2nd edn. (Bari, 1976), II, 464 ff. See also S. Calderone, Costantino e il cattolicesimo (Firenze, 1962), I, 143 ff. 17 Cypr., Ep. 39, 5. An ecclesiastical cursus honorum, regulated by age and by the number of years spent in a single office, came into operation only during the fourth century, as can be seen in the letter of Siricius to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona in 385 (PL 13, coll. 1142–3, chs. 9–10); see below, n. 52. 18 Clerics were forbidden to go away from the place where they had been ordained without special permission from the bishop: J. Gaudemet, L’E´glise dans l’Empire romain (IVe–Ve sie`cles), 2nd edn. (Paris, 1989), 107–13, 124. In the fifth century, offenders were still returned to the lay state, since the principle of the irreversibility of

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granting these benefits, Constantine validated an already established organisation, notably the one – like the one already at work in the community of Cyprian – that was the more understandable and acceptable from the point of view of a Roman emperor. While Constantine was responsible for setting these privileges in place, it was not he who decided which kind of benefits, in which form, and to whom they were to be given. The fact that the language in his letters to Caecilian and Anullinus conformed to Cyprian’s language confirms the influence of Christian bishops at the court of the emperor. We know that Ossius, the bishop of Cordova who lived close to the emperor from 306,19 drafted the list of clerics at Carthage among whom money from Constantine had to be divided.20 We can be sure that his role included more than simply compiling a list and distributing the amount of money as required by the scale indicating clerical honores and dignitates. Actually, Constantine granted tax exemptions and money only to a group of privileged ministers: to the members of the ecclesia catholica. Only those who belonged to the kazocikh, vekklhsi,a, only the ministers of kazolikh zrhskeiˆ a could claim these privileges. The religious situation in Africa demanded this kind of clarification. Faced with the conflicts between the Caecilianists and the party of Maiorinus,21 both of which groups demanded privileges from the emperor, the proconsul Anullinus must have asked Constantine for clarification. In his response – officially a rescriptum22 – the emperor explained that he bestowed benefits only upon Caecilian’s community, because only its members could be considered ‘‘catholic.’’ This term (kazocikh, vekklhsi,a) is present in the Constantinian letter that orders the restitution of properties to the Church, in

ordination had not yet been elaborated: E. Wipszycka, ‘‘Il vescovo e il suo clero. A proposito di CPRV 11,’’ Journal of Juristic Papyrology [hereafter JJP] 22 (1992), 67– 81 ¼ E´tudes sur le christianisme dans l’E´gypte de l’Antiquite´ tardive (Roma, 1996), 177– 94. 19 T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass.–London, 1981), 43. 20 Eus., HE 10, 6, 1–5. 21 On the first conflict between Caecilianus and Maiorinus (AD 311–12), which developed into the Donatist crisis, when Donatus led Maiorinus’ followers, see S. Gherro, ‘‘Stato e Chiesa di fronte alla controversia donatista nei primi anni dell’eta` costantiniana,’’ Studia et documenta historiae et iuris 36 (1970), 359–409; W. H. C. Frend, ‘‘Donatismo,’’ Dizionario Patristico di Antichita` Cristiane I (Roma, 1983), 1014–25; and J. L. Maier, Le dossier du donatisme (Texte und unters. zur Gesch. del Altertum. Lit. 134) I, (Berlin, 1987), 128 ff., along with the considerations of N. Duval, ‘‘Une nouvelle e´dition du Dossier du Donatisme avec traduct. francaise,’’ Revue des E´tudes August. 35 (1989), 171–9. 22 Irrespective of any enactments by Constantine or Maxentius after 306, until 311 general laws could only be issued by Galerius, the senior Augustus. The Edict of Serdica of 311 was therefore the first general provision (valid throughout the Empire) for the recovery by Christians of confiscated buildings or property. Constantine’s letter ordering restitution of properties in Africa was a purely local rescript.

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that which concedes exemption from munera, as well as in the letter to Caecilian concerning the offer of 3000 folles whereas in both the Edict of Galerius of 311 and the rescript of Licinius of 313, we find only the generic term ‘‘Christians’’ without further specification.23 We must conclude that the recurrence in those three letters of the expression katholike ekklesia, ecclesia catholica, had been suggested at a time when Constantine was beginning to make laws for the western part of the Empire. The expression reflects the long process through which Christian communities developed the ideas of communicatio and excommunicatio, so that the quality of a Christian group was determined by its relationships with other communities, especially with the Roman Church.24 The adoption of this specific term in official documents is well explained by the presence at the court of the emperor of ‘‘ministers of God’’ whom, as Eusebius remembers, ‘‘[the emperor] had as his table-companions’’ and whom ‘‘he took with him wherever he set out on campaign,’’25 as well as by his friendship with Ossius (from the Trier period) and Miltiades in Rome. Although it was Constantine who granted these privileges, it was the bishops around him who gave content to his reform. In this most important phase of ecclesial renewal – concurrent with the establishment of the Church as a legal institution – bishops were the subjects of reforms at the same time that they were the reformers. Moreover, these initial, imperial concessions triggered a process of permanent reform whereby the extension of privileges throughout the entire Empire and the dynamic among emperor, ecclesiastical officials, imperial officials, and municipal curiales became the primary factors in a constant process of aggiornamento, a process which also involved the important sphere of clerical recruitment. In giving his privileges only to the Caecilian community (that is to the group judged Catholic because it was in communion with Miltiades of Rome, and so part of the universal Church), Constantine adhered to the example of Cyprian, who ceased payment of salary to those clerics who had deviated from the true faith.26 But Constantine was not Cyprian: the decisions of an emperor had even broader and more unexpected consequences. From then on, tax exemptions and salary became an official discriminatory tactic in the face of doctrinal dissent throughout the Empire. In Roman Africa, this Constantinian bias had a particular meaning: the simple contrast between Caecilianists and Maiorinists turned into a secular fight, the Donatist crisis.

23

For the Edict of Galerius, see Lact., De mort. pers. 35, 1; Eus., HE 8, 17, 1–2; the so-called Edict of Milan is found in Lact., De mort. pers. 48, 1–13; Eus., HE 10, 5, 1– 14. 24 F. P. Rizzo, La Chiesa dei primi tre secoli. Lineamenti storici (Bari, 1999), 118. 25 Eus., Vita Constantini, ed. A. Cameron and S. G. Hall (Oxford, 1999), 1, 42, 1. 26 See above, n. 14.

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But Constantine’s three measures were not only taken with regard to that local Church.27 They reflected provisions of general laws which were valid throughout the western Empire, perhaps in the same form and with the same intention of marginalising schismatic and heretical fringes. This fact is also demonstrated by some constitutions found in the Theodosian Code, which must be interpreted as answers to the reactions that only a general law concerning clergy exemptions could have aroused in different regions.28 After the defeat of Licinius, Constantine’s immunity policy, which was already in force in the West immediately after the incident at the Milvian Bridge, was extended to the East as well. We do not know whether the legislative text, which ordered the generalisation of exemptions for the clergy of the Catholic Church, coincided with the constitution sent to Dracilianus in 326. However, in this constitution the principle of discrimination among heretics, schismatics, and the ministers of the true Christian cult was reconfirmed. The first were categorically excluded from privileges, which instead were guaranteed to those who were defined as observatores catholicae legis.29 These first Constantinian decrees marked the next relationships between Church and Empire. The same act of declaring the Christian faith legal coincided with the selection of a part. Only its ministers were legally entitled to be called in that way (¼ ministers of God), since they alone could benefit from the Constantinian privileges – the same fiscal immunity from munera civilia and salarium – which defined their status. The effects were enormous, as the number of imperial constitutions enacted on these subjects during the fourth century shows. The fluctuating course of the ensuing legislation also reflects the kind of influence that Christians, whose numbers steadily increased within the imperial courts, were able to exercise on the emperors. One example suffices to demonstrate this point. A few years after Nicaea, many of the bishops who had defended and approved its formula were deposed. Whereas Eusebius of Nicomedia was restored, and the synod of Antioch in 328 ratified the reversal of Nicaea, important episcopal sees (Antioch, Ancyra) fell to Arian bishops. The failure of the conciliation which Constantine had tried to obtain was complete in 329, when he tried in vain to force Athanasius to enter into communion with 27 Sources and demonstration in R. Lizzi Testa, ‘‘Privilegi economici e definizione di status: il caso del vescovo tardoantico,’’ Rendiconti Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, s. 9, 11 (2000), 55–103, particularly 65–6, nn. 32–4. 28 CTh 16, 2, 1 (31 Oct. 313 [?]) and 16, 2, 2 (21 Oct. 319), Octaviano correctori Lucaniae et Brittiorum. 29 CTh 16, 5, 1 (1 Sept. 326) to Dracilianus who, according to Otto Seeck, Regesten der Kaiser und Pa¨pste fu¨r Jahre 311 bis 476 n. Chr: Vorabeit zu einer Prosopographie der Christlichen Kaiserzeit (Frankfurt, an. repr. 1964), 68, 176 was agens vicem praefectorum praetorio in the East. Cf. PLRE I, s.v. Dracilianus, 271.

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the Philoarian bishops.30 Putting aside the doctrinal and religious consequences of this recent imperial orientation, the new trend provoked many doubts and a high degree of confusion. After 328, in the various cities where Nicean bishops had been exiled and new priests were elected, groups of clerics previously excluded could legally claim the same exemptions as the Catholic bishops. Furthermore, following the extension of immunity in the East after 325, the increase in the number of those clerics claiming exemptions extended the problem of fiscal privileges from the Church to the civic community as well. The problem of privileges was no longer just a matter of ecclesiastical quarrels, since many petitions for exemptions originated from within the town councils, who also complained about the reduction of curial staff liable for taxes. The legislation, then, resulted in a completely different trend from that in 313 and, for the first time, a constitution established rules determining the way in which the clergy were to be enrolled in the Church.31 Constantine ordered that it would no longer be possible to grant dispensation from the compulsory public services (vacatio a muneribus publicis) to whomever asked for it on the pretext of being a cleric (sub specie clericorum), nor should great numbers be added to the clergy rashly and without limit, but rather, when a cleric died, another should be selected to replace the deceased, one who was unrelated to a decurion family, and who had not the wealth of resources whereby he could easily have supported the compulsory public services. Individuals enrolled in the Church contrary to similar provisions should be removed from the clergy and returned to the municipality.32

30 Concerning doctrinal quarrels after Nicaea, see M. Simonetti, La crisi ariana nel IV secolo (Roma, 1975), 110 ff.: Athanasius, consecrated bishop of Alexandria in 328, refused to enter into communion with Arius, as Constantine asked, and his energetic measures to suppress Meletians and Arians provoked an immediate reaction from Philoarian bishops who had received seats outside of Egypt. Accused of corruption, treason, and in the end even the assassination of the Melitian bishop Arsenio, refusing, moreover, to go to Cesarea in 334, Athanasius was condemned the following year at Tyre. Constantine exiled Athanasius to Trier on 7 November, 335. Cf. Kl. M. Girardet, ‘‘Kaiser Kostantin der Grosse als Vorsitzender von Konzilien. Die historische Tatsachen und ihre Deutung,’’ in Costantino il Grande dall’Antichita` all’Umanesimo. Colloqui sul cristianesimo nel mondo antico (Macerata, 18–20 dicembre 1990), ed. G. Bonamente and F. Fusco (Macerata, 1992), I, 445 ff. 31 CTh 16, 2, 6 is dated 1 June 326, but Otto Seeck has suggested redating it to 329. This date is certainly more correct in relation to my argument so far: Seeck, Regesten, 64, 179 and C. Dupont, ‘‘Les privile`ges des clercs sous Constantin,’’ Revue des histoire eccle´siastique 62 (1967), 729–52, at 736. There is a clear connection between CTh 16, 2, 6 and CTh 16, 2, 3 to the praetorian prefect Iunius Bassus. The latter is dated 18 July 320, but it has to be moved to 329, after CTh 16, 2, 6 which is, in fact, the constitution mentioned in CTh 16, 2, 3. 32 The constitution has to be understood beyond what it seems at first glance. The initial phrase did not annul the fiscal exemptions for clerics, as many have believed,

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This constitution (CTh 16, 2, 6) from 329 represents the second crucial moment in Constantine’s attitude towards the Church. Privileges accorded to the clergy remained intact, but limitations were put on the way ecclesiastical personnel was recruited. Above all, the simple status of being a minister of the true Catholic cult was no longer regarded as sufficient reason to receive those special honours which, until then, had been granted. Greater justification was now required for the granting of fiscal privileges, in order to reassure citizens about the public function of the ministers of the Christian cult. They were not different from the classic civic model, for which a generous attitude was requested from those who held the power. However, as applied to the clergy, this justification articulated the meaning of its function and the areas of its activity. It was no longer sufficient that bishops and clerics prayed to God in the manner most appropriate for the good of the Empire; they had to be munificent towards the poor. Opulentos enim saeculi subire necessitates oportet, pauperes ecclesiarum divitiis sustentari. ‘‘The wealthy must assume secular obligations, and the poor must be supported by the wealth of the churches.’’ The charitable action of the Church acquired the value of a public function.33 In addition, the constitution gave indications that, when implemented, the social image and role of bishops and clerics ought to be be modified. The law, in fact, defined their economic physiognomy. With the term opulenti the constitution indicated those clerics who, having enough wealth, had to be returned to the curia. In the same way, the term pauperes did not refer to the poor in general, but only to those who, lacking that wealth, could be ordained in the Church. The cleric, therefore, had to be ‘‘poor’’ and concerned with the care of the poor. Only in this condition could he claim the privileges which sanctioned his status. It is not a matter of an occasional indication, but of a leitmotif which, from that time until about 350, ran obsessively through almost all the constitutions relating to ecclesiastical immunities. It substituted, after 325, the Cyprianic and Constantinian theme of the minister

but simply advised the prefect of the East, Ablabius, to pay attention to their concessions, since with that constitution the rights of the Church in ordering its ministers were limited. It is clear that this was its meaning, in view of the constitution sent the following year to the consularis Numidiae, where full immunity from curial taxes was given to all clerics, including those of lower rank: CTh 16, 2, 7 (5 February 330). 33 See G. Crifo`, ‘‘Romanizzazione e cristianizzazione. Certezze e dubbi in tema di rapporto tra cristiani e istituzioni,’’ in I cristiani e l’impero nel IV secolo. Colloquio sul cristianesimo nel mondo antico (Macerata 17–18 dic. 1987), ed. G. Bonamente (Macerata, 1988), 94 ff. and, recently, P. Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hannover and London, 2002), 29 ff.

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who had to be defended and supported by the community, because his worship of God was perfect and brought benefit to the State.34 This change in the imperial attitude is significant for our conference because the new justifications offered by the rhetoric of poverty were a product of the strong pietism inspired by Arian Christology. They were found when, in the East, Eusebius of Nicomedia assumed the role of Ossius, Constantine’s former Spanish adviser. By adopting Eusebius’ suggestions, it was possible to create a new form of discrimination where the Constantinian definition as ‘‘members of the Catholic Church’’ no longer seemed sufficient to deal with all the problems caused by the recruiting of curials in the Church. On this new basis, exemptions from munera curialia were once again given to clerics. One of the first constitutions that, after Constantine’s death, specified the conditions for the granting of fiscal privileges was no different from the earlier one. Clerics and bishops (antistites) could keep their religious identity only if their patrimony was insufficient to return them to the curia.35 The new criteria for the concession of clerical privileges were maintained until the fifth century.36 The case just analysed may prove that, in the area of the social and institutional definition of the clerical hierarchy, reforms derived from the dialectical relationship between lay leaders who enacted laws and decrees and spiritual leaders who acted as technical advisers to them. Such a connection (or even such a model) gains clarity thanks to the evidence of sources from Late Antiquity whenever we manage to reconstruct the events with comparative certainty, as in the case of Constantine and Ossius at the beginning of the former’s reign or, later, with respect to the influence of

34

It is possible to find an echo of the Cyprianic theme in CTh 16, 2, 16 (14 Feb. 361), where, in confirming fiscal privileges for clerics in Antioch, Constantius II declared himself aware that his empire ‘‘was sustained more by religion than by official duties and physical toil and sweat.’’ Nevertheless, in 383 Theodosius I used the same motivations for the opposite end, in order to limit ordinations of wealthy citizens. Cf. CTh 12, 1, 104 (7 Nov. 383): ‘‘quippe animos divina observatione devinctos non decet patrimoniorum desideriis occupari.’’ 35 Immunity, in these same conditions, was for the first time extended to children who had followed their fathers into the Church: CTh 16, 2, 11. For the date of the issue, 26 February 342 rather than (as in the Manuscripts) 354, see Seeck, Regesten, 45 and P. Cuneo, La legislazione di Costantino II, Costanzo II e Costante. Materiali per una palingenesi delle costituzioni tardoimperiali, s. II, 2 (Milano, 1997), 92. The opening sentence (‘‘Iam pridem sanximus’’) of this law refers to a previous constitution, which should have renewed (before 342) exemptions from munera civilia for clerics with no property. That is not preserved in the Code. 36 On the problem of recruiting curials and clerics during the transition from the fourth to the fifth century, see R. Lizzi Testa, ‘‘Come e dove reclutare i chierici? I problemi del vescovo Agostino,’’ in L’adorabile vescovo di Ippona. Convegno Internazionale (Paola, 24–25 maggio 2000), ed. F. E. Consolino (Soveria Mannelli, 2001), 183–216.

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Eusebius of Nicomedia. In other cases, the advisory role of bishops to emperors appears as an almost self-evident assumption, and it is to be presupposed even when the precise personalities or pressure groups behind lay leaders are not easy to recognise. Nevertheless, a few ancient texts – even some well known for their information on the concrete functioning of the Church in Late Antiquity – have been misinterpreted, precisely because due attention has not been given to the source of reform. As an exemplary case, I would like to consider two constitutions of Valentinian I concerning the capability of the Church to freely accept inheritances from women. The first of these constitutions, from July 30, 370, was directed ad Damasum episcopum urbis Romae, and was destined to be read in the churches of the capital. The emperor ordered ecclesiastics, ex-ecclesiastics, and those men who wished to be called ‘continents’ not to visit widows or female wards. If denounced for such behaviour, they were banished by the public courts. Furthermore, they were barred from obtaining anything from these women either by way of donation or from a legacy in a will. Following promulgation of this law, each item of property which these women wanted to bestow on the aforementioned groups of men was to be seized by the tax office.37 Some months later, it was necessary to enact a second decree in order to clarify that the general ruling in the previous decree was valid and that its prohibitions should be extended as well to bishops and virgins.38 Scholars have never considered the connection between these two laws so that the earlier one directed to Damasus has always been read as directed against the pope. The view of Valentinian I as a strongly anti-senatorial and anti-aristocratic emperor – a view which, until now, was widely accepted – conditioned this kind of interpretation.39 According to this view, Valentinian 37

CTh 16, 2, 20 (30 July 370). CTh 16, 2, 22 (1 December 372) ad Paulinum praesidem Epiri Novae. 39 Largely based on the ambivalent presentation of Valentinian I by Ammian (27, 7, 4; 28, 1, 20; 29, 3, 9; 29, 4, 1; 30, 6, 3; 30, 7, 1–11; 30, 8, 8 and 10; 30, 9), the modern assessment of this emperor depended on Otto Seeck’s description of his personality: violent, resentful, and aggressive, lacking birth and education, and for this reason completely without respect for the dignity and privileges of the senatorial order. Valentinian I represented the rustic crudity of his original Pannonian country, a still semi-barbarian wasteland (Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, V (Stuttgart, 1913), 7); cf. W. Heering, Kaiser Valentinian I (364–375 n. Chr.) (Magdeburg, 1927); partly A. Nagl, ‘‘Valentinianus I,’’ in Paulys Real-Encyclopa¨die der classichen, Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1873– ), VII, A 2, cols. 2158–204, and A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602, I (Oxford, 1964), 139. In reaction to this tendency, A. Alfo¨ldi had revalued him as ‘‘the last of the great Pannonian Emperors’’: it was because of his German origin that Roman aristocracy and the late historiography were so hostile to Valentinian I, who was instead a clever defender of the empire, a good soldier, and a skilled administrator (A Conflict of Ideas in the Late Roman Empire (Oxford, 1952), 3 ff.); cf. J. Matthews, Western Aristocracies and 38

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also opposed Damasus,40 who was being helped by Roman aristocrats in his fight against Ursinus on behalf of his see.41 This is also the general opinion about the contrast between Damasus and Ursinus, based mainly on the principal source of that fight – the so-called Gesta inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos – even if scholars universally acknowledge that the text was a clear anti-Damasian pamphlet. Therefore Valentinian’s edict was seen as diverting to the imperial treasury large estates from unmarried women and widows which Damasus’ priests were previously used to inheriting, given their frequent visits to the houses of these women. However, if we read these laws free from such interpretative frames, a more realistic analysis can be produced. Without going into details, that is, by leaving aside the connection between the two laws, it is clear that both of them reflected the general aim of correcting the habits of certain members of the clergy. Bishops such as Ambrose, and monks and ascetics such as Jerome, had already condemned these habits as immoral.42 Furthermore, in Imperial Court (A.D. 364–425) (Oxford, 1975; 1990), 32 ff., who explained the contrast between the emperor and the Roman aristocracy as a consequence of the wish of Valentinian I and his Pannonian officials to moralise the traditionally corrupt governing class. A completely new perspective has to be adopted with respect to this problem: the aristocracy always collaborated with the emperor, even if the divisions between noble families in Rome – in different ways called to share the more prestigious offices in Rome and in the Empire – had some reflection on the ambiguous reputation of this emperor: see R. Lizzi Testa, (Bari, 2004). ‘‘Senatori, popolo, papi. Il governo di Roma al tempo dei Valentiniani’’ on the subject). 40 Ch. Pietri, Roma Christiana. Recherches sur l’Eglise de Rome, son organisation, sa politique, son ide´ologie de Miltiade a` Sixte III (311–447) [hereafter RCh], Bibliothe`que des Ecoles Franc¸aise d’Athe`nes et de Rome, 224 (Rome, 1976), I, 419. 41 The so-called Gesta inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos can be read in Collectio Avellana (CA 1, ed. O. Gu¨nther (Lipsia 1895), CSEL 35, 2, pp. 1–4). For the traditional view, see L. Cracco Ruggini, ‘‘Spazi urbani clientelari e caritativi,’’ in La Rome impe´riale. De´mographie et logistique. Actes de la table ronde (Rome, 25 mars 1994), Collection de l’Ecole Franc¸aise de Rome [hereafter CEFR] 230 (Rome, 1997), 157–91, esp. 169–78, and recently C. Carletti, ‘‘Damaso I, santo,’’ in Enciclopedia dei Papi, I (Rome, 2000), 349–72. A reconstruction of the bias of the Christian noble families during the Liberian episcopacy (352–66), and the analysis of the historical context of the fight, show that both Damasus and Ursinus were helped by different groups of the Roman aristocracy, but whereas Ursinus had very strong patrons in the Anician members, Damasus won because the majority of the Roman clerus sided with him. Imperial officials, such as the urban prefect Viventius or Julian, the praefectus annonae, or the subsequent urban prefect Praetextatus, simply ratified the ecclesiastical choice Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 129–70. 42 On Jerome’s attitude, see L. De Giovanni, Chiesa e Stato nel Codice Teodosiano. Saggio sul libro XVI (Napoli, 1980), 43–4; see also St. Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis, Historia Einz. 72 (Stuttgart, 1992), 32–41. On Ambrose, see R. B. Bruno Siola, ‘‘Proprieta` secolare e proprieta` ecclesiale nel pensiero di Ambrogio,’’ in Atti dell’Accademia Romanistica Costantiniana [hereafter AARC] IX (Perugia, 1993), 139–85. Such moralising tensions had major effects on the ideal definition of the episcopal image: R. Lizzi Testa, ‘‘I vescovi e i ‘potentes’ della terra: definizione e limite

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comparing these constitutions with a previous edict of Constantine – which permitted anyone to bequeath at his death whatever he wished to the ‘‘most holy and venerable council of Catholic Church’’43 – we realise that Valentinian’s laws did not aim to abolish the Church’s capacity to inherit money or property, but to control and prevent individual churchmen from suddenly growing rich as, for example, deacons who were normally charged with the task of collecting the charitable offerings of the faithful. In that context, the bishop of Rome was the first, after the emperor, albeit for different reasons, who wished to be able to exercise this kind of control. In about 370, his church was not yet fully settled and he had to face much opposition.44 Ursinus had recently been exiled again to a village of Gaul, but a few months later he was permitted to reside anywhere he wanted, apart from Rome and the suburbicarian regions.45 Someone from Ursinus’ party could then decide to describe Damasus’ violent activity during the disputed election (the so-called Gesta) in order to convince Italian bishops – who still in 369 did not want to undersign the formal condemnation of Ursinus requested by the pope46 – that Damasus was not to be recognised as the legitimate bishop of Rome. A few months later,47 Damasus was prosecuted.48 The specific charge is not clearly expressed in contemporary sources, but we must believe the testimony of Liber Pontificalis, where Damasus is said to be

del ruolo episcopale nelle due ‘partes imperii’ fra IV e V secolo d.C.,’’ in L’e´veˆque dans la cite´ du IVe au Ve sie`cle. Actes de la table ronde organise´e par l’Istituto Patristico Augustinianum et l’E´cole franc¸aise de Rome (1er–2 de´c. 1995), CEFR 248 (Rome, 1998), 81–104. 43 On the edict (CTh 16, 2, 4, of 3 July 321), see Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, 50. 44 In 369–71 a Roman synod organised by Damasus composed the letter Confidimus against the Italian bishops who had signed the Creed of Rimini. M. Simonetti, La crisi ariana, 388–9; Carletti, ‘‘Damaso,’’ 356. 45 First expulsion in 366 (CA 1, 6, 5); before 15 September 367, he could go back to Rome (CA 1, 10, 7); on 16 November 367 he was again expelled from the town (CA 1, 11, 15–18); on 12 January 368 a new imperial letter allowed Ursinus to reside anywhere except Rome (CA 7, 2). Probably because of new fights around St. Agnes’ cemetery in 369 (CA 1, 12–13), he was again exiled to an unknown village of Gaul. CA 11, 2, 21–3 contains the imperial letters (not later than 370/71) to Ampelius PVR and Maximinus vicarius, where that kind of relegation was again softened. Ursinus then could reside anywhere in the Empire, except Rome and the suburbicarian regions. 46 CA 1, 13–14. 47 A. Cos¸ kun, ‘‘Der Praefect Maximinus, der Jude Isaak und der Strafprozeß gegen Bischof Damasus von Rom,’’ in Jahrbuch fu¨r Antike und Christentum J46 (2003), 17– 44 believes that the trial was just before 373, but there are many reasons to set the date in 371. 48 The trial against Damasus is quoted in Ambr., Ep. Extra Coll. 7 (CSEL 82, 3, 191–7), a Roman synodal sent to the emperor Gratian, who answered to the bishop sending a rescript to Aquilinus vicarius Urbis Romae (CA 13).

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prosecuted de adulterio.49 At this time, many aristocrats, expecially women, were prosecuted for the same crime by the praefectus annonae, then vicarius Maximinus, whereas the charge of black magic was usually brought against men. As a consequence, the inevitable relationships that the new bishop had with female members of high society could be used against him. Independently from the moral implications, that kind of charge worked well against a bishop who was described by the Ursinians as auriscalpius matronarum, a nickname suggesting the episcopal assiduous visits to widows and young girls in order to have their rich donations and heritages.50 Widows and young girls were, indeed, the same subjects of the law, so that the trial against the pope could be seen as a retaliation against the promoter of that law, if it was advocated, as I believe it was, by Damasus. At a time when Damasus could begin to reap the plentiful fruits produced through the conversion of Roman aristocrats, he had to be careful to exercise control over both the donors and the beneficiaries of donations and inheritances. Noblemen and noblewomen, usually quite wealthy, rarely gave away their fortunes without imposing conditions, so that heavy restrictions could conceivably constrain papal autonomy. It has to be remembered that the oldest occurence of titulus (for the Church of Santa Fasciola), the term which was used to indicate both the property in question and the juridical act which conferred legitimacy upon a donation of property, is dated to Damasus’ pontificate.51 As for the beneficiaries, if large bequests or donations were left to clerics ad personam, rather than to the holy council of the Church, they could be used for personal purposes, such as climbing higher in the ecclesiastical hierarchy independently of the bishop’s control and preference. It was during Damasus’ pontificate that more general mechanisms for advancing in the ecclesiastical

49 LP 212: ‘‘Hic accusatus invidiose incriminatur de adulterio; et facto synodo purgatur a XLIII episcopis qui etiam damnaverunt Concordium et Calistum diacones accusatores et proiecerunt de ecclesia.’’ See recently Coskun, ‘‘Der Praefect Maximinus,’’ who believes that. More details are quoted in Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 171–81. 50 CA 1, 10, 4–5: ‘‘quem in tantum matronae diligebant, ut matronarum auriscalpius diceretur.’’ 51 It is present on the inscription of titulus Fasciolae (Inscriptiones Christianae Vrbis Romae, n.s. 2, 4815) in 377: Pietri, RCh I, 90–96 and 569–73, and ‘‘E´verge´tisme et richesses eccle´siastiques dans l’Italie du IVe a` la fin du Ve s.: l’exemple romain,’’ Ktema 3 (1978), 317–37, esp. 327 ¼ Christiana Respublica. E´le´ments d’une enqueˆte sur le christianisme antique I–III, CEFR 234 (Rome, 1997) hereafter ChR, II, 813–33, esp. 823, n. 41. Similar cultural buildings existed already in the pre-Constantinian age, but they were not called tituli: F. Guidobaldi, ‘‘Roma. Il tessuto abitativo, le domus e i tituli,’’ in Storia di Roma. L’eta` tardoantica 3, 2 (Torino, 1993), 69–83, esp. 76.

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cursus honorum were discussed and formalised.52 Two further contemporary reforms confirm that, in order to prevent similar, dangerous, centrifugal drifts, the bishop of Rome needed to check an individual cleric’s capacity to grow rich: the territorial delimitation of diaconates in order to limit the influence of individual deacons within precise boundaries;53 the addition of a second presbyter to the one who, until that time, was required for the creation of a titulus, in order to avoid a ‘‘private’’ management of the office.54 Moreover, some scholars believe that the fermentum liturgy, that is, the Sunday distribution of the hosts consecrated by the bishop to presbyters who officiated in the tituli churches, a practice well known from a later letter of Pope Innocent (402–17), was actually initiated by Damasus.55 The strong symbolic meaning of that liturgy, highlighting the unity of presbyters with the bishop, must not be allowed to conceal the fact that the practice was also a way to impose the bishop’s authority on the city’s churches, which were more numerous thanks to benefactor foundations. It is not often the case that emperors enact constitutions without being asked to do so. Usually they respond to pressures from the various provinces exerted through governors or through the urban or praetorian prefects, by issuing local rescripts or even more general laws. Those officials who had 52

See Siricius’ letter to Imerius, Tarragonensis episcopus of 385, in PL 13, 9–10, 1142–3. On this document, see P.-H. Lafontaine, Les conditions positives de l’accession aux ordres dans la premie`re le´gislation eccle´siastique (300–492) (Ottawa, 1963), passim. See also A. Faivre, Naissance d’une hie´rarchie. Les premie`res e´tapes du cursus cle´rical (Paris, 1977). Of course, not all clerics could reach the bishopric and in many cases competition made it difficult to reach the level of deacon or presbyter. Moreover, variations from these rules were always present, specially in the lower orders. E. Wipszycka, ‘‘Les ordres mineurs dans l’E´glise d’E´gypte du IVe au VIIIe sie`cle,’’ JJP 22 (1992), 181–215 ¼ E´tudes sur le christianisme dans l’E´gypte de l’Antiquite´ tardive (Rome, 1996), 225–55. 53 Concerning the institution of regional deacons, each of whom was assigned to a particular zone, see Ch. Pietri, ‘‘La conversion de Rome et la primaute´ du pape (IVe–VIe sie`cle),’’ in Il primato del vescovo di Roma nel primo millennio: ricerche e testimonianze, Atti e Documenti 4 (Vatican City, 1991), 219–43, especially 235–6 ¼ ChR, I, 23–47, esp. 39–40. 54 Ambrosiaster, Ad Timotheum prima 3, 13, 3 (CSEL 81, 3, ed. H. I. Vogels (Wien 1969)), 269: ‘‘nunc autem septem diaconos esse oportet, aliquantos presbyteros ut bini sint per ecclesias et unus in civitate episcopus.’’ Cf. Ch. Pietri, ‘‘Chiesa e comunita` locali nell’Occidente cristiano (IV–VI d. C.): l’esempio della Gallia,’’ in Societa` romana e impero tardoantico, ed. A. Giardina, 1–4, (Rome–Bari, 1986), 3, 761–95, esp. 765 ¼ ChR I, 475–521 esp. 479. In 419, presbyters for each titulus became three, so that one of them could permanently reside in the church. 55 V. Saxer, ‘‘L’utilisation par la liturgie de l’espace urbain et suburbain: l’exemple de Rome dans l’antiquite´ et le haut moyen aˆge,’’ in Actes du XIe Congre`s International d’Arche´ologie Chre´tienne (21–28 sept. 1986), II, CEFR 123 (Rome, 1989), 917–1032, esp. 928, concerning Dam., Epigr. 15, 6, ed. A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, Sussidi allo studio delle antichita` cristiane II (Vatican City, 1942): ‘‘Tarcisium santum Christi sacramenta gerentem.’’

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requested new provisions were generally named as the addressees of these laws.56 Against this backdrop, we believe that the constitution ad Damasum was requested by the pope. The first law did not curtail the privileges of bishops. Even the second edict, which extended the prohibition of donations and bequests to bishops and virgins, could admittedly cause the bishop a modest loss of income since he was the ultimate manager of the Church’s aggregate resources. However, that kind of loss could be construed as small indeed, in comparison with the great gain that the edicts afforded the pope in the form of additional control over his deacons and presbyters.57 Further backing for this interpretation comes from Jerome, who, speaking about attempts to restrain the increasing immorality of churchmen, regretted that many ecclesiastics had found ways to get round the prohibitions of Valentinian’s laws by way of certain legal expedients such as the fideicommissum.58 Damasus’s future secretary would not have voiced 56 Cf. J. Gaudemet, La formation du droit se´culier de l’Eglise aux IVe et Ve sie`cle (Paris, 1957), 11, concerning the activity of suggestio by high officials, expecially the pretorian prefects. In particularly refering to Q. A. Symmachus’ Relationes, L. Cracco Ruggini, ‘‘Le associazioni professionali nel mondo romano-bizantino,’’ in Artigianato e tecnica nella societa` dell’Alto medioevo occidentale (Spoleto 2–8 apr. 1970), XVIII Sett. Int. di St. sull’Alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 1971), 59–227, esp. 144–5, 160–62, 179–80 with nn. 175, 202, 229. More recently, T. Honore, ‘‘The Making of the Theodosian Code,’’ Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fu¨r Rechtgeschichte (Romanistische Abteilung) (1986), 133–222, and J. F. Matthews, Laying Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code (New Haven–London, 2000), 13–16. Specifically, L. Maggio, ‘‘Note critiche sui rescritti postclassici. 2. L’efficacia normativa dei rescritti ad consultationes e dei rescritti ad preces emissa,’’ in AARC 14 (Napoli, 2003), 377–401. 57 C.Th. 16, 2, 22 is clearly dated 1 Dec. 372, and is addressed to Paulinus, praeses Epiri Novae. Since the constitution is addressed to a provincial governor, it should have been an imperial rescript answering a question from that official, even if the text preserved in the Theodosian Code could be just the local copy of a general law, which its compilers had at their disposal. In any case, a second constitution had to be sent to make clear the first imperial provision where bishops were not mentioned. We do not know who Paulinus was (PLRE I, s.v. Paulinus 6), but we can ask ourselves if he was the same Anicius Paulinus who was proconsul Campaniae in 378/79 (PLRE I, s.v. Anicius Paulinus 12), immediately before Anicius Auchenius Bassus (PLRE I, s.v. Anicius Auchenius Bassus 11). The latter was a Christian, but not friendly with Damasus, because in 382, as the urban prefect, he did not want to expel from Rome Ephesius, the Luciferian bishop whom Damasus had condemned. Against the pope, the urban prefect held that Ephesius was completely orthodox: CA 2, 85, 17–18 (‘‘Bassus sciebat in Lucifero nullam hereseos fuisse pravitatem’’); ibid., 20 (‘‘reppulit accusationem Damasi negans se facturum, ut homines catholicos et integrae fidei viros insequeretur’’). If Paulinus, who obtained C.Th. 16, 2, 22, was a member of the Anician family, the hostility of his family to Damasus could be confirmed also by this first intervention by the emperor. He should then have tried to turn against Damasus a law that the pope had requested in order to reduce the centrifugal powers of his presbyters and deacons. 58 Hier., Ep. 52, 6. The fideicommissum (in this case the fideicommissum hereditatis, that is, the hereditary trust) consisted of the request that the testator addressed to the legitimate heir to transfer the inheritance in whole or in part to a third person. In dealing

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appreciation publicly for the imperial legislation in question if it had been enacted against his own pope. Once again, it is not always possible to understand Christianisation in relation to culture and society through the categories of form or content. Members of the Christian hierarchy became an official reality for the emperor as soon as Constantine recognised them as public figures in the Empire, giving them a high level status, a status competing with that of the municipal e´lites who obtained identical exemptions to the priests because they had held a militia palatina. From then on, bishops, deacons, and presbyters, but especially the bishops, had vast opportunities – depending on their personality – to influence the making of religious policy. In fact, from Constantine to Justinian, through Theodosius I and the others, no ‘‘religious policy’’ as such existed; it still was simply an aspect of general imperial affairs, even if the Christianisation of society became more and more evident.59 But, some emperors decided to consult ecclesiastics as technical advisers on those subjects where their recommendations could be decisive, for example when considering which kind of exemptions ought to be granted to clerics, which communities should be called ‘‘Catholic,’’ or who was, in fact, a heretic. As in the case of Constantine, who decided to concede to Caecilian and to his church tax exemptions and monetary subsidies, explaining this gesture with reasons used formerly by Cyprian, that Ossius and other councillors had suggested to the emperor, biblical–christian culture slowly penetrated the language of imperial regulations regarding the Church and its ministers. An unexpected subtext therefore should be considered concerning the relationship between culture and reform, especially the ways in which culture inserts itself in reform. The clergy had access to the imperial court, either directly or via their lay patrons. Above all, bishops, in a manner not different from that of other imperial officials, could send requests to the emperor, in order to obtain the ratification of synodal sentences and their application against rebel bishops, short rescripts to their requests, or even general laws. In this sense, the reformed – the members of ecclesiastical hierarchy – were also reformers.60

with the ‘‘final wish,’’ such a request bound the heir to transfer the inheritance to the person designated by the testator. The discipline of the fideicommissum hereditatis underwent a considerable evolution in the course of the Empire, culminating in the Justinian position that legacies and trusts were to be always equivalent. 59 D. Vera, ‘‘Teodosio I tra religione e politica: i riflessi della crisi gotica dopo Adrianopoli,’’ in AARC VI Convegno Internazionale (Citta` di Castello, 1986), 223–39; G. Crifo`, ‘‘La Chiesa e l’Impero nella storia del diritto da Costantino a Giustiniano,’’ in Cristianesimo e istituzioni politiche. Da Costantino a Giustiniano, ed. E. dal Covolo and R. Uglione, Bibl. Di Scienze Religiose, 134 (Rome, 1997), 171–96. 60 I wish to thank Robert Dodaro and Louis I. Hamilton for helping me to revise the English version of this article.

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Chapter 7

To Consecrate the Church: Ecclesiastical Reform and the Dedication of Churches1 Louis I. Hamilton

The so-called Gregorian Reforms that lasted from 1049 (the Council of Rheims) to 1123 (the First Lateran Council) attempted to reform the Church both according to what the reformers presented as the scriptural ideal and according to an eschatological ideal. Thus, its central efforts centered on (re)asserting Petrine authority (Matt. 16: 18; Luke 22: 31–2), and ecclesiastical independence of secular authorities. As others have noted, the success of the reforms depended on the reformers’ ability to convince the faithful that they were creating a more sacred Church with more effective sacraments.2 For this reason, the sanctity of the reformers and the validity of their sacraments was a central debate within the contemporary Church.3 1 Portions of the research for this article were completed through the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for research at the Vatican Film Library, Saint Louis University, and the Fulbright Program. I would like to thank Richard F. Gyug for inviting me to participate in the conference ‘‘The Liturgy in Rome in the Eleventh Century’’ (Fordham University, April 1999), where this talk was originally presented. The late Rev. Leonard E. Boyle, OP graciously read and commented on an early draft of the article. I would also like to thank Daniel L. Smail for offering valuable suggestions and corrections, and Sible De Blaauw for timely help with questions of Roman architecture. 2 Karl Morrison put this most succinctly, ‘‘The sanctifying grace that [the sacraments] conveyed stamped faithful souls with the character of Christ and ‘transformed’ them into his divinity, so that he was in them and they in him. Plainly, the Gregorian Reform, seeking papal dominance over the priesthood, also required control over the administration of the sacraments and consequently over the actions by which the visible church defined itself as the Body of Christ, admitting some to participation in his eternal life and excluding others from it.’’ Karl Morrison, ‘‘The Gregorian Reform,’’ in Christian Spirituality, Origins to the Twelfth Century, eds. Bernard McGinn, John Meyendorff, and Jean Leclerq (New York, 1993), 177–93, at 183. 3 For discussions of the role of the sanctity of reforming clergy and the success of their reforms, see John Howe, Church Reform and Social Change in Eleventh-Century Italy, Dominic of Sora and his Patrons (Philadelphia, 1997); E. Pa´sztor, ‘‘La ‘Vita’ anonima di Anselmo di Lucca. Una rilettura,’’ in Sant’Anselmo Vescovo di Lucca

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This debate resulted in extensive commentary on the sacraments in the period.4 One of the great opportunities for the reformers to assert the sacred character of their authority was at the dedication of a new church. By examining the commentaries on the dedication of a church by Peter Damian and Bruno of Segni, we can trace the arc of the debate across the period. Damian was possibly the first to effectively use political allegory in exegeting the liturgy of consecration of churches. He presented the dedication as both a challenge to secular authorities who sought to control the Church and an affirmation of episcopal and papal control over the Church. Bruno of Segni initially took up Damian’s line of interpretation and presented the dedication as affirming papal dominance of the Church. But powerful symbols are inherently volatile and Bruno ultimately attempted to turn the liturgy against the papacy after his falling out with Paschal II in 1112. The dedication of the new basilica of S. Benedict at Montecassino on October 1, 1071 provides an excellent introduction to the nature of the dedication.5 The witness list to the event contains many of the greatest figures of eleventh-century Italy. They would have witnessed a spectacular rite. The liturgy was an intensely physical one, beginning with a vigil outside the new church, followed by eight public masses over the ensuing week. It required elaborate processions circling the new church inside and out, and crisscrossing its interior, all punctuated with genuflections. The liturgy would have filled the nose with incense; the ears with the echoing thuds of the bishop’s staff against the empty church’s doors, and with the singing of antiphons; the mouth with the taste of the consecrated bread, and, perhaps, wine; and the eyes with the spectacles of a community arrayed in its finest, relics in reliquaries, new liturgical vestments and tools, and, just before mass, the church fully illumined for the first time in the presence of the entire community. A sermon might try to explain its significance. The congregation would be reminded of the peace of the church and the responsibility to pay (1073–1086), nel quadro tranformazioni sociali e della riforma ecclesiastica, ed. Cinzio Violante (Rome, 1992), 207–22; Kirtstin Noreen, ‘‘Lay Patronage and the Creation of Papal Sanctity during the Gregorian Reform: The Case of Sant’Urbano alla Caffarella, Rome,’’ Gesta XL, 1 (2001), 39–59. 4 Roger E. Reynolds, ‘‘Liturgical Scholarship at the Time of the Investiture Controversy: Past Research and Future Opportunities,’’ Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978), 109–24. 5 Essential works with further bibliography are Herbert Bloch, Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1986); H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Age of Abbot Desiderius: Montecassino, the Papacy, and the Normans in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries (Oxford, 1983); and Pierre Toubert, ‘‘Pour une histoire de l’environnement e´conomique et social du Mont-Cassin (IXe–XIIe sie`cles),’’ Comptes rendus de l’Acade´mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, nov.–de´c. 1976 (Paris, 1976), 689–702.

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tithes; and the lay ‘‘lord and constructor’’ of the edifice would be advised as to his obligations to clergy and Church.6 This only begins to describe a liturgy that gave spiritual gravity to everything from the mixing of cement, to the tracing of the Greek and Latin alphabets, to the aspersion and anointing of the very walls themselves. The well-documented dedication of Montecassino makes clear that the religious and lay leaders who would be most important in the life of Rome over the last quarter of the twelfth century had experienced just such a dedication, and can tell us how they might have understood that experience. Present at Montecassino were Alexander II (1061–73), Peter Damian, Archdeacon Hildebrand, soon to become Gregory VII (1073–85), and Abbot Desiderius himself, later Victor III (1086–87). In addition there were another forty-six bishops, including three cardinal bishops, and at least three cardinal priests and probably many other deacons and clerics from Rome.7 A cadre of Normans, who had radically transformed the political landscape of the Italian peninsula, and who were critical allies of Montecassino, also witnessed the dedication. With Robert Guiscard at the lead, the Normans would seize Rome from the imperial party in 1084, at the behest of Gregory VII.8 Thus, the dedication of Montecassino also exemplifies how such a liturgy drew lay and religious leaders together. Finally, the dedication could play a broader role in the life of a given community, in this instance a community that had experienced intense social, religious, and political change, as had the whole eleventh-century Italian peninsula. The period knew the re-emergence of the crowd in public life, widespread popular demand for religious reform, the institutionalization of that reform, and the ongoing process of incastelamento.9 These processes came together in the dedication of a new church, a major public event that gathered the lay and religious leaders of a community,

6

Brian Vincent Repsher, ‘‘Locus est Terribilis: The Rite of Church Dedication in Medieval Christendom’’ (Ph.D. Diss., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994), 295. 7 Leo Marsicanus, Narratio De Consecratione et Dedicatione Ecclesiae Casinensis, PL 173, 999A; 1000A–1001C. 8 Ibid., 1000A–B. One can well imagine the anxieties that must have accompanied the very presence of such guests in Leo’s description, at ibid., 997C–998B. Louis I. Hamilton, ‘‘Arson, Memory, and Symbolic Power: Was Rome ‘Sacked’ in 1084?’’ Speculum 78, 2 (2003), 378–99. 9 R. I. Moore, ‘‘Family, Community, and Cult on the Eve of the Gregorian Reform,’’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. (30) (1980), 49–69; Howe, Church Reform and Social Change; Pierre Toubert, Feudalismo medite´rraneo. Il caso del Lazio me´die´vale (Milan, 1980); and Giovanni Tabacco, ‘‘Le strutture del regno italico fra XI e XII secolo,’’ in Atti del Convegno di Studi Matildici (Modena, 1978) and ‘‘The Churches as Instruments and Active Centres of Political Power,’’ in The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy: Structures of Political Rule (Cambridge, 1989), 166–76.

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attracted large crowds, and sanctified a new addition to the religious and political landscape. As Leo Marsicanus, a monk of Montecassino and its chronicler, looked around him that October day, he wondered at the magnificent new church Desiderius had built; surely, he thought, others must have wondered at it, as well. Its columns and paving stones had been taken, at no small expense, from Rome itself; the artisans from Constantinople had worked in the nearly lost art of mosaic; and its paving was so beautiful, so colorful, so artful that it seemed a field of flowers. Many stood in wonder at the sight, and some could scarcely comprehend it.10 It is unclear who delivered a sermon on this occasion, although it could have been Peter Damian.11 The career of Peter Damian, from hermit to cardinal and bishop of Ostia, is emblematic of the transformation of the eleventh-century reform efforts from personal to institutional.12 It is worth reviewing its outline. Having studied at Faenza and Parma, and then pursued a career as a rhetorician at Ravenna, Damian had been caught up in the religious zeal of the era and subsequently joined a monastic community at Fonte Avellana around 1036. For Damian, this became a life of travel in Italy, preaching a spiritual renovatio. In 1043, he was elected prior of Fonte Avellana. Stephen IX (1057–58) consecrated Damian as cardinal and bishop of Ostia in 1057 as a way of drawing the prior into the work of the Roman Curia.13 Damian would have known at first hand the relationship between personal reform and the structures that controlled the Italian peninsula; in particular, he would have known that the structures girding ecclesiastical and secular authority (especially monasteries and churches) were often the fruit of the spiritual renovatio sweeping Italy.14 This dynamic among spiritual, ecclesial reform, and social change is the context in which the dedication of a new church and its commentaries must be 10

Leo, Narratio, PL 173, 998B–C. There do not seem to have been any significant dedications at Ostia during Damian’s episcopate. Internal evidence, discussed below, suggests the sermon was delivered at a major dedication, but is not definitive. Damian is known to have dedicated at least one monastic church but any one of the monastic communities he founded are possibilities for the sermon. See CCCM, vol. 57, Sanctus Petrus Damianus, Sermones, ed. Johannes Lucchesi (Brepols, 1983), Sermo 72, at 1.1–6 for the most suggestive passages concerning the occasion of the sermon. 12 For a parallel example, see Howe, Church Reform and Social Change on Dominic of Sora. 13 The bibliography on Damian is vast; see the ‘‘Select Bibliography’’ in Peter Damian, Letters 1–30, tr. Owen J. Blum, OFM (Washington, DC, 1989), xi–xviii. For a brief summary of the important events of his life, see ibid., 3–11. See also Giovanni Lucchesi, ‘‘Per una vita di San Pier Damiani,’’ San Pier Damiani nel ix centenario della morte (1072–1972), 4 vols. (Cesena, 1972–3) vol. 1 (1972), 13–179, vol. 2 (1972), 13– 160 and ‘‘Il Sermonario di S. Pier Damiani come monumento storico agiografico e liturgico,’’ Studi Gregoriani 10 (1975), esp. 12–13, 31–6. 14 As Howe observes in Church Reform and Social Change, 23. 11

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understood. In the second half of the eleventh century, according to papal registers and inscriptions, there were ten (perhaps thirteen) churches or altars and one monastery dedicated in Rome. Nine of these, and the monastery were dedicated after the dedication of Montecassino, that is, between 1071 and 1099. These figures easily dwarf the three (perhaps five) such dedications of the first half of the century, and the four (perhaps six) prior to Montecassino for which we have records.15 These numbers are even more impressive if one considers that Gregory VII (1073–85) and Urban II (1088– 99) spent large portions of their papacy in exile, or as virtual prisoners within the city, and that the city was regularly in a state of political and military turmoil throughout the last quarter of the eleventh century.16 Thus, while the number of dedications seems small, they are significant relative to both precedent and circumstance. When the papal reformers were finally back in control of the city under Paschal II (1099–1118), there was a burst of church building and dedications. The dedications of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries were part of a larger process transforming the broadly diffused religious zeal of the late tenth and early eleventh century into concrete institutional reform.17 Even as the reform transformed on the peninsula from monastic to episcopal and from personal to institutional, the

15 For a complete list, see Louis I. Hamilton, ‘‘The Power of Liturgy and the Liturgies of Power in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Italy’’ (Ph.D. Diss., Fordham University, 2000). Works of primary importance in establishing such a list are Walther Buchowiecki, Handbuch der Kirchen Roms. Der Romische Sakralbau in Geschichte und Kunst von der altchristlichen Zeit bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna, 1967–74); Vincenzo Forcella, Iscrizioni delle chiese e d’altri edificii di Roma dal secolo XI fino ai giorni nostri (Rome, 1869–84); Paul F. Kehr, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, vol. 1: Roma (Berlin, 1906 [1961]); Richard Krautheimer, Corpus basilicarum christianorum Romae: The Early Christian Basilicas of Rome (IV–IX Cent.), 5 vols. (Vatican City, 1937–77); Christian Hu¨lsen, Le chiese di Roma nel medioevo (Florence, 1927); and Ferruccio Lombardi, Roma: chiese, conventi, chiostri. Progetto per un inventario, 313–1925 (Rome, 1993). 16 See esp. I. S. Robinson, ‘‘Rome and the Patrimony of St Peter,’’ in The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge, 1990), 17–21; Uta-Renate Blumenthal, ‘‘Rome and Reform,’’ and ‘‘The Struggle Between Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII,’’ in The Investiture Controversy (Philadelphia, 1988), 64–98, 113–26; and Gerd Tellenbach, ‘‘La Citta` di Roma dal IX al XII secolo Vista dai Contemporanei d’Oltre Frontiera,’’ in Studi Stori in Onore di Ottorino Bartolini, 2 vols. (Pisa, 1972), 679–734. On S. Clemente, see Leonard E. Boyle, ‘‘The Date of the Consecration of the Basilica of San Clemente,’’ San Clemente Miscellany II. Art and Archaeology (Rome, 1978), 1–12, reprint of Archivium Fratrum Praedicatorum 30 (1960), 417–27; and Federico Guidobaldi, Il Complesso Archeologico di San Clemente. Resulti degli scavi piu` recenti e riesame dei resti architettonici (Rome, 1978). 17 For a cautious outline of this overall change, and an important reminder of the importance of regional differences in reform, see Gerd Tellenbach, The Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century, trans. Timothy Reuter (Cambridge, 1993), 140–41.

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exegesis of the rite of dedication shifted from its moral to its allegorical meaning.18 Exegesis of the dedication was transformed in eleventh-century Rome in the same manner as scriptural exegesis was being transformed by the reformers: towards increasingly ‘‘political’’ allegory.19 Thus, even as the reformers shifted their emphasis, the exegesis of the dedication moved from the personal moral significance to its broader political/ecclesiological significance. Damian’s sermon on the dedication of a church forged a new approach to the dedication liturgy. The precedents readily available to Damian for understanding the rite included the Carolingian commentary Quid Significet Duodecim Candelae in the Romano-Germanic Pontifical present both in eleventh-century Rome and at contemporary Montecassino.20 This text emphasized the moral or tropological sense of the liturgy. That is, the Quid Significet explored the relationship between the liturgy and the progress or conversion of the soul towards God. The Quid Significet compared the dedication to a baptism, and then used that as an opportunity to instruct the clergy, and perhaps the laity, in the rudiments of conversion, instruction, initiation, and repentance within the Christian community.21 It also served to affirm ecclesiastical and social cohesion within the 18

This relationship between the political and religious landscape is very clearly articulated in John Howe’s case study of the life of Dominic of Sora. Howe, Church Reform and Social Change, xiii–xxiii, 160–61. 19 See I. S. Robinson, ‘‘ ‘Political Allegory’ in the Biblical Exegesis of Bruno of Segni,’’ Recherches de The´ologie Ancienne et Me´die´vale 50 (1983), 69–98, esp. 76–8, 84– 6, and Beryl Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools: A Study of Intellectuals in Politics (Oxford, 1973). The term ‘‘political allegory’’ does not come from Damian, who refers to the mystical or sacramental meaning. The use of ‘‘political’’ here is a strictly modern device. An excellent study of Bruno’s political allegory is Elisabeth Me´gier, ‘‘Otto of Freising’s revendication of Isaiah as the prophet of Constantine’s ‘exaltation of the Church’ in the context of Christian Latin exegesis,’’ Sacris Erudiri 42 (2003), 287–326, esp. 303–14. 20 Cyrille Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources (Washington, DC, 1986), 237–9. The Romano-Germanic Pontifical is primarily a collection of liturgies, but also contains commentaries on those liturgies as well as didactic texts. It may have functioned as a handbook of correct practice. See Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze, eds., Le Pontifical romano-germanique du dixie`me sie`cle (Vatican City, 1963–72), iii, 32, 50–51, also 1–6 for a brief summary of its origins, and 44–51 for its wide use. The extant Roman and Cassinese copies are Montecassino, Archivio della Badia, Cod. 451, 22r–33v; Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Cod. D. 5, 18v–27v. See Michel Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du Haut Moyen Age, 4 vols. (Louvain, 1931–56), i, 176–7, 184. Though contained in seven of the eleven exemplars used by Vogel, the Quid Significet is absent from Alessandrina 173, perhaps a Roman exemplar, and not contained in the Roman pontifical; Bruno and Peter certainly had contact with the text at Cassino, if not Rome. 21 See Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 194–233, for a detailed discussion. More poetic, though similar, is Lee Bowen, ‘‘The Tropology of Mediaeval Dedication Rites,’’ Speculum 16 (1941), 470. Christopher A. Jones, ‘‘The Book of Liturgy in

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Carolingian reform.22 Bede’s sermon on the dedication was also available to Peter Damian; like the many sermons available in the collections of eleventh-century Rome, it emphasized the moral meaning of the rite.23 Damian’s sermon first interpreted the dedication in a typological manner (that is, in terms of biblical precedent), thus placing a local event, the dedication of this new church, into a larger context of the history of God’s people. He then cast his congregation’s vision forward and interpreted the dedication rite anagogically, in terms of the divine plan, the future of the Church. The typological interpretation became an exemplum to which their behavior ought to conform.24 In Damian’s hands the dedication of a new church became an important moment in salvation history. For Damian, the liturgy of the dedication called to mind two great historical events: the attack on Jericho (Josh. 6: 3–5) and the command to rebuild the temple (Haggai). These two events provided the link to the anagogical: a renewal of God’s Church on earth, its evangelical mission to

Anglo-Saxon England,’’ Speculum 73 (1998), 659–702 though also considering them as a largely undifferentiated whole, offers a more subtle appreciation of the early commentaries. 22 Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 232–3. 23 For Bede, these would be Vatican City, Bibliotecea Apostolica Vaticana, S. Pietro C 103 and C 105. See, Paola Supino Martini, Roma e l’Area Grafica Romanesca (Secoli X–XII) (Alessandria, 1987), 59. Bede, Homilia 21, In Dedicatione Ecclesiae, PL 94, 244A–C, 245C–46A, and 248D–249A, respectively. The Roman Homiliary included sermons 47 and 49 of Eusebius, ‘‘Gallicanus’’ (CCL 101A, 555 and 573), and 227 of Caesarius of Arles (CCL 104, 897) for the feast of the dedication. The homiliaries of St. Peter’s and of Eginon of Verona most likely also contained these homilies. The Roman Homiliary of Agimond (copies of which were made in eleventhcentury Montecassino and ninth- or tenth-century Rome) also contained sermons 158 and 19 of Caesarius, as does the Homiliary BAV Vat. lat. 3828. The Homiliary of Paul the Deacon added Bede’s homilies 24, 25 (CCL 122, 358–78), and 66 (PL 94, 439–41). Among manuscript collections Vatican City, BAV, Chisianus P VIII (s. XI), fols. 283v–285v also contains Caesarius 227 and Bede 66 (interestingly followed by a Life of St. Nicholas); Reg. lat. 496 (s. XI, French), fols. 114–122v contains Caesarius 227, Bede 66, and another attributed to Bede beginning stetit itaque rex and concluding at in possessionem (this is a fragment of a decretal attributed to Pope Felix in the Decratalium Collectio of Isisdor Mercator (s. IX) reproduced in PL 130, 1059B– 1060A); Vat. lat. 8563 (s. X–XI) fols. 247–257v contains Bede 24, 25, and 66. Vat. lat. 5055 has a brief commentary at fol. 43v with ‘‘de xiii [sic] crucibus in dedicatione ecclesiae’’ in rubrics (whose ecclesiology is that of Christ as bridegroom) and takes a sermon for the feast of the dedication from Jerome’s Tractatus in Psalmos 137 (CCL 78, 39) at 59r. While both Peter Damian and Bruno of Segni could have consulted any of these it is clear that the exemplar they had before them (and deviated from) was the Quid Significet, as they follow its unusual structure. 24 See Gabrielle M. Spiegel, ‘‘Political Utility in Medieval Historiography,’’ History and Theory 14 (1975), 314–25, esp. 321. Compare with Bede, PL 94, 247D–249A, who is content mainly to retell the story of the rebuilding of the temple while only very indirectly implying a need for reform.

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bring God’s law to the world, and the coming of the heavenly Jerusalem. Damian began his sermon by drawing a sharp distinction between those who live under the old law and those who live under the new. He reminded his listeners (and his later readers) of the difference between a church and a synagogue. A synagogue is a mere congregation while an ecclesia is a convocation: brute animals might congregate, but to be convoked belongs to those with reason.25 The former see only externalities, while the latter, being reasoned, penetrate mysteries and recognize in the liturgy (and in themselves, as the Church) a sacrament of divine power and not, as it appears to the foolish, only a child’s game.26 It is very likely that Damian did not here intend a literal synagogue. Rather, this was the language adopted by the papal reform party following Damian’s lead after the schism of 1061 in response to accusations by imperial supporters that papal reformers were being too liberal in asserting the scriptural basis for sacerdotal authority. The pro-imperial reformers were insisting that a more literal reading of the Old Testament demonstrated that kings were meant to have authority over priests. Damian, in response to these arguments, had already insisted upon a more mystical (here sacramental) reading of scripture, or, as Robinson and Smalley have described it, ‘‘political allegory,’’ in order to defend the novus ordo of the cardinalate and denounce the literal reading of the scriptures as a function of the ‘‘old law.’’27 Damian’s preface thus recalled the conflicts of 1061. Although the exact occasion for Peter Damian’s sermon remains elusive, internal evidence allows for some conclusions about the nature of its circumstance. When this evidence is combined with what is known about the social, political, and religious climate of eleventh-century Italy, we can begin to tease out its broader import. There is significant evidence to suggest that it was delivered on the occasion of a major dedication. Briefly: Damian referred to the new church as a basilica and allegorizes the new church as a library of

25 Damian, S. 72, 1, 6–9. Thus also the Quid Significet: Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication’’, provides its origins, 114; and also Bede, PL 94, 244A–B, picking up an ancient topos. 26 Damian, S. 72, 1, 13–17: ‘‘His enim qui mysterii sunt spiritalis ignari, quodammodo ludus ac puerilis videtur ineptia quod supernae sapientiae redolet disciplina. Vnde dicit Apostolus: Verbum enim crucis pereuntibus quidem stultitia est, his autem qui salui fiunt, id est nobis, virtus Dei est.’’ He returns to this theme in ibid., 8, 186–92: ‘‘Quae scilicet omnia idcirco in dedicatione ecclesiae visibiliter admiscentur, ut nos eorum mysticum intellectum in mente nostra recondere doceamur. Et quia nos utique sumus ecclesia, per visibiles species atque corporeas, mystice designatur quae spiritalium virtutum nobis inesse debeant sacramenta. Haec interim vos nosse sufficiat, ut per haec quae dicimus valeatis et illa conicere quae tacemus’’; emphasis mine. 27 Here I am summarizing the argument of Robinson, ‘‘ ‘Political Allegory’,’’ esp. at 84.

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divine law and a school of spiritual study. These suggest that the sermon was delivered at the dedication of either a major monastic or episcopal church, such as Montecassino in 1071, an event with which Damian’s sermon shares many themes. It may have been at one of the dedications in the crypt of St. Cecilia, or it may have been a significant dedication now lost to us.

Allegory in Peter Damian’s Sermon on the Dedication Damian’s sermon followed the fourfold exegetical method typical of medieval scriptural commentators; that is to say, in the medieval sense, this sermon was an exegesis of the liturgy of the dedication. In addition, the structure of the sermon followed the unique commentary style of the Quid Significet (that is, an article by article commentary on the pontifical).28 To begin with the anagogical sense: the initial sprinkling of the church in the name of the Trinity recalled for Damian the Israelites’ exodus through the desert, the bitterness of the water they found, and how it was made sweet by the staff of Moses. So, too, the old law, served carnally, was bitter, but was now made sweet by the Cross which offers spiritual understanding and grace.29 As the elements of the Greek and Latin alphabet were written on the floor of the new church, so this new basilica inscribed the new law in our hearts.30 The dedication set the Christian community apart as the bearers of the new divine law, even as it placed that community within the Old Testament story.31 The turn to the heart became a call for conversion, not just of the individual, but of the entire community. The basilica represented the secret heart, the book of God on which heavenly commands are written, a bookcase of law, and a school of spiritual study, a true city of letters.32 This new church, then, was to be the library of the Word of God, a community living under God’s precepts. It was to be an ideal Church, with each member in conversation with God.33 Each was truly in contact with God: in the church

28

See my comments in note 23 above. Damian, S. 72, 2, 18–30. 30 Ibid., 3, 31–43. See esp. 3, 32–6. 31 Here Damian, who views the Abcedarium as the revival of the law, differs sharply from the Quid Significet, which views it as a metaphor for the proclamation of ecclesiastical doctrine; Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 127–30. As we shall see below, Damian has other ambitions for allegorizing preaching. 32 Damian, S. 72, 3, 43–7: ‘‘Quamobrem et haec basilica, quae nostri cordis arcana designat, nil aliud quodammodo quam liber est Dei, caelestibus mandatis inscriptus, armarium divinae legis et schola studii spiritalis, ut sit amodo quod scriptum est, vera Cariathsepher, hoc est civitas litterarum.’’ 33 Ibid., 3, 48–56. 29

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participating in its rites, in prayer, and in the readings from the New Testament, they were in direct communication and society with God. Once again, Damian had reconnected his congregation with the ancient Israelites in the desert, speaking with God on his holy mountain. From the outset, then, Damian established a pattern of interpretive movement from the typological to the anagogical: from the Old Testament precedent to a call for personal reform and a hoped-for, idealized Church of the reformed. With each return to these themes, he reinforced and expanded the image of the fully realized Church. The typological context for Damian’s seven circuits around the new basilica, as the bishop blessed its walls in dedication, is the seven circuits the priests and people of Israel made around the city of Jericho. The force of this Old Testament metaphor, and Damian’s introductory image of the new church as a city of God’s Word, would seem to direct him to interpret this new basilica as a type of promised land or new Jerusalem, but Damian resisted the obvious and chose a bolder interpretation. The basilica building, standing for Jericho, was the entire unconverted world. The priests were not carrying the ark of the covenant but rather the Church itself. The horn blast that saps the walls of the exalted and the haughty, of infidelity, pride, and objections, was the preaching of ‘‘the doctrine of the true Church.’’34 Rather than turning this individual church into a metaphorical heaven, Damian identified it as part of a larger effort to convert the entire world. This is similar to Desiderius’ view of the importance of his own basilica: making the law known to all.35 This message, so eloquently but subtly delivered in the image of Jericho, must not be overlooked. For it was here that Damian’s sermon took a turn away from the moral and towards mystical allegory. The evangeliaries of Italy reminded listeners at the dedication mass of the story of Zaccheus (Luke 19: 1–10). When Jesus met the wealthy tax collector, Zaccheus, upon entering Jericho and offered to dine with him in his home, Zaccheus promised to give half of his possessions to the poor and repay by fourfold those whom he had

34

Ibid., 4, 57–88, esp. 4, 69–88: ‘‘Hiericho plane . . . huius mundi varietas designatur. Per arcam vero sancta figuratur ecclesia . . . sic in hoc tempore quod septem dierum vicissitudine voluitur, dum fertur arca, id est praedicantium, quasi ad sonitum clangoresque tubarum, elati quilibet atque sublimes a suae celsitudinis superbia corruunt, et omnia contradictionis atque infidelitatis obstacula destruuntur. Sacerdotes ergo baiulantes arcam aereis concrepant tubis, dum sancti praedicatores ecclesiae doctrinam intonant veritatis. Et sic Hiericho funditus eversa destruitur dum mundus hic, a sui rigore fastigii corruens, sub triumphantis veri Iesu pedibus inclinatur, donec in fine temporum, sicut testatur Apostolus, inimica destruatur mors, et sit Deus omnia in omnibus.’’ (emphasis mine) 35 Chronica Monasterii Casinensis 3.28: 397(10–13), ed. Hartmut Hoffman, in MGH Scriptores, t. 34 (Hannover, 1980) [hereafter Chron. Cas.], as discussed above.

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defrauded. Jesus replied, ‘‘Today salvation has come to his house, because he too is a son of Abraham.’’ Thus, in the minds of his audience, Christ’s entry into Jericho and meeting with Zaccheus could have had two ready associations: first, a message for the wealthy of a community, certainly present at the dedication; second, the question, ‘‘who is a child of Abraham?’’ Damian would have been emphasizing these associations by allegorizing the walls of Jericho as the exalted and the esteemed. In short, Damian’s message on this occasion was a strong one: not only did he expand the image of the dedication in order to incorporate the conversion of the entire earth, but he identified the obstacles to this conversion as being the exalted and the esteemed (elati quilibet atque sublimes).36 He had begun to employ a kind of mystical allegory of ecclesio-political significance. The dedication of a basilica would have been crowded certainly with local magnates and, depending on its importance, perhaps with regional or pan-European lay and ecclesiastical leaders (as at Montecassino). In other words, by declaring the exalted and esteemed an obstacle to the fulfillment of the Church’s mission, Damian was boldly being critical of the most powerful portion of his congregation. In an era receptive to an ideology placing the ruling elites closer to God, Damian would have been inverting his audience’s expectations by claiming that the exalted and esteemed members of the community had become the obstacles to entering the promised land. In the context of the liturgy, to become a true son of Abraham in order to enter into the promised land of salvation, the wealthy and powerful must purge themselves of their injustices. In Damian’s sermon, they must humble themselves before Christ.37 Damian then turned his commentary to reflect contemporary reform politics. When the bishop, having circled the church, rapped three times on its door and proclaimed, ‘‘Raise your gates, princes, and be lifted up, ancient doors, so that the King of Glory may enter,’’38 Damian confronted a moment rife with the tensions between the authority of the bishops as vicars of Christ, and secular authority. By claiming that the walls are the ‘‘exalted and the esteemed’’ he unmistakably associated these with the princes of Psalm 23. By declaring them an obstacle to the true Church, torn down by preaching (an episcopal responsibility), he was in essence asserting the primacy of sacerdotal over lay authority. At this point Damian’s sermon broke with the Carolingian interpretation of the liturgy, moving to a broader appreciation of the power

36

Damian, S. 72, 4, 79–81. Some form of direct address was most likely expected by the lay leadership (though probably not so pointed) and was incorporated into the Romano-Germanic Pontifical; see Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical 40.129; and Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 86, 295. 38 Ps. 23: 7. See Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical 40.14; Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 61, 242. Damian, S. 72, 4, 57–88. See n. 49. 37

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of the liturgy. The Quid Significet had interpreted the bishop rapping on the doors of the new church as a reminder of his apostolic position and episcopal duties.39 Instead, Damian used the occasion to deliver a powerful warning to the social elite. Damian heightened this sense of social reversal through his interpretation of the unction of the altar. He began with the conventional interpretation of the Church as being made of living stones.40 Like Jacob anointing the foundation stone of Bethlehem, so too the unction of the altar made the church ‘‘undoubtedly the house of God.’’41 Moreover, this represented the anointing of the body of Christ, that is the universal Church. The altar, representing Christ, was the head of the church and the building was made of living stones, the ‘‘inferior members’’ of the body of Christ.42 At this point, however, Damian went beyond his predecessors. He claimed that everyone who was connected by genuine faith to Christ acquired the dignity of a royal priesthood: anointed as priests since all received the oil of the Holy Spirit in regeneration (baptism) and as kings because they bore the standard of the cross on their foreheads.43 He pointed his listeners to the words of Peter (1 Peter 2: 9) and the song of the saints in Revelation (5: 10): ‘‘You have made us a kingdom and priests for our God and they will reign upon the earth.’’ This call was made more immediate by the object nos instead of eos.44 The challenge, then, was directed towards Damian’s present, rather than being confined to the biblical past. It was Damian’s listeners who had become the new kingdom, a new priesthood.45 39

Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 308–9; Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical 35.6–7. As it is presented in Quid Significet, Le Pontifical 35.5; Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 33, 36, and 307. 41 Damian, S. 72, 5, 89–94: ‘‘quod est procul dubio domus Dei.’’ 42 Ibid., 6, 106–10: ‘‘Nec illud ignorandum est quia, sicut altaris mensa ceteris lapidibus superponitur, in qua salutaris oblatio coram divinis obtutibus immoletur, ita Redemptor noster electis omnibus tanquam vivis lapidibus supereminet, et tanquam caput inferioribus membris inhaeret.’’ 43 Ibid., 5, 100–105. 44 Ibid., 5, 103–105. The manuscripts of Damian are unanimous in recording, ‘‘Fecisti nos Deo nostro regnum et sacerdotes, et regnabunt super terram.’’ Most of the manuscripts listed in the critical edition of the Vulgate read: ‘‘fecisti eos.’’ Hence, that is the reading chosen by the editors. However, several read ‘‘fecisit vos,’’ including the Fuldensis vel Victoris (Fulda, Landesbibl. Bonifatianus 1, a. 547; from Capua), ed. Robert Weber, Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Stuttgart, 1983). Damian’s version is in keeping with the immediacy of 1 Peter 2: 9: ‘‘vos autem genus electum regale sacerdotum gens sancta.’’ It is not clear which version of the Vulgate Damian might have had before him. 45 It is interesting that Damian does not retain the first person plural, but returns to the text when it becomes more openly political, ‘‘they will reign upon the earth’’; emphasis mine. It would seem that he is, again, trying to deliver a strong message, subtly. He may be consciously avoiding the charge of chiliasm, while trying to make an immediate call for reform. 40

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In short, Damian had taken the occasion of the dedication to deliver a strongly eschatological message. Having distinguished the Christian community from the original Israelites, he offered a radical vision of ‘‘the true Church.’’ This Church, a Church of living stones whose members were all anointed as priests and kings, was tearing down the walls of the exalted and the proud, the unfaithful and the resistant, and converting the entire world in hoc tempore.46 Damian had issued a subtle message with serious import for his listeners; he had questioned their role within the Church and its mission. Having quickly laid down this challenge, he stepped back, telling his audience that he wanted to ‘‘touch lightly’’ on the significance of various liturgical elements ‘‘of profound mystery.’’47 And so, for several minutes, he moved from one element of the liturgy and the church to the next, saying a few words about each. There is a sense of inventory, or cataloguing in many dedication commentaries, and here Damian’s sermon took on those qualities. At the same time, however, the section was clearly centered on many of the same motifs we have already begun to hear. Damian paused and apologized to his listeners lest he burden their charity with an excess of detail. The water and wine intermingled at the consecration represent the Old and New Testaments. As Christ turned water into wine at the marriage feast, so the law was instantly changed in our hearts.48 So, too, the salt represents the bitter old law, made sweet by the spiritual understanding of the gospels.49 Thus, Damian continued his strategy of pulling his congregation from Old Testament precedent to the present events of the dedication, and then distinguished the Christian community by pointing to the new, interior law. He explored the elements of that interior life: purity, humility, and above all charity, by means of the ornaments of the church and tools of the liturgy.50 Of the three dimensions of the interior law, the most important for Damian was charity. The fervor of charity is represented through the red fragments (rubei fragminis) which remind the faithful of Adam, who was made from red earth, representing both humility and charity. This charity must not be allowed to grow lukewarm.51

46

Damian, S. 72, 4, 77. Ibid., 7, 125–6: ‘‘tam profunda mysteria’’; 8, 156: ‘‘breviter perstringendo transcurrimus.’’ 48 Ibid., 8, 162–7. 49 Ibid., 8, 167–76. 50 Ibid., 8, 177–8. Compare with the Quid Significet for which hyssop also represents humility; Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical 35.26; Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 326; Damian, S. 72, 8, 179–81, and 3, 48–56, as discussed above. 51 Damian, S. 72, 8, 182–5: ‘‘Per speciem vero rubei fragminis, fervor innuitur caritatis. Hinc est quod Adam dicitur terra rubra, videlicet ut in vocabulo primi hominis homo discat quatinus, quia terra est, humiliter vivat, et quia ruber dicitur, a 47

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Damian directed his gaze to the building itself: what, he asked, was the sacramental significance of this church, which we both are and dedicate?52 Pausing, he warned his congregation: Moreover, consider, my dearest people, because this basilica stands firm from stones and cement; that if a machine lifting stone only piled on high a wall, and it was not bound by glue of lime and sand, at the attack of any violent person whatsoever it is inescapable that it would be overthrown.53

On the volatile Italian peninsula of the late eleventh century, this brief ‘‘political’’ allegory on the importance of cementing and fortifying a stone structure would have been appreciated by all.54 Damian used this striking image to great effect. What was the temple of God, if not the people of God? What were the stones, if not humans? What was the cement, if not the sticky glue of charity? Any edifice of good works would collapse in the face of temptation, unless it was held together by charity.55 It was charity that defined the Christian community and connected all Christians in fraternity. Not everyone so called belonged to Christ, not everyone who had the society of the Church was truly a member of the ecclesiastical body.56 ‘‘Charity alone,’’ Damian warned, distinguished those who belonged to Christ from

fervore caritatis geminae non tepescat.’’ This may be a visual allusion within the church being dedicated, as it is not clear to what these species rubei fragminis refer. Perhaps they are red porphyry, much used in ecclesiastical paving, altars, thrones, paschal candles, tombs, and bell towers, either as small tiles or larger disks and still visible in the pavements of the Desiderian church of St. Angelo in Formis, and the eleventh-century or earlier pavement of the lower S. Clemente in Rome. 52 Ibid., 8, 186–92. 53 Ibid., 9, 193–7: ‘‘Videtis praeterea, dilectissimi, quia basilica ista constat ex lapidibus et caemento: quod, si parietis machina in alta se subrigens solis lapidibus coaceruatur, et calcis et sabuli glutine non obstringitur, ad violentiae cuiuslibet impetum quicquid constructum est necesse est subruatur.’’ 54 Because we cannot know precisely where and when this sermon was delivered, it is necessary to explore such allegory in broad terms. On the significance of a new church to local aristocracy, see Tabacco, ‘‘The Churches as Instruments,’’ 167, ‘‘Thus the possession of churches not only gave the lord a religious insurance and increased his income . . . but it constituted one of the foundations of the social prestige of the aristocracy, together with the extent of the landed estate, the number of serfs and coloni, the availability of an armed cliente`le and, from the tenth century, the fortresses built on estates. Indeed, it gave those transient family groupings . . . a means of orienting the descendants of the founder around the stability of the churches founded and owned by them (and in particular around the favourite sanctuary of the family), so keeping alive the memory of a common descent.’’ 55 Damian, S. 72, 9, 198–204. This may have been inspired by the ritual act of mixing mortar by the bishop; Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical 40.50; Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 70, 78, 259. 56 Damian, S. 72, 9, 205–209.

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those who belonged to Antichrist.57 Damian was delivering a message especially directed towards a social and ecclesiastical elite. Castles, towers, monasteries, and churches – the domains of the powerful elite that provided safety in a violent world – were held together by cement. Likewise, the Christian community was held together by charity; fraternity depended upon it. It was charity that allied one with Christ and made one a member of his mystical body. Overtly, therefore, Damian was warning his audience that without charity they were outside the Church, of Antichrist and, so, condemned. Damian’s rhetorical observation that the walls of the church could be easily overthrown without charity pointed directly to the transformation from the personal charismatic leadership of reform (of which Damian’s early career is emblematic) into the kind of institutional charisma, such as the building of a church, that helped his contemporaries control the Italian peninsula and ultimately the city of Rome.58 Damian’s metaphor was a thinly disguised social threat: without charity, the structures that provided security would fail and collapse. In a culture accustomed to thinking about society as a body whose members must act in a unified manner, and where social disruption was, therefore, often understood to reflect the moral disorder of society Damian need not have overstated his threat.59 He simply needed to remind his listeners of the defensive structures, including the basilica, that surrounded them and to connect that timely reminder to the imagery of the ecclesiae societatem and the ecclesiastici corporis . . . unitatem.60 Thus, Damian impressed upon the congregation the present and eternal value of Christian charity. The final movement of Damian’s sermon was structured around the theme of the people of God as the temple of God. This theme was cast as a discussion of temple pollution and restoration. Damian prefaced this exploration of ecclesiastical reform based on Old Testament imagery by characterizing Antichrist and heretics as slavish, carnal, and literal in their

57

Ibid., 9, 214–16: ‘‘sed sola caritate discernitur qui scilicet ad Christum, qui ad antichristum merito pertinere credatur.’’ 58 As Italy went, in this regard, so, too, Rome: ‘‘In the tenth and eleventh centuries . . . the power of the aristocracy . . . developed precisely at that time on Roman territory the same tendencies which characterized the seigneurial development on a military and landed base in the Italian kingdom and in all post-Carolingian Europe’’; Tabacco, ‘‘The Churches as Instruments,’’ 175. For a concise summary of the shift between personal and institutional charismas, see Howe, Church Reform and Social Change, 161. 59 See Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s classic, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, 1957). 60 Damian, S. 72, 9, 208–209.

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following of the law.61 Damian, as from the outset in this sermon, continued to distinguish the new Israelites from the old. He concludes the sermon, ‘‘I will walk among them, and I will live with them, and I will be their God.’’ This is a Pauline paraphrase of Leviticus, the very old law Damian has condemned all along. Even as he drew on Old Testament imagery to assert the unity of the Church as the people of God and to assert the need for reform within that Church, Damian distinguished the new reformed community from the community of the old law. This distinction becomes all the more important as Damian concluded with a more conventional, pro-papal view of the reform Church. Before closing he raised the possibility that the consecrated church might become contaminated, either by bloodshed or some grave crime, and so need to be re-consecrated by the ‘‘highest priest.’’62 Likewise, we become the temple of God at our baptism, and, so, might become contaminated: And if it will touch the leprosy of grave sin attacking us, mother church is approached immediately, and the pontiff is beseeched, that the temple of our soul, which is seen to be violated and even destroyed by frightful polluting, is newly restored through the office of priestly authority and the remedy of worthy satisfactions.63

Earlier, Damian was willing to assert the royal priesthood of all believers to deliver a strong warning to the magnates of the community; here he emphasized the role of the office of the priest and the episcopal structure as the basis of individual spiritual reform, thus reasserting sacerdotal authority. The cardinal and bishop was no longer interested in social inversion as a tool for ecclesiastical completion, for entering the promised land in hoc tempore. Here, the priestly office became a sure conduit for divine power and, by implication, the priest became an icon for Christ. Neither doubt in any way the restoration of that spiritual temple, which through the office of the visible priest is supported, and through the effect of divine power

61 Ibid., 9, 220–24. This parallels the experience of the old law in general for Damian, as discussed above; ibid., 2, 18–30. Damian is concerned to defend the novus ordo of the cardinalate against the challenges of the schism of 1061, hence his insistence on reading spiritually, in accordance with the new law, throughout. Robinson, ‘‘ ‘Political Allegory’,’’ 84. 62 Damian, S. 72, 10, 234–40; at 240, ‘‘denuo per summi sacerdotis officium necesse est instauretur.’’ Here too the liturgy is seen as a metaphor for reform. 63 Ibid., 10, 245–9: ‘‘At si gravis culpae lepram nos incurisse contigerit, adeunda est protinus mater ecclesia, supplicandus est pontifex, ut animae nostrae templum, quod violatum atque destructum inmani scelere cernitur, per sacerdotalis auctoritatis officium ac satisfactionis dignae remedium noviter instauretur.’’ See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York, 1966) for a discussion of the use of disease and cleanliness in creating community.

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and virtue is filled internally. And Christ Jesus, who is the true king and priest who considers carefully the collapse and destruction in men of the evil spirit, renews and reforms (the spiritual temple) into something better through the abundance of a more full grace.64

The realization of the Christian community would come about through the action of the priest, acting as intermediary for Christ. The consecration of this church became a call to rededicate the spiritual, interior temple. In this way, Damian has himself become one of the priests carrying the ark of the Church around the walls of hypocrisy and infidelity, sounding the horn of preaching.65 As at the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem in the time of the prophet Haggai, the new, renewed temple was greater than the first. Christ is the royal priest who shall restore the temple to even greater grace.66 Damian called his listeners to reform the temple of their souls by seeking forgiveness at the hands of their pontiffs. More than restore his listeners, the pontiffs could bring them into full union with Christ.67 This is the fulfillment of the Christian life, and, by extension, an eschatological vision of the Christian community, as well. For Damian immediately pointed to the significance of the restoration of the temple for the Israelites: ‘‘Et veniet desideratus cunctis gentibus, et inplebo domum istam gloria, dicit Dominus exercituum.’’68 Damian concluded the sermon with an examination of various sins and their remedy. Eliminate vice, he admonished his congregation, and it would be replaced with the ornaments of virtutes.69 The image is a striking one, with many levels. The image hinged on the word virtus; as Damian used it here, it had a double force. In the first place, it was an active message, with a passive response: eliminate vice, and it would be replaced by virtue. But the image was of the redecoration of a church in ruins, the re-ornamentation of a neglected structure. In this sense virtus implied a miraculous force, or divine characteristic, where the individual becomes a reflection of a church ornamented with icons. In late eleventh-century Rome, it would be an apt image indeed. As one banished the ugliness of vice, a church was ornamented with icons and sacramental objects that brought one closer to God. It was an

64

Damian, S. 72, 11, 250–55: ‘‘Nec dubium quin illa templi spiritalis instauratio, quae per visibilis sacerdotis exhibetur officium, per divinae virtutis atque potentiae intrinsecus inpleatur effectum. Et Christus Iesus, qui verus rex et sacerdos quod collapsum in homine vel destructum maligni spiritus arte considerat, per plenioris gratiae largitatem in melius renovat ac reformat.’’ 65 Ibid., 4, 76–88, as discussed above. 66 Ibid., 11, 256–72. 67 Ibid., 11, 272–5. 68 Haggai 2: 7. Damian, S. 72, 11, 276–7. 69 Damian, S. 72, 12, 288–92.

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image of the perfection and interiorization of Christian cult, of the relation between grace and free will, as experienced in that perfected cult. The last few moments of the sermon centered on the specifics of the interior life. Depraved aspirations, rage and anger, luxury, vain thoughts, envy, libidinousness, and fornication: these vices must be eliminated as they destroy the temple of the heart.70 It is the bishop, the pontiff, who was the primary tool at the disposal of sinners for combating this corruption.71 The pontiffs of the Church, or rather, ‘‘that pontiff who holds principally the power of restoration,’’ was at the very center of the restoration of this new, interior cult of the temple. The pontiffs were the new priestly class of a restored temple. Damian concluded his sermon, aptly, by returning to Leviticus by way of St. Paul. He warned his listeners, Let our minds therefore be not an oven of obscene luxury . . . but let it be with the help of the omnipotent God, a spiritual hall of virtue, as much as it might be worthy that the heavenly dweller visit and even dwell in the temple of the heart dedicated to him. (Emphasis mine)72

The new Israel followed a renewed, interiorized cult. With the restoration of this cult, God and his people dwell together. Damian turned to the old law, as restated by Paul, to summarize this vision of the fulfilled Christian community. He referred to this text, thus sanitized, simply as the words of the prophet: ‘‘I will walk among them, and I will live among them, and I will be their God.’’73 The sermon taken as a whole focused on the restoration of God’s people. It is an eschatological, fulfilled vision of the Church. It was a vision of a Christian community in full union with God. It moved from a discussion of the fulfilled community, bound together by the interior law of charity, to a discussion of the individual Christian, as temple of God. If, in the former discussion of the Christian community, Damian seemed more willing to overturn social expectations, that was because he was delivering a pointed warning to the magnates of Italian society about the need for charity within Christian society. The sermon was consistent in presenting the priests of the Church as leading the effort to reform the Church and draw it into its fulfilled state. Indeed, by the end of the sermon Damian had strongly affirmed the power of the priestly class – and the central role of the episcopate, the pontiffs 70

Ibid., 12, 283–7; 12, 300–304: ‘‘Sit ergo mens nostra non obscenae luxuriae clibanus . . . sit, cum Dei omnipotentis auxilio, spiritalium aula virtutum, quam ipse supernus dignetur habitator invisere atque in templo dicati sibi pectoris habitare.’’ 71 Ibid., 12, 278–83: ‘‘illum adite pontificem qui restaurationis et totius humanae salutis principaliter obtinet potestatem.’’ 72 Ibid., 12, 304–308. 73 2 Cor. 6: 16 (Lev. 26: 12): ‘‘Inambulabo in illis et inhabitabo et ero illorum Deus.’’ Damian, S. 12, 309.

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(again, ‘‘that [one] pontiff ’’) – in restoring each individual Christian soul as a place of worship. Thus, Damian was incorporating the novel strategy of applying mystical allegory of political import to the exegesis of the dedication rite. Thus reformers began to change how the dedication was viewed in eleventh-century Rome, but in the next generation Bruno of Segni would be the first to capitalize on this new approach in Rome and he would do so at a time of intensive church building and dedication within the city. It is to the liturgical commentary De Sacramentis Ecclesiae of Bruno of Segni, exegete, cardinal, bishop, papal counselor, monk, and abbot, that we shall now turn.74

Bruno and the Context of the De Sacramentis Bruno of Segni, made bishop in 1079, was a devoted supporter of popes from Gregory VII to Paschal II. Bruno spent much of his time in the entourage of Gregory VII, and continued to serve under Victor III (1086–87), Urban II (1088–99), and Paschal II (1099–1118). Papal business brought him to Maguelonne in June of 1096 and he probably first met a cleric in the episcopal household named Walter at this time. Walter would become bishop of Maguelonne in 1104–05 and it is to him that Bruno addressed the De Sacramentis.75 In 1103, apparently after suffering an illness, Bruno entered the abbey of Montecassino over the initial objections of Paschal II. Even as a monk Bruno continued to travel extensively in service of the pope and in 1107 was elected abbot of that venerable monastery. It may have been that Bruno had hoped to position himself for the papacy, as two others had risen from the abbacy of Montecassino to the chair of St. Peter in Bruno’s lifetime: Stephen IX (1057– 58) and Victor III (1086–87).76 If Bruno, already cardinal and bishop, was hoping that Paschal’s successor would also come from that ancient abbey, he was right. He lived to see John of Gaeta become Gelasius II (1118–19) upon Pascal’s death. Years before the coronation of Gelasius II, the events of 1111 had changed Bruno’s relationship to the papacy. In 1111, Henry V approached Rome with a significant army and met with Paschal at Sutri, about 30 miles northwest of Rome after an aborted coronation ceremony. Recent scholars have shown

74

Bruno Signiensis, De Sacramentis Ecclesiae, PL 165, 1089–110. None of Bruno’s extensive works (vols. 164 and 165 in the PL) have been edited critically. 75 Reginald Gre´goire, Bruno de Segni: exe´ge`te me´die´val et the´ologien monastique (Spoleto, 1965), 30, 40, see n. 112. 76 Ibid., 44, see also 121–2 for a discussion of the letter Cuncti procul dubio preserved only in Peter the Deacon’s Chron. Cas. 4.42.

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that, despite a reputation for weakness and the criticisms of the other reformers, Paschal at first presented a strong, reform-minded position to Henry. In Paschal’s original position, Henry would lose the right to invest bishops and the bishops would give up their regalia. This latter term caused much confusion at Sutri and subsequently, but Paschal appears to have meant that bishops would no longer hold royal or civil offices while retaining their ecclesiastica, that is, the churches and lands donated to them.77 However, by April of 1111, after having been imprisoned by Henry, Paschal granted the emperor the right to invest bishops who had been elected without simony. Bruno, who had not been at Sutri in February, accused Paschal of betraying the reform movement. His reaction gave rise to a rumor that the synod to be held in 1112 would depose Paschal and elect a new pope.78 One can hear clearly the tension between the two in a letter of Bruno’s from this time. First, however, let this be known, that the lord pope neither loves me nor my council . . . and I say indeed what I have said to Gregory and Urban and in that thought I remain most firmly, and I hope of the mercy of the omnipotent God, because I will remain in this choice even to the end.79

Nonetheless, even as Bruno condemned lay investiture as heresy he attempted to assure Paschal of his ultimate loyalty: Thus I love you as I ought to love a father and a lord and I want to have no other pontiff with you living, just as I with many others promised to you. . . . I ought, therefore, to love you, but I ought to love more the one who made you and me.80

Given this tempered show of respect, Bruno argued that the privilegia of April 1111 violated religion and piety, and reminded Paschal that the pope himself had declared lay investiture heretical. Bruno urged the pope to confirm lay investiture as heresy so that peace might reign in the Church.81 77 See Robinson, The Papacy, 424–9. Robinson depends on U.-R. Blumenthal’s reading of Paschal’s position at Sutri: Blumenthal, ‘‘Patrimonia and Regalia in 1111,’’ in Law, Church and Society, Essays in Honor of Stephan Kuttner, eds. K. Pennington and R. Sommerville (Philadelphia, 1977), 12–16. 78 Gre´goire, Bruno, 52; Robinson, The Papacy, 429. 79 MGH Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum saeculis XI et XII conscripti, 3 vols. (Hannover 1891–97), ii, 565, esp. 3; see Gre´goire, Bruno, 53: ‘‘Primum autem hoc sciatis, quia dominus papa neque me diligit neque consilium meum. . . . Et ego quidem quod dixi hoc dico et in Gregorii et Urbani sententia firmissime maneo, et spero de omnipotentis Dei misericordia, quia in hac voluntate usque in finem permanebo.’’ 80 MGH Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, ii 564, esp. 2: ‘‘Ego enim sic te diligo, sicut patrem et dominum diligere debeo et nullum alium te vivente pontificem habere volo, sicut ego cum multis aliis tibi promisi. . . . Debeo igitur diligere te, sed plus debeo illum diligere qui te fecit et me.’’ 81 MGH Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, ii, 564–5.

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In 1112, after Paschal renounced the privilegium, Bruno remained unconvinced of the pope’s commitment because Paschal refused to excommunicate Henry. Paschal, in response to this criticism and schismatis et discordiae metuens, recanted his decision to allow Bruno to be abbot and compelled him to return to Segni.82 If Bruno had seen the abbacy of Montecassino as placing him closer to the papacy, this certainly put an end to that ambition. In any case, this must have come as a terrible personal blow and done little to endear Paschal to him.83 This is the context within which Bruno’s De Sacramentis Ecclesiae ought to be understood, although the exact date of the composition of the document is unknown. It was written after 1104, as it is addressed to fratri Galterio, Magalonensi episcopo and Walter was elevated to the episcopate no earlier than that year.84 Bruno refers to himself only as bishop and not as abbot, which could imply that it was written after he had been removed from Montecassino; however, Bruno appears to have rarely used the title abbot himself. The commentary is a belated reply to a question Walter had posed to Bruno while in Rome in 1104–1105.85 Bruno set aside the question, as he apologized to Walter, because he was aliis negotiis impeditus.86 It was not until later, when a hermit priest named Helbertus arrived from Walter that Bruno was reminded of Walter’s question, no earlier than 1106. Even if Bruno’s response were written as early as 1106, his decision to comment on the dedication of churches was a telling one. For, as he tells Walter, Many things in the dedication of churches, and many things in the other sacraments of the church, are done under a shadow and seem to be made a figure.87

82 Gre´goire, Bruno, 54–5. For a detailed discussion of the relationship between Paschal II and Bruno, see Glauco Maria Cantarella, ‘‘Bruno di Montecassino o il disagio del Primato Romano,’’ in L’eta` dell’Abate Desiderio, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, Miscellanea Cassinese 60 (Montecassino, 1989), 483–91. 83 Bruno’s brothers at Montecassino appear to have been ambivalent at best about him while he was abbot; see Gre´goire, Bruno, 55–6, and Heinrich Dormeier, Montecassino und die Laien im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1979), 112–13. 84 Gigalski places the commentary between 1106 and 1111. The earlier date is for the reasons given, but he does not fully explain his reasons for the later date. Bernhard Gigalski, Bruno, Bischof von Segni, Abt von Monte-Cassino (1049–1123). Sein Leben und Seine Schriften. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchengeshichte im Zeitalter des Investiturstreites und zur theolgischen Litteraturgeschichte des Mittelalters (Mu¨nster i. W., 1898), 282. 85 Ibid. 86 Bruno, Sacramentis, PL 165, 1091A. 87 Ibid., 1090C–1091A, ‘‘Multa enim fiunt in ecclesiarum dedicationibus, multa et in aliis Ecclesiae sacramentis, quae non minus quam illa, sub umbra, et figura fieri videntur.’’

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It is no mere coincidence that the liturgy for the dedication leapt to Bruno’s mind while contemplating ecclesiastical symbolism. Indeed, at this time Paschal II had begun an unprecedented building program within the eternal city. Taking his name from a Carolingian pope (Paschal I, 817–24) famous in the Liber Pontificalis for having reornamented the churches of Rome, the pope who built the church of S. Cecilia, the site of six of the ten dedications of the eleventh-century reform papacy, Paschal II had chosen to define his papacy in terms of a building program.88 While work remains to be done on eleventh- and twelfth-century Roman architecture, I have been able to identify twenty-six churches restored or built during the papacy of Paschal II.89 Of these, eighteen can be linked directly to Paschal; of those ten were certainly dedicated by Paschal. Another four churches were dedicated during his pontificate but can not yet be linked directly to the pope. Put briefly, the verifiable dedications of Paschal’s nineteen-year reign match those of the preceding fifty years and rival the number for the entire eleventh-century papacy. In addition, Paschal’s building activity would have had a much broader influence within the city itself than the previous dedications, which had been concentrated on the crypt of S. Cecilia. Paschal also dedicated churches in northern Italy, France, and southern Italy.90 It is little wonder, then, that when Bruno finally sat down to compose his commentary he chose to focus on the dedication liturgy. By 1106, Paschal had

88 Liber Pontificalis II, 430.III.22–7; 431.IV.28–30; and 431.V.4–432.VI.27 on Paschal I. Le Liber pontificalis; texte, introduction et commentaire par l’abbe´ Louis Duchesne, ed. Cyrille Vogel (Paris, 1957). I am currently researching the building program of Paschal II for another work. Dorothy Glass makes important connections among reform architecture, the liturgy for the dedication, and the contemporary crisis in ‘‘Papal Patronage in the Early Twelfth Century – Notes on the Iconography of Cosmatesque Pavements,’’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32 (1969), 386–90. Any student of Paschal II is greatly indebted to Professor Blumenthal; in addition to works cited above, see her ‘‘Opposition to Pope Paschal II: Some Comments on the Lateran Council of 1112,’’ Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 10 (1978), 82–98; The Early Councils of Paschal II: 1100–1110, Studies and Texts 43 (Toronto, 1978); and ‘‘Paschal II and the Roman Primacy,’’ Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 16 (1978), 67–92. Recent efforts at reevaluating the papacy of Paschal II are Glauco Maria Cantarella, Ecclesiologia e Politica nel Papato di Pasquale II. Linee di una interpretazione, Studi Storici 131 (Rome, 1982) and La Construzione della Verita`. Pasquale II, Un Papa alle Strette, Studi Storici 178–79 (Rome, 1987); and Carlo Servatus, Paschal II (1099–1118). Studien zu Seiner Person und Seiner Politik, Pa¨pste und Papsttum 14 (Stuttgart, 1979). See also Mary Stroll, Symbols as Power: The Papacy following the Investiture Conflict (Leiden, 1991). 89 See Hamilton, The Power of Liturgy. In addition to the works cited in note 15 above, see Ann Edith Priester, ‘‘The Belltowers of Medieval Rome and the Architecture of Renovatio’’ (Ph.D. Diss., Princeton University, 1990), 71 and 73. 90 On those in southern Italy, see my forthcoming ‘‘Desecration and Consecration in Norman Capua, 1062–1122: Contesting Sacred Space during the Gregorian Reforms,’’ Haskins Society Journal 14 (2003), 137–50.

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dedicated an altar in St. Peter’s, the church of St. Adrian (Curia Julia), and perhaps that of Sts. Alexis and Boniface; by 1112, Paschal would have conducted four dedications and more than a score of churches would be under construction; and by 1113, the city would have seen seven dedications, with more to come. The kind of commentary Bruno chose to create in this climate of intense papal dedications is curious because it has few papal references; the nature of this commentary may be why historians have neglected Paschal’s building program.

Damnatio Memoriae: The Silences of the De Sacramentis Bruno’s De Sacramentis Ecclesiae has three major themes: its discussion moves from the consecration of a church to baptism and confirmation, and finally to the significance of priestly and episcopal robes.91 Thus, by its very structure, it is also a commentary on the major issues of the late eleventhcentury reform: the significance of the episcopate and of episcopal investment. Even from its very outline, therefore, we can see that the work – addressed to a bishop, concerning pontifical rites, and discussing the significance of episcopal vestments – was intended to function as a kind of episcopal ‘‘handbook.’’ Through the rhetorical structure of the text, Bruno asked his reader to think about the consecration of a church in terms of the investiture conflict and the nature of the episcopacy. If the De Sacramentis were written after the events of 1112, its most perplexing feature would be resolved: the almost complete lack of reference to the papacy or to Petrine authority. It offers a portrait of the episcopate as the principal mechanism of reform while scarcely referring to the relationship between reforming bishop and Roman pontiff. In this latter respect the De Sacramentis diverges sharply from the ‘‘Gregorian conception of episcopacy’’ – an ideal, found in the writings of the reformers of the late eleventh century and early twelfth centuries, of both reforming zeal and strong papal discipline of the episcopate.92 Such an absence is extraordinary in a text written as a guide to pontifical liturgical significance by one of the leading reformers of the Gregorian party. 91 The De Sacramentis opens with a description of the consecration of a new church (1091) and an extensive analysis and commentary on the elements of that consecration (1092–1100). Following this is a brief exposition of baptism and confirmation (1100– 1103), and an analysis and commentary on various sacramental elements and the liturgical vestments of a bishop (1103–1110). Gigalski, Bruno, 282. Bruno may have included a discussion of baptism as a result of reading the Quid Significet, in which the dedication becomes a type of baptism. Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedications,’’ 181. 92 I. S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest: The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century (New York, 1978), 163–9.

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It is all the more striking since Bruno had written extensively on the significance of the dedication some time prior to 1100.93 In his De Laudibus Ecclesiae (also known as the Libri Sententiarum), Bruno envisioned an episcopal structure with the Pope clearly at its head and consistently drew upon images of apostolic authority. In that work Bruno considered the dedication in terms of Noah’s ark and contemplated its ecclesiological significance. Considering the ark’s pyramidal structure he observed: If anyone wishes to consider the orders of the Church, how above the laity are seated in order the clerics, above the clerics are the priests, above priests the bishops, above bishops archbishops, above them the patriarchs, and then finally the Roman pontiff is observed to sit above all, also in this same way, it is possible to understand how the ark of God is wide in the lower level, and narrowing itself little by little in cubits it is reduced.94

Likewise, when he discussed the dedication of a basilica he reminded his reader of the apostolic foundation of the Church, the source of Petrine authority (Matt. 16, 19), and that this tradition illumined the Church as well

93

Gre´goire, Bruno, 49 assigns his Libri Sententiarum (De Laudibus Ecclesiae) to Bruno’s Cassinese years (1103–11) because Bruno refers to ‘‘patrem nostrum Benedictum,’’ one time. PL, Libri Sententiarum, 165, 886A. Gre´goire himself observes, Bruno, 99, though without explanation, that Cava, Abbazia Santissima Trinita` 6 may have been copied out while Bruno was there in 1092 (for the dedication of the church) or in 1100. At present it will have to suffice to simply state that the manuscript was copied out hurriedly, as an independent book, almost certainly at the abbey, some time in the eleventh century, by several hands writing in both Beneventan and Carolingian miniscules. In addition, the work has three extant eleventh-century exemplars (S. Trinita`, 6; New York, Glazier, G 51; and Rome Biblioteca Angelica, 362) with at least two distinct traditions. The De Sacramentis, which is certainly post 1104, and thus theoretically a near contemporary, has no extant manuscripts in eleventh-century hands. William North, ‘‘In the Shadows of Reform: Exegesis and the Formation of a Clerical Elite in the Works of Bruno, Bishop of Segni (1078/9–1123)’’ (Ph.D. Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1998), in a thought-provoking discusion of Bruno’s corpus, assumes the De Sacramentis and the Libri Sententiarum are near contemporaries and so discusses them as a seamless whole (at pp. 340 and 341) or, at least, does not distinguish them from each other. While I cannot agree with many of his conclusions, North’s work correctly portrays Bruno as reducing neither the scriptures nor the liturgy to a mere tool of immediate political concerns. Nor do any of these authors wonder why Bruno, having written extensively on the dedication, would compose an entirely new treaty for Walter. 94 Sententiarum, PL 165, 881B: ‘‘Si quis etiam Ecclesiae ordines considerare velit quomodo super laicos clerici, super clericos presbyteri, super presbyteros episcopi, super episcopos archiepiscopi, super illos patriarchae per ordinem sedeant, et tunc tandem Romanum pontificem super omnes sedere conspiciat, etiam isto modo intelligere poterit quomodo arca Dei in inferioribus ampla, paulatim se angustando in uno cubito consumetur’’; emphasis mine.

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as supported it.95 De Laudibus Ecclesiae thus stands in sharp contrast to the highly restrained language of the much later De Sacramentis. In the latter work Bruno confined even his use of the word pontiff to three of the final sections on priestly vestments: Quid pallium significet, De vittis, and De summo pontifice. In the section on the pallium Bruno distinguished between pontifex, referring to all bishops, and summus pontifex. For bishops in general the pall (superhumerale) referred to the grave burden they bear; theirs was the burden of carrying the weak and the sinful. The bishops carried the burden of the whole Church.96 Bruno prefaced his reference to summus pontifex by noting that those bishops who do not lift a finger to bear the burden of others do not truly bear the pallium. Bruno then observed that our summus pontifex (Christ) was the one who, on being ornamented with the pallium, left the ninety-nine sheep to seek out the one stray. Understood, then, was the even greater responsibility of the pope to be worthy of the pallium.97 In the very brief section De summo pontifice, Bruno asserted that he did not believe that the pope wore purple robes because of his royal power but rather because Constantine once gave to Pope Sylvester all the imperial insignia, and so popes wore what was once worn by emperors.98 These few direct references to the papacy are ambivalent at best and, in fact, suggest a contrast between the earlier reforming papacy and a ceremonial papacy in the hands of the emperor.99 Indeed, Bruno’s cool treatment of this subject seems to be implying that the royal ceremonial garb of the papacy did not have a temporal significance and did not point to a territorial kingdom, but simply referred blandly to a historical event. By thus limiting the significance of papal vestments to their historical, literal sense, Bruno was taking a position on the regalia like Paschal’s original position of 1111 (that is, bishops would give up their regalia), but only in reference to the papacy. He was making a direct comment on the significance, more precisely, the lack of significance of the vestments the pope wore on the most important occasions in Rome. It is surprising that Bruno would consider so lightly the significance of the papal 95

Ibid., 895C, 895D, 896A, and 898A respectively. Bruno, Sacramentis, PL 165, 1106A. 97 Ibid., 1106AB. At 1106B: ‘‘Summus autem Pontifex ille noster tali superhumerali ornatus erat, qui relictis ovibus nonaginta novem, unam, quae perierat, quaerere venit, quam inventam propriis humeris imposuit et ad pascua reduxit.’’ 98 Ibid., 1108B. The full section reads, ‘‘Summus autem pontifex propter haec et regnum portat (sic enim vocatur) et purpura utitur, non pro significatione, ut puto, sed quia Constantinus imperator olim beato Silvestro omnia Romani imperii insignia tradidit. Unde et in magnis processionibus omnis ille apparatus pontifici exhibetur, qui quondam imperatoribus fieri solebat. Haec autem de vestibus sacerdotalibus dicta sint.’’ 99 This entire section seems to have been written when the question of regalia was in flux. So when Bruno refers to a papal regnum, he adds sic enim vocatur. Ibid., 1108B. 96

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regalia thought to have been given by Constantine to Sylvester and upon which much of the authority of the papal reform movement had rested. The relative absence of papal language stands out when the De Sacramentis is placed alongside the Carolingian Quid Significet, which made several strong assertions of Petrine authority and used the title pontifex throughout.100 In one instance, the anonymous commentator of the Quid Significet interpreted the bishop’s staff as representing sacerdotis potestas.101 This priestly power stemmed from Christ’s commissioning the apostles to go out and preach the gospel, taking only a staff with them (Matt. 10: 10, Mark 6: 8, Luke 9: 3). Later, when the pontiff rapped the staff three times on the lintel of the church building, the act was taken to represent apostolic authority over heaven, earth, and hell. The commentator quotes Matthew 16: 18–19, a passage of central import to the Gregorian party and staunchly avoided in the later Bruno’s commentary: You are Peter, and upon this petra I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, and that which you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you will loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.102

These two references combine to make the pontiff ’s staff a strong symbol of apostolic authority, both doctrinal and juridical. Bruno likewise connected the virga pastoralis with sermo divinis et praedicatio evangelica. Bruno, however, did not make the connection with Christ’s commissioning of apostolic authority; rather, he made his point more obliquely by referring to Isaiah 11: 4: ‘‘percutiet terram virga oris sui, et spiritu labiorium suorum interficiet impium.’’ By means of this reference Bruno retained the sense of teaching authority from the Quid Significet without introducing its sense of apostolic authority. This reference allowed Bruno to note that the bishop knocking three times on the door represented the Trinity evoked in the sacraments, and the bishop’s preaching (knocking

100 Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical, Quid Significet, i, 35. Even Amalarius of Metz (c.775–850/51) in his brief comment De Officio in Dedicatione Ecclesiae was not afraid to associate episcopus with pontifex, a commonplace to be sure but one that Bruno avoided. Amalarii episcopi, Opera Liturgica Omnia, ed. John M. Hanssens, SJ (Vatican City, 1950), iii, 98–9. Nor was Bruno’s younger contemporary Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141) concerned to distinguish the two offices when he expounded on the dedication of a church in his own De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei, Bk. 2, pt. 5, PL 176. 101 Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical 35.7; Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 308–10. 102 ‘‘Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram edificabo ecclesiam meam et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus eam et quodcumque ligaveris super terram erit ligatum et in caelo et quodcumque solveris super terram erit solutum et in caelo.’’ Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical 35.7, 93–4; Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 310.

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on the ears of the faithful).103 The episcopal reader, however, familiar with the pontifical and the Quid Significet, would have to ask himself why a man previously so concerned with asserting apostolic authority, such as Bruno, would have avoided the opportunity to assert that authority here by choosing such a relatively obscure reference. Further, the Quid Significet referred a second time to the passage (Tu es Petrus) in order to make the analogy between apostolic authority and the strong walls of the Church.104 Bruno, when confronted with the lapides of his church, chose to ignore the more obvious reference used in the Quid Significet and preferred to see them as signifying the Church built from living stones (vivis lapidibus aedificatur) joined and united by charity.105 The Lapis altaris is Christ and all his limbs, and so it was appropriate to put relics in the altar.106 Bruno again chose a more enigmatic reference over an obvious Petrine one when he discussed the hyssop used in sprinkling the congregation with holy water. He began this section by observing, ‘‘Hyssopus naturaliter in petra nascitur.’’107 Here Bruno was deliberately choosing petra over saxa. The anonymous commentator of Quid Significet had said, ‘‘Ysopus . . . est humilis, quae radicibus suis saxorum dicitur penetrare duritiam.’’108 For the anonymous commentator, hyssop represented the humility that enters our hardened hearts. Bruno chose petra instead, but was not at all interested in connecting this with Petrine authority, choosing instead a more obscure scriptural allusion: Hyssop is naturally born in petra: ‘‘Petra however,’’ the Apostle said, ‘‘was Christ.’’ Hyssop is the good herb which is born, and reborn, and rooted in Christ. Through this indeed all the multitude of the faithful can be understood who are rooted and founded in Christ and who cannot be separated or torn away from his love. For which [hyssop], what better can we understand than the bishop and the priests,

103 Bruno, Sacramentis, PL 165, 1094. Damian S. 72, 4, 79–81 used this image to declare boldly that the bishop was tearing down the walls of the haughty and elevated; see above. 104 Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical 35.47; Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 342. Damian allegorized these walls as the strong walls of a fortification bonded by charity, an extension of the Quid Significet’s commentary. 105 Bruno, Sacramentis, PL 165, 1092B. As does Damian, but unlike Damian, Bruno does not return to a reassertion of ecclesiastical hierarchy; instead he continues with the weak passage on De summo pontifice. 106 Ibid., 1100BC. 107 Ibid., 1093. 108 Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical 35.26; Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 326. In the Quid Significet hyssop purifies the law, while for Damian it was the cross that established the new law, making sweet the bitter waters of the old; see above. For the hyssop’s habitat they are probably directly or indirectly dependent on Isidore of Seville. See Joseph Hrbata, ‘‘De expositione missae Walfradi Strabonis,’’ Ephemerides Liturgicae 63 (1949), 146–7.

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those who obtain the greater dignity in the Church, ought so much more adhere to the faith of Christ.109

In this passage Bruno’s choice of petra and preference for episcopus demands an explanation. Bruno’s question was a rhetorical one. Who has greater dignity within the Church than priests and bishops? Who ought to be more firmly rooted in the rock (petra) which is Christ? Obviously the one with the highest dignity in the Church, that is, the pope, could best be understood here, since he sits in the chair of St. Peter: who better to be rooted in petra ? By choosing petra over saxa, Bruno called his readers’ attention to the appropriate answer to his rhetorical question. What is more, if Bruno had followed the style more typical of the commentaries and referred to all bishops as pontifex rather than episcopus he would not have been able to make his point. Without directly attacking the papacy, Bruno was able to imply a criticism of the papacy and assert the primacy of bishops and clergy within the Church. The rhetoric of the De Sacramentis only makes sense if we place it after 1112, when the reader can easily imagine Bruno shifting his attention to the role of the episcopate in consecratione ecclesiae. He was, at that time, out of favor with the papacy, with his own possible papal ambitions scuttled, and certainly not trusting Paschal II to continue the reforms he held dear.110 The episcopal rite of making holy (consecratio) a new church provided an easy metaphor for the role of the episcopate in reforming the Church. There could be few better ways to undermine Paschal than an exegesis of the rite of church dedication. For Paschal II was engaged in a building program and a ceremonial life unlike anything Rome had seen, or the popes had attempted, in the eleventh century. Bruno himself was acutely aware of the violent controversy and miraculous power that could erupt around the dedication of a church within Rome.111 For Bruno to have written a 109

Bruno, Sacramentis, PL 165, 1093–94: ‘‘Hyssopus naturaliter in petra nascitur: ‘‘Petra autem,’’ ait Apostulus, ‘‘erat Christus.’’ (1 Cor. 10: 4) Bona herba hyssopus, quae nascitur, et renascitur, et radicatur in Christo. Per hanc enim etsi tota fidelium multitudo intelligi possit, praecipue tamen illi per hyssopum figurantur, qui in Christi fide radicati et fundati, ab ejus amore divelli et separari non possunt. Per quod quid melius, quam episcopos et presbyteros intelligere possumus, qui quanto majorem in Ecclesia obtinent dignitatem, tanto firmius Christi fidei inhaerere debent?’’ Bruno chose here a third interpretation for the hyssop, quite distinct from Damian (Hyssop designates faith that purifies the secret heart; Damian S. 72, 8, 177–8) and from the Quid Significet where hyssop represents humility; Vogel and Elze, Le Pontifical 35.26; Repsher, ‘‘Church Dedication,’’ 326 and the Quid Significet (the healing humility of Christ, which is handed on to the Church, Quid Significet, 26). 110 Bruno, Sacramentis, PL 165, 1091. 111 Bruno dedicated a small chapel to S. Nicholas at St. Angelo in Formis in 1106, an event attended by violent controversy concerning his right to do so, and resolved by Paschal in Bruno’s favor: Chron. Cas. 4.28: 493(21)–494(10). Also in April, Bruno

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commentary on the episcopate and the significance of the rite of church dedication with slight reference to the papacy when the pope was embarked on a serious building campaign and dedicating numerous churches would have been a clear diminution of Paschal’s efforts. To undermine the liturgical import, the symbolic meaning, of the rich ceremonial life Paschal was constructing in Rome and abroad was to undermine Paschal’s own authority. If we return to the broader context of the De Sacramentis we can see Bruno contemplating not only liturgical symbolism but such symbolism as it was related to the investiture controversy. An examination of these sources will help us better trace how Bruno’s thought changes after 1112. Bruno began the De Sacramentis by recalling a meeting between himself and Walter of Maguelonne (1096?) where they first began to conceive of this commentary. When we, some time ago, were on the isle of Rome, in the house of the bishop of the Portus; and when in the book of Exodus we were reading of the tabernacle and the vestments of Aaron, a certain figurative signifying a great mystery, you began to wonder, and I began to wonder, what other things similar to these we saw done in the church, since now the old passes away and all is made new.112

Bruno produced much literature commenting on the symbolism of different liturgies and liturgical elements and so there is an abundance of proof that he had, indeed, given these things much thought. In a letter which could have been written no earlier than March 1110, Bruno connected many of the same sacramentals he interpreted for Walter in the De Sacramentis (anulus, virga, aqua, sal, oleum, and crisma) directly with the investiture controversy. The letter is addressed to the bishops and cardinals of the holy Roman Church.113 The latest datable reference Bruno made in the full letter is to the Lateran synod of March 1110, and specifically to Paschal’s reaffirmation that appears to have dedicated S. Thomas the Apostle ‘‘extra castrum Vallis frigide’’ (Vallemaio, prov. Frosinone). According to the Chronica (Guido of Montecassino), a woman was exorcized of a demon by the water Bruno had used to wash his hands; Chron. Cas. 4.41: 509(17–21). This account is immediately followed within the same section by a rather apocalyptic vision, from Germany, of the demise of the king of the Christians and the spread of error (Chron. Cas. 4.41: 509(21–32). This certainly serves to heighten the correlation among Bruno, the rite of dedication, and the politics of reform. Concerning the dedication at St. Angelo in Formis, see Hamilton, ‘‘Desecration and Consecration.’’ 112 Bruno, Sacramentis, PL 165, 1089–90: ‘‘Cum Romae quondam in Insula in domo episcopi Portuensis simul essemus; cumque in libro Exodi de tabernaculo testimonii, et de vestibus Aaron, typica quaedam, et magni mysterii significativa legeremus, coepisti mirari tu, coepi mirari et ego, quod aliqua illis similia adhuc in ecclesia fieri videamus, cum jam vetera transierint, et facta sint omnia nova.’’ 113 The complete text is in Ge´rard Fransen, ‘‘Re´flexions sur l’e´tude des collections canoniques a` l’occasion de l’e´dition d’une lettre de Bruno De Segni,’’ Studi Gregoriani 9 (1972), 515–33. MGH Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, ii, 565 is incomplete.

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anyone invested by a lay ruler would be excommunicated.114 All of this occurred before Paschal’s controversial reconciliation with Henry in 1111. Bruno’s tone in this letter, however, reflected none of the controversy with Paschal after 1112. Whoever wishes to know what the catholic and apostolic church will think about investiture, what it will teach, what it will judge and establish, let him read in the first chapter of that council held in the time of Gregory VII. . . . Similarly, however, even in the council of Pope Paschal II those clerics are all damned and separated from the communion of the faithful who have taken up [their office] from the hands of a lay person. The first and the last church concord well with one another, that which was done in the time of the apostles is done now in our own time.115

At no point in this letter did Bruno chastise Paschal in the manner we have already seen in his other letters after Paschal’s granting of the privilegium; nor does this letter hint at Bruno’s mistrust of Paschal, also a post-privilegium characteristic of Bruno’s other letters. In fact, Bruno is happy to compare the Church of Paschal with the apostolic Church (a comparison we have already seen him avoid in the later De Sacramentis). It seems most probable, therefore, that this letter was composed sometime between March 1110 and the privilegium of April 1111. If this is the case, it would demonstrate that just prior to composing the De Sacramentis Bruno was already considering the same sacramentals in light of the investiture controversy. Even if we cannot be certain of precisely when the above letter was composed, it gives us an excellent reason to place the De Sacramentis within this phase of the investiture controversy. Bruno argued in the letter that episcopal authority came from the Church and that a king could only add his aid and defense to this authority.116 It is not the king’s right to invest his bishops: When however the ring and staff are given by those and to whom they ought to be given, and when and where they ought to be given, they are sacraments of the church, just as water and salt, oil and chrism, and every other thing without which the consecrations of people and of churches are not possible.117

114

Robinson, The Papacy, 424. Fransen, ‘‘Re´flexions,’’ 530: ‘‘Qui autem cognoscere volunt quid catholica et apostolica ecclesia de investitura senserit, quid docuerit, quid iudicaverit et constituerit, legat in primo capitulo illius concilii quod temporibus Gregorii septimi pape factum est. . . . Similiter autem et in concilio Pascalis secundi pape omnes illi clerici dampnantur et a communione fidelium seperantur quicumque de manu laici suscipiunt. . . . Bene ergo concordat inter se prima et ultima ecclesia, idest illa que fuit in tempore apostolorum et ista que nunc est in tempore nostro.’’ 116 Ibid., 531–2. 117 Ibid., 532: ‘‘Cum autem anulus et virga ab illis dantur a quibus dari debent, et quando et ubi et quomodo debent, sacramenta ecclesie sunt, sicut aqua et sal, oleum et crisma, et alia omnia sine quibus hominum et ecclesiarum consecrationes fieri non possunt.’’ 115

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Bruno was thinking about the investiture controversy as a liturgical and sacramental issue just prior to 1111. Only the Church had the power to administer genuine sacraments and that power gave the sacraments their meaning. Therefore, the tools for the ministration of those sacraments are the exclusive domain of the Church, upon which true ‘‘consecrations of people and churches’’ depended. This letter to the bishops and cardinals of Rome gave further credence to interpreting the De Sacramentis as a contribution to the investiture debate. The letter also served as a contrast with Bruno’s silence on Petrine authority in the De Sacramentis. In this setting, we can imagine Bruno, disenchanted with Paschal and out of favor with the papacy after the compromise of 1112, re-envisioning for himself and his fellow bishops how to continue the reform of the Church. It would be the responsibility of the bishops to make the Church holy and to make the institution a sacred place. This is the consistent metaphor of the De Sacramentis: episcopal consecration of the Church. In a general sense Bruno put forth this metaphor by describing and interpreting the liturgy of a bishop consecrating a church. Bruno made this point within the individual analogies of his commentary. He combined a discussion of the greater significance of a bishop’s vestments with a discussion of the duties of a bishop to place his polemic within the context of the investiture controversy. Salt, placed in a child’s mouth at baptism, represented the rudiments of faith contained in the baptismal creed the bishop put to the faithful.118 The bishop’s staff represented his authority and responsibility to preach to his flock.119 Water also represented the bishop preaching to his congregation.120 The bishop’s amictus represented his chastity as did his mitra.121 The orarium represented the yoke and burden of Christ that the bishop bore.122 The tunica represented the direction of the bishop’s mind and desires towards heaven.123 The pallium, as we have seen, signified the bishop’s willingness and responsibility to take on the burdens of the weak and sinful members of his flock.124 The manipulum represented the good works of the bishop, and the anulus marked the bishop as both the vicar of Christ and as representative of the bride of Christ, the Church.125 Finally, the bishop was anointed on his hands and

118

Bruno, Sacramentis, PL 165, 1093AB. Ibid., 1094BC. 120 Ibid., 1098BC. 121 Ibid., 1103CD and 1107AB. 122 Ibid., 1104BC. 123 Ibid., 1104D–1105A. 124 Ibid., 1105D–1106B. 125 Ibid., 1107C–1108AB. 119

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this should remind him of his responsibility to be merciful and generous to the poor.126 This last analogy comes in the final section of the work, De consecrationibus episcoporum. This concluding section stands as the mirror of the opening section, De consecratione ecclesiae. The very structure of the commentary united the holiness of the Church to the holiness of the episcopate. The genre of liturgical commentary strengthened Bruno’s claim that the proper behavior of the bishop (allegorized from his precise ritual behavior) effected the consecration of the Church.127 The episcopal ideal and the ideals of the Gregorian Reform were reflected in the very vestments the bishop wore. Every bishop must vest himself in charity and mercy while bearing the burdens of preaching and the defense of the poor. In this final section, it is important to notice that Bruno did not allegorize any of the vestments in regard to the temporal authority of the episcopate. As in the section on the Summus Pontifex, this would have been in line with the original position of 1111 giving over episcopal regalia; but this was the position that Paschal had abandoned, precipitating the fallout between him and Bruno. Thus, Bruno was continuing to support the original position of 1111 and further undermining Paschal’s later position. That he denied any larger temporal significance to the papal vestments and that he avoided direct support for Petrine authority, his earlier position, both suggest a post-1112 date. Bruno produced a highly original commentary in the De Sacramentis. Concerned with personal, especially episcopal, moral action, the commentary operated even more forcefully on the level of ‘‘political’’ allegory.128 This was in the tradition of exegesis that had emerged with Damian and the papal reformers of the late eleventh century, and that Cardinals Peter Damian and Bruno of Segni brought to the understanding of the liturgy.129 Bruno’s conflict with Paschal marked the beginning of growing disenchantment among the older school of papal reformers.130 It was during the twelfth-century papal crisis that the battle to control the iconography of 126

Ibid., 1110A. In contrast to the ‘‘well-greased palms’’ of the papal curia? Probably not. 127 Though in a more allegorical way than some of his predecessors who were willing to link personal priestly holiness and sacramental efficacy directly. On Peter Damian and Humbert of Silva Candida, see Louis I. Hamilton, ‘‘Sexual Purity, ‘the Faithful,’ and Religious Reform in Eleventh-Century Italy: Donatism Revisited,’’ in Augustine and Politics, eds. Kim Paffenroth et al. (Lanham, Md., 2004). 128 For more on the originality and influence of Bruno, see the comments of Barton Brown, ‘‘Enigmata Figuram: A Study of the Third Book of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum of William Durandus and its Allegorical Treatment of the Christian Liturgical Vestments’’ (Ph.D. Diss., New York University, 1983), 160–61, and Gre´goire, Bruno, 104. 129 Robinson, ‘‘ ‘Political Allegory’,’’ 84–6. 130 Robinson, The Papacy, 67–73.

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churches and their dedication in Rome reached a fever pitch.131 If ecclesiastical symbols were perceived as powerful and worth fighting for in the twelfth century, it was a battle that was necessary and worthwhile because the meaning of the liturgy had been transformed by the preceding generation of reformers. Peter Damian articulated for perhaps the first time the very real significance the construction and consecration of churches held for the political and religious transformations of the Italian peninsula. That he did so is not surprising, for it was an era increasingly sensitive to the political and religious significance of the consecration of a bishop. Bruno of Segni would seize upon Peter’s model. But Bruno’s commentary makes clear the danger of such an approach: if Paschal had hoped to rebuild Rome and assert papal authority through the liturgy of the dedication, then Bruno could use his own broad reputation and influence as an exegete to mute Paschal’s voice. The Gregorian reformers gained influence by pursuing a more sacred priesthood and episcopate that was chaste, lived communally, and was independent of secular rule. That more sacred clergy performed more attractive sacraments and that gave those sacraments, including the dedication of churches, their appeal and their power. Symbols could indeed be powerful, but their power was inherently unstable, constantly needing to be reaffirmed and always open to reinterpretation. It was, very likely, here in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, and because of this inherent volatility of meaning, that the need was born for the great number of liturgical commentaries and legal commentaries on the liturgy that the twelfth century would produce.132

131

This is the subject of Stroll’s Symbols as Power. For a discussion of these, see Reynolds, ‘‘Liturgical Scholarship at the Time of the Investiture Controversy: [n.4]. 132

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Chapter 8

The Reform of the Episcopate in the Libellus to Leo X by the Camaldolese Hermits Vincenzo Querini and Tommaso Giustiniani Giuseppe Alberigo ‘‘A bishop is nothing more than he who keeps watch.’’1

I.

The Context

Following the election of a Medici as Pope Leo X on March 11, 1513, two Venetian Camaldolese monks, Tommaso Giustiniani (1476–1528)2 and Vincenzo Querini (1479–1514)3 sent the new pope a Libellus, in which they outlined reforms they hoped he would guide through the Fifth Lateran Council. The sixth session of this Council, the first held with the new pontiff, was reconvened on April 27, 1513 as a result of the impulse towards reform fostered by the restructured conciliar commission for reform. At a time when the decadence of the Church was apparent to all, petitions and projects aimed at Church reform readily multiplied. These included less well-known proposals, such as those of John of Segovia, Pope Pius II, Nicholas of Cusa, and Domenico Capranica, but also the better-known denunciations of Savanarola and the prophetic post-savanarolians. Also included among wellknown calls for reform at this time was the oration of Egidio of Viterbo (May 3, 1512), Pico della Mirandola’s De reformandis moribus oratio, the De veri pastoris munere of Lippo Brandolini, and the proposals of Stefa´no Taleazzi, who was bishop of Torcello (1486–1514) but resident in the Roman Curia.4 1 ‘‘nihil aliud Episcopus est, quam speculator,’’ Annales Camaldulenses, vol. IX (Venice, 1773), 669 [hereafter AC ]. 2 J. Leclercq, Un humaniste ermite. Le bx. Paul Giustiniani (1476–1528) (Rome, 1951). 3 H. Jedin, ‘‘Vincenzo Quirini e Pietro Bembo,’’ in Chiesa della fede chiesa della storia (Brescia, 1972), 481–98. 4 N. H. Minnich, ‘‘The Reform Proposal (1513) of Stefa´no Taleazzi for the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517),’’ Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 27/28 (1995–1996), 543–70. See also Minnich, ‘‘Concepts of Reform Proposed at the Fifth Lateran

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Another thread contributing to the context for understanding the Libellus is drawn from the general climate of Erasmian humanism found throughout Europe at this time, and specifically in Venice.5 Giustiniani and Querini, the authors of the Libellus, enjoyed a rich cultural and humanistic experience at the University of Padua and were part of a group of Venetians brought together by Giustiniani. They were diplomats on occasion, serving the Holy League (the alliance between the pope and Venice against the French) as representatives of Venice to the king of Castille and then to the emperor, before both underwent a spiritual conversion. Their conversion was precipitated by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the year 1507. After some negotiation, they entered the monastery of Camaldoli together: Giustiniani took the name Paolo in July of 1510, and Querini took the name Peter the following October. Querini’s career was to conclude prematurely in Rome on September 23, 1514, after having received and declined an offer to be made a cardinal.6 The Fifth Lateran Council attempted reforms against the spread of ecclesiastical abuse. Perhaps in part to encourage the effectiveness of reform proposals such as those of Taleazzi, the Council issued the bull Pastoralis officii on December 13, 1513. The reforms in this decree were confirmed by the bull In apostolici culminis, which was issued during the Council’s eighth session.7 During the ninth session, on May 5, 1514, the Council approved the bull Supernae dispositionis arbitrio, which was intended to reform the curia.8 In the tenth session, on May 4, 1515, the Council approved Regimini universalis ecclesiae, a bull against exempt religious orders, as well as the decree Inter sollicitudines, which dealt with books.9 Finally, on December 19, 1516, the eleventh session produced two more bulls: Supernae maiestatis praesidio circa modum praedicandi and Super religiosos et eorum privilegia.10

Council,’’ Annuarium Historiae Pontificae 7 (1969), 163–251, reprinted in The Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) (Brookfield, Vt., 1993) with numerous unedited interventions at Lateran V on the reform and Incipiat iudicium a domo Domini. ‘‘The Fifth Lateran Council and the Reform of Rome’’ from 1978 is now reprinted in Minnich, The Catholic Reformation: Council, Churchmen, Controversies (Aldershot, 1993). 5 See E. Massa, L’eremo, la bibbia e il Medioevo in Umanisti veneti del primo Cinquecento (Naples, 1992), esp. chs. 5 and 9 (121–85 and 240–63). 6 On July 4 Leo X confirmed the decisions of the general chapter of the Calmodese at Florence, verifying the purpose of Querini and Giustiniani at Rome. It is in this circumstance that Querini wrote the fragment edited by Jedin in Chiesa della fede, 497– 8. 7 Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Istituto per le Scienze Religiose (Bologna, 1973) [hereafter COD], 608–609. 8 COD 614–25. 9 COD 627–33. 10 COD 634–8 and 645–9.

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The Libellus ad Leonem X

II.

In 1513 Giustiniani and Querini quickly drew up a proposal for comprehensive reform, motivated by their inability to tolerate the decadence of the Church and the imminent election of the young Medici cardinal whom they trusted. Significantly, the Libellus was addressed to the pope and not to the Lateran Council. The original text is lost; the Libellus is known essentially through the edition of Gb. Mittarelli and A. Costadoni in the Annales Camaldulenses.11 The Libellus offers a systematic, if somewhat rambling, account of the vision of the Church held by the two Venetian Camaldolese. The proposal is not one of ‘‘precautions,’’ nor of ‘‘self reform.’’ The text transcends the frequent ‘‘moralism’’ found in the writings of this genre that involve the same ecclesiastical structures, redesigning the Christian Church. Querini and Giustiniani, still shocked by the disastrous pontificate of Julius II, warned the heads of the Roman Church that their salvation was in great and clear danger if ‘‘they were to consider it characteristic of a great pontiff to defend and enlarge the earthly power of the Church and to concentrate all their attention and care on this aim alone, neglecting before God the precious care of souls.’’ The two Venetian Camaldolese continued, those who do so certainly do not consider the nature of things. They do not judge according to the right criteria; rather, blinded by perverse customs and overcome by excessive love of present and visible things, they err radically from the moment they are not able to place true and lasting goods before ephemeral and vain things. They conclude that the Holy Church is not a community of the faithful, but an earthly empire, and that entrusted to the care and faith of the pontiff is not the salvation of souls, but the administration of earthly goods. Not only to Peter but, in Peter, also to you who now hold his post the Lord has not said to defend ecclesiastical prerogatives, to lay claim to cities, or to accumulate wealth, but to feed my lambs, feed my sheep [John 21: 15–18]. It is appropriate to defend the true rights of the Church, meaning to procure in every way the salvation of souls. What in fact is the Church if not a community of souls?12

11

AC 612–719. One of the first to make the most of the Libellus is J. Schnitzer, Peter Dolfin. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte de Kirchenreform, Alexanders des VI. und Savanarolas (Munich, 1926), 227–49. 12 ‘‘non Petro solum, sed in Petro Tibi etiam, qui nunc e ius locum tenes, a Domino dictum sit: non iura ecclesiastica tuere, non vindica civitates, non divitias cumula, sed pasce oves, pasce agnos meos, quamquam verae Ecclesiae iura tueri, est animarum salutem omnibus modis curare. Quae enim Ecclesia est, nisi animarum congregatio?,’’ AC 657.

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The introduction of the Libellus speaks to Leo skillfully as a legitimate pontiff who breaks with the recent past of ‘‘inane ravings (inania deliramenta), senile tales (aniles fabulas), and sleeping sickness (aegrotantium somnia).’’ Accept [the authors write], most blessed pontiff, the letter offered to you by the humble servants of your holiness, the hermits Peter and Paul. To whatever extent Jesus Christ approved the actions of the pontiffs over the most recent years – though we do not believe he did so – you will now find among these deeds only inane ravings, senile tales, and sleeping sickness. But if you would consider not what others have done, but how much it is necessary for a legitimate pontiff – which we do not doubt that you are – to carry out, he might find many things useful and something even necessary if he intends to carry out the duty that God has entrusted to you, not only with the nobility of name and the dignity of the person, but also with deeds.13

Giustiniani and Querini asked Pope Leo to consider not how the things that they wrote were said, but what they said, or rather what they had hoped to say, and to consider that they had only written to him, pope and pastor given by God, after assiduous prayer. The text of the Libellus consists of six parts and is arranged from the perspective of the duties of the pope, who is considered the central administrator and leader of all Christian life. Every aspect of these duties, therefore, is examined. The first part is dedicated to ‘‘The Power of the Pope and his Office.’’14 The second part examines ‘‘The Conversion of Idolaters and Jews.’’15 ‘‘The Conversion or Defeat of the Moslems’’ is the focus of part three.16 The fourth part deals with ‘‘The Union with their Head of the Seven Separate Christian

13

‘‘Suscipe Beatissime Pater Leo Decime Pontifex maxime Libellum, quem tibi humiles sanctitatis tuae servi Petrus et Paulus Eremitae offerunt. Neque enim aliud in admirabili hac exaltatione Tua, magnaque totius Orbis laetitia in eorum erga Te fidei, ac observantiae testimonium habuerunt, quod offerent. Hunc, si ad multas, maximasque occupationes Tuas respexeris, immensum fortasse volumen existimabis: Si vero ad ea, de quibus sermonem fecimus, animum intenderis, pro rerum magnitudine, ac diversitate brevem, jeiuniamque Orationem censueris. In eo autem, Pater Beatissime, si quae facere iam aliquot annos Pontifices consueverunt, a Iesu Christo, quod minime credimus, probabuntur, inania deliramenta, aniles fabulas, aegrotantium somnia reperies. Si vero, quae legitimum Pontificem, qualem Te esse non ambigimus, facere oporteat potius, quam quod alii fecerint, considerare volueris, multa fortasse utilia, quaedam etiam invenies necessaria, si Tibi a Domino demandatum munus, non solum nominis excellentia et personae dignitate, sed operis quoque consumatione implere desideras,’’ AC 612. 14 ‘‘Pontificis Potestatem, eiusque officium ostednit,’’ AC 614–21. 15 ‘‘Iudaeos, et Idolatras ad Fidam vocandes suadet,’’ AC 621–31. 16 ‘‘Mahumetanos aut convertendos, aut in pugnam vincendos proponit,’’ AC 631– 54.

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Nations.’’17 The fifth section is dedicated to the theme of ‘‘Reform of Christians within the Church.’’18 The authors consider this to be the part of the Christian family closest to the pope and the part for which he ought to care most. An analysis of the increase in the Church’s temporal power vis-a`vis the infidels is the theme of the sixth and final part of the treatise. This section consists of a polemic against those who would suggest that the pope give priority to temporal affairs over the care of souls.19

III.

Church Reform

The Church is constituted of many diverse members but, according to our two authors, ‘‘not one of its members is completely healthy.’’20 Many are the ills which afflict the Church’s members, but they can be reduced to two types: those that are derived from the libido dominandi (love of dominance) of a few princes, and those that have their source in the vices of religious. The ignorance, even at a basic level, of scripture, of the Church fathers, and of Latin is such that it is no wonder that in these conditions the clergy are teeming with errors. According to the Libellus, nothing can instruct people about matters divine and human as can the Sacred Scripture of the Old and the New Testaments. Because of this, the ancient fathers stipulated that they were to be read in church everyday, in order that the greatest number of Christians, regardless of their occupation in life, their inability to read, or the lack of books (in fact, at that time Christians did not possess the abundance of books that they do today) on account of which they were not able to read these kinds of things at home, could gather in the church where they would hear the word of God and thus advance greatly in the understanding of these things and in the correction of their habits.21 It should be the task of religious, unless they have been afflicted with the same sickness, to assist people in their ignorance, and certainly it would be their duty to

17

‘‘Septem Christianorum Nationes, quae a Romana Ecclesia sunt divisae, Capiti uniendas dicit,’’ AC 688–714. 18 ‘‘De Christianorum omnium, qui Romano obediunt Pontifici, reformatione agit,’’ AC 668–714. 19 ‘‘Temporale Ecclesiae Imperium per universas Infidelium Regiones augendum hortatur,’’ AC 714–18. 20 ‘‘in nullo enim plena sanitas est,’’ AC 670. 21 ‘‘nihil magis omnes homines de Divinis, humanisque rebus instruere, posse, quam Sacrosanctam veteris, novique Testamenti Scripturam, quae ideo in Ecclesiis quotidie legi ab antiquioribus Patribus instituta est, ut maxima Christianorum pars, qui propter alias vitae occupationes, aut propter legendi imperitiam, seu etiam propter librorum penuriam (non enim tunc abundabant, sicut nunc, Christiani voluminibus) minus haec domi legere poterant, ad Ecclesiam convenientes, ibi verbum Domini audierent, quo multum proficere in rerum cognitione, et morum emendatione possent,’’ AC 681.

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remove all superstitions, had they not instead learned to institute and foster perverse customs.22 There is no one who can properly improve and set a standard for intellectual endeavors which have been distorted, contaminated, and thoroughly tainted, except you, the one most blessed Father. If this is out of step with those who devote their energies to pagan literature, the nitpicking talents and sure-fire distortions of dialectics which are customarily styled sophistry, whereby the younger generation wastes both time and talent with no benefit to anyone, such an improved program of study, if nothing else, will have the potential to reform and to instruct a school of competent individuals. At your command, let individuals be prohibited in such a way that no one will take the initiative to lecture publicly on these arts in the future, if many commentaries by recent authors are nothing other than those which were diligently composed by ancient authors, but given additional exposure in recent volumes in a less desirable manner. This is especially the case in that area of learning which is communicated through quaestiones. Such books ought not to be granted any exposure at all. But some place of honor ought to be granted also to ancient authors, specifically, those who properly offer thorough examination of their material: if one should be permitted (I shall not say ‘‘to write,’’ but ‘‘to publish what one has written’’), only when worthy of publication having been approved by learned individuals designated by you; as in all intellectual pursuits the original authors are the preferred reading, not the expositors. The amount of time we spend in the diligent search for all commentators is both astounding and deplorable. We learn nothing from them that we could not grasp rather easily, if we had the will to sweat over the original authors rather than their expositors. If, Most Holy Father, you should institute these intellectual endeavors and others of a similar kind, such as your wisdom can in all respects prudently devise, you will offer much help also to pagan intellectual pursuits.23

22 ‘‘Religiosorum enim opus fuisset, nisi ipsi eadem infirmitate laborarent, populorum ignorantiae subvenire, eorumdemque sane munus esset, superstititiones omnes amovere, nisi perversa consuetudine institutere potius, ac eas fovere dicissent,’’ AC 688. 23 ‘‘Nemo enim est, qui depravata, contaminataque, et corrupta penitus studia emendare, recte instituere possit, nisi Tu unus, Beatissime Pater. Quae quidem reparari, et meliorem familiam instruere poterunt, si praeter eos, qui Gentilium litteris incumbunt, Dialectiorum cavillationes, ingeniorum certe depravationes, quae sophistica ars appellari solet, in qua sine aliqua utilitate iuniores et tempus, et ingenium conterunt, Te iubente, ita prohibeantur, ut nullus sit, qui deinceps eam valeat publice profiteri; si tot modernorum hominum commentaria, quae nihil aliud sunt, quam illa quae a veteribus auctoribus diligentissime conscripta, sunt novis voluminibus deterius explicata, in ea potissimum disciplina, quae per quaestiones traditur, locum omnino habere non permittantur; sed et veteribus auctoribus, his scilicet, qui legitime res ipsas pertractant, aliquis locus, honorque concedatur, si nemini, non dicam scribere sed edere scripta liceat, nisi ea fuerint ab aliquibus doctioribus, qui a Te instituti sint, approbata, atque digna, ut edantur iudicata; si in omnibus studiis non expositores auctorum, sed ipsi auctores potius legantur. Mirum enim est, et miserabile, quantum temporis consumimus, dum expositores omnes perquirimus, et nihil addiscimus de his, quae facilius addiscere poteramus, si in auctorum potius, quam in expositorum lectione insudare voluissemus. Haec, Sanctissime Pater, aliaque huiuscemodi plurima, quae Tua, omnibus prudentius, excogitare sapientia potest, si institueris, Gentilia etiam ipsa studia multum iuvare poteris,’’ AC 677.

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It will be of use if renewed attention is paid to the ancient customs of the holy Fathers and of the holy canonical decrees, taking care that in the places where literary studies flourish, there are those who teach Christian theology understood not as the cavil, Parisian discipline, but that pure doctrine of holy and canonical scripture. Moreover, they should naturally clarify obscure points of the ancient law and the prophets, and they should not be ashamed to explain the holy gospel and the apostolic writings.24

Ecclesiastical studies are reformed, in the view of the authors of the Libellus, by returning to the sources and by abandoning the intoxicating theologia parisiensis and the commentaries of the canonists. Turpe et indecens est, to assign to the care of souls someone who does not even know where to begin. The gospel alone should be preached, the authors insist, not personal opinions or the diatribes of the schools. Nothing is so efficacious for the reform of his subjects, the authors of the Libellus insist, than the prince’s own good habits. Let the pope, therefore, begin by eliminating harmful practices. Taking his inspiration from the Regula pastoralis of Gregory, let him abandon the way of his predecessors. He ought to observe four fundamental rules: legitimate election, an upright life, a positive example to preachers and to ecclesial institutions, and pursuit of the ideal of the good shepherd.

IV.

Reforming the Bishops

But, the authors of the Libellus insist, the Curia must also be reformed, including the cardinals, bishops, and male and female religious orders, Ecclesiam universam virginem castam exhibere Christo.25 The Libellus urges that no benefice be conferred on the cardinals other than their see. The pope can reward those who elected him in no better way than to free them from error.26 Those among them who do not live in a manner that suits their position, or who do not carry out their ministry appropriately (that is, with pastoral visits and teaching), should be stripped of their office and incarcerated. None among the many bishops challenges the fact (and we cannot write it without tears) that scarcely any trace of religion, of the truth and of Christian purity has 24

‘‘Proderit ad hoc, si antiqua illa Sanctorum Patrum, Sacrorumque Canonum Decreta instaurari curabis, quibus cautum est, ut in locis, ubi studia litterarum vigent, sint semper, qui Christianam Theologiam, non hanc Parisiensium cavillosiorem disciplinam, sed puram illam Sanctarum, Canonicarumque Scripturum Doctrinam doceant; qui scilicet antiquae legis, et Prophetarum obscura dilucident; qui Sacrum Evangelium, Apostolicasque Scripturas declarare non erubescant,’’ AC 678. 25 AC 693. 26 AC 694.

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remained near the Christian people, while there is not a single act, public or private, profane or sacred, that does not appear contaminated by superstition.27

Therefore, the Libellus concludes, the pope should ensure that no one is made a candidate for bishop for any reason other than the integrity of his life, the holiness of his habits, and his teaching concerning the scriptures. The same requirements should pertain to priests: no one should be ordained unless he has memorized the Psalms.28 The Responsibility of Bishops According to the Libellus, ‘‘Many infamous things are done openly in the Church, things so divergent from Christian truth, as to be almost contrary to it.’’29 The authors continue at a point further on in the Libellus, saying, ‘‘Bishops who permit such things to occur in their cities should be deprived of their office. Otherwise we do not think it possible to destroy the serpent, the disease of superstition, which though already widespread is still expanding.’’30 The Libellus urges that monasteries be once again placed under the authority of the bishop, who should be obligated to visit them personally and to carry out reforms in them. In this way pastors demonstrate that they are worthy of that name. When the practice [of the exemption of abbots, monks, and religious orders from the authority of bishops] was introduced by Saint Bernard during the pontificate of Pope Eugene, many protested that it was neither proper, nor licit, nor useful. Today, not only does experience show us that religious exemption is licit and proper, but also that it is most useful and even the best possible practice. However, in this present deprivation of all things, those who are subject to bishops, who are monks and other religious, are miserably aware that they have thieving wolves as pastors. When we say that the monks and other religious must be subject to the bishops so they will be led back to perfect observance of their rules, we know that it is first necessary that bishops learn to observe their own proper episcopal and 27 ‘‘Et nemo ex tanto Episcoporum numero obstat, ita ut, quod sine lacrymis scribere non possumus, vix aliqua religionis, Christianae veritatis, ac puritatis apud Christianos populos forma reliqua sit, dum nulla publica, nulla privata, nulla profana, nulla sacra actio sit, quae superstitione faedata non appareat,’’ AC 684. 28 ‘‘Legimus olim, quod ad sacerdotalem ordinem non admittebatur quispiam, nisi praeter alia plura, omnes Prophetae psalmos memoriter teneret, et qui ex psalmorum numero aliquem memoriae non mandasset, difficillime a summo Pontifice ad Sacerdotium admittebatur; nunc vero miraculum reputatur, si quis ex sacerdotibus aut omnes aut aliquos psalmos memoriae tenere reperiatur, cum et multi sint, qui neque legere illos commode valeant,’’ AC 698. 29 ‘‘palam nefandissima multa fiunt, eaque a Christiana veritate ita diversa, ut adversa penitus sint,’’ AC 684. 30 ‘‘si Episcopi, qui in suis civitatibus haec locum habere patiuntur, dignitate privantur; aliter enim tam magnum, tamque in omnes fare diffusum, ulteriusque continue serpentem superstitionis morbum tollendum esse non existimamus,’’ AC 688.

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pastoral rule of life, otherwise they will not assist, but will do grave damage to religious orders. In fact it would be wiser to leave the flock without a shepherd than to entrust it to wolves.31

Organization of the Episcopate By your authority, the order of archbishops and bishops should be made subject to the cardinals in such a way that every year or at least every three years all of the bishops will have to give an account of their administration to these cardinals. If in their judgment, the bishops do not live up to their responsibilities, either because they have not rendered an account of their ministry, or they have not visited the people entrusted to them, or they have not shown by word and example how to live an upright moral life, let them be made to fear the punishment of being deprived of their office and jailed for life, to eat the bread of sorrow. Let it easily be the case that those who are invested with the episcopal dignity might seek the worthy habits of bishops, and that he who participates in the honor of government might not refuse to bear its burden.

Choice of Bishops If instead of ignorance, superstition, avarice, ambition, and other vices of this nature under which undoubtedly many men of this order are laboring, Your Beatitude, Most Holy Father, wishes to introduce the opposite virtues in this order, and if Your Piety wishes that the whole church may have bishops as the divine word taught us they should be, that is, without sin, not prideful, not hot-tempered, not violent, nor litigious, not shameful, nor desirous of gain, but irreproachable, sober, continent, respectable, prudent, modest, hospitable, learned, benign, just, holy, faithful to the divine precepts and to the discipline of the sacred scriptures, who are able to exhort the faithful in proper doctrine and convince those who contradict it, it is necessary, we believe, that above all you carefully ensure that while you lead God’s church no one ascends to this office by avoiding responsibility, by the grace of princes, by rudely pressuring yourself, or for any other illegitimate reason, but that they assume this office only because of the integrity of their life, holy practices, and knowledge of holy scripture. In the monastery it is said that everyone must be accepted in the hope that he might make

31 ‘‘Neque enim alia de causa factam credimus subtractionem, exemptionemques hanc Abbatum et monachorum ac religiosorum ordinum ab episcoporum potestate, quam olim, cum ipsa fieri cepisset a sancto viro Bernardo, neque decere, neque licere, neque postremo expedire apud Eugenium Pontificem maximum multi conquerebantur, nunc non tantum licitam ac decentem, sed et utillimam et optimam experimur, nisi quod ea tempestate illi, qui episcopis subiiciebantur, pastores se habere sentiebant. Hac autem temporum, immo rerum omnium depravatione rapacissimos lupos pro pastoribus illi se habere, misere experiuntur, qui episcopis subiecti sunt. Unde cum subiciendos episcopis monachos atque alios religiosos dicimus, ut ad perfectam regularum observantiam eos reducant, episcopos prius tales esse oportere intelligimus, ut ipsi propriam episcopi atque pastoris regulam observare didicerint; aliter enim non prodesse, sed obesse plurimum religiosis ordinibus possent; Sanius enim est nullis quam lupis gregem committere,’’ AC 703.

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progress and better himself; however, none are to be admitted to the episcopate who have not already shown themselves worthy of the office. If those who aspire to the episcopate do not bring with them the virtue appropriate to a bishop, what good ought to be hoped from them? Adding dignity does not correct those who are already bad, but will only make them more wicked.32

Apostolic Visitation After this, in the future you should take care that the bishops will be frequently visited by the cardinals or the most worthy and blameless members of your household for the purpose of knowing their vices by diligently making inquest among clerics, priests, and the people who are entrusted to them, and if it is heard that they have erred in anything, or that they have fulfilled their office more negligently than becomes a bishop, they are to be corrected and, if necessary, to be deprived of the office which they failed to possess rightly. Moreover, if they are found to be guilty of a crime, they are to be judged more gravely, in proportion to its scale. Accordingly, those bishops who are visited frequently by you or by your legates will learn in turn to conduct frequent visitations of those clerics, priests, and others who are under their charge, to examine them, to correct them carefully, and to choose diligently those upon whom hands should be imposed. In regard to this matter, we can hope for the future, Holy Father, that you will command all the bishops that they should confer minor orders upon no one except those well-born and properly educated, those of good nature, those gifted with good habits, who

32

‘‘Archiepiscoporum enim et episcoporum ordo, si, Te iubente, Cardinalibus ita subiciatur, ut singulis annis, aut quolibet saltem triennio apud ipsos Cardinales rationem villicationis suae reddere episcopi omnes teneantur, et sub eorum iudicio, an aliter, quam Episcopum deceat, vixerint, et ministerium suum non impleverint, quique commissam sibi plebem non visitaverint, non verbo et exemplo recte vivere docuerint, dignitatis privatione puniri, et perpetuo carceri ad panem doloris comendum emancipari timuerint, facile eveniet, ut illi, qui episcopali fulgent dignitate, episcopi etiam condignos mores habere studeant; et qui congaudet honore ministrationum, onera quoque non recuset, AC 696. . . . Si itaque pro ignorantia, superstitione, ambitione, avaritia aliisque huiusmodi vitiis, quibus multos huius ordines viros laborare non ambiguum est, vult Beatitudo Tua, Sanctissime Pater, his vitiis oppositas virtutes in hoc ordine inducere, optatque pietas Tua, ut omnes Ecclesiae tales episcopos habeant, quales esse oportere Episcopos Divinus nobis sermo demonstraat, sine crimine scilicet, non superbos, non iracundos, non vinolentos, non litigiosos, non percussores non turpis lucri cupidos, sed irreprehensibiles, sobrios, continentos, ornatos, prudentes, pudicos, hospitales, doctores, benignos, iustos, sanctos, divina praecepta et sacrae scripturae disciplinam amplectentes, qui possint Fideles in doctrina sana cohortari, et eos, qui contradicunt, arguere; oportet, ut credimus, Te ante omnia invigilare, ut, Te ecclesiam Dei moderante, nullus ad hanc dignitatem ambiendi sollicitudine, Principum gratia, importuna Tui vexatione, aut alia quavis non legitima ratione, sed sola vitae integritate, morum sanctitate, Divinarum Scripturarum doctrina ascendat. In monasterio, ait quidam, omnes recipiendi sunt, spe proficiendi et meliorandi; ad episcopatum vero non sunt admittendi, nisi qui antea eo ordine digni sunt; nisi enim qui ad episcopatum veniens eas secum virtutes attulerit, quas habere episcopum oportet, quid de eo sperandum boni sit, non videmus; cum illos, qui mali antea sunt, dignitates non corrigere, sed depravare potius soleant,’’ AC 697.

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are adequately educated for the times. No one should assume the dignity of priest unless he is of proven virtue and learning.33 We see many priests who, because of the misery that oppresses them, poverty of life, or pressing necessities, descend to some occupation less worthy of a priest, to illicit work, or to some most shameful way of living, and are either on account of ignorance unable to discharge the care entrusted to them of the faith of the people, or, being distracted by their other occupations, they neglect them, or even worse, through their own wickedness they corrupt those whom they ought to correct and lead towards better inclinations. These things might not come to pass if the pastor and bishop were careful about them, and did not admit to the priesthood those who are lazy, or foolish, or who indulge in vices, and if annually or even more often, the bishop were to visit his priests in order to admonish, exhort, reprove, and encourage them.34

V. Remedies We can not doubt (as we now say) that you, Most Holy Father, are considering and preparing remedies for all the weakened members of the Christian society, each according to his infirmity. But in addition to the particular remedies required for individual members, we are certain that Your Holiness has inquired into and even obtained a particular remedy for the complete health of all members of the body. Among these, the first place is held by that remedy without which perhaps no religion, no order, no congregation, and no church can guard for long the rule of

33

‘‘Post haec cura futura Tibi est, ut frequenter a Cardinalibus, aut a dignissimis integerrimisque familiarum Tuorum Episcopi visitentur, et ad eorum vitia cognoscenda clerus populusque illis commissus diligenter inquiratur, libenter audiatur, si in aliquo deliquerint si negligentius, quam episcopos deceat, munera sua impleverint, et tunc corrigantur, et si opus erit, ea, quam recte possidere neglexerunt, dignitate priventur; et pro criminum enormitate, si quae in illis apparuerint, gravius etiam plectantur. Discent profecto, qui a Te, aut a Tuis legatis frequentius sic visitentur, et sollicite corrigantur, clericos, sacerdotes, et omnes, qui sub illis sunt et ipis visitare, examinare atque corrigere, et quales illi sint, quibus manum imponere habeant, diligentius inquirere. In quo sane negotio multum profuturum sperare possumus, si Tu, Beatissime Pater, episcopis omnibus iusseris, ut nemini nisi bene nato riteque educato, nisi bonae indolis, nisi bonis moribus praedito, nisi pro aetate mediocriter literis instituto minores ordines conferant; neminem nisi probatae virtutis atque doctrinae ad sacerdotalem dignitatem assumant,’’ AC 697. 34 ‘‘Multos enim nunc sacerdotes videmus, qui miseria qua premuntur, paupertate vitae, urgentibus necessitatibus ad minus sacerdoti congrua negotia, ad illicitas quasque artes, ad turpissimam quamlibet vivendi rationem descendunt, et eorum fidei commissam populorum curam aut ignorantia implere nequeunt, aut aliis ocupationibus distracti negligunt, aut quod deterius est, propria etiam pravitate eos corrumpunt, quos corrigere, atque ad meliora studia invitare debebant. Quae quidem non acciderent, si pastor et episcopus super eos invigilaret, et ignavos ac vecordes et vitiis obvolutos ad sacerdotium non admitteret; si quotannis aut etiam saepius in anno clericos suos episcopus visitaret, admoneret, argueret, increparet, corrigeretque,’’ AC 697–8.

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right practice and of holy education, without which it is not well or fitting to serve for long any part of this Christian society or all of the faithful together. This remedy, however, is the frequent celebration of councils.35 If, therefore, you wish to assist and care for all the members of the holy church, it is fitting to decree that every religious order and every congregation of religious fathers in the order frequently convoke and celebrate a council, which they call a chapter. Let every bishop call more often a synod of clergy and priests who are subject to them, in which, with the fear of God, he might be solicitous for the reformation of God’s order and the proper education of the people. Bishops with their senior and more influential priests should go to their respective metropolitan bishop on a set day for the celebration of a yearly synod. At episcopal or metropolitan councils one of the cardinals or the most suitable member of your household should often or always assist or preside in your name. Given that we believe it more perfect to the extent that it is common to all in the universal church, let care be taken that a universal council of the entire church be celebrated not only every ten years, but every five years. Without these, in our experience, the church of God could not stand; nothing else has led the church of God out of its best and most perfect state into its present misery than the omission of councils. . . . If the one who held the Apostolic See most assiduously observed this practice, the Roman church which is the head of all the joined churches might not be deprived of its most noble members, nor might such famous and excellent churches of Africa and Asia be divided from Rome, the mother of all churches, nor unknown by those who live in Rome.36

35 Shown through the resumption of the decree Frequens, approved by the Council of Constance in the thirty-ninth session of October 9, 1417, COD 438–9. 36 ‘‘Christianae Reipublicae membris omnibus languentibus, Te, Beatissime Pater, singulis pro singulorum infirmitate remedia excogitare atque praeparare, (sicut iam diximus) dubitare non possumus. Sed et praeter peculiariem singulorum membrorum medicamenta, quaedam etiam universalia omnibus simul corporis huius membris salutaria, ac multum omnibus profutura perquisisse atque iam advenisse Sanctitatem Tuam existimamus; inter quae primum fortasse locum tenet illud unum, sine quo nulla religio, nullus ordo, nulla congregatio, nulla ecclesia rectae conversationis, sanctaeve alicuius institutionis regulam custodire diutius potest; sine quo neque pars huius Christianae Reipublicae ulla, neque tota ipsa Fidelium congregatio proprium robur, et proprium decorem servare diutius valet. Hoc autem est frequens Conciliorum celebratio. Te igitur, si omnia sanctae ecclesiae membra iuvare atque fovere desideras, hoc potissimum statuere decet, ut omnis religionis ordo, omnis religiosorum congregatio frequenter Patrum, qui in eo ordine sunt, concilium, quod ipsi Capitulum vocant, studeat advocare atque celebrare; ut omnis episcopus eorum, qui sub se sunt, clericorum ac prebyterorum et sacerdotum omnium synodum saepius advocet, in qua cum Dei timore de ordinis sui reformatione, atque de recta populorum institutione quisquis sollicitus sit; ut ad Metropolitanum episcopum ceteri sub eo constituti episcopi, cum sacerdotum suorum senioribus, atque praestantioribus, quotannis ad synodum metropoliticum celebrandam statuto die occurrant. Quibus episcopalibus, aut Metropolitanis conciliis saepius, aut semper aliquis ex cardinalium numero, aut ex familiarium Tuorum probatissimus vir Tuo nomine assistat atque praesideat. Ut illud, quod tanto perfectius esse credimus, quanto commune est universali Ecclesiae, custodiatur, ut scilicet universalia totius Ecclesiae Concilia non solum quolibet decennio, sed omni quiquennio celebrentur: sine his enim stare Ecclesiam Dei non posse experientia didicimus; nihil enim aliud ex optima atque perfectissima, ecclesiam

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Thus, the Lord’s vine, instead of the sweetness of grapes, produces a bitterness like gall and the deadly venom of serpents. Indeed, what is needed is not so much that the vine be transformed by pruning the old branches, but that it be renewed by planting the best new shoots. There is in fact less work involved in growing tender, new vines that produce sweet fruit than in changing the bitterness of old fruit into sweetness. . . . While in fact the old vines will slowly diminish . . . so that after a short time the form of the church may appear completely renewed. And if you will to do such things, you will see these things come to pass. We believe that you, on account of a supreme desire, are informed about all the regions of Italy, all Christian lands, and that you will find men who are gifted in terms of doctrine and morals given every possible custom and doctrine. We propose to write out in your mind, as if in some secret catalog [the names of such men], so that when someone who holds the rudder of the church dies you always have at hand those whom you rightly ought to propose as a substitute.37 We trust that from the beginning of your pontificate you will pay particular attention to nominations and promotions as undoubtedly [on this depends] the future of the Church of Christ under you, as well as the course of your pontificate.’38

Dei ad eum, in quo nunc est, miserrimum statum deduxit, nisi huiusmodi Conciliorum omissio. In universali autem Concilio, si de totius Ecclesiae unitate, si de singularum ecclesiarum reformatione agendum sit, non videmus, cur, qui Christiano nomine censentur, et illi, qui magis, quam reliqui omnes, reformatione indigent, nimirum Graeci homines, atque sex aliae Christianorum Nationes ad hoc Concilium non advocentur? Quantum enim legimus, universalia Concilia cum celebrari priscis temporibus solebant, non ex Italia, aut ex Europa solum, sed ex universo orbe Patres advocabantur; unde et oecumenica vocata esse censemus. Quem si morem, qui Apostolicam sedem tenuerunt, studuissent servare, non esset Romana Ecclesia, quae caput cunctarum Ecclesiarum est, iam nobilissimis membris suis viduata, neque essent aliae tam clarae ac praestantes Africae et Asiae Ecclesiae a Romana omnium Ecclesiarum matre divisae, et his, qui Romae degunt, incognitae,’’ AC 707–8. 37 ‘‘Vinea enim haec Domini, quae pro uvae dulcedine, fellis parit amaritudinem, et venenum aspidum insanabile, non tantum est verierum vitium curatione in meliorem formam vertenda, quantum novis optimis surculis positis penitus innovanda; minor enim labor futurus est, novas teneriores vites alere, quae dulces afferant fructus, quam veterum amaritudinem in dulcedinem commutare. Tibi praesertim, qui ea diei hora, eo aetatis Tuae flore, ad colendam Domini vineam advocatus es, ut quos modo humiles surculos plantare incipies, eosdem altissimas vites videre possis, fructusque ex laboribus tuis desideratissimos abundantissimosque suscipere: Cum enim vetera quaequam paulatim deficiant, si nova Tu a veteribus diversa statuere decreveris, non post multum temporis fiet, pro veteribus novis semper crescentibus, ut tota innovata Ecclesiae forma appareat. Et qualem Tu Tibi ipsi illam facere proposueris, talem Te videre continget. Summo etiam desiderio Te omnes Italiae partes, omnes Christianas regiones iam perquirere credimus, et quoscumque viros moribus doctrinaque praeditos invenies, eos in mentis Tuae arcano seu aliquo etiam quasi catalogo describere censemus, ut cum aliquis ex iis, qui modo Ecclesiae gubernacula tenent, decesserint, semper in promptu habeas, quem loco eius subrogare debeas,’’ AC 712. 38 ‘‘Maximam vero in electionibus ac promotionibus hoc pontificatus Tui initio Te habere velle rationem iudicamus, quoniam omni dubio procul qualis futura sit sub Te Christi Ecclesia, qualis Pontificatus Tui cursus,’’ AC 713.

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The Libellus therefore offered a complex and cohesive program for the pontificate of Leo X, founded on the reform of the Church, from the perspective of an organic ecclesiology. In addition to the reform of Church practices, the Fifth Lateran Council in its final constitution instructed the pope to oversee ‘‘the state of all ecclesiastics and of their activities, and the reform of the universal Church, which has been usefully accomplished through us.’’ It is known that these undertakings remained a dead letter because of Roman sloth, only later to be swept away in the ‘‘protest’’ of Martin Luther. No trace of the Camaldolese Libellus remained, not even during the work of the Roman commission that edited the document Consilium de emendanda ecclesiae, nor did it resurface at the Council of Trent during its animated debates over Church reform. It only reemerged in the eighteenth-century edition of Mittarelli and Costadoni.

PART IV The Processes of Reform

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Chapter 9

The Church in the Roman Empire: Changes without Reform and Reforms without Change Claire Sotinel

To speak of ‘‘reform’’ in the early Church could appear to be doubly impossible. The notion of reform, as we understand it,1 is alien to ancient Christianity;2 and there is no institutional reality to which ‘‘the Church,’’ as a singular noun, could refer. The word has an obvious theological sense to designate all the churches, but the diverse Christian communities, albeit united among themselves in a visible communion, did not form a uniform and hierarchical whole in a homogeneous way. Thus we cannot speak of ‘‘reform’’ except in specific geographically and institutionally limited contexts. Nevertheless, if we consider reform as a voluntary effort to return to an earlier condition of greater purity, or to aspire to a more perfect state – whether this effort refers to individual Christians or to the Christian community3 – it cannot be denied that ancient Christianity did initiate processes of reform and could, at least in a certain measure, conceptualise such reform. I shall concern myself here with attempts at reform by Christian communities rather than with ideas of reform expressed by the Fathers of the Church. This pragmatic approach will allow us to observe the functioning of the institutional mechanisms not as yet well defined. We shall see that efforts at reform, by bringing into play the relations between churches, and later between the churches and the Empire, involved the need to define more precisely the sources of authority and the conditions of its exercise, and, in doing so, contributed to the transformation of the ancient churches.

1 The term ‘‘reform’’ made its appearance in Luther’s Reformation at first to designate only the restoration of discipline in monastic milieus. This does not imply that there was no notion of ‘‘return to an earlier state’’ before. 2 Gerhardt B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge, Mass., 1959). 3 On the various meanings of the word in the context of the ancient Church, the clearest account is Konrad Repgen, ‘‘ ‘Reform’ als Leitgedanke kirchlicher Vergangenheit und Gegenwart,’’ Ro¨mische Quartalschrift fu¨r christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte 84 (1989), 5–30.

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The evidence is vast, as every disciplinary measure and every doctrinal formulation can be brought into the field of our enquiry. The present study is limited to Western Christianity and proceeds by way of taking soundings in a varied range of cases which can be considered as especially significant in virtue of the richness of the relevant material they offer. I shall begin by defining the various areas in which the notion of reform can be applied within ecclesiastical life, emphasising the specific problems raised. I shall then go on to describe the processes which could lead to reform by considering concrete cases in each of the areas specified. My analysis of these processes will involve an account of the agents and this will lead directly to a concluding reflection on the balance – and the imbalance – between centre and periphery in the process of reform. It goes without saying that this study is far from exhaustive.

What can be called ‘‘Reform’’ in Ancient Christianity? The documents in which we can look for the notion of reform at work are those which request or declare authoritative decisions. Generally they issue from bishops addressing their flock, from metropolitans addressing bishops of their province or fellow-metropolitans of other provinces, or conciliar assemblies. To allow us to speak properly of reform, voluntary change must be involved. But, although expression of intention is not absent in normative texts, explicit formulation of the change is much more rare. The words for requiring change – corrigere, emendare, meliorare, recreare, regenerare, renouare, reparare, restaurare – are astonishingly rare in episcopal writings and conciliar texts. In the surviving canons, the most common word used to introduce decisions is placuit. Among the eighty-one canons of the Council of Elvira (305), more than seventy are introduced thus, while only two are concerned with a situation to be corrected. One is canon 43, which seeks to ‘‘correct a bad custom’’: the custom of celebrating Pentecost forty days after Easter.4 The other is canon 48, which is intended to ‘‘correct’’ the practice of making an offering at the time of baptism.5 This does not allow us to conclude that the remaining seventy-nine canons only state existing norms without enacting new rules and without the intention of correcting deviant practices. The normative ecclesiastical texts pose exactly the same problems as imperial legislative texts: the law pronounced defines equally clearly the infringements it seeks to curb. It is important, however, to note that the texts 4

‘‘Prauam institutionem emendari placuit,’’ Mansi, t. 2, col. 13. ‘‘Emendari placuit, ut hi qui baptizantur, ut fieri solebat, nummos in concham non mittant,’’ Mansi, t. 2, col. 13. 5

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only seldom provide for the enactment of the norm in a process of reform or of innovation. Like the canons of Elvira, most conciliar texts abstain from detailing the reasons why a rule needs to be formulated and from explaining what changes are involved by their decisions. While the Roman law always explains why a change is needed when a new rule is formulated (such an information can be found even in the Codes of laws), the ecclesiastical canons appear most often as absolutes: the placuit of 305 is repeated almost systematically until the end of Antiquity. The sense of reform, however, which is generally lacking in the canons, often finds expression in the kind of texts which we do not have for the most ancient councils: the prologues, the acts of the councils, and synodal letters. Thus the canons of the Council of Arles of 314, the first council called by the emperor Constantine, announce nothing of its intention except in connection with the African practice of rebaptising heretics6 (we shall return to this). However, in the letter they addressed to Pope Sylvester, the fathers of the Council formulated the reasons which caused them to legislate on points of discipline and not to confine themselves to replying to the question put to them by the emperor. The fathers had thus acted to unify customs they deemed too diverse,7 and this in fact involved introducing some changes. The introduction to the canons clearly indicates this, stating that the decrees of the Council were enacted ‘‘in order that all the bishops might know what they should observe in the future.’’8 To establish a norm to be followed in the future is in fact to imply change, at least potentially, that is to say, to initiate a ‘‘reform.’’ From the end of the fourth century, the necessity to correct abuses in order to return to the requirements of religion is more frequently expressed in synodal letters. This is the case at the Councils of Valence (374),9 of Nijmegen (394/6),10 of Rheims (439),11 of Vaison (between 441 and 445),12 of Arles (449/461),13 of Tours (461),14 and of Vienne (between 461 and 491).15 This becomes a recurrent feature of the councils of the sixth century, to the

6 The text has ‘‘De Afris, quod propria lege sua utuntur ut rebaptizent, placuit,’’ etc., ibid., col. 472. 7 Letter to Sylvester, Concilia Galliae A. 314-A.506, ed. Ch. Munier, CCL 148, pp. 4–5. 8 Canones ad Silvestrum, ibid., 9: ‘‘ut et omnes episcopi sciant quid in futurum obseruare debeant.’’ 9 Ibid., 37. 10 Ibid., 50. 11 Ibid., 63. 12 Ibid., 96. 13 Ibid., 133. 14 Ibid., 143. 15 Ibid., 150.

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extent that it has been possible to speak of ‘‘reforming councils’’ in sixthcentury Gaul. Such remarks apply not only to Gaul. As far as we can know, the rhetoric deployed by the general councils does not appear to be radically different. Whatever the date at which they were collected, some of the canons of Nicaea clearly assume an undeniably reforming initiative. Thus, for instance, canon 1, on the episcopal succession by maimed clergy: ‘‘if someone in good health has mutilated himself, let him be excluded from the clergy to which he belongs; and for the future let no-one be ordained who has acted thus.’’16 This formulation assumes a practice as yet not controlled by fixed rules. Canon 17 forbids the clergy to practise usury, in very similar terms.17 Canon 2 is even more clearly an instance of corrective reform, beginning ‘‘Whether by necessity, or on the insistence of some persons, several things contrary to the ecclesiastical rule have taken place . . . It is right that in future this should not happen.’’18 Canon 15 begins ‘‘The numerous disturbances and divisions have made it seem right to abolish the custom which, contrary to the canons, has got itself established in certain cities.’’19 Here we find the complete expression of a dialectic familiar in ecclesiastical decisions: allusion to an ancient canon, neither identified nor dated; to a recent arbitrary custom opposed to it; and to a conciliar definition which is, as it is here, a reformatio ad pristina. Canon 18, concerning eucharistic discipline, is constructed in similar fashion,20 while canon 20 corrects a custom (genuflection on Sundays and the days of Easter) without justifying this abolition except by invoking the principle of liturgical uniformity. To be sure, these six canons are a minority; but the declaration of the permanence of a tradition only appears in two canons,21 while the great majority is content to state a norm in an absolute manner, without explicit reference to any notion of change. The canons of later ecumenical councils insist even more on the maintenance of tradition, particularly in affirming in the first canon their respect of earlier councils. But we continue finding canons which allude explicitly to reforms, establishing new rules for the future (Constantinople I c. 3, giving primacy of honour to Constantinople after Rome; Chalcedon, c. 3, on the economic activities of bishops; c. 23, forbidding clergy to visit Constantinople except with the permission of their bishop; c. 25, limiting 16

Canon 1 of the Council of Nicaea. Canon 17: ‘‘the holy council decides that if anyone, after the publication of this ordinance, should lend at interest, etc.’’ 18 Canon 2 of the Council of Nicaea. 19 Canon 15. This refers to the prohibition of translating clerics. 20 Canon 18 mentions a practice ‘‘contrary to the canons and to custom’’ which has to be corrected. 21 Canon 7: ‘‘As the custom and the ancient tradition required the bishop of Aelia to be honoured . . . ’’; 13: ‘‘the ancient rule . . . ’’ 17

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episcopal vacancies to no more than three months; c. 26, defining the functions of the oikonomos) or reinstating the force of the ancient discipline for correcting abuses (Chalcedon, c. 19, on holding provincial councils). This incomplete inventory reveals that conciliar prudence does not exclude a consciousness of reforming intent, and that such a consciousness may be present even when it is not made explicit. Two aspects of reform are occasionally to be found in conciliar texts: the need to reform some abuse and the awareness of introducing new rules. This suffices to show that the idea of reform was not alien to bishops in the ancient Church. We can come to even clearer conclusions on the basis of episcopal letter collections of this period. If all innovations are altogether suspect, as Pope Stephen, writing to Cyprian of Carthage in 256, expressed himself in a famous lapidary sentence (‘‘nihil innouetur nisi quod traditum est’’),22 the need to change, adapt, or correct is often stated. It is enough to note here that although the idea of permanence and stability is clearly present in the normative texts, that of change is by no means absent, and that this change is presented both as a corrective reform designed to return to an earlier state and as a new provision designed as a norm for the future – thus encompassing both aspects of reform. The texts so far considered give a fairly accurate picture of the realms touched by reform: ecclesiastical discipline, church organisation, liturgy. Significantly, questions of doctrine do not occur among canons expressing change. More than in any other realm, the expression of faith is assumed to be immutably stable. In this area, innovations and new formulations are enacted outside institutional processes, at least until the time of the emperor Justinian. At the moment of decision, when a council or a bishop makes a statement, the doctrinal formulation can only take the form of a truth already known and established.23 We shall return at the end to the idea of reform in theological formulations. Meanwhile, the principal domains for observing the process of reform at work are those of discipline, liturgy, and ecclesiastical organisation.

The Process of Reform: The Case of Heretical Baptism (256–314) To analyse the processes of reform, we need to change our point of view and to look at concrete situations more closely. Here I shall examine the case of the baptism of heretics, from its emergence in 256 until the Council of Arles (314). In considering the stages of this controversy, well known especially 22

Cyprian, Ep. 74, quoting Stephen. C. Sotinel, ‘‘Le roˆle des expertises dans les de´bats the´ologiques du VIe sie`cle,’’ Studia Patristica 34 (2001), 235–49. 23

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thanks to the correspondence of Cyprian, we can display the process of reform.24 In Africa, in 254, a group of eighteen Numidian bishops faced with the problem of re-integrating heretical Christians addressed Cyprian of Carthage as their metropolitan. They had themselves baptised these heretics, but they wondered whether this was always necessary. A council of thirty-two bishops replied to the effect that in their baptismal practice they followed the rule established by their predecessors, for baptism conferred by heretics cannot save and therefore can have no validity.25 The question had already arisen some time before in Christian circles. Cyprian had already written on this subject to Magnus, a person otherwise unknown, who cannot be identified as a layman or cleric.26 In this letter Cyprian does not speak with episcopal authority, but gives advice as an expert: ‘‘Beloved son, we were greatly moved by the habitual and scrupulous piety with which you asked us, unworthy as we are to answer you.’’27 Further on he adds: ‘‘I have replied to your letter, beloved son, as well as my meagre competence allows, and I have exposed to you as far as I was able, my own views.’’28 Already his opinion was that baptism conferred by heretics, notably here Novatians, is heretical and hence invalid: ‘‘On this subject we can speak only to the extent of our faith, on the basis of the sacred truth of the holy scriptures; and our opinion is that all heretics and schismatics lack any power whatsoever.’’29 It is hardly surprising to see this council of 254 acceding to the views of the bishop of Carthage, now accepted as authoritative. His reply to the question raised is then justified by an appeal to tradition: in baptising heretics ‘‘you are following the just and unchanging law of the Catholic Church’’; our advice ‘‘is not a new judgement, but has been determined a long time ago by our predecessors and we follow their practice.’’30 Yet there is a gap between Cyprian’s scriptural quotations and his invocation of tradition: as the sequel in the debate reveals, the reference is to a council gathered at an unknown date by a Bishop Agrippinus of Carthage. As has been shown, the establishment of re-baptism of heretics

24 For Cyprian’s correspondence, the notes in G. W. Clarke, The Letters of Cyprian of Carthage, 4, Ancient Christian Writers 47 (New York–Mahwah, 1989), are extremely valuable. For the text, see CCL. 25 Cyprian, Ep. 70. 26 Clarke, The Letters of Cyprian of Carthage, 177–8 is inclined to think him a bishop. 27 Cyprian, Ep. 69, 1. 28 Ibid., 69, 17. 29 Ibid., 69, 1. 30 Ibid., 70, 1, 2: ‘‘sententiam non nouam sed iam pridem ab antecessoribus nostris statutam.’’ There are no less than eight scriptural references in the letter.

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was a norm established for Africa by the council of Agrippinus; the tradition goes no further back.31 In this non-polemical context (non-polemical because the Numidian bishops request confirmation of their own practice from Carthage), the discourse is one of permanence. Beyond the frontiers of Africa, however, the question was contentious.32 In the East, many bishops also practised rebaptism of heretics, whereas this was not the case in Rome. Moreover, even in Africa, the solution given by the council failed to resolve all the difficulties. The following year a Mauretanian bishop, Quintus, again questioned Cyprian, who conceded in his response that ‘‘certain of our brothers think that there is no need for a new baptism,’’33 and that they claim in this to be following an ancient custom.34 Cyprian did not dispute the antiquity of the practice of the imposition of hands, but he affirmed that it was related to circumstances which no longer obtained at this time: the case of Christians baptised who, after baptism, fell into heresy and subsequently wished to return to the Church. He went on to say that practices need not be based on tradition only, but also on reason,35 thus implicitly recognising that the norm adopted by the council of Agrippinus had, in its time, constituted a reform, that is to say, the introduction of a new rule to meet a new situation; thus imitating Paul who taught us and showed that there are conditions when revelation can come to a particular individual, bringing an improvement, and that nobody should obstinately cling to an opinion because he had once embraced it and held it since; rather, he should espouse ardently a new opinion if it is a matter of improvement and of greater good. For when better counsel is offered to us, we are not vanquished but instructed. This is especially true when we are concerned with the Church’s unity and with the truth of our faith and our hope.36

In his letter to Pompeius, Cyprian adopts a tone different from that in his letter to Magnus. This is not a consultation, but communicates an ecclesiastical decision. To his reply Cyprian attaches ‘‘a letter which he has written on this subject’’, and, above all, a copy of the synodical letter of the council of 255, charging his correspondent ‘‘to inform all the other bishops.’’

31

Clarke, The Letters of Cyprian of Carthage, 196–7. And perhaps in Africa, too, if the author of the treatise De rebaptismate, CSEL 3, 3, 69 is taken to be an African. As Clarke notes (The Letters of Cyprian of Carthage, 197) he invokes a uetustissima consuetudine as traditione ecclesiastica to defend the opposite position. 33 Cyprian, Ep. 71, 1, 2. 34 Ibid., 71, 2, 1: ‘‘Et dicunt se in hoc ueterem consuetudinem sequi.’’ 35 Ibid., 71, 3, 1. 36 Ibid., 71, 3, 2. 32

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At this stage of the debate we already have two projects of reform: one undertaken by Agrippinus, whose context is unknown to us but which we can see not to have brought about complete uniformity of practice in Africa, and one undertaken by Cyprian. The lack of uniformity, as well as the new conditions of the schism of Novatian, created a situation of conflict which made Cyprian’s reform necessary. As the subsequent letter shows, another council, of seventy-one bishops, had to pronounce again on the same question a few months later. This suggests that not all Africans were pacified.37 Cyprian, having come to a definitive position, sent a complete account – as he had done in 251 concerning the reconciliation of the lapsi – of this debate to Rome, accompanied by a collegial letter to Pope Stephen. Without appealing to tradition, Cyprian conceded that this discipline might be a novelty for some, obliging them ‘‘to put aside notions of the past and to change their view.’’38 So we have to do with a reform, that is to say a voluntary change for the better, to adapt oneself to a new situation. In institutional terms the letter to Stephen has all the usual ambiguity of the correspondence between Carthage and Rome. Cyprian addresses the pope with the words ‘‘cum tua grauitate ac sapientia conferendum,’’ but it is to inform him rather than to discuss with him. This is borne out by the dossier which accompanies the letter: the dossier of the decisions taken and put into practice. There is certainly no question of requesting Rome to ratify the African decision, for the conciliar decisions had already been published. It is rather a question of confirming the lasting communion: of founding one’s own orthodoxy on its convergence with another’s.39 G. W. Clarke is right to underline the parallel between this letter and the letter addressed by Cyprian to Cornelius in 251 to support the African practice, still new at the time, for reconciling the lapsi.40 The great difference is that the African position on the re-baptism of heretics differs entirely from the Roman. In this respect Cyprian’s letter ends with a revealing clause: he envisages a possible reaction on the part of those who ‘‘cling to ideas formed in the past, and who are not prepared to change their views’’; who maintain certain practices peculiar to themselves which have been adopted in the past without, however, breaking the bonds of peace and concord with their colleagues. ‘‘We do not compel anyone in this matter; we do not enunciate a law. For each bishop has the

37 Clarke, The Letters of Cyprian of Carthage, 212–13 identifies this council convincingly as the council held in April 256. 38 Cyprian, Ep. 72, 3, 2. 39 Ibid., 72, 3, 1: ‘‘Haec ad conscientiam tuam, frater carissime, et pro honore communi et pro simplici dilectione pertulimus, credentes etiam tibi pro religionis tuae et fidei ueritate placere quae et religiosa pariter et uera sunt.’’ 40 Ibid., 57; Clarke, The Letters of Cyprian of Carthage, 213.

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freedom in the government of his church to apply his own judgement and will, while having to render account for it one day to the Lord.’’41 As we may properly call the norms established by Cyprian for the baptism of heretics a ‘‘reform’’, its Roman stage has a double importance. On the one hand, it shows that communication with other churches – with which there are bonds of collegiality, not of subordination – is a necessary element. Such a step best expresses the bonds which exist between the sophisticated degree of the organisation of local churches and the ideal of the unity of the universal Church. In actual practice, these bonds are based solely on the circulation of information.42 On the other hand, the terms in which Cyprian expresses his indifference to uniformity are particularly interesting, for they distinguish explicitly the normative procedure of the African Church from the legal procedure of the Empire. Taking the letter of the bishop of Carthage literally, there is no central authority which declares a rule that must be followed, but rather a collegial expression of communities that follow the same rule, new to some among them, but accepted by all. The Roman response to the African position, as is well known, was not favourable. Stephen despatched a letter to Cyprian which is known only through its mention by the bishop of Carthage in his Letter 74. This is not the place to go over this well-known correspondence, but we must note that in the only passage quoted by Cyprian, the bishop of Rome is not content simply to present the custom of his Church, but demands that Cyprian conform to it: ‘‘if anyone, coming from whatever heresy, should appear before you, it is proper not to innovate on what has been received, and to impose hands on him in sign of reconciliation.’’43 While Cyprian had declared a rule of conduct, affirming at the same time that it alone was in accord with the truth and that he did not wish to impose it on anyone else, Stephen asserted in response a rule exactly contrary, which was to be applied by his correspondents. Of Stephen’s argumentation we know only what Cyprian wanted to refute: the argument about authority44 and about the weight of tradition, and the relations with heretics.45 This, however, is not what is of 41 Cyprian, Ep. 72, 3, 1: ‘‘Ceterum scimus quosdam quod semel inhiberint: nolle deponere nec propositum suum facile mutare, sed salus inter colleges pacis et concordiae uinculo quaedam propria quae apud se semel sint usurpata retinier. Qua in re nec nos uim cuiquam facimus aut legem damus, quando habeat in ecclesiae administratione uoluntatis siue arbitrium liberum unusquisque praepositus, rationem acuts sui domino rediturus.’’ 42 C. Sotinel, ‘‘La circulation de l’information entre les E´glises,’’ in Circulation de l’information et structures de pouvoir (Bordeaux, forthcoming). 43 Cyprian, Ep. 74, 1, 2: ‘‘Si quis ergo a quacumque haeresi uenient ad uos, nihil innouetur nisi quod traditum est, ut manus illis imponatur in paenitentiam.’’ 44 The question about authority, in particular the reference to the apostolicity of the see of Rome, has evidently caused much ink to flow. 45 Cyprian, Ep. 74, 4, 2.

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interest to us, but the process of reform is. Writing to Rome, Cyprian enunciated a new norm for Christian communities to Stephen, who not only rejected it, but at the same time sought to impose instead a reform of his own in extending to all the churches the discipline of his own Church of Rome. The result of this conflict was the rupture between the two churches, consummated when a new council held at Carthage in September 256 reiterated Cyprian’s decisions. Exceptionally, we have the individual sentences pronounced by the bishops who took part in this council.46 Five of them recognised explicitly the innovatory nature of the African practice,47 opposing consuetudo to ueritas, evidently in favour of the latter. More immediately, reform came to a standstill. Stephen failed to impose the Roman practice on all the churches, as Cyprian probably did not impose his beyond Africa. From 257 the resumption of persecution and, during the summer, the arrest and death of Cyprian put an end to the conflict. If the debate was, for a time, closed in Africa, the process of reform, however, did not come to a stop. While alive, Cyprian had alerted the eastern bishops, many of whom favoured the re-baptism of heretics. He had sent a Carthaginian deacon to Caesarea of Cappadocia, and received a letter from its bishop, Firmilianus,48 affirming his complete communion with Cyprian. Cyprian’s letters were translated into Greek and are found in eastern canonical collections. Local practice remained diverse, but the question remained open throughout the Empire. The last stage of the reform took place after Constantine’s victory over Maxentius and the legal recognition of Christianity that followed. At the Council of Arles called by Constantine to regulate the African problem of Donatism, the bishops published a canon concerning the baptism of heretics which made direct reference to the African situation. It said: Concerning the Africans, because, according to their own law they practise rebaptism, we wish that if a heretic return to the Church, he be interrogated about the creed; and if it appear that he has been baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, let hands be imposed on him so that he might receive the Holy Spirit. If on interrogation he does not confess this Trinity, let him be baptised.49

The step taken by the Council of Arles is significant. As we saw before, the general motivation for disciplinary decisions is to procure uniformity of practice,50 a uniformity which Cyprian regarded as unnecessary. Anyhow, the

46

Sententia episcoporum LXXXVII, Mansi 1, col. 951–64. Sententia 28, 30, 56, 63 and 77. 48 Cyprian, Ep. 75. 49 Council of Arles, canon 8. C. J. Hefele and H. Leclerc, Histoire des conciles d’apre`s les documents originaux, vol. 1 (Paris, 1907), 285. 50 See above, note 7. 47

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decision – on which the bishop of Carthage commented, ‘‘we do not wish to promulgate a law’’ – was henceforth given the status of law.51 The abolition of a law is a reform, as is the normative imposition of uniformity. Arles, however, went further: as far as we know, its decree differed from the norm enunciated by Pope Stephen in so much as it distinguishes between heretics who have received trinitarian baptism and others, thus implicitly taking up a part of the argument developed by Cyprian in various texts pertaining to the case. We could say that the Council of Arles completes a process of reform begun in Africa by Agrippinus at the beginning of the third century, remaining deadlocked in 256 at the end of the quarrel between Cyprian and Stephen, but present in the background in the following half-century. This process involved, whether linked or not, reform under both its aspects: establishment of a new norm to meet a new situation, and elimination of abuses in order to return to a previous condition.

The Agents of Reform The first agent of reform is the originator of the question which needs to be resolved, whether there is or is not an established answer, or where there are divergent answers. In the case of the re-baptism of heretics the documentation is entirely episcopal, as the act at its heart – baptism – is an episcopal responsibility. The case arose from the counsel sought by the Numidian bishops from Cyprian. Perhaps, indeed beyond doubt, these bishops had been under pressure, either from heretics seeking to return to the Church or from members anxious about the conditions for their re-admission. The original agents, however, have disappeared from the dossier.52 The second agent of reform is the provincial council, called by the metropolitan bishop to pronounce the necessary rules. At this regional level, there is a clear pattern of centres and peripheries: Rome, Carthage, Alexandria and so on, obviously functioning as the centres for local churches in their regions. But two factors balanced the central character of these principal churches. On the one hand, not all the churches in the Empire were contained within such networks. The council of 255 replied to the bishops of Numidia, but its decisions were not communicated to the bishops of Mauretania, still less beyond. On the other hand, the authority of conciliar

51

Above, note 38: ‘‘non legem dare.’’ At Arles: ‘‘De Afris, quo propia lege sua.’’ This is not always the case. Thus, in the even more complex case of the elaboration of a penitential discipline for the lapsi, the role of the confessores should be underlined, as well as that of the Christians who make their requests to them, all of which contribute to the creation of a new situation which requires the intervention of an authority. 52

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decisions derives from the agreement of its members, not the authority of its president. Thus the council itself is a centre for the Church, because that is where the bishops meet, and the bishops who express their accord there are an exact representation of the unity of the Church. Councils – necessarily regional before 312; either regional or ecumenical after – are the locus of the pronouncement of norms, that is to say, of reform, either if the norm is new or seeks to abolish an established practice. There is no doubt that the councils of 255–56 are in a sense Cyprian’s. But it is not without interest to note that if Cyprian was the first to pronounce his view in the very first letter he wrote on the subject, and presented it as the view of an expert, he did not assign to it the force of law until after the meeting of the first council. It would be easy, and profoundly anachronistic, to speak of manipulation or of disguised personal power. The collegiality of the conciliar institution reveals what is at the heart of the Church’s nature. It would be interesting, and even necessary, to undertake a specific enquiry into Roman decisions in their relation to conciliar meetings. If councils are the locus of the pronouncement of norms, what is missing from this account is the agency through which they are put into effect. In fact, can we properly speak of reform if there is no effective change in conformity with the decisions taken? The question of the application of norms is linked with that of their universality and is not peculiar to the life of the Christian churches. It is highly significant that analogous questions arise constantly for historians of Roman, including late Roman, law.53 In a certain manner, at least every bishop present at a council is charged with the duty of applying its decisions in his own community. But what about communities whose pastors were not present? This question is part of the problem of the diffusion of norms; a question which has never been subjected to systematic survey, even for ecumenical councils. At the same time, there is a contrast, almost paradoxical, between the lack of an articulate policy of diffusion of norms and the well-attested reality of the diffusion of information. On the one hand, in 256 Cyprian did not communicate the decisions taken that could concern them to the bishops of Mauretania; on the other, although there was little official communication, his correspondent, Bishop Pompeius, was well aware of the case on which he interrogated him. Likewise, on the one hand the decisions made by Cyprian and by Pope Stephen respectively remained limited within the spheres of their own regional authority; on the other, the debate was known throughout the whole Empire (Firmilianus of Caesarea in Cappadocia was taken as witness by Cyprian, but Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine had the pieces of the dossier before his eyes when writing his

53

See especially J. Matthews, Laying down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code (New Haven and London, 2000).

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Ecclesiastical History) and, more than fifty years later, it was still known to the bishops meeting at Arles. An extraordinarily wide diffusion, in both space and time, is clearly attested. The conversion of Constantine introduced a new agent, the person of the emperor, into the life of the Church and, hence, potentially, into the process of reform. We should not underrate his person and his role, even though the Empire’s becoming Christian did not change the multi-polar constitution of ecclesiastical organisation. At the most, this was formalised by means of the canons of the ecumenical councils and of imperial legislation. Beyond the level of the region, Christianity remained constituted of local churches, each centred on their bishop, but without forming among them a centralised hierarchy. Alongside the great hubs of the metropolitan sees, there were parallel hierarchies such as those formed by the northern Italian churches, which, although within the Roman communion, were not subject to Rome before the end of the sixth century. At the level of the Empire as a whole, the ecumenical council is what a provincial council is for the region. It is the point at which the communion of the churches is made manifest; it is not its institutional expression, still less the expression of a single Church. As a consequence of maintaining this multi-polar character of the Church, the emperor alone has the competence to call an ecumenical council, and the sole authority to promulgate a law in principle valid for the whole Empire, in effect diffused throughout all provinces. He would have been a centralising force in the Church, had his authority in ecclesiastical matters ever found an agreed formulation. This, however, never came about, and it is notable that no emperor before Justinian utilised this de facto centrality, accepted by all Christians since the end of the period of persecutions, to initiate any reform in the Church. The imperial legislation concerning Christianity appears explicitly as echoing the ecclesiastical decisions, never as the ruler’s initiative.

Centre or Periphery? If there is a level at which the process of reform is clearly centralised, it is that of the local church. In effect, the central agents of reform are the local bishops, to the extent that the non-episcopal individuals who may have had a role in initiating some novelty, or in questioning some existing arrangement, are often simply unknown to the historian. Occasionally they can be discovered, which is enough to prove that they existed. Thus, in the long debate over penitential discipline to be applied in the case of the lapsi after the first great persecutions of the third century, the surviving documentation allows us to observe the part played by the confessors – not all of whom were clergy – who issued certificates of reconciliation without consulting the episcopal authorities: an innovation which triggered a whole process of

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reform. Much later, monks could play an analogous role. On the whole, however, the episcopate monopolised the process of reform by not recording the activities of other persons except in so far as their reforms failed, or their initiatives were designated as heretical. In order to speak of ‘‘reform,’’ it is necessary that an authoritative decision be taken; and in the mechanism of this the bishop plays an essential part. He is the first to receive intimation of new aspirations or new opinions; he is the intermediary between Christians and metropolitan authorities; he takes part in councils and has the duty to apply their decisions. This local centralisation had apparently come into being by the mid-third century, and remained unchallenged until the end of the fifth century. If, meanwhile, some Christians who were not bishops played a part in the life of the Church, that is to say, exerted any real influence – such as, for instance, Jerome exerted – none of them exercised a reforming role strictly speaking, except as a remote source of inspiration. Thus the promotion of asceticism by Jerome certainly influenced Christian spirituality; but we cannot speak of ‘‘reform’’ here before the time when canons of councils sought to impose an ascetic mode of living on bishops, or, later, in the sixth century, the precepts inspired by monastic Rules came to be applied to all Christians. It is just in the late fifth and early sixth centuries that a new way of reforming the Church begins to appear: the production of canonical collections in which ecclesiastical norms are gathered and published. In a religious context which is more and more inimical to innovation, appeal to earlier authorities appears as a guarantee of orthodoxy. But collecting canons is not a neutral exercise: selecting, sometimes inventing from scratch, is a means of exercising influence on the life of the Church. Significant in this regard is the publication of the statuta ecclesiae antiqua. According to Charles Munier,54 their editor, notwithstanding that they are made up from borrowings from the most diverse sources, thanks to the uniformity of the reforming aims which inspire them, they constitute a coherent whole. In the humble shape of an anonymous compilation, the editor of the Statuta wanted to offer for the reflection of his contemporaries some suggestions, presented as authorised by tradition, directed to the religious reform which the councils of the sixth century would be seeking to enact.55

Even more interesting, among the reforming aims to be found here is to be noted the intention to limit the power of the monarchical episcopate by subjecting it to the double control of provincial synods and of the presbyterate. Scholars of the text are agreed in identifying its author as a

54 55

The Statuta are published along with the Gallic Councils in CCL 148, 163–88. Ch. Munier, Les statuta ecclesiae antiqua (Paris, 1960), 172.

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Gallic priest of the second half of the fifth century, perhaps Gennadius of Marseille. But if the author simply wanted to inspire his contemporaries to meditate, the canonical form of his collection allowed it to take its place in the archives of many churches among the authoritative texts and some of its canons passed into medieval canon law. It is in an analogous fashion that a number of reforms in the domain of the liturgy and the cult of the saints passed from the practice in one or other province into authoritative norms capable of being accepted as valid in much larger areas. The liturgical changes of the fourth century have often made historians speak of a reform.56 In fact, we can see them, for the most part, converge in the same direction. A greater conciseness, dramatisation of liturgical action, clericalisation of the Mass, and exclusion of lay people are evident. All these features tend to make one think of a reform conceived to adapt the liturgy to a new situation created by a new environment: the human setting – the growing numbers of the faithful; the architectural setting – the construction of great buildings, capable of being fitted out, leading to the invention of liturgical arrangements such as the presbyteral bench, liturgical barriers, raised apses, and so on; the institutional setting – development of the clerical hierarchy and stratification of Christian society, influencing the shape of common prayer, the role of the deacon, and the like. Numerous studies of particular cases, however, attest to local initiatives and the persistence of regional variety. No doubt there were pressures towards uniformity. Thus canon 20 of Nicaea forbade kneeling for prayer during Pentecost in order to promote uniformity. But all in all, the diversity of liturgy is generally recognised. It is enough to recall Ambrose’s reassurance in reply to Augustine’s worry about differences in the practices between Africa and Milan in the commemoration of the martyrs.57 This well-known case suggests that liturgical peculiarities were perceived as expressions of belonging to different geographical and cultural areas, with different religious sensibilities, and respected as such. In Italy, too, diversity of observance remained the rule. There is no trace of any policy to impose unity until the correspondence of Innocent I with Decentius, the bishop of Gubbio.58 Even then, Innocent acted only after Decentius adressed him a question. Victor Saxer rightly concludes his study of the Mass and the problem of its reform with the remark that it is not possible to speak of Church reform in the fourth century. The situation

56

V. Saxer, ‘‘Le culte chre´tien au IVe sie`cle: la messe et le proble`me de sa re´forme,’’ in Les transformations de la socie´te´ chre´tienne au IVe sie`cle. Commission internationale d’histoire eccle´siastique compare´e. Congre`s de Varsovie, 25 juin – 1er juillet 1978. Section I (Miscellanea historiae ecclesiasticae 6) (Brussels, 1983). 57 Augustine, Ep. 36, 14; CSEL 34 (2), 62. 58 Innocent I, Ep. 25; PL 20, cols. 551–61.

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was not different in the pontificate of Gregory the Great, who usually accepted variety of rites and practices because, as he put it when writing to Bishop Leander of Seville, ‘‘united in one faith, diversity of usages does no harm.’’59 In the meantime, texts such as the Gelasian canon or, in the matter of the cult of the saints, the hieronymian martyrology, had begun to circulate and to become authoritative, thus modifying the process of reform and introducing into it agents unknown to us. Such an oblique way to challenge the episcopal monopoly of reform reveals the extent and the diversity in the evolution of early Christianity. Later in the sixth century, the central role of the bishops came to be questioned not only by the anonymous authors of the canonical collections but by the higher authority of councils, the emperor, and, in the West, the bishop of Rome. But the way was long before any kind of centralisation was achieved beyond the local level. If we lay weight on the geographical dimension, it is in fact clear that there is no centralised reform in the ancient Church. Reforms arise from situations of crisis which need resolving, whether by restoring an ancient discipline or by pronouncing new rules. Reform is inspired by local agents who act locally. Only later on does the process spread over a wider area. This happens not through a central organisation, nor even through a real aspiration for uniformity, but because the lack of a unitary or centralised institutional organisation in the Church requires visible communion among the churches. What has been decided must be made public in order to manifest that the communion is maintained. This stage is both informal and an impulse towards organisation. It is informal in so much as it takes place, as we have seen in looking at the relations between Rome and Carthage, when decisions have already been taken and without demanding anything specific from the other party except the remaining in communion. It is also an impulse towards organisation because it obliges the other party to align itself and often to respond. In the end, sometimes a long time after the start of the debate (we have noted this in the case of the interval between the quarrel between Stephen and Cyprian and the Council of Arles) decisions are made which claim to be valid for all the churches. In this process there are two elements of centralisation. First, the greatest churches are the first to be informed and, for the most part, to react. We have noticed this clearly in the case of the debate over the baptism of heretics and many other occasions also show it. This is not, however, the case universally. Sometimes, just as one of the great churches, so a see whose bishop is eminent can be informed. Thus in 372 Basil of Caesarea addressed the bishops of Rome, Milan, and Aquileia at the same

59

Gregory, Ep. I, 41. On Gregory’s attitude towards ‘‘diversity of practices,’’ see R. Markus, Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge, 1997), 72–5.

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time to keep them informed of his difficulties with the local authorities.60 This indicates the renown of such sees, rather than any particular hierarchical rank. In the course of time and councils, however, the network of the greatest churches came gradually to assume a more definite hierarchical organisation. Along with formulations of faith, patriarchal geography is one of the commonest subjects dealt with by ecumenical councils. Second, uniformity among the churches became more and more an imperial requirement and, as we have seen, the emperor was in a position to be the effective centre of the churches of the Empire. The outcome of this evolution can be seen in the reign of the emperor Justinian, who was the first to undertake theological initiatives to remedy divisions over their position in regard to the Council of Chalcedon, which were tearing apart the eastern churches. As can be seen in the correspondence exchanged between Rome and Constantinople, from 520 Justinian began to formulate theological positions and proposed them for adoption by the churches.61 Such a policy would in the end lead to the condemnation of the Three Chapters in 553. This is not the place to delve into the huge dossier of the Three Chapters, but we may underline two of its features directly related to the subject of our discussion. Wishing to reconsider some of the condemnations pronounced by the Council of Chalcedon, Justinian wished explicitly to correct errors long held in the churches – that is to say, to impose reform. But this was the first time that the process of reform was thus applied in the domain of doctrine. On the other hand, this reforming intention came up against absolute opposition in the West. This was based, essentially, on the principle recognised by experts as well as ecclesiastical authorities that nothing whatever could be modified either in the doctrinal content of conciliar definitions or the authority of councils. As Ferrandus, the Carthaginian deacon, wrote: ‘‘the whole of the Council of Chalcedon, for the Council at Chalcedon is what is at issue, must be maintained intact.’’62 In the West, in the doctrinal domain it is not the centralised reform that is at issue; the very possibility of reform itself is excluded. More explicitly than in the domain of disciplinary or liturgical reform, which are allowed in the guise of canonical collections or apocryphal texts intended to promote one or other reforming intention, in the domain of doctrine Pope Stephen’s view was decisive: nihil innouetur.63

60

Basil of Cesarea, Ep. 91. Letter of Justinian to Hormisdas, Collectio Avellana 235, CSEL 35, concerned with the theopaschite formula (‘‘one of the Trinity was crucified’’), which the pope refused to sanction as orthodox. 62 Ferrandus, Ep. 6. 63 See above, note 43. 61

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Several points emerge from this enquiry. First, in the government of the churches and of the exercise of collegiality, the idea and the practice of reform are less rare than one might assume, even though they are most frequently formulated in terms of reform ad pristina, not ad melioranda. Even this latter is not, however, absent. When Cyprian’s position on re-baptism was abandoned in the fourth century, his arguments in favour of reason and freedom to adapt ecclesiastical practice to existing conditions did not lose its force. Conversely, the high value set on tradition, at least from the fifth century, seems to have weakened this acceptance of reform as necessary to the life of the Church. After Chalcedon, overtly reforming discourse, except in the sphere of morals, became rare in the West, if not impossible. Second, we must note the complexity of the problem of centre and periphery. The strong tendency towards concentrating authority in the bishop, starting well before Constantine, had as a corollary the absence of centralisation among the churches. The aspirations to authority of the great churches of Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria found themselves constantly opposed by the reality of local decisions and developments and the sharp consciousness – shared also by the greater churches – of the value of consensus and shared communion. At every moment of Christian history this tension between centrifugal and centripetal forces is at work, neither force eliminating the other. The sole indisputable centre, the emperor, does not play a centralising role in the process of reform as it was known in Antiquity, at any rate not before Justinian. But at that time the emperor was no longer the centre, except of a truncated part of the Christian churches, and his reforming projects could have no hold in the West. In the sixth century, the idea of reform seems to be on the retreat in the history of Western Christianity, atrophied before centralising tendencies could truly get a hold.

Chapter 10

Text and Authority in the Formation of the Cistercian Order: Re-assessing the Early Cistercian Reform Martha G. Newman

‘‘When the new plantation [Cıˆ teaux] began to put forth new branches from the roots, the venerable father Stephen, in his watchful wisdom, produced a document of remarkable discernment, which was a tool for pruning the multiplying shoots that, growing unchecked, could suffocate the emerging fruit of mutual peace.’’1

The twelfth-century Cistercian monks who described their abbot Stephen Harding some years after Stephen’s death in 1134 commemorated him as the author of a text. This document, eventually known as the Charter of Charity, has long been considered the central innovation of Cistercian monastic reform; it is usually portrayed as a constitutional document that bound the early Cistercian abbeys into the first monastic order.2 Recently, Stephen’s authorship of this document has come into question, sparking a debate over the origins of the Cistercian order and the nature of early Cistercian reform.3 The debate has focused primarily on documents describing the Cistercians’

1 ‘‘Porro a principio cum nouos in ramos nouella cepisset pullulare plantatio, uenerabilis pater stephanus, sagacitate peruigili, mire prouiderat discrecionis scriptum tanquam putationis ferramentum ad precidendos uidelicet scismatum surculos, qui, quandoque succrescentes, mutuae pacis exorturum prefocare poterant fructum.’’ Exordium cistercii 2, Chrysogonus Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cıˆteaux, Cıˆ teaux: Studia et Documenta 9 ([Cıˆ teaux], 1999), 181. 2 See, for instance, C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London and New York, 1989), 186– 92; J. B. Mahn, L’ordre cistercien et son gouvernement des origines au milieu du XIIIe sie`cle (1098–1265) (Paris, 1945), 60–70; and Louis Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent, Ohio, 1977). 3 Constance Hoffman Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia, 2000); Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts and ‘‘The Myth of Cistercian Origins: C. H. Berman and the Manuscript Sources,’’ Cıˆteaux: Commentarii Cisterciensis 51 (2000), 299–386. For earlier studies that explore and question the development of the Charter of Charity, see Jean-Baptiste Auberger, L’unanimite´ cistercienne primitive: mythe ou re´alite´?

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institutional formation. As a result, it has maintained a frequently noticed separation between the monks’ administrative practices and their spirituality, a dichotomy that is often expressed as a contrast between Stephen Harding’s practical administration and Bernard of Clairvaux’s charismatic personality.4 In this essay, I argue that manuscripts produced in the early 1110s at Cıˆ teaux, particularly Cıˆ teaux’s copy of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob, can provide new insight into the Cistercians’ reform and suggest a solution to the debate over the Charter of Charity. I suggest that these early manuscripts portray an interpretative practice by which the monks endowed texts with charismatic qualities that could shape individual character and behavior.5 The author of the Exordium cistercii, who described the Charter of Charity as a text of ‘‘remarkable discernment (discretio)’’ displayed such a practice, for he attributed the human quality of a charismatic teacher to a text.6 These texts demonstrate that our modern separation between administration and spirituality is often too starkly drawn. The Cistercians’ textual interpretation linked their spiritual writings to their institutional development, for it allowed the monks to foster within a geographically diffuse organization an emphasis on personal experience and individual growth more often encouraged by direct contact with a charismatic teacher. The eleventh and early twelfth centuries were once considered a period of crisis in which reform-minded monks recognized that traditional monastic communities had become too wealthy and overly intertwined with secular society; as a result, these monks sought to move their communities towards a

Cıˆ teaux: Studia et Documenta 3 (Achel, 1986), 25–41 and J.-A. Lefe`vre, ‘‘La ve´ritable Carita caritatis primitive et son e´volution,’’ Collectanea Ordinis Cisterciensum reformatorum 14 (1954), 5–29. 4 See, for instance, R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1970), 257; Auberger, L’unanimite´ cistercienne, 22, 83, 318; and Jean Leclercq, ‘‘Saint Bernard et les de`buts de l’ordre cistercien,’’ Studia monastica 34 (1992), 63–77. I critique this dichotomy in my ‘‘Stephen Harding and the Creation of the Cistercian Community,’’ Revue be´ne´dictine 107 (1997), 307–29. 5 In making this argument, my study draws together two recent works: Stephen Jaeger, ‘‘Charismatic Body – Charismatic Text,’’ Exemplaria 9 (1997), 117–37 and Conrad Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life: Reading, Art, and Polemics in the Cıˆteaux Moralia in Job (Princeton, 1997). See also Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia, 1994), 4–15. For further discussion of these authors, see below. 6 Discernment is normally a human quality, the charismatic gift of a teacher or abbot who understands how best to guide others toward spiritual reform. Gregory the Great, for instance, associated discretio with the holy men in his Dialogues. He portrayed them as figures who had achieved a harmony with divine will and thus possessed the ability to distinguish appearance from reality and to understand what was best for a human soul. E´. Dekkers, ‘‘ ‘Discretio’ chez saint Benoıˆ t et saint Gre´goire,’’ Collectanea Cisterciensia 46 (1984), 79–88; Carol Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988), 49–50.

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closer adherence to the Benedictine Rule.7 More recently, scholars have critiqued this idea of ‘‘crisis,’’ arguing that there was nothing inherently corrupt about traditional forms of eleventh-century monasticism. Rather, they suggest that reform should be understood as a more general interest in religious experimentation and individual transformation that touched traditional monasticism and new religious communities alike.8 Such experimentation took a variety of forms, ranging from an eremitical cell to which the busy abbot of Cluny might occasionally retreat, to the hermits of Brittany and Maine who found in the solitude of the forest a place for personal reform.9 A desire for solitude, however, did not mean a life of isolation, for these holy men were also teachers, preaching the need for spiritual renewal and developing around them communities of disciples. This interest in personal transformation touched more than just monastic life: it was an impetus behind the clerical reform movement which began in the mideleventh century, and it spread as well to the laity, so much so that one historian has seen the first half of the twelfth century as a period in which the monastic values of interiorized reform spread out of monasteries and ‘‘monasticized’’ the world.10 Historians can best explore this impetus toward individual reform and spiritual renewal when it created or transformed institutions. We know little, if anything, about those individuals and groups who avoided organization, and hardly more about those who did found new organizations: few of the eleventh- and early twelfth-century monastic reformers, for instance, left writing of their own, and accounts of their lives, usually written some years after their deaths, were shaped by the later concerns of their followers.11 Our best sources for monastic reform usually come from already developed 7 See Germain Morin, ‘‘Rainaud l’ermite et Ives de Chartres. Un e´pisode de la crise du ce´nobitisme au XIe-XIIe sie`cle,’’ Revue be´ne´dictine 10 (1928), 99–115; Charles Dereine, ‘‘Odon de Tournai et la crise du ce´nobitisme au XIe sie`cle,’’ Revue du moyen aˆge latin 4 (1948), 137–54; Norman F. Cantor, ‘‘The Crisis of Western Monasticism,’’ American Historical Review 66 (1960), 47–67; and Jean Leclercq, ‘‘The Monastic Crisis of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,’’ in Cluniac Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages, ed. Noreen Hunt (London, 1971), 217–37. 8 See especially John H. Van Engen, ‘‘The ‘Crisis of Cenobitism’ Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 1050–1150,’’ Speculum 61 (1986), 269–304 and Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996), 1–5. 9 Giles Constable, ‘‘Eremetical Forms of Monastic Life,’’ Instituzioni monastiche et instituzioni canonicali in occidente (1132–1215), Miscellannea del Centro di studi medioevali 9 (Milan, 1980), 255–61; Henrietta Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe, 1000–1150 (London, 1984). 10 Constable, Reformation, 6–7. 11 For the problems in accessing the nature of early movements of monastic reform, especially from documents written a generation or two later, see Constable, Reformation, 35–9. Constable rightly stresses the experimental and fluid nature of

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institutions whose members codified their rules, legislation, and customs, wrote letters and treatises offering spiritual advice, and articulated their justifications for their particular interpretations of pre-existing models of monastic life. As a result, we tend to move too quickly from informal, charismatic groups to formal monastic institutions without understanding the process of such a development and the ways that the monks sought to preserve a focus on their own personal reform within their new organizations. Especially in a period such as the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, in which Europeans were only beginning to establish abstract social organizations and to consider the legal principles which could bind them together, we must be careful not to assume the existence of fully institutionalized monastic orders when they were just beginning to form, nor assume that those reformers struck by a desire for personal perfection knew how to create legal institutions from their loose face-to-face communities of disciples. Rather, we should recognize a transitional period in which expanding and institutionalizing religious organizations still tried to preserve the charismatic qualities that had characterized their initial communities. The Cistercians were only one of many groups of monks to experience this transition, but they have left us enough texts from their early years to help us investigate the process by which they tried to develop a religious order that could still preserve charismatic teaching and personal reform. There was once a time when the creation of the Cistercian order seemed clear and unambiguous, and the Cistercians’ own narrative accounts of their foundation appeared trustworthy.12 Scholars who rely on the Cistercians’ own narration describe a group of reformers who left their monastic community at Molesme because of its wealth and worldly connections and, in 1098, started a new monastery in the forest of Cıˆ teaux. There the monks claimed they could strictly follow the Benedictine Rule, live a life of poverty, isolation, and manual labor, and accept only adult converts.13 By the second decade of the twelfth century, this new monastery had established affiliates. The Charter of Charity, which the monks believed had been written by Cıˆ teaux’s abbot Stephen Harding and confirmed by Pope Calistus II in 1119, seemed a constitution that linked these affiliated monasteries into an institutional order: it ensured each abbey’s financial independence and monastic reform in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, but nonetheless describes those who avoided organization and disappeared as ‘‘failures’’ (Reformation, 5). But this assumes that these reformers wanted to create lasting institutions. 12 See, for instance, Mahn, L’ordre cistercien, 41. 13 See the most recent editions of the Exordium parvum and the Exordium cistercii in Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts. Most modern histories of the Cistercians approach these texts critically but are still based on their accounts. See, among others, Lekai, The Cistercians; Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, 174–82; and my Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform (Stanford, 1996).

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established uniform observances that were legislated by the abbots meeting in a yearly General Chapter and enforced by a system of annual visitations.14 Such an organization appeared an innovative solution to the problem of linking affiliated communities; by the thirteenth century, the papacy presented it as a model for the creation of institutionalized monastic orders.15 The story of the Cistercian reform movement no longer seems so straightforward. Constance H. Berman is but the most recent in a series of scholars who have questioned the claims and validity of many of the Cistercians’ early narrative and legislative texts.16 Berman has used the uncertainties about these documents to suggest that there was no institutionalized Cistercian order, with a Chapter General that issued legislation and settled internal disputes, until at least the 1160s. In fact, she suggests that the narrative texts describing the foundation of the order, and the Charter of Charity itself, were written in the 1160s and 1170s as the monks recreated their early history to conform to their current ideas.17 Interestingly, Berman’s work follows from some of the same assumptions as those scholars whose work she criticizes, for it was her expectation that she would find a fully developed, legally organized order in the first half of the twelfth century that led her to question the existence of the order and many of its early documents.18

14

There are three versions of the Charter of Charity – the Summa cartae caritatis, the Carta caritatis prior, and the Carta caritatis posterior. It is generally argued that the Carta caritatis prior is the version approved by Calistus II in 1119, that the Summa cartae caritatis is an abridged version of the Carta caritatis prior, and that the Carta caritatis posterior is a revision of the charter, probably first confirmed by Eugenius III in 1152, but whose first recoverable manuscript dates from 1165. See Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 166, 261–73, 371–80. Neither the Carta caritatis prior nor the Carta caritatis posterior were static texts; both evolved over time. 15 See, for instance, Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, 176: ‘‘What was original in the Cistercian order was its unique constitution.’’ See also Jacques Dubois, ‘‘Les ordres religieux au XIIe sie`cle selon la curie romaine,’’ Revue be´ne´dictine 78 (1968), 283–309. 16 See Cistercian Evolution. Others before Berman have questioned the claims of the early Cistercian documents. See especially the series of articles by J.-A. Lefe`vre, including ‘‘La ve´ritable Carta caritatis primitive et son e´volution’’; ‘‘Le vrai re´cit primitif des origines cisterciennes est-il l’Exordium Parvum ?’’ Le Moyen Age 61 (1955), 79–120, 329–60; and ‘‘Que savons-nous du Cıˆ teaux primitif?’’ Revue d’histoire eccle´siastique 51 (1956), 4–51. 17 Berman, Cistercian Evolution, 151–60, esp. 153. She argues that texts usually dated to before 1165 that mention the Charter of Charity are later forgeries; these include copies of Calistus II’s 1119 confirmation of the Charter and Eugenius III’s confirmation of a revised Charter in 1152 (pp. 86–92). 18 See especially p. 88, when Berman argues that since constitutio ‘‘was not used elsewhere at this time with our sense of constitution as a law code,’’ then Calistus II’s confirmation is anachronistic. Throughout the book, she repeatedly calls the Charter of Charity the Cistercians’ ‘‘constitution.’’ Waddell rightly points out that constitutio

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There is a middle ground between these positions. Berman is right that the early twelfth-century Cistercian order did not possess the legal and legislative functions of the early thirteenth-century order, and that scholars must be careful not to read later characteristics back onto earlier organizations. But this does not preclude the existence of an early twelfth-century organizational structure that sought to bind affiliated Cistercian monasteries into an order. Furthermore, we have early Cistercian manuscripts other than the disputed legislative and narrative texts, for early Cıˆ teaux had an active and creative scriptorium. In little more than a decade after the founding of the new monastery, the monks had produced two heavily illuminated texts: the Bible of Stephen Harding and a copy of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob. In addition, they appear to have carried with them from Molesme not only a psalter but also copies of Gregory’s Dialogues and his gospel homilies.19 An examination of these early manuscripts not only sheds light on the recent debates about the nature of early Cistercian monasticism but, more importantly, also illustrates the monks’ particular solution to the problem of preserving the nature of individual reform and spiritual teaching within an organization that had grown beyond the boundaries of a single community. The manuscripts suggest that the monks imbued texts with the human characteristics of their authors and believed that they could provide readers with the charismatic teaching usually provided by personal contact between master and disciple. It was this process of reading and understanding texts that allowed the early Cistercians to create documents that could bind the monks and even our modern uses of ‘‘constitution’’ do not imply a law code; see his ‘‘The Myth of Cistercian Origins,’’ 324. He continues to translate constitutio as ‘‘constitution’’ and capitula as ‘‘articles,’’ which resonates with the form of the US Constitution; see Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 452. But even if ‘‘constitution’’ does not mean a law code, our modern usage of it, as ‘‘a system or body of fundamental principles according to which a nation, state or body politic is constituted and governed’’ (OED), is a definition that stems from the late seventeenth century and is bound up in emerging ideas about the organization of the nation-state. The problem is not whether the Charter of Charity provided fundamental principles to bind Cistercian monasteries together; the problem is the extent to which these principles, in the second decade of the twelfth century, created a structured and institutionalized ‘‘Order.’’ As Waddell points out, the word constitutio is frequently used ‘‘in a more restricted sense’’ in the minatio-phrase: ‘‘Si qua igitur in futurum ecclesiastica saecularisve persona hanc nostrae consitutionis paginam sciens’’; but why not continue to use it in this ‘‘restricted sense’’? For an initial attempt to untangle the meanings of this word, see my paper, ‘‘Bernard of Clairvaux and the Charter of Charity,’’ delivered at the Thirty-Eighth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 9, 2003. 19 For a discussion of Cıˆ teaux’s early texts, see Yolanta Zaluska, L’enluminure et le scriptorium de Cıˆteaux au XIIe sie`cle (Cıˆ teaux, Commentarii cistercienses, Studia et Documenta 4) (1989), esp. 75–82, 191, 269–71; Auberger, L’unanimite´ cistercienne, 190–204; and Charles Oursel, La miniature du XII sie`cle a` l’abbaye de Cıˆteaux (Dijon, 1926).

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into an institution while maintaining the character of a small community with its emphasis on the importance of personal transformation and reform. Stephen Jaeger has recently argued that the twelfth century was a period in which people learned to ‘‘transpose body into text.’’20 He views this transformation as part of a broader transition from a ‘‘charismatic’’ to an ‘‘intellectual’’ culture in which the power of physical presence was gradually supplemented by the authority of texts and artistic representations and was maintained in symbolic rather than bodily forms.21 Charismatic and intellectual cultures, while oppositional, have a fruitful interaction: for much of the twelfth century, in both education and art, people experimented with ways in which the power of bodies could be represented in texts, and ways in which texts could substitute for personal presence in teaching and shaping character. Jaeger labels the works resulting from these experiments ‘‘charismatic texts.’’ He is primarily interested in understanding such texts in the context of cathedral schools and courts, and in analyzing the aesthetic differences between bodily and textual modes – although, significantly, many of his examples of ‘‘charismatic texts’’ come from twelfth-century religious communities.22 His formulation is thus useful for understanding both the gradual development of monastic institutions from face-to-face communities, and the ways these institutions sought to preserve the nature of individual reform within more abstract organizations. By reading texts as embodying the presence and qualities of a teacher, monks could use them to substitute for the physical presence of a spiritual guide. The Cistercians’ copy of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob (Dijon BM mss. 168–170, 173) is one example of such a charismatic text. Given the centrality of Gregory the Great to medieval monastic culture, it is not surprising that the monks of Cıˆ teaux chose his works to be among the first copied in their new scriptorium.23 It is, nonetheless, significant. Gregory’s works present themes that corresponded to fundamental concerns of eleventh- and early twelfth-century monastic reformers: a focus on human repentance and compunction, on inner conflict and personal experience, and

20

Jaeger, ‘‘Charismatic Body,’’ 125. Ibid., 121. He makes the important point that this transition is not limited to one historical period. One finds similar shifts in fifth- and fourth-century BC Athens, in Rome between the Republic and the Empire, and in the late Middle Ages with the transition to the Renaissance. 22 Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 244–77, where he discusses the school at St. Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux. 23 Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi, 2nd rev. edn. (New York, 1974), 31–44, and Rene´ Wasselynck, L’influence des Moralia in Iob de saint Gre´goire le Grand sur la the´ologie morale entre le VIIe et le XIIe sie`cle (Lille, 1956). 21

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on the dialectic between action and contemplation.24 His texts provide models for charismatic teachers – his Dialogues demonstrate the continued presence of heroic holy men with their miraculous powers of discernment, while the Pastoral Care describes how to formulate teaching that responds to the individual needs of a particular audience. The holy men in Gregory’s writings teach through personal contact, and Gregory’s own texts retain an oral immediacy.25 They speak to the reader in order to transform him. Gregory advocated this sort of reading in his preface to the Moralia: ‘‘we ought to transform what we read into our very selves so that when our mind rouses itself through the act of hearing, our life may act in agreement by putting into effect what it has heard.’’26 Cıˆ teaux’s manuscript copy of the Moralia demonstrates this form of reading put into practice. Cıˆ teaux’s Moralia, now in the municipal library in Dijon, has long been recognized as unusual. Its volumes, produced at Cıˆ teaux’s scriptorium around 1111, contain the Book of Job and Gregory’s Moralia, and they, as well as the Bible of Stephen Harding (Dijon mss. 12–15), represent a remarkable expenditure of human labor and financial resources, especially for a small, recently established, and supposedly impoverished community of monks.27 In copying the Moralia, the monks initially created two volumes of unequal dimensions, one of 290 folios, the other of 181 folios; they subdivided the first volume into three in the middle of the twelfth century.28 The volumes

24 For studies of Gregory’s ideas, see Straw, Gregory the Great; also Claude Dagens, Saint Gre´goire le Grand: culture et experience chre´tiennes (Paris, 1977); Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, vol. 2 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York, 1994), 34–79; Jean Leclercq, ‘‘The Exposition and Exegesis of Scripture: From Gregory the Great to St. Bernard,’’ in The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, vol. 2 of The Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. G. W. H. Lampe (Cambridge, 1969), 183–96; and Robert Gillet, ‘‘Introduction: Saint Gre´goire et l’oeuvre des ‘Morales’ sur Job,’’ Morales sur Job, Sources Chre´tiennes 32 bis (Paris, 1975), 7–19. I am not arguing here for a uniquely Cistercian reading of Gregory the Great but rather that the early Cistercians could find in Gregory’s works ideas that directly reflected their own immediate concerns. 25 The Moralia began as a series of monastic conferences, preached before his monks. Gillet, ‘‘Introduction,’’ 10. Medieval monks, even when reading to themselves, would have read them aloud. Leclercq, Love of Learning, 89. 26 Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 84–6; Moralia 1:33: ‘‘In nobismetipsis namque debemus transformare quod legimus, ut cum per auditum se animus excitat, ad operandum quod audierit vita concurrat’’ (translation is Rudolph’s). 27 Rudolph treats the Cistercians’ claims about their early poverty with some scepticism (Violence and Daily Life, 5). For discussions of the early Cistercians’ lands and wealth, see Constance Bouchard, Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights, and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century Burgundy (Ithaca, 1991) and my Boundaries of Charity, 69–82. 28 For a description of the manuscripts, see Zaluska, L’enluminure, 200–204. The first volume contained a colophon, written in the hand of one of the scribes, dating its completion to the vigils of the Nativity in the year 1111, ‘‘at the time of Stephen

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were lavishly illuminated with elaborate initials and miniatures depicting Gregory and Job. Yolanta Zaluska has identified five scribes who worked on this project as well as on other manuscripts from Cıˆ teaux’s scriptorium; the illuminations of the Moralia, in contrast, were probably drawn by a single artist, although he may have received some assistance with the coloring.29 It is the work of this artist that has made these manuscripts especially distinctive. Both Cıˆ teaux’s Moralia and the Bible of Stephen Harding remind us that the first generation of Cistercians did not have the same suspicion about the distracting power of visual images as the later generations influenced by Bernard of Clairvaux.30 Some initials in Cıˆ teaux’s Moralia are filled with images of violence and struggle: men battling dragons, and hybrid half-humans locked in chaotic struggles with other monsters. Others show scenes of Cistercian life – monks in prayer, harvesting grain, and felling trees – that were drawn with a naturalism that contrasts with the monstrous violence of the other initials. The initials also change in style: the early initials follow a more traditional iconography, abandoned with the initial to Book Eight, while they also shift between a modeled and a solid coloring scheme.31 Most problematic has been the relation between these images and their text. Since these initials seldom depict a literal reading of the text, especially text on the same folio as the initials, they are often treated as ornamental or generic, or as the expressions of psychological fantasy.32 Conrad Rudolph’s recent study of the Cıˆ teaux Moralia offers a solution to the relationship between the text of the Moralia and the initials in Cıˆ teaux’s manuscript. He argues that these initials were neither reductive textual illustration nor artistic fantasy but rather a spiritual exegesis of the text in which the artist interpreted elements of Gregory’s Moralia with reference to his experience of Cistercian culture. Thus, the images do not usually refer to literal passages of the text but rather are ‘‘visual commentaries’’ that link issues within the text to the monks’ experience of liturgy and daily life. For example, the initial ‘‘P’’ of Book Eight depicts two men climbing the stem of the P to escape lions attacking below, while a man forming the loop of the P Harding, second abbot of Cıˆ teaux.’’ ‘‘Anno ab Incarnatione Domini/ millesimo centesimo undecimo/ in uigilia Natiuitatis eiusdem / Domini nostri Ihesu Christi, liber iste / finem sumpsit scribendi tem / poribus domni Stephani Cister / ciensis abbatis secundi.’’ Zaluska, L’enluminure, 202. The second volume was probably finished a couple of years later. 29 Zaluska, L’enluminure, 56–61; Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 19–20. 30 See Auberger, L’unanimite´ cistercienne, 222–3; Conrad Rudolph, The ‘‘Things of Greater Importance’’: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and the Medieval Attitude toward Art (Philadelphia, 1990), esp. 133–57. 31 Does this suggest a change in artist, or a single artist experimenting with different artistic and interpretative styles? See Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 17. 32 For the scholarship exploring the relationship between text and image in the Cıˆ teaux Moralia, see Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 10–12.

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brandishes his sword, probably at the men scrambling up the stem.33 Rudolph associates this initial with a passage in Book Eight, chapter Sixty-six of the Moralia, where Gregory interprets Job 7: 13–14 (‘‘You will frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions’’) as the temptations of holy men who experience either too great a success or too great an adversity in the world; they are then terrified violently by their thoughts. The lions, however, do not appear in Gregory’s text. Rather, they evoke a text every monk would have memorized: Psalm 7 in which a penitent asks for divine deliverance from those who seek to seize his soul ‘‘like a lion.’’34 The metaphor of the lion as a spiritual threat thus derived from a shared monastic culture and imagery that the monks would have internalized.35 Similarly, the initial ‘‘I’’ in Book Twenty-one shows a monk chopping at the base of a tree while a layman lops off branches from a perch halfway up the trunk. Such an image evokes the Cistercians’ emphasis on manual labor and their experience of clearing land, but it also refers to a central theme of Book Twenty-one: the avoidance of temptation. In the initial, the monk cuts the tree of temptation at its root; the layman, in contrast, only prunes the branches and will soon teeter and fall with the tree.36 Rudolph suggests such an exegetical reading for nearly all the initials in the Cıˆ teaux Moralia. He argues that the initials emphasize the themes of spiritual effort and process central to Gregory’s text, in which achievement is always precarious, but they also depict these Gregorian ideas interpreted by a Cistercian artist whose experience of the liturgy, of physical labor, and of the knightly background of his companions helped him illustrate a monk’s spiritual quest in terms of violent struggle and hard labor. The Moralia’s initials thus demonstrate a form of reading that links text, experience, and individual spiritual transformation. Some, in fact, directly highlight this transformative process of reading by referring to Gregory’s own discussion of reading. The initial ‘‘Q’’ of Book Sixteen, in which a monk harvesting grain provides the curve of the letter and a sheaf of grain forms the tail, has often been used to illustrate the Cistercians’ manual labor, but it also associates the redemptive character of labor with the redemptive process of reading. Book Sixteen of the Moralia concerns false and true forms of knowledge, and the image of harvesting has this multivalent implication: false preachers who, according to Gregory, ‘‘gather their fodder in the field’’ (Job 24: 6) oppress members of the Church, while those who ‘‘go about naked, without clothing, hungry, they carry the sheaves’’ (Job 24: 10) are those who

33

For reproductions of these images, see Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, plates 1–

36.

34

Psalm 7: 2–3; Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 36–7. See also the initial ‘‘T’’ to Book Twenty-nine, in which imagery from Psalm 90 is associated with the contents of Gregory’s text. Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 53. 36 Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 66–7. 35

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are willing to repent and ‘‘desire to gather the words of sacred eloquence.’’37 Just as the Cistercians found manual labor a form of penance and redemption, so Gregory suggests that this meditative reading could restore those who have been negligent. Whenever they reflect upon the thought of the Fathers for the edification of their minds, they take with them, as it were, ears of grain from a good crop . . . the ears of grain signify the thoughts of the Fathers in that while they are often expressed through figurative speech, we remove from them the covering of the letter like the husks of grain so that we may be restored with the kernel of the spirit.38

The initial is not just an illustrated metaphor; it provides a visual exegesis on the relationship of spiritual and manual labor. The initial to Book Nineteen, in which a mounted knight with a sword chases a dragon, also refers to this process of associating reading with life. In chapter Fifty-six of this book, Gregory describes those progressing in their spiritual struggle as ‘‘strong warriors of the spiritual fight. . . . ‘holding swords and highly expert in war,’ (Song of Sol. 3: 8)’’ and explains that ‘‘he has a sword but does not hold it who knows divine Scripture but neglects to live according to it.’’39 The artist’s image evokes both Gregory’s text and Gregory’s citation of the Song of Songs, but it filters these texts through the artist’s own military imagery and sense of monastic life. Such initials, both in their imagery and in the texts they reference, emphasize a redemptive process through which reading shaped spiritual struggle and growth. To what extent might the interpretative practice expressed and highlighted by the initials of the Cıˆ teaux Moralia reflect the unique interpretation of the artist himself, and to what extent might they reflect a culture of reading and interpretation shared by the first generation of monks at Cıˆ teaux? We do not have the evidence to answer this question with certainty. The practice shown by the manuscripts drew on the monastic tradition of meditative reading; the initials of the Cıˆ teaux Moralia appear to have encouraged monks to internalize what they read by providing an example of how to link the ideas in the text with their own experience of conversion and reform.40 However, we know neither

37 ‘‘percipere sacri eloquii dicta desiderant’’; Gregory, Moralia 16:62; 16:66 (translation mine). 38 Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 67–8; Moralia 16:66: ‘‘Qui quotiens patrum sententias pro aedificandis mentibus in cogitatione uersant, quasi de bona segete spicas portant. . . . Nec immerito spicas signare patrum sententias dicimus, quia dum saepe per figurata eloquia proferuntur, ab eis tegmen litterae quasi aristarum paleas subtrahimus, ut medulla spiritus reficiamur’’ (translation is Rudolph’s). 39 Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 44–5; Moralia 19:56: ‘‘Fortes spiritalis pugnae describeret bellatores, ait: ‘Omnes tenentes gladios et ad bella doctissimi.’’’ (translation is Rudolph’s). 40 Leclercq, Love of Learning, 89–93.

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exactly who used these manuscripts nor where and when they were read, although we can speculate that manuscripts such as the Moralia provided material for the monks’ Lenten reading.41 If we focus on this manuscript as the creative work of a single artist, then it is possible to interpret it as an individual’s personal connections between the text and his own experience.42 But we need to remember that monastic expressions which might seem personal can also reflect more general models for ways that feelings and experiences can be individualized and interiorized.43 Furthermore, a monastic community’s observances, liturgy, and memorized texts created a common repertoire of images, so that one monk’s individual statements might still reflect ideas shared by his brothers. Given the discipline and communal nature of Cistercian life, it is difficult to imagine that a group of monks at Cıˆ teaux could have produced such a lavish and expensive manuscript as their Moralia without its reflecting the common culture of their community and without their receiving approval and direction from their monastery’s abbot.44 Unfortunately, we know little about the ideas and teachings of this abbot. Stephen Harding had been among the group of monks who left Molesme in 1098, and he was elected abbot of Cıˆ teaux in 1109. In comparison with later Cistercians, most notably Bernard of Clairvaux, Stephen’s voice seems muted; his extant writings have none of the emotional power and selfawareness of later generations.45 In fact, there are surprisingly few writings attributed to him; we have no extant sermons and few letters, so we know neither what Stephen might have preached in chapter nor the extent to which his presence and teaching fostered the spiritual growth of his monks.46 Apart

41

Regula Benedicti [hereafter RB] 48; Leclercq, Love of Learning, 17. Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 88. 43 See, for instance, Brian Patrick McGuire’s discussion of the interplay between literary models and everyday experience in the expressions of friendship, Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience 350–1250 (Kalamazoo, 1988), esp. 232–4. 44 We do not have the evidence to answer this question with certainty. Some scholars have speculated that Stephen Harding may have been the anonymous artist of the Moralia’s illuminations, but this seems unlikely. See Jean Porcher, L’art cistercien (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1962), 321; Charles Oursel, Miniatures cisterciennes (1109–1134) (Maˆcon, 1960), 20; and Pierre Gras, ‘‘Les manuscrits de Cıˆ teaux,’’ Les dossiers de l’arche´ologie 14 (1976), 94–9. For Rudolph’s doubts, see Violence and Daily Life, 97, n. 1. 45 For discussions of Stephen’s life and ideas, see H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘‘ ‘Quidam frater Stephanus nomine, anglicus natione’: The English Background of Stephen Harding,’’ Revue be´ne´dictine 101 (1991), 322–40; J. B. Van Damme, ‘‘Saint Etienne Harding mieux connu,’’ Cıˆteaux 14 (1963), 307–13; Brian Patrick McGuire, ‘‘Who founded the Order of Cıˆ teaux?’’ in The Joy of Learning and the Love of God: Essays in Honor of Jean Leclercq, ed. E. Rozanne Elder, Cistercian Studies Series, 160 (Kalamazoo, 1995), 390–413; and my ‘‘Stephen Harding.’’ 46 Stephen was abbot for nearly twenty-five years. It is surprising that neither he nor a secretary assembled collections of letters and sermons. For the creation of such letter collections, see Giles Constable, Letters and Letter Collections, Typologie des sources 42

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from the now-disputed Charter of Charity, he left only two texts from the first two decades after Cıˆ teaux’s foundation: a monitum or warning written into Cıˆ teaux’s Bible, and a letter about the chant.47 Scholars studying these texts have tended to endow Stephen with an authoritarian character, mostly on the basis of his use of verbs in the first person plural.48 I would like to suggest a different interpretation. Stephen’s monitum and his letter on the chant demonstrate, above all, the authority he gave to texts, and his concern for their accuracy and authenticity. His monitum describes the problems that Cistercian scribes encountered when they found dissonant texts among the exemplars they copied for their Bible. It sets out the monks’ principle for textual criticism: that ‘‘reason clearly teaches that what was translated from one Hebrew source of truth by one translator, that is to say Jerome . . . ought to sound as one.’’ It also notes that the monks, faced with incompatible texts, sought Jewish scholars who could help resolve the inconsistencies. Once the text was established, Stephen ordered, ‘‘with the authority of God and of our own congregation,’’ that no one add verses, nor ‘‘presume to mark through the text with his nail or note anything in the margin.’’49 With a similar emphasis on the authority of the text, Stephen and his monks tried to locate the liturgical texts they believed the Benedictine Rule specified – chants for mass and offices from Metz, and Ambrosian hymns from Milan, since, as Stephen wrote, ‘‘Benedict, our blessed father and teacher, proposed to us these du moyen aˆge occidental 17 (Turnhout, 1976); for the collection of Bernard’s letters, see Jean Leclercq, ‘‘Recherches sur la collection des e´pıˆ tres de saint Bernard,’’ Cahiers de civilization me´die´vale 14 (1971), 205–18. For a text containing some personal comments, see Stephen’s letter to the English monastery of Sherborne in which Stephen remembers that he was raised and educated by this community. D. L. Bethell, ‘‘An Unpublished Letter of St. Stephen Harding,’’ The Downside Review 79 (1961), 349–50. The letter was written between 1122 and 1134. 47 The first volume of the Bible (Dijon, mss. 12 and 13) contains a colophon that dates the completion of the copy to 1109, and the monitum of Stephen Harding. It is quite possible that Stephen added the monitum some time after the volume was finished. For a discussion of this, see Zaluska, L’enluminure, 69–73; for the text of the ‘‘monitum,’’ see 274–5. Stephen Harding’s letter on the chant is found in a manuscript from the municipal library in Nantes (ms. 9); since the Cistercians revised their liturgy around 1147 and modified the Ambrosian hymns, it is not surprising that this is the only extant copy of Stephen’s letter. 48 See, especially, Auberger, L’unanimite´ cistercienne, 83. See also Cowdry, ‘‘ ‘Quidam frater,’ ’’ 325. 49 ‘‘Qua digesta, non modice de dissonantia historiarum turbati sumus, quia hoc plena edocet ratio, ut quod ab uno interprete, uidelicet beato Iheronimo, quem, ceteris interpretibus omissis nostrates iamiamque susceperunt, de uno hebraice ueritatis fonte translatum est, unum debeat sonare. . . . Interdicimus etiam auctoritate Dei et nostre congregationis, ne quis hunc librum, multo labore praeparatum, inhoneste tractare, uel ungula sua per scripturam uel marginem eius aliquid notare presumat.’’ Zaluska, L’enluminure, 274–5.

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Ambrosian hymns for singing in his Rule which we have determined to observe in this place with the greatest of care.’’50 Having found the hymns, Stephen’s letter on the chant ordered his successors ‘‘by God’s authority and our own’’ to ‘‘never presume through your frivolity to change or eradicate the integrity of the holy rule which you see that we, with no little effort, have worked out and established in this place.’’51 Stephen thus sought to establish the authentic texts mentioned in the Benedictine Rule, even if this meant rejecting an accustomed liturgy and requiring his monks to learn new hymns and chants whose melodies seemed strange to their ears. His commanding verbs reflect less his own authority than his desire to preserve the authority of particular texts. The unusual content of the Cıˆ teaux Moralia also demonstrates an interest in the integrity of texts. That the manuscript contains both the Book of Job and the Moralia suggests that its creators intended the reader to move between the biblical text and Gregory’s commentary.52 In fact, in the middle of the twelfth century, when the first volume was subdivided into three books – the better to hold for individual reading, perhaps – the monks made an effort to divide the biblical book as well so that each new volume contained the verses from Job that corresponded with the books of the Moralia.53 This desire to present a biblical text alongside its commentary mirrors Stephen Harding’s interest in preserving the integrity and authority of texts. It supports the suggestion that the Moralia manuscript must have reflected, at the very least, ideas that Stephen accepted and more likely, ideas that he himself presented to his monks and sought to inculcate in his community. The Cıˆ teaux Moralia implies the early Cistercians found that texts could help shape their character, teach virtue, and influence their spiritual development. It also helps explain why the presence of Stephen Harding as a spiritual teacher at Cıˆ teaux has been effaced. Certainly, the later Cistercians appear to have written their histories so as to highlight the charismatic power of Bernard of Clairvaux at his predecessors’ expense.54 But Stephen’s lack of

50 ‘‘hos ambrosianos beatus pater et magister noster Benedictus in sua regula, quam in hoc loco maximo studio decrevimus observandam, nobis proponit canendos.’’ Text edited in Auberger, L’unanimite´ cistercienne, 327 (translation mine). William of Malmesbury confirms the nature of the early Cistercian liturgy, noting that they used Ambrosian hymns from Milan. De gestis regum Anglorum libri quinque iv.366, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., Rolls Series 90 (London 1887–89), ii, 383. 51 ‘‘Qua propter auctoritate Dei et nostra, vobis iniungimus nequando integritatem sanctae regulae, quam in hoc loco haud parvo sudore a nobis elaboratam et statutam conspicitis, et vestra levitate mutare aut evellere presumatis, sed magis predicti patris nostri prepositi amatores et imitatores ac propagatores existentes, hos hymnos inviolabiliter teneatis.’’ Auberger, L’unanimite´ cistercienne, 327 (translation mine). 52 Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 21–2. 53 For the dating of this sub-division, see Zaluska, L’unanimite´ cistercienne, 201. 54 See Adriaan H. Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux: Between Cult and History (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1996), 201–12.

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presence may also reflect his own ideas that a text can embody the qualities of a teacher, evoke a monk’s individual experience, and influence his spiritual formation. Gregory’s Moralia was not alone in serving this function, but the complex layers of the Cıˆ teaux manuscript make this interpretative practice especially apparent, for in it we can view the interaction of interpretative reader and text. At the base there is Job and his prophetic voice, in communication with God. Gregory described Job as the author of his own book and, in an unusual representation of Job, the Cistercian illuminator depicted Job as holding his book, rather than using a more common image of either an Old Testament prophet or an exemplar of human suffering on his dung heap.55 By replacing the image of a suffering human with one that represented a holy person with his book, the artist suggested an equivalency between person and text. The next layers are Gregory the Great and his text, the Moralia, a text written with the directness of oral communication and concerned with the process of spiritual formation. Next we find the Cistercian illuminator, who reformulated Gregory’s exegetical practice through his own monastic experience. Finally, there is the shadowy presence of Stephen Harding and his monks: an abbot whose teachings may have encouraged his monks to use texts to effect their own experience of individual transformation, and the monks who may (but may not) have used the manuscript with the assumptions its layers of authors suggested. Gregory the Great thus demonstrated how to read the Book of Job as embodying Job’s teachings; the Cistercian illuminator demonstrated how to read Gregory’s Moralia as embodying Gregory’s teachings; and Cistercians using the manuscript could read the volume as embodying a teaching current at early Cıˆ teaux. Although this picture of Stephen Harding’s ideas and teaching remains speculative, the next generation of Cistercians more clearly demonstrates the interpretative practice that the Cıˆ teaux Moralia displays. The sermons of abbots such as Aelred of Rievaulx, Guerric of Igny, and, especially, Bernard of Clairvaux, also show how texts can aid spiritual growth by embodying the physical charisma of their authors and inspiring an interaction between the author’s teaching and the reader’s experience. Because we are accustomed to separating visual from verbal, scholars tend to create an opposition between the iconographically sophisticated Cistercians around Stephen Harding at early Cıˆ teaux and the Cistercians influenced by Bernard of Clairvaux, whose suspicion of the distracting power of visual images dominated the next generations of Cistercian culture.56 But scholars have also long noticed that 55

Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 26–7. Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life, 96. He notes that Bernard uses violent images to describe spiritual struggle, but suggests that these appear mostly in Bernard’s writings to non-Cistercians (p. 7). 56

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one of the central characteristics of Bernard’s writings is the way he used and transformed individual experience to create sermons designed to influence behavior and encourage spiritual growth.57 Although Bernard created an experiential exegesis using verbal images, whereas Cıˆ teaux’s artist did so with visual images, nonetheless both interpreted texts with a similar set of assumptions. Is it possible that Bernard may have learned his mode of interpretation from the culture of early Cıˆ teaux, whether from Cıˆ teaux’s Moralia itself or from exegetical discussions in the monastery?58 Bernard may not have liked visual images, especially the monstrous figures in Cıˆ teaux’s early texts, but his writings, especially his commentaries on the Song of Songs, show a similar kind of experiential reading, a similar willingness to understand biblical texts in terms of personal experience, whether of struggle, of longing, or of moments of fleeting joy. For many twelfth-century Cistercians, Bernard of Clairvaux served as a charismatic teacher, whose words and presence called people to join Cistercian monasteries in order to undertake the personal reformation that his example inspired. But Bernard could not remain physically present to all those whose conversion he initiated; most Cistercian monks encountered Bernard’s teachings through his texts rather than in person. Brian Stock has called the Cistercians the foremost example of a ‘‘textual community’’ whose culture depended on a shared interpretation of biblical texts, most notably, Bernard’s commentaries on the Song of Songs.59 But what gave these texts their power to create a community was a mode of reading that we have already encountered during Cıˆ teaux’s first decades: one that allowed a text to replace the physical presence and teaching of the author yet create a personal connection between the author’s ideas and the experience of the reader. As later Cistercians remembered Bernard, they described how his texts could embody his physical presence; when introducing a list of Bernard’s works, his biographer, Geoffrey of Auxerre, stated that, ‘‘he became visible far more distinctly in his books, and was knowable from his own writings, in which it seems he imprinted his image

57 Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Modes of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1982), 403–54. See also Michael Casey, A Thirst for God: Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo, 1988); Jean Leclercq, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian Spirit, trans. Claire Lavoie (Kalamazoo, 1977); and Etienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. A. H. C. Downes (London, 1950). 58 There has been little work on Gregory’s influence on Bernard of Clairvaux. For a brief analysis of Gregory’s influence on Bernard’s ecclesiology, see Bernard Jacqueline, ‘‘St. Gre´goire le Grand et l’eccle´siologie de saint Bernard,’’ Ciollectanea Cisterciensia 36 (1974), 69–73. 59 Stock, Implications of Literacy, 405.

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and held up a mirror of himself.’’60 By connecting Bernard’s character to his writings, Cistercian monks in the middle and later part of the twelfth century articulated a way to think of themselves as Bernard’s disciples even after the geographical spread of the Cistercian order and his death in 1153 prevented them from direct personal contact with their teacher. The Cistercians from the second half of the twelfth century who could find Bernard’s image in his texts were bound into an organization by a common reading of specific texts, but they were also linked by a common set of monastic observances and an organizational structure. Bernard himself recognized this; he noted in a letter to his monks at Clairvaux that, even when he was separated from them physically, he remained united to them as long as they remained conscientious in their observances and attentive in their prayers.61 It was liturgy and uniformity of observance, as much as shared textual interpretation, that linked distant monks and made them present to one another, binding them into an abstract ‘‘order.’’ Yet the documents that established this unity of observance – especially the Charter of Charity and the early Cistercian legislation – are usually studied separately from the Cistercian spiritual writings, implying a distinction between institutional organization and spiritual formation. And, as we have seen, the very legitimacy of these documents as productions of first generation Cistercians has been brought into question, with the accompanying implication that the Cistercian communities from the first half of the twelfth century were bound by their spirituality alone.62 The interpretative practices found in the Cıˆ teaux Moralia do not just link the ideas of this first generation of monks to the later expressions of Bernard of Clairvaux; they also suggest a way of understanding the early Cistercian legislative texts that connects organization and spirituality. If we read the Charter of Charity in light of the early Cistercians’ exegesis, we can see it not as a constitutional document, but as one that sought to preserve the charismatic teaching embedded in the Benedictine Rule.63

60 ‘‘Caeterum longe eminentius in suis ille libris apparet et ex litteris propriis innotescit, id quibus ita suam videtur expressisse imaginem, et exhibuisse speculum quoddam sui.’’ Geoffrey of Auxerre, S. Bernardi Vita Prima iii.8.29, PL 185: 320. (Thanks to Stephen Jaeger for his suggestions about the translation.) 61 Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 143, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. Jean Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais, 8 vols. (Rome, 1957–77), vii, 343. 62 Berman, Cistercian Evolution, 98. 63 This, again, is a very different reading than the usual emphasis on the authoritarian quality of the early Charter of Charity and the idea that the revisions of the Charter show a gradual transition from a monarchical to a representative organization. See J. B. Van Damme, ‘‘Les pouvoirs de l’Abbe´ de Cıˆ teaux aux XIIe et XIIIe sie`cle,’’ Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis 24 (1968), 47–85, and Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, 186.

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As we have seen earlier, Stephen Harding’s monitum and his letter on the chant demonstrate his concern for a careful observance of Benedictine Rule and his interest in using reason to determine the authenticity of texts. His interest in textual integrity can be seen as a legalistic and authoritarian concern for the letter, but it can also be interpreted as a concern for preserving the exact teachings of a charismatic author. Stephen’s concern for the integrity of texts is reinforced by an early twelfth-century observer of the Cistercians’ reform. In 1124, the English chronicler William of Malmesbury noted that the Cistercians intended to follow the Benedictine Rule so that ‘‘not a jot or tittle of it be disregarded.’’ William attributed to Stephen a speech that illustrates William’s understanding of Stephen’s motivations. According to William, Stephen had sought to reform the customs at Molesme by telling his monks: Since through neglect our nature often falls away from reason, many laws have been proposed from time to time; most recently a rule came forth by divine inspiration through the blessed Benedict which should recall our disordered nature to reason. Although it includes certain things whose reason I am unable to penetrate, in my judgement it is right to submit to its authority.64

While it is unlikely that Stephen spoke these exact words, the stress on reason and accuracy in this speech echoes that of Stephen’s own monitum. Even more noteworthy, I think, is the emphasis that William’s Stephen puts on the ability of the Rule to reform human nature, even if, as William suggests, Stephen could not himself fully comprehend its purpose. William portrays Stephen as finding in the Rule the charismatic discernment of a holy man; the Rule, not the abbot, responds to the character of the human soul and restores its ‘‘disordered nature to reason.’’ Despite Stephen’s concern for the Benedictine Rule, the Rule provided him with no guidance for the central problem he faced in the mid-1110s: how to link together Cıˆ teaux’s newly founded affiliates. Stephen did have other models, most notably the congregations of monasteries associated with Cluny and Molesme.65 At Cluny, cohesion among the affiliated communities

64 ‘‘Sed quia per desidiam saepe a ratione decidit, leges quondam multae latae; novissime per beatum Benedictum regula divinitus processit quae fluxum naturae ad rationem revocaret; in qua etsi habentur quaedam quorum rationem penetrare non sufficio, auctoritati tamen adquiescendum censeo.’’ William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum 4.334–5, Rolls Series 90, ii, 381. For a discussion of the nature of reason in this passage, see Constable, Reformation, 144–5. 65 H. E. J. Cowdrey argues that Stephen could also have found a model in Bede’s account of the relationship of Wearmouth and Jarrow, although he admits that there is no clear evidence that Stephen had read Bede (‘‘ ‘Quidam frater’,’’ 323–39). It has also been suggested that Stephen was influenced by the organization of Vallombrosa, usually more because the Cistercians adopted a similar status of lay brother than

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depended on obedience to a single abbot. This placed great administrative and spiritual burdens on the abbot who not only spent much of his time traveling from community to community, but was also responsible for the salvation of monks with whom he had little direct contact.66 The abbot of Molesme governed Molesme’s affiliates in a similar fashion. Stephen, who had served as secretary to the abbot of Molesme before both he and the abbot left Molesme to found Cıˆ teaux, must have witnessed his abbot’s burdens and responsibilities first-hand. While Benedict’s Rule offered no model for linking affiliated monasteries, the portrait of Benedict in Gregory the Great’s Dialogues did. Gregory described Benedict as possessing authority over a series of communities, each composed of twelve monks and an abbot. While there is no direct reference to Gregory’s Dialogues in Stephen’s writings, the probable presence of a copy of the Dialogues at Cıˆ teaux, the monks’ interest in Benedict, and the general importance of Gregory to monastic culture, make it highly unlikely that Stephen did not know this work.67 I believe Stephen’s reading of the Dialogues shaped his understanding of how to link his monasteries. But Stephen did not read the Dialogues to model his own behavior and position on Benedict. Instead, he found in the text the inspiration to preserve what Benedict had already established. If this is correct, then he understood the Benedictine Rule as William of Malmesbury suggested: as a text that could act in place of its author by embodying his charismatic teachings. By emphasizing the authority of the text, Stephen changed the nature of the abbot’s authority and suggested a way to preserve the spiritual teaching of an intimate, face-to-face community in a growing and geographically diffuse institution. The holy men in Gregory’s Dialogues were to be admired, not imitated. These men of God exhibited a harmony with God’s will that made them

because they imitated their mode of affiliation. See Roger Duvernay, ‘‘Cıˆ teaux, Vallombreuse, et Etienne Harding,’’ Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis 8 (1952), 379– 494. 66 For a discussion of the responsibilities of abbots, and the growing dissatisfaction with these burdens in the early twelfth century, see Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writings,’’ in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982), 110–69. 67 Dijon BM ms. 179 is a copy of Gregory’s Dialogues which has striking similarities to the psalter called ‘‘The Psalter of St. Robert.’’ Auberger believes it is likely that these two manuscripts, as well as a manuscript of Gregory’s gospel homilies, were carried by the first Cistercians from Molesme to their new monastery and formed the core of Cıˆ teaux’s library. Auberger, L’unanimite´ cistercienne, 188–90; Zaluska L’enluminure, 270–71. The Cistercian monks who wrote the Exordium parvum explicitly referred to the Dialogues in justifying some of their practices. Exordium parvum 15; Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 253.

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conduits for the presence of the divine on earth. According to Gregory, Benedict’s self-understanding and self-discipline gave him discretio: the charismatic ability to discern what was real, to judge the true quality of a soul, and to determine what was necessary for a soul’s salvation. Thus Benedict could see through a person’s outer appearance to spot the devil within, he could uncover hypocrites, and he could hear his monks’ silent grumbling.68 It was discretio that allowed Benedict to serve as abbot for monks in distant communities, for he did not need to be physically present to note disciplinary problems or instruct his disciples. Gregory’s stories show Benedict sensing if the monks ate or drank outside the monastery, knowing immediately when a monk accepted a gift, and instructing one group of monks by appearing to them in a dream.69 This portrait of Benedict linking his monasteries through his miraculous discretio must not have presented a comforting model for Stephen Harding. Like Benedict, Stephen sought to link together several monastic communities, but there was no guarantee that he, or any other Cistercian abbot, would receive a divine gift of miraculous discernment by which he could be present to his monks in spirit if not in body. Even more troubling, Gregory made clear to his readers that institutional office could not, in itself, provide a prelate with discretio. In his Dialogues, even a pope erred by listening to those who could not discern a holy man beneath the rustic appearance of an abbot.70 Yet, according to the Benedictine Rule, an abbot must use discretio to regulate his monastery and teach his monks: in taking the needs of his monks into consideration, he could modify specific dictates of the Rule.71 Stephen’s response to the problem of linking his communities was to rely less on his own discernment and more on that of Benedict. Gregory’s Dialogues suggest how this was possible, for Gregory portrayed Benedict’s life and his Rule as forming a single cohesive representation of his teaching. As Gregory explained, ‘‘anyone who wishes to know more about Benedict’s life and character can discover in his Rule exactly what he did as an abbot, for this holy man could not have taught other than he lived.’’72

68

Gregory the Great, Dialogues 2.4, 2.20, Sources Chre´tiennes 260, ed. A. de Vogu¨e´ and trans. P. Antin (Paris, 1979), 152, 196. 69 Dialogues 2.12–13, 19, 22; pp. 177–82, 194–6, 200–204. 70 Dialogues 1.4; pp. 49–57. 71 Benedict gave the abbot the discretion to rearrange the order of the psalms, to increase the allotment of food and change the hour of the main meal depending on the monks’ labor, to modify the distribution of clothing in accordance with the climate, and, generally, to distribute goods in the monastery according to need and with consideration for the monks’ weakness. RB 18.22–3; 39–41; 55.1–3, 20–21; 34.1–2. 72 ‘‘Cuius si quis uelit subtilius mores uitamque congnoscere, potest in eadem institutione regulae omnes magisterii illius actus inuenire, quia sanctus uir nullo modo potuit aliter docere quam uixit.’’ Dialogues 2:36; p. 242.

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The link between Benedict’s charismatic person and his text was his discretio: his life illustrated his discernment while his Rule put it into practice. Again, Gregory explained, ‘‘Benedict wrote a Rule for monks that is extraordinary in its discretio and brilliant in its language.’’73 Stephen’s insistence on following the Benedictine Rule ‘‘with the greatest care’’ suggests that he emphasized the charismatic discretion of this text over his own authority. In this light, his insistence on establishing an unfamiliar liturgy because it was mentioned in the Rule actually curtailed the abbot’s authority to regulate the conditions of his monastery, for liturgical practice was one of the areas in which Benedict had given the abbot the discretion to make modifications. Stephen’s care to establish authentic texts and his desire for the integrity of the Benedictine Rule, then, was less a legalistic return to the letter of the law than it was a desire to treat the Benedictine Rule as a text capable of transmitting the character of its author to those who followed it.74 By understanding the Benedictine Rule as text that could act with the discernment of a holy man, Stephen Harding developed a creative response to the problem of the abbot’s authority, a problem that Caroline W. Bynum, nearly twenty years ago, suggested lay behind many of the movements of monastic reform in the early twelfth century.75 Non-Cistercians, writing about the early Cistercian reform, noted this change in the abbot’s position. William of Malmesbury observed approvingly that a Cistercian abbot ‘‘allows himself no indulgence beyond the others.’’76 Peter the Venerable, the abbot of Cluny, found this change in abbatial authority more troubling. Around 1126, he wrote a letter to Bernard of Clairvaux, that he claimed was a response to specific Cistercian criticisms of Cluniac practice. He listed twenty areas in which the Cistercians accused Cluny of deviating from the Benedictine Rule; these included the reception of novices and guests, dress and bed-coverings, meals and fasting, genuflections and blessings, the role of the doorkeeper, exemptions from episcopal jurisdiction, and issues of 73

‘‘Nam scripsit monachorum regulam discretione praecipuam, sermone luculentam.’’ Dialogues 2.36; p. 242. Cistercian authors repeat this phrase. See, for instance, Guerric of Igny’s Fourth Sermon for St. Benedict, Sermons, ed. John Morson and Hilary Costello, Sources Chre´tiennes 202 (Paris, 1973), 92, and Conrad of Eberbach, Exordium magnum 1.4, p. 52. 74 Bernard of Clairvaux makes a similar point in On Precept and Dispensation; De praecepto et dispensatione 4.9–10; in Sancti Bernardi opera, iii, 259–60, in which he stresses that a monk’s vows were a pact between the monk and his God, not the monk and his abbot. Further, the abbot was not free to modify the Rule he had vowed to obey. Rather, the abbot’s role was to aid each monk in fulfilling what he had promised. 75 Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 110–69. 76 William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum 4.336–7, Rolls Series 90, ii, 383.

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property. Many of the criticisms seem trivial.77 But Peter noticed something more fundamental, for his defense of Cluny’s customs is also a defense of his understanding of the abbot’s authority. Peter had been influenced by the Cluniac tradition that divine law, as interpreted by the abbot, supported Cluny’s rules and customs, including the abbey’s interpretation of the Benedictine Rule.78 Repeatedly in his response to Cistercian criticisms, Peter quoted the passage from the Rule that the abbot ‘‘should arrange all matters so that souls may be saved and the brothers may go about their work without justifiable grumbling.’’79 In fact, many of the areas the Cistercians had criticized, especially matters of food, clothing, and bedding, were exactly those areas Benedict left to the abbot’s discretion. What Stephen and the other Cistercians may have seen as an effort to maintain the charismatic value of Benedict’s Rule, Peter the Venerable, with his emphasis on the personal authority of the abbot, instead saw as a pharisaical concern for the letter of the law. We find the same concern for placing the abbot under the authority of the Benedictine Rule in the Cistercian’s Charter of Charity. In the charter, the discretionary authority of the abbot is again limited: each abbot observes the Benedictine Rule ‘‘in everything just as it is observed in the new monastery’’; each abbey has the same liturgical books and usages ‘‘so that there may be no discord in our actions but that we may live by one charity, one rule, and like customs.’’80 Only the abbots meeting together could make modifications: ‘‘if anything is to be improved or strengthened in the observance of the holy rule or our way of life, let them adjust it and restore among themselves the good of peace and charity.’’81 The abbot of Cıˆ teaux did retain the care of souls in his new foundations, but this is ‘‘so that if they ever try to turn away from their holy purpose and the observance of the holy rule, even a little bit – which heaven forbid! – they can return to the straight path of life through our

77

Peter the Venerable, Letter 28, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), i, 53–6. See also Constable, Reformation, 185. 78 Barbara Rosenwein, ‘‘Rules and the ‘Rule’ at Tenth-Century Cluny,’’ Studia monastica 19 (1977), 307–20. 79 RB 41.5; Peter the Venerable, Letter 28, Letters i, 160, 69, 73; see also 64–6, 72 for a discussion of the abbot’s discretionary authority. 80 ‘‘ut regulam beati benedicti per omnia obseruent sicuti in novo monasterio obseruatur’’; ‘‘quatinus in actibus nostris nulla sit discordia, sed una caritate, una regula, similibusque uiuamus moribus.’’ Carta caritatis prior 2, 3; Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 276. 81 ‘‘in obseruatione sanctae regulae uel oinis, si quid est emendandum uel augendum, ordinent; bonum pacis et caritatis inter se reforment.’’ Carta caritatis prior 7; Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 278.

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care.’’82 The emphasis in this charter lies not with the legal powers of the abbot of Cıˆ teaux, precise procedures for visitations, or the regulatory function of a Chapter General – these are gradually worked out over the course of the twelfth century.83 Indeed, if we insist on reading the early Charter of Charity as a Cistercian ‘‘constitution,’’ then Constance Berman is right to question its authenticity as a document from the 1110s. But, if we read it in the context of the undisputed texts from early Cıˆ teaux and the interpretative practices they display, then it becomes less problematic.84 The Charter of Charity then becomes a text that bound affiliated monasteries by maintaining Benedict’s charismatic authority as embodied in the Benedictine Rule. Understanding the Charter of Charity in light of Stephen Harding’s concern about his own discretio and his desire to preserve the charismatic authority of Benedict helps resolve another long-standing problem with the Charter of Charity: its name. Some scholars have remarked that the charter says little about charity and that the reference to charity in its prologue seems disconnected from its contents.85 We do not know exactly when the charter

82 ‘‘Curam tamen animarum illorum gratia caritatis retinere uolumus, ut si quando a sancto propositio et obseruantia sanctae regulae paululum – quod absit! – declinare temptauerint, per nostram sollicitudinem ad rectitudinem uitae redire possint.’’ Carta caritatis prior 1; Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 275. 83 One can observe the monks gradually working out these issues in the Instituta; see, for example, no. 33, in which procedures for the annual visitation were worked out in more detail, or nos. 31, 44, 47, 50, 71, 72, which work out some details concerning both relations between abbeys and the general meeting of abbots. Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 339, 338, 345, 346, 358–9. 84 This, of course, leaves to one side the vexed problem of manuscript transmission. The dominant question is how to explain the dearth of extant manuscripts of the Carta caritatis dated from before the last decades of the twelfth century. Waddell explains this by suggesting that the early versions of the Carta caritatis were written out with versions of the Cistercians’ customary; thus as the Cistercians’ usages changed or as new versions of the Carta caritatis received papal confirmation, the older versions became obsolete. Constance Berman, in comparison, explains the lack of manuscripts by suggesting that the Carta was not composed until around 1165. Essential to this debate is manuscript 1171 from the communal library in Trent. This manuscript contains a copy of the Cistercian customary used before its revision in c.1147, along with a copy of the Summa cartae caritatis, the Exordium cistercii, and the Capitula. Waddell dates the entire manuscript to around 1138/1140; Berman accepts the date for the copy of the customary, but suggests that the folios containing the Summa cartae caritatis, Exordium cistercii, and Capitula were added at a later date, in a separate quire plus an additional folio wrapped around the quire containing the customary. For Waddell’s discussion of Trent 1171, see Narrative and Legislative Texts, 92–3, 137 and ‘‘The Myth of Cistercian Origins,’’ 304–306. For Berman’s discussion, see Cistercian Evolution, 61–3. 85 Scholars (although, interestingly, not Berman) have noted the differences between the language of the charter, with its expressions of unity, peace, and love, and the language of Stephen’s other writings, so much so, in fact, that Jean Leclercq once

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received its name: the papal confirmation of 1119 calls it only ‘‘capitula illa et constitucionem.’’ The prologue to the charter, and the account of the Cistercians’ foundation called the ‘‘Exordium cistercii,’’ do mention a ‘‘carta caritatis’’; both have most recently been dated to the 1130s and 1140s, after Stephen’s death.86 But Gregory’s Moralia may again provide guidance, for there Gregory suggests that charity rather than miracle is the true sign of holiness. He wrote: ‘‘Indeed, the proof of holiness is not to make miracles, but to love others as oneself; moreover, to believe truths about God, and to think better things of one’s neighbor than of oneself. For true power is in love, not in the showing of miracles.’’87 Preservation of charity, like the observance of the Benedictine Rule, could substitute for an abbot’s lack of miraculous discernment. Whether Stephen himself named the Charter of Charity, or his successors did, is unclear. But when later Cistercians wrote about Stephen Harding, they did not tell many stories about his ability to work wonders. Instead, they remembered him as the author of the Charter of Charity, and they described him in terms reminiscent of Gregory’s description of Benedict, as producing a document ‘‘of remarkable discernment.’’88 For the later Cistercians who wished to view Stephen Harding as a saintly man, the Charter of Charity, like the Benedictine Rule, had become a charismatic text, but one which embodied the charity, rather than the miraculous powers, of its author. If, as Stephen Jaeger has argued, the twelfth century was a period in which people experimented with ways to embody charismatic power in writing, then these texts produced at early Cıˆ teaux appear to have functioned as

suggested that Bernard of Clairvaux inspired those passages. Leclercq, ‘‘Saint Bernard et les de`buts de l’ordre cistercien,’’ 75–6. For comments about Stephen’s authoritarian voice, see Auberger, L’unanimite´ cistercienne, 83. For a different perspective, see my ‘‘Stephen Harding,’’ 316. 86 Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 296, 156, 270–73. A document often called Pontigny’s foundation charter also mentions a ‘‘cartam uero caritatis et unanimitatis.’’ The dating of this charter is problematic: while it may reproduce some notices from soon after 1116, it was written after 1147; see Le premier cartulaire de l’abbaye cistercienne de Pontigny (XIIe – XIIIe sie`cle), ed. Martine Garrigues, Collection des documents ine´dits sur l’histoire de France 14 (Paris, 1981), 152–4; also Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 264–5, who tries to date the earlier notices incorporated into the later document. 87 Moralia 20.17: ‘‘Probatio quippe sanctitatis non est signa facere, sed unumquemque ut se diligere, de Deo autem uera, de proximo uero meliora quam de semetipso sentire. Nam quia uera uirtus in amore est, non autem in ostensione miraculi.’’ 88 See note 1. The longest collection of stories about Stephen appears in the first book of Conrad of Eberbach’s Exordium Magnum (chs. 21–31). But most of these stories describe Stephen’s virtues and his concern for Cıˆ teaux’s observances; only two demonstrate a miraculous discernment, while a third depicts a vision confirming that Cistercian practices are pleasing to God. See Bruno Griesser, ed. Exordium magnum cisterciense, Series Scriptorum S. Ordinis Cisterciensis 2 (Rome, 1961), 77–88.

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‘‘charismatic texts.’’ Both Cıˆ teaux’s Moralia and the early Cistercian legislation, including the Charter of Charity, sought to preserve in writing the charismatic teachings of holy men, whether Job, Gregory, or Benedict. Endowing texts with charismatic teaching and discretion in texts did not, of course, eliminate the position of abbot in Cistercian monasteries. It did, however, change the relation of the abbot to his community. Cistercian abbots still represented Christ to their monks, they witnessed vows of obedience, they promoted and degraded whom they wished, they received confessions, judged and absolved the monks of faults, and ate with the guests in the hostel.89 But placing the abbot under the authority and discretion of the Rule lessened the distance between the abbot and his monks and made it possible for the abbot to remain a learner, concerned for his own spiritual progress as well as the progress of those under his care.90 This collapsing of distance is reflected in the Cistercians’ rituals: the Cistercian abbot not only took his turn in performing the mass with the other priests of the monastery, but he, like his monks, could be punished if he arrived late for prayers.91 It is also reflected in the writings of Cistercian abbots, since they could speak of their own spiritual development and concerns with the assumption that their monks could identify with their experiences.92 The manuscripts produced at Cıˆ teaux in the 1110s provide a route to understanding the early Cistercians that bypasses the more controversial narrative and legislative texts but also provides a context for them. These manuscripts suggest that the early Cistercians developed a mode of interpretation that allowed texts to embody the charismatic qualities of their authors and mold the character and behavior of their readers by encouraging an interaction between reading and individualized experience. As such, they 89 Bruno Griesser, ‘‘Die ‘Ecclesiastica officia Cisterciensis ordinis’ des Cod. 1711 von Trient,’’ Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis 12 (1956), 270. 90 See note 74. 91 Griesser, ‘‘Ecclesiastica officia,’’ 270; Waddell, ‘‘Instituta Generalis Capituli’’ XLIX in Narrative and Legislative Texts, 346; Newman, Boundaries, 49–50. At Cluny, in comparison, the bells continued to ring until the abbot arrived so that he could not be late. 92 See my ‘‘Stephen Harding,’’ 328–9. Giles Constable, in Reformation, 183, makes a distinction between authoritarian abbots who felt responsible only to God and themselves, and more solicitous abbots who might refer to themselves as mothers as well as fathers, and who recognized the authority of diocesan bishops, the abbot of a mother house, and their own chapter. He suggests that, in general, this is a division between older ‘‘black’’ monks and the newer houses of reformed monks and regular canons, but that ‘‘there were so many exceptions to this generalization . . . as to make it almost meaningless.’’ Perhaps a better way to explain the division is to think about the abbot’s relation to a monastic rule. Many of the founders of new communities, for instance, stressed their own teaching rather than a strict observance of the Benedictine Rule; Stephen of Grandmont, for instance, is reputed to have wanted no rule at all for his community other than his interpretation of the gospels.

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helped the monks solve the problem of how to link independent but affiliated monasteries into an order that was no longer a face-to-face community but not yet a legal-rational institution. The monks’ understanding of Gregory the Great was pivotal to this process. Gregory provided the Cistercians with the ideas that texts could contain the character of their authors, that reading could be a process of spiritual transformation, and that charity could substitute for miraculous discernment. Even more, the monks demonstrated that, in reading and commenting on Gregory, they had learned how texts could influence their own personal transformation and thus serve as intermediaries between individual reform and institutional organization. The early Cistercian reform movement helps us understand the relationship of personal reform to institutional development. Too often, developments in monasticism are placed within a cycle of reform and decline, in which the institutionalization of charismatic movements seemingly entails an inevitable compromise and loss of individual fervor.93 Although the Cistercians have often been studied in terms of reform and decline, they have never fit well into the pattern of charismatic leader giving way to institutionalization, in part because their charismatic figures seem to follow rather than precede their institutional organization. But I have suggested here that this is a false dichotomy, created by a tendency to see the early Cistercians as a legal institution bound by a constitution and legislation rather than as an abstract organization bound by a shared culture, shared customs, and a shared interpretative practice that found charismatic teaching in texts. The Cistercians read Cıˆ teaux’s Moralia, the Benedictine Rule, the Charter of Charity, and eventually Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons as texts that embodied the physical presence of their authors. These texts allowed the monks to maintain a connection to a charismatic ‘‘man of God’’ in a growing, and eventually institutionalized, Cistercian order.94

93 See, for example, Ludo J. R. Milis, Angelic Monks and Earthly Men (Woodbridge, 1992), 119–24. The classic formulation of this process is, of course, Max Weber’s. See ‘‘Charisma and its Transformation,’’ in Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1978), ii.1111–23. 94 I would like to thank Stephen Jaeger and Conrad Rudoph for their comments on this essay, Alison Frazier and Joan Holladay for their readings of earlier drafts, and Christopher Bellitto, Louis Hamilton, and the participants of the conference ‘‘Ecclesia Semper Reformanda’’ for their suggestions.

Chapter 11

Compliance and Defiance: The Daughters of Charity and the Council of Trent Susan E. Dinan

The Council of Trent ended its last session in December 1563. Seventy years later, in March 1633, Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul formally organized the Company of the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Sick Poor, in Paris. Historians today know de Marillac and de Paul as important agents of reform within the French Catholic Church. Indeed, to most eyes, de Marillac and de Paul represent Catholic orthodoxy. Throughout their lives, however, de Paul and de Marillac had a complex relationship with the Roman Catholic Church and its Tridentine legislation. In the creation of the Company of the Daughters of Charity, the founders alternatively complied with and defied the decrees of Trent according to their own vision of a reformed Church. In order to create a religious community that carried out the mission of Catholic reform, the Company had to circumvent some of the decrees of Trent. By considering the history of the Daughters of Charity in light of this paradox, we grapple with notions of center and periphery as they applied to unenclosed communities of women religious. What can the Daughters of Charity tell us about the nature of Tridentine reform and how it occurred at centers and peripheries? In this essay, center is defined as agents of Tridentine reform, including those attending the Council and those implementing its decrees; periphery is defined in both geographical and ideological terms. The Daughters of Charity illustrate that although Church authorities at the center could not procure conformity throughout the ranks, the overall goals of Church reform could be realized in the peripheries. The history of the early years of the Daughters of Charity shows the founders’ ability to circumvent certain Tridentine strictures to accomplish the broader goals of the Council. Moreover, initiatives that took place on the periphery could shape the center. The ability of people on peripheries to wield power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was due, in part, to the Church’s lack of systematized mechanisms of control. After the success of the Daughters of Charity, many non-cloistered communities of women religious developed in France. Thus, we will be able to conclude that

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initiatives on the periphery became important to the Church as a whole, and to the center’s success, in reaching the laity with the message of reformed Catholicism.

Brief History of the Daughters of Charity In 1617, Vincent de Paul, a parish priest of seventeen years, became cure´ of the diocese of Chaˆtillon-les-Dombes near Lyons as part of the Catholic Church’s effort to reform its clergy. De Paul’s reputation as a model cleric rested upon his impeccable behavior as a priest and spiritual advisor. He went to Chaˆtillon to counter an increasing Huguenot presence.1 De Paul concentrated on improving the priests’ behavior, in accordance with the dictates of the Council of Trent, and to that end he eliminated the priests’ practice of keeping concubines.2 Overall, de Paul’s stay seems to have been a success and the visitation reports indicate that the clergy followed Tridentine procedures more carefully after de Paul’s arrival.3 De Paul also sought to fulfill the dictates of Trent by cultivating the devotional practices of his parishioners and, like other great reformers of the age, he spent considerable energy ministering to women. In the summer of 1617, he founded his first Confraternity of Charity in Chaˆtillon.4 Twenty ‘‘virtuous women,’’ well off and married for the most part, composed the Confraternity.5 The ladies took turns making daily visits to the sick and poor, bringing them food to meet their corporal needs. They also talked to the poor about religious matters, thus addressing their spiritual needs.6 Throughout the history of the Confraternities of Charity, assistance to the poor physically and religiously defined the women’s mission. The Confraternity survived de Paul’s brief five-month stay in Chaˆtillon, and served as a model for subsequent Confraternities of Charity that he would create.7

1

Luigi Mezzadri, A Short Life of Saint Vincent de Paul (Dublin, 1992), 20. H. J. Schroeder, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford, Ill., 1978), 152. Also see, Lewis Spitz, The Protestant Reformation, 1517–1559 (New York, 1985), 312. 3 Pierre Coste, Monsieur Vincent: le grand saint du grand sie`cle, vols. I–III (Paris, 1934), i, 76. 4 R. P. Chalumeau, ‘‘L’assistance aux malades pauvres au XVIIe sie´cle,’’ XVIIe Sie´cle 90, 1 (1971), 77. 5 Coste, Monsieur Vincent, i, 84. 6 Christopher Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1989), 10. Confraternities existed to provide good works which were to benefit the donor and the recipient. A good work was more than simply giving alms; it was a path to justification and salvation for the donor more than for the recipient. 7 Mezzadri, Short Life, 21. 2

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Confraternities of Charity commonly developed in the path of missions preached by a group of priests under de Paul’s direction. In 1625, de Paul founded the Congregation of the Mission, an order of priests who proselytized in rural regions of the countryside where people were often ignorant of Catholic teachings.8 The priests of the Mission, who were educated at the seminary of Saint-Lazare in Paris (and thus were often referred to as Lazarists), traveled across rural France evangelizing. The priests did not reside permanently in the villages; they were temporary missionaries who formed Confraternities of Charity before leaving an area. Thus, they created communities dedicated to serving the poor and practicing reformed spirituality, thereby bringing the message of the center, that of religious reform, to the geographic peripheries of France.9 De Paul’s theology stressed direct service to God by serving the poor; the Congregation of the Mission and the Confraternities of Charity were expressions of this conviction as both institutions prioritized benevolent activities.10 In 1629, de Paul formalized the network of Confraternities of Charity when he appointed Louise de Marillac, a Lady of Charity who had been performing benevolent works under his direction for four years, as supervisor of the Confraternities in and around Paris. De Paul requested that she visit the Confraternities regularly and assure that their members were adhering to the Confraternity’s rule. According to the rule, ‘‘[The Confraternity of Charity] shall be instituted in the Parish Church [by virtuous women and girls] . . . Its end is to honor Our Lord Jesus Christ, as its Patron, and His Holy Mother; to assist the sick poor of the Parish where it is established.’’11 The missions preached by the Lazarists infused these Ladies with energy to help those in need and at first they diligently worked to ease the suffering

8 See Jean Delumeau, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris, 1971) for a fuller discussion of efforts made to educate the European population about religion in early modern Europe. 9 Mezzadri, Short Life, 20. 10 Andre´ Dodin, Vincent de Paul and Charity: A Contemporary Portrait of his Life and Apostolic Spirit (New York, 1993), 58–61, and Abbe´ Maynard, Virtues and Spiritual Doctrine of Saint Vincent de Paul (St. Louis, 1961 [1864]), 105. Andre´ Dodin, a biographer of de Paul, asserts that there are three main tenets of de Paul’s ideology: ‘‘life must expand constantly through action; life and action receive their depth and truth only through faith; and life lived in faith must grow and adapt, in order to remain faithful to the goal of eternal life.’’ According to de Paul, ‘‘to be a Christian, and to see a brother in affliction and not weep with him, or feel for him in his illness, is to be devoid of charity, and without humility. Let us strive to have sentiments of grief and compassion for our neighbor. In the exercise of Christian virtue let us do what, in people of the world, is often prompted by human respect.’’ 11 Louise de Marillac, E´crits spirituels, ed. Elisabeth Charpy (Paris, 1983), ‘‘Rule of the Charity,’’ 707.

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of the sick and poor. However, over time they became less reliable providers of aid because they stopped helping the needy themselves. De Marillac was disappointed that their fervor was waning and that they were willing to send their servants to visit the poor in their place.12 Such behavior undermined the mission of the Confraternity, as the premise was that each member would serve God through serving the needy. De Marillac understood, however, that the Ladies did not have the skills necessary to be on the front lines of poor relief. Unlike de Marillac, the Ladies did not know how to cook or nurse the sick. These were jobs done by their servants, which is why it was so spiritually valuable for women who sought to practice humility to undertake these tasks. But their inept job performance undermined the Confraternities’ vocation. It was obvious that the institutions would not survive if they relied upon the Ladies to provide hands-on assistance to the needy. De Marillac’s challenge was to maintain the Ladies’ participation in the Confraternities, but to redirect the nature of the service to better suit their abilities. Over the next few years, de Marillac changed the Ladies’ mission. Ultimately the Ladies became something of a board of directors as well as the group’s principal fundraisers. While the Ladies became administrators, the caregivers in the Confraternities became women from artisan and peasant families. Some of these women heard the preaching during the Lazarists’ missions, others saw the Confraternities in action in their villages or towns and sought to join them.13 In community accounts, the hand of God sent the first ‘‘peasant girl’’ to the community when Marguerite Naseau, an uneducated shepherdess, asked de Paul if she could serve a Parisian Confraternity of Charity in 1630. She approached de Paul requesting his permission to provide charitable assistance to the poor in Paris as she had in her village, where she nursed the sick and was learning to read in order to teach others. When de Paul and de Marillac accepted her into the Confraternity, they permanently transformed the organization. Within the next few years women from modest families entered the Confraternity to work directly with the sick and poor while those from elite families assumed more administrative roles. Naseau was able to serve the poor in ways that the Ladies could not because she possessed a wide array of practical skills, including cooking, teaching, and healing. Although Naseau died while working among the plague-stricken in 1633, she was the model for all subsequent Daughters of De Marillac, E´crits spirituels, Lettre 8. For example, see de Marillac, E´crits spirituels, Lettre 45. De Marillac wrote to the Abbe´ de Vaux in 1641 in response to his letter requesting permission to send a local girl to Paris to be trained as a Daughter of Charity. She learned of the Company through its work in the hospital in Angers. 12 13

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Charity.14 She was also the subject of one of de Paul’s Conferences, his talks to the community, about the virtues of country girls.15 Following her, many other young women, mostly from rural artisan and petit bourgeois families, entered the Confraternity of Charity.16 My research indicates that a minority of the Daughters of Charity came from her peasant background. Most were the daughters of artisans or the lesser bourgeoisie.17 The entrance records for the Daughters’ seminary in Eu, which opened in 1685, typically state the father’s occupation, and, in some cases, the skills the young women possessed. Skills most frequently commented upon include reading, writing, knitting, and sewing. Those who were acceptable, morally and physically, to de Marillac and de Paul became Daughters of Charity, regardless of their place and rank of origin. Novices brought with them enough money for either their trip home or their first habit. The Company required no dowry and accepted women whose entrance records reveal that they arrived with only some worn clothing. At an age when religious orders required dowries and tertiary organizations were closing, the Company of the Daughters of Charity offered a unique opportunity to women of modest backgrounds with religious vocations. By 1633 the structure of the Confraternity of Charity had altered dramatically. By this year, there were a number of young women from the countryside working under the direction of the Ladies of Charity in and around Paris. The organization’s more viable structure ironically endangered their very existence. By the mid-1630s, the Daughters of Charity were visible in many of Paris’ parishes. As young, single women came to Paris to live with

14 For example, see Archives de Maison Me`re des Filles de la Charite´ (AMMFC) 1033/78, a letter from Louise de Marillac to two sick Daughters of Charity in Calais dated 8/3/1657. De Marillac tells them that two other Daughters of Charity have recently died and another has been severely ill for eight days. See also, AMMFC 1057, a letter from Monsieur Lambert to de Marillac in 1652 stating that nearly all the Daughters of Charity working at the hospital in Angers were ill. Many recruits died young, either because of the intensity of their work or because of their proximity to the sick. 15 In July 1642, de Paul addressed a conference to the Daughters entitled, ‘‘On the Virtues of Marguerite Naseau’’ and in January 1643, ‘‘On Imitating the Conduct of Country Girls.’’ See The Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul to the Sisters of Charity, trans. Joseph Leonard, CM (Westminister, Md., 1952), 71–85. 16 Joseph I. Dirvin, Louise de Marillac (New York, 1970), 113. 17 De Paul claimed that the Daughters of Charity were ‘‘peasant girls’’ because he saw the Daughters in light of Naseau, the first and model Daughter of Charity. However, by later in the seventeenth century most of the Daughters came from families of the artisan and middle classes, and many of their fathers worked in textile trades. There are no entrance records extant for the time period before 1685, but from this year until 1792 the Daughters maintained records of all entrants to their seminary in Eu, in the diocese of Rouen. Archives Nationales. L. L. 1664. Registre de la ville d’Eu.

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de Marillac and work under her direction, the Confraternity began to resemble a religious order.18 Such a resemblance was dangerous because in its 23rd session the Council of Trent had decreed that all religious orders of women live within convent walls. Anything more ambiguous than a direct assertion of lay status could have led to clausura at the hands of reformminded bishops. The founders were sensitive to this danger. According to de Paul, ‘‘It cannot be maintained that the Daughters of Charity are ‘religious,’ because they could not be Daughters of Charity if they were, for to be a ‘religious,’ one must be cloistered.’’19 It is in their efforts to maintain the active vocation of the Daughters of Charity and to avoid enclosure that de Paul and de Marillac skillfully averted Tridentine promulgations.

Council of Trent The Council of Trent met from December 1545 to December 1563; its goals were the articulation of the doctrines of the Catholic Church and the implementation of behavioral regulations in the face of the successes of the Protestant Reformations. The Council had an odious beginning. According to Giuseppe Alberigo, ‘‘the bishops gathered at Trent were few and often bewildered, overwhelmed by a rupture in the religious unity of the West that they did not really understand, uncertain whether the pope really wanted a Council.’’20 Moreover, the Council was pulled in two directions. Charles V wanted the Council to remedy the disciplinary and pastoral problems within the Church, whereas the pope wanted the Council to address the theological issues raised by Luther with the goal of condemning Protestant doctrinal dissent.21 The Council bridged these competing visions as those in attendance alternated between disciplinary and doctrinal questions. Despite very difficult circumstances, including warring heads of states who sought to influence the Council, the reigns of five popes (including Paul IV who was hostile to the Council), and an outbreak of the plague at Trent, the Council managed to lay the foundation for reform of the Catholic Church. In its 23rd session it promulgated the decree that would ultimately have the greatest impact on the Daughters of Charity, ‘‘Provision is made for the enclosure of nuns, especially those who reside outside the cities.’’ This decree was a reassertion of Boniface VIII’s 1298 Periculoso, which imposed cloister on all nuns.

18

AMMFC 187. Vincent de Paul, Saint Vincent de Paul. Correspondance, Entretiens, Documents, ed. Pierre Coste, 14 vols. (Paris, 1920–26), ix, 662. 20 Giuseppe Alberigo, ‘‘The Council of Trent,’’ in Catholicism in Early Modern History: A Guide to Research, ed. John O’Malley (St. Louis, 1988), 211. 21 Ibid., 212. 19

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The holy council . . . commands all bishops that . . . they make it their special care that in all monasteries subject to them by their own authority and in others by the authority of the Apostolic See, the enclosure of nuns be restored wherever it has been violated and that it be preserved where it has not been violated . . . even summoning for this purpose, if need be, the aid of the secular arm. The holy council exhorts all Christian princes to furnish this aid, and binds thereto under penalty of excommunication to be incurred ipso facto all civil magistrates. No nun shall after her profession be permitted to go out of the monastery, even for a brief period under any pretext whatever, except for a lawful reason to be approved by the bishop.22

In the following year, Pius V issued the papal bull Circa pastoralis, suppressing all women’s congregations not practicing enclosure.23 With this Bull the pope went a step farther than both Boniface VIII and the Council of Trent when he cloistered or disbanded all religious women who still lived outside cloisters including members of all tertiary orders. These promulgations indicate that the representatives at Trent sought to make their Church more orderly by better regulating its men and physically containing its women. The pope understood that the decrees of Trent could not be fully implemented without the help of lay authorities, because the Church lacked the mechanisms to assure compliance. Indeed, the decree about the enclosure of nuns instructs bishops to call upon secular authorities for help in keeping women within their cloister walls. The pope requested that Europe’s Catholic monarchs accept and publish the decrees.24 Despite Pope Pius IV’s request, the states of Europe did not uniformly adopt the Tridentine accords. Particularly in France, there was a great deal of opposition to recognizing the decrees.25 According to Hubert Jedin, ‘‘the reception of the Council of Trent ran into strong opposition from the partly Huguenot, partly Gallicanminded, jurists of the highest tribunals, the parlements, in which every law valid in France had to be registered.’’26 Indeed, French secular authorities did not seem worried by the prospect of excommunication for not placing women religious inside convent walls. Instead, the Royal Council and principal members of the Parlement of Paris met at Fontainebleau in 1564 to discuss

22

Schroeder, Canons and Decrees, 220–21. William Monter, ‘‘Protestant Wives, Catholic Saints, and the Devil’s Handmaid: Women in the Age of the Reformations,’’ in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Stuard (Boston, 1987), 209. 24 Thomas I. Crimando, ‘‘Two French Views of the Council of Trent,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal XIX, 2 (1988), 169. 25 Alain Tallon, La France et le Concile de Trente (1518–1563) (Rome, 1997), 521. 26 Hubert Jedin and John Dolan, eds., History of the Church, vol. V: Reformation and Counter Reformation, trans. Anselm Biggs and Peter W. Becker (London, 1980), 515. 23

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accepting Tridentine reforms.27 Members of the Royal Council asked Charles de Moulin, who had practiced law in the chaˆtelet and Parlement of Paris, to write an opinion.28 He was one of the greatest legal minds of his day, the ‘‘prince of legists’’ according to Donald Kelley. He was also a proponent of the revived Gallicanism in the sixteenth century that had developed after the Concordat of 1516.29 De Moulin and other Gallican theorists argued that absolute temporal authority resided in the King and that French acceptance of Tridentine decrees ‘‘would result in extensive papal interference in the temporal and ecclesiastical affairs of France.’’30 Robert Kingdon argues: ‘‘underlying Dumoulin’s entire argument is the assumption that in all matters affecting the temporal organization of human society, the state must take precedence over the Church.’’31 Ultimately, one wonders why the councilors would have requested De Moulin’s opinion had they seriously considered adopting the Tridentine accords. Kingdon describes de Moulin as ‘‘certainly not a Roman Catholic’’ nor ‘‘any orthodox sort of Protestant.’’32 He was profoundly suspicious of the Catholic Church and could not in all likelihood have offered the fathers at Trent a fair hearing. Indeed Kelley asserts, ‘‘having adopted the simplistic and moralizing attitudes of his Protestant antecedents, Dumoulin naturally drew upon the most radical and offensive critics of the Church in portraying this process of corruption.’’33 De Moulin believed the papacy to be thoroughly corrupt and he articulated a model of Gallicanism that sought the unity of French law, monarch, and Church.34 He argued that the Royal Council should not adopt the Tridentine decrees, believing that they would compromise the ‘‘liberties of the Gallican Church.’’35 The Royal Council decided to postpone accepting the decrees. Catherine de Medici did not want the decrees published, or, if published, she wanted them only to apply to French Catholics so as not to antagonize French Protestants. De Medici did urge her bishops to make their dioceses obey Trent, but the pope did not insist that she publish the decrees.36 27

Crimando, ‘‘Two French Views,’’ 175. Ibid., 174. 29 Donald R. Kelley, ‘‘ ‘Fides Historiae’: Charles Dumoulin and the Gallican view of history,’’ Traditio 22 (1966), 352. 30 Crimando, ‘‘Two French Views,’’ 170. 31 Robert M. Kingdon, ‘‘Some French Reactions to the Council of Trent,’’ Church History 33 (June 1964), 153. 32 Ibid., 151. Kingdon describes Dumoulin as a man who ‘‘flirted with Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Zwinglianism.’’ 33 Kelley, ‘‘ ‘Fides Historiae’,’’ 376. 34 Ibid., 353. 35 Crimando, ‘‘Two French Views,’’ 175. 36 Victor Martin, Le gallicanisme et la re´forme Catholique: essai historique sur l’introduction en France des de´crets du concile de Trente (1563–1615) (Paris 1919), 61–4. 28

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The French monarchy had always been dubious of the meetings at Trent. French delegates were not active in the first two phases of the Council (1545–49 and 1551–52), in part because of their fear that the doctrines of the Council could threaten the French Church’s sovereignty.37 After the Council’s first session, Henry II asserted that the decrees were meant as a guide for pastors and would not be made royal law.38 Catherine de Medici did send French ambassadors and bishops to the final meetings of Trent (1562–63) because she had come to believe that a decline in clerical discipline was a primary cause of the spread of the Huguenot movement.39 When the French arrived in Trent they urged the Council to prioritize ecclesiastical reforms.40 Indeed, the French left the Council a few months before its formal close because they had concluded that some of the proposed reforms would infringe upon the freedoms of the French crown and Church.41 Beyond the concerns of the monarchs, there was a more general debate in France about accepting and publishing the decrees of Trent. We cannot forget that this dispute took place against the chaotic background of religious war and a succession of young monarchs. According to Alain Tallon, the Council of Trent was not important to most sixteenth-century French Catholics.42 However, the need for reform of the Church was important to members of the Gallican clergy and at the Assembly of Melun in 1579 they advocated the publication of the decrees of Trent. According to Victor Martin, the Assembly of Melun was important because it merged the notion of disciplinary reforms to the adoption of Trent and because it demonstrated that the Gallican clergy was united with the universal Church, which advocated change in accordance with Tridentine promulgations.43 Despite the Assembly’s efforts to issue the decrees, they remained unpublished. Members of the clergy continued to advocate the adoption of the decrees and when the Estates-General convened in 1614, the cahiers of the clergy demanded the publication of the decrees.44 However, the Estates-General refused to accept the reforms of Trent. In the following year, the Assembly of the Clergy (the national representative institution of the French Church) voted to accept and enforce the reforms within the

37

Crimando, ‘‘Two French Views,’’ 172. Tallon, La France, 539. 39 Crimando, ‘‘Two French Views,’’ 173. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., 174. 42 Tallon, La France, 518. 43 Martin, Le gallicanisme et la re´forme Catholique, 165. 44 Ibid., 343. 38

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French Church.45 Therefore, the French Church only ratified the promulgations of Trent in 1615 and was never successful in getting the king’s approval for publication.46 Although the French Church did not immediately ratify the Tridentine decrees, the mood within the Church did change over the course of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. French bishops enforced reform in their dioceses beginning in the 1560s when local councils ratified the decrees.47 As a result of the independent reform initiatives of the bishops, there were localized efforts at correcting religious abuses and moral laxity in France before the Assembly of the Clergy adopted the Tridentine reforms. Efforts to reform the French Church came from individuals like de Paul, priests and bishops who dictated the rules in their parishes and dioceses. Such internal reforms were varied, but certainly included efforts to restrict the physical freedom of women religious, such as the Visitandines and the Ursulines, communities that lived outside of enclosure in Annecy and Italy, but were cloistered in France.

Enclosures of the Visitandines and Ursulines Although all three communities sought an active vocation for religious women, the history of the Visitandines and Ursulines was very different from that of the Daughters of Charity. Franc¸ois de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal created the Visitandine order in 1607 in de Sales’ diocese of Annecy. They founded their community for lay women (many of whom were not physically well enough to endure the rigors of monastic life) who sought to practice the virtues of the Virgin Mary, humility, piety, and charity, and to provide benevolent works for the sick and poor.48 De Sales and de Chantal created a new form of feminine religious life based upon de Sales’ theology. De Sales wrote that Christians could lead meaningful secular lives centered on religious devotion; one did not have to join a religious order to be a dedicated

45

Jedin and Dolan, History of the Church, 516. See also Colin Jones, ‘‘Perspectives on Poor Relief, Health Care and the Counter-Reformation in France,’’ in Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, ed. Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Jon Arrizabalaga (New York, 1999), 216. 46 Martin, Le gallicanisme et la re´forme Catholique, 392. 47 Pierre Blet, ‘‘France,’’ in Catholicism in Early Modern Europe, 61. The decrees of Trent were first accepted by local councils in Reims in 1564 and 1583, Cambrai in 1565, Rouen in 1581, Bourdeaux and Tours in 1583, Bourges in 1584, Aix in 1585, and Toulouse in 1590. 48 New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967 edn., s.v. ‘‘Francis de Sales, Saint,’’ vi, 34–6.

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Christian.49 Members of the Visitandine order served God through their simplicity and their good works. Visitandine communities also opened their doors for spiritual retreats made by lay women. In 1615, the archbishop of Lyon, Denis-Simon de Marquemont, requested that de Sales found a community of the Visitandines in his diocese. De Sales accommodated him and modeled the new community after the one in Annecy. During the first year of its establishment the archbishop reconsidered and insisted that de Sales impose clausura upon the order as directed by Trent. De Sales refused. He did not prevail, however, and in 1616, the archbishop of Lyon enclosed the Visitandines. De Sales understood that in Lyon the Visitandine order was under the archbishop’s jurisdiction and had to obey his commands. Other dioceses in France had begun requesting communities of the Visitandines and if the order was to grow in France it needed the support of the Archbishop de Marquemont. Therefore, de Sales conceded to his demands and cloistered the French communities. The fate of the Ursulines in France was similar to that of the Visitandines. Angela Merici, a lay woman, founded the Ursulines in 1535 when she brought together twenty-eight young women in Brescia, Italy. The women promised to live in the world (usually with their families) and serve God as consecrated virgins and brides of Christ.50 In 1544, Paul III confirmed the congregation as a confraternity with some of the privileges of a religious order. Five years after the community’s foundation Merici died and gradually the nature of her company changed. The Mother Superior appointed by Merici before her death implemented modifications that contradicted Merici’s original vision when she required the Ursulines to wear a habit and adopt public vows upon entrance.51 Eventually the community came to the attention of Carlo Borromeo, the reforming archbishop of Milan who saw a way to employ the Ursulines in his diocese. He brought twelve Ursulines to Milan where they taught young girls catechism and lived with local families.52 He was impressed with their work, and by 1576 Borromeo had made it the duty of bishops in his archdiocese to found a Company of St. Ursula to teach girls and young women catechism on Sundays and feast days.53 For Borromeo, the Ursulines were an ideal vehicle through which to teach women and girls the theology

49

See Franc¸ois de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, ed. John K. Ryan (New York, 1950). 50 Charmarie J. Blaisdell, ‘‘Angela Merici and the Ursulines,’’ in Religious Orders of the Catholic Reformation, ed. Richard DeMolen (New York, 1994), 99. 51 Ibid., 115. 52 Judith Combes Taylor, ‘‘From Proselytizing to Social Reform: Three Generations of French Female Teaching Congregations, 1600–1720’’ (Ph.D. Diss., Arizona State University, 1980), 55. 53 Teresa Ledochowska, Angela Merici and the Company of St. Ursula according to the historical documents, trans. Mary Teresa Neylan (Milan, 1968), 85–6.

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and piety that Trent insisted all Catholics learn. Borromeo turned the Ursulines into teachers of Christian doctrine and legitimized the congregation by placing it under clerical controls. He transformed the community’s structure when he put the Ursulines of Milan under the leadership of a male prior-general, something Merici had avoided doing.54 Female control of the congregation shrunk as local bishops and the prior-general increasingly controlled the Ursulines. In the early 1580s, Borromeo further transformed the Company by writing a new rule, which dictated simple vows, a formal induction ceremony, a uniform habit, and communal living.55 Borromeo’s rule stressed hierarchical governance and obedience, whereas Merici’s original rule had encouraged the Ursulines to live simply and listen to the Holy Spirit.56 As the Ursulines grew, both models endured with some companies in Italy adopting the Brescian model and others adopting the Milanese model.57 By the end of the sixteenth century, communities of Ursulines had spread to all major Italian cities and into France; by the mid-seventeenth century, many French towns had a school maintained by the Ursulines.58 The early French Ursuline communities followed the Milanese model, having both the oversight of the local bishop and a communal life without enclosure. They served their towns by catechizing girls of all social classes.59 Over time, however, Ursuline communities adopted clausura.60 In Paris, the women who brought the Ursulines to the city, Mme Acarie and Mme de Sainte-Beauve, went beyond the structure imposed by Borromeo and insisted that entrants pronounce solemn vows and accept enclosure in 1612.61 This decision caused division within the community and some women left instead of living a life of clausura. Despite this struggle, the order thrived and between 1612 and 1640 hundreds of Ursuline convents were founded in France.62 Obviously, the Ursulines in Paris were no longer a confraternity; they were a formal religious order taking solemn vows, living a communal life organized

54

Marie Andre´e Je´gou, OSU, Les Ursulines du Faubourg Saint-Jacques a` Paris (1607–1662) (Paris, 1981), 22. 55 Blaisdell, ‘‘Angela Merici and the Ursulines,’’ 119. 56 Ibid. 57 Taylor, ‘‘From Proselytizing to Social Reform,’’ 51. 58 Ibid., 96. 59 Ibid., 120. 60 Blaisdell, ‘‘Angela Merici and the Ursulines,’’ 121. See also Marie-E´lisabeth Aubry, ‘‘La Congre´gation de Notre-Dame a` Nancy et l’e´ducation des filles aux XVIIe et XVIIIe sie`cles,’’ Annales de l’Este 26 (1974), 76–96. Aubry details the enclosure of an Ursuline community in Nancy in 1616 and the impact of clausura on the community’s educational mission. 61 Je´gou, Les Ursulines du Faubourg Saint-Jacques a` Paris, 27. 62 Linda Lierheimer, ‘‘Redefining Convent Space: Ideals of Female Community among Seventeenth-Century Ursuline Nuns,’’ Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 24 (1997), 214.

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around a Rule, and residing in a convent. Enclosure dramatically changed the order in France. The cloistered French Ursulines recruited wealthy women who could afford the cost of a dowry to support their lives in convents and thus the order became more aristocratic, whereas in Italy unenclosed Ursulines retained more modest congregations.63 The Ursulines maintained their original purpose of teaching girls, albeit in a very different environment. Instead of teaching in charity schools for poor girls, they now instructed wealthy girls who boarded in their convents and accepted only a few poor day students for lessons.64 The nature of the order’s social mission changed and the Ursulines became the prominent teachers of noble and other wealthy girls in France. Although the Ursulines survived this transformation, the Daughters of Charity – with their commitment to help the sick and poor – could not have transformed their mission to one compatible with enclosure, and indeed the threat of enclosure to women religious was very real. De Paul served as the director of the Visitandines in France at the request of de Sales, and he witnessed their enclosure and the transformation of their mission firsthand. He understood that in order for the Company of the Daughters of Charity to survive and fulfill its vocation, it had to remain an active community in the world. De Paul and de Marillac formulated strategies to avoid enclosure so that the company could retain its mission of serving the sick and poor. Although I do not think their goal was to discredit the work done by the Council, they were very aware of what they were doing. In a letter from 1541, Monsieur Lambert, a priest of the Congregation of the Mission, wrote to Barbe Angiboust, a Daughter of Charity serving a parish in Richelieu, inquiring if the Daughters are still ‘‘passing’’ for a secular community.65 The Daughters of Charity did not serendipitously avoid enclosure; the founders deliberately created a unique identity for the community, thereby intentionally distinguishing themselves as distinct from a contemplative order. They actively solicited the support of valuable allies who helped the community maintain its active vocation.

63 Anne Bertout, Les Ursulines de Paris sous l’ancien re´gime (Paris, 1935), 81. See also Olwen Hufton and Frank Tallett, ‘‘Communities of Women, the Religious Life, and Public Service in Eighteenth-Century France,’’ in Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World, 1500 to the Present, ed. Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert (New York, 1987). 64 Marie de Chantal Gueudre´, Histoire de l’ordre des Ursulines en France (Paris, 1957), i, 242. See also Je´gou, Les Ursulines du Faubourg Saint-Jacques a` Paris, 148. 65 AMMFC 187. The original letter dated 13 May 1641 reads, ‘‘Je ne sais si vous passez pour seculiere.’’

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The Daughters of Charity avoid Enclosure As the Company became more formally organized, de Marillac and de Paul considered enclosure a plausible threat. In 1633, the Company had a centralized authority under de Marillac at the Motherhouse where she directed the activities of the Daughters of Charity with the assistance of the Ladies acting as an administrative board. The community was no longer a group of volunteer Ladies. The Company of the Daughters of Charity was a professional organization with its members supported by local elites and parishes who funded the communities and institutions that they served. The Daughters of Charity resembled a religious order in many respects. Members wore simple habits. Each house of two or more Daughters had a Superior, called the Sister Servant. The Daughters of Charity also followed a formal rule, the first uniform edition of which circulated in 1646. Most importantly, beginning in 1640 Daughters who had been with the Community five or more years could take vows of obedience, poverty, chastity, and service to the poor. The Daughters’ vows were simple and not solemn; nuns professed solemn vows before the Church and the world to announce that they had entered into a religious life and were therefore ‘‘dead to the world.’’66 Persons not affiliated with formal religious orders took simple vows, like those of the Daughters. The Daughters’ vows were also annual (renewed on 25 March) and not perpetual.67 Although the Daughters wanted to make perpetual vows, de Marillac told them of the beauty of annual vows, as one can recommit oneself to God each year.68 With habits, superiors, vows, and a rule, the Daughters appeared to be a religious order. Given the fate of the Visitandines and the Ursulines, prudence was in order. De Paul and de Marillac searched for ways to retain the Company’s active vocation. To underscore the unique mission of the Daughters, de Paul told them, ‘‘your monasteries are the houses of the sick; your cell, the hired room; your chapel, the parish Church; your cloister, the streets of the city; your enclosure, obedience; your grille, the fear of God; your veil, holy modesty.’’69 This quotation demonstrates that de Paul clearly understood what characterized

66 Elizabeth Rapley, The De´votes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Buffalo, 1990), 25. 67 On March 25, 1642 Louise and four other Daughters of Charity took private perpetual vows during mass. Only Daughters with at least five years in the Company were eligible to take perpetual vows and de Paul granted this privilege to very few. After the death of the founders this practice ceased and Daughters were only eligible for annual vows. For de Marillac, this vow served as a substitute for the Capuchin vow that she had promised to God as a teenager. Later in the century, when active orders became more common, so did the practice of taking annual vows. 68 Elisabeth Charpy, Petite vie de Louise de Marillac (Paris, 1991), 39. 69 De Paul, Correspondance, x, 661.

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the lives of nuns, including cells and cloister, and that he saw alternative parallel traits for his Daughters. They would not need enclosure because of the fortitude of their vows of obedience. De Paul was sure that his Daughters would not scandalize the Church, even if the delegates at Trent had expressed their doubts about the ability of women to remain chaste and pure in the world. For the Daughters’ active vocation to remain a reality, the founders employed several strategies to avert enclosure. As we have seen, de Paul and de Marillac manipulated language to create an identity for their ‘‘Daughters’’ that was different from that of nuns. The founders also allied with local officials, those on the ‘‘periphery,’’ who helped shield them from the forces of the ‘‘center.’’ Although some bishops in France embraced reform on the Tridentine model, such behavior was not universal. Since there was no universal acceptance of the Tridentine decrees in France, the Company had some room to maneuver. The religious figure most responsible for helping the Daughters retain their unenclosed lifestyle and active vocation was Jean-Francois-Paul de Gondi, archbishop of Paris (from 1622) and cardinal de Retz (from 1652). If there was ever a man on the periphery, it was the cardinal de Retz. His sexual and political escapades alienated him from the royal family and many of France’s nobles. However, it was he who recognized the importance of the Daughter’s vocation and granted them official recognition and the protection that accompanied it. The archbishop’s support for the Company is due in part to his personal relationship with de Paul. Vincent de Paul had served as spiritual guide and tutor in the household of Philippe Emmanuel de Gondi, General of the Galleys and father of the future archbishop. Although de Paul had left the household when Jean-Francois-Paul de Gondi was 4, he ultimately proved to be an important supporter of de Paul’s fledgling communities by making de Paul director of the Colle´ge´ des Bons-Enfants, approving the foundation of the Congregation of the Mission, and allowing him to establish the Congregation at Saint-Lazare.70 Most importantly for our discussion, in 1646 he granted the Company of Daughters of Charity his formal approbation.71 This document of official approbation was reported ‘‘lost’’ by de Marillac, and in 1655 the archbishop of Paris, who by then had become the cardinal de Retz, signed a second statement of approbation.72 The

70

J. H. M. Salmon, Cardinal de Retz: The Anatomy of a Conspirator (London, 1969), 20. For a more complete discussion of the support the archbishop provided de Paul, see Correspondance, i, 103. 71 Pierre Coste, Les Filles de la Charite´ (Paris, 1933), 28. 72 De Marillac, E´crits sprituels, Lettre 333. In 1651, de Marillac wrote to de Paul stating that she did not have a copy of the 1646 letter of approbation. ‘‘I have found

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difference between the two versions of this document is that in 1646 the archbishop stated that after de Paul’s death the Daughters of Charity would be directed by local bishops, whereas in 1655 he wrote that direction of the Company would remain in the hands of the Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission. De Marillac initiated this change when the second document was being written because she believed that the Company had a better chance of escaping enclosure if the Congregation of the Mission oversaw it.73 The statement was everything that the Daughters could have wanted. Not only did the decree declare that the confraternity was open to married women, widows, and pious single women, but it avoided defining the confraternity as a religious order and thereby helped to ensure its unenclosed status. Along with appealing to the archbishop for his support, de Marillac and de Paul also looked to the royal family for assistance in establishing the Daughters of Charity. De Paul had a reputation as a venerable priest and spiritual advisor. He was the son of poor peasants and he had become the director of several religious communities and a member of Louis XIV’s Council of Conscience. However, in this venue he often was in opposition to Mazarin and eventually Mazarin had him dismissed from the Council. De Marillac was a less controversial figure at court, despite her illegitimate birth, humble upbringing, and conniving relations (two of her uncles had been imprisoned as a result of the Day of Dupes plot against Louis XIII). In the eyes of the women of the court, de Marillac was a model of de´vote piety. Her charitable works were the stuff of legend and many at court aspired to her model of sanctity. For instance, there was a plan to create a confraternity of the court, which de Marillac would direct, and which would have been staffed by the Ladies of the royal court. Although this plan was never realized, it does indicate the important place de Marillac held at the court. With the help of religious and political leaders in France, the Daughters of Charity opened the doors to women seeking an active religious vocation. Although peripheral to the Roman Church, the French leaders had the power to protect the Daughters and ultimately to change what the center defined as legitimate women’s work in the Church. Shortly after receiving the approbation of the archbishop of Paris, the Company began taking the steps necessary to obtain acceptance from Louis XIV. Before the state no document pertaining to the foundation. However, I recall that one day (30 May 1647) you read to us the petition you had presented to the Most Reverend Archbishop of Paris. You followed this with a reading of our Rule. Thinking that the text should remain with us, I asked you for it. I believe that the reason we never received it was because there were still modifications to be made in it.’’ 73 Archives Nationales, L. L. 1054. Letter of approbation from the cardinal de Retz. The Company of the Daughters of Charity was always governed by its Superior General and the Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission.

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accepted the Company, de Marillac was interviewed by the Procurator General, an appointee of the king who served as an officer of Parlement. A portion of this conversation, preserved in correspondence between de Paul and de Marillac, demonstrates that the issue of the Company’s identity was a sensitive one. De Marillac wrote: ‘‘he asked me if we considered ourselves regular or secular. I told him that we aspired only to the latter. . . . He said many good things about the Company and added that he did not disapprove of our plan.’’74 The Daughter’s mission of serving the poor resonated with those in positions of power in France. The king signed the royal letters patent in 1657 and registered them with Parlement in December 1658. The official name of the organization remained the Company of the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Sick Poor. Finally, in 1668 Pope Clement IX recognized the Company of the Daughters of Charity as a confraternity. In this way, the actions of the Daughters on the periphery shaped what was permissible by authorities at the center. Clement IX’s decision to embrace the Daughters’ unconventional mission was at least in part due to its acceptance by many local clerics, the archbishop of Paris, and the king. As the seventeenth century progressed, many more unenclosed communities of women were developed and the Church recognized them and their mission. Although the Council of Trent sought to enclose religious women, the Catholic Church, and in particular the French Catholic Church, needed women like the Daughters of Charity to provide basic social services and to educate the poor about their faith. Ultimately, clerics in France treated the legislation of the Council of Trent as malleable, which makes sense because the Council imposed legislation to cloister women in an effort to better discipline the Church; they did not pass this legislation in order to keep women from aiding the sick and poor or from teaching girls. The French were on the periphery of the Roman Church because of their belief in the autonomy of the Gallican Church. Moreover, the monarchs had offered very little support to the Council of Trent, either in encouraging bishops to attend or in imposing its decrees. Tridentine accords were clearly peripheral in the eyes of the French monarchs. There was clearly a competing notion of what was peripheral and there was a struggle between officials in Rome and in France to control the center. In terms of the Daughters’ success in becoming a non-cloistered community of women religious, it was the authority of the French Church and State that was central. Viewed in the light of their overall contribution as missionaries (as teachers and healers), the Daughters of Charity were a clear manifestation of early modern Catholicism. The Daughters served as witnesses to the faith of poor families, taught girls catechism, and urged the sick to make confessions.

74

De Marillac, E´crits spirituels, Lettre 283.

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Viewed strictly within the light of Tridentine decree on enclosure, however, the Daughters of Charity were not obedient. Their role within the Catholic Church was complicated and carefully negotiated.75 To bring the Tridentine message of reform to the poor of France, the Daughters of Charity had to circumvent the rules of the Council of Trent and make a place for themselves outside the convent and in the world. The Daughters of Charity are a prime example of early modern women shaping and altering the rules designed to regulate their conduct in ways that reflected the needs of their societies. The development of active women’s religious communities on the periphery of the Tridentine Church was an important facet of the central mission of the Church, which was to comfort and educate its members. The Daughters’ creation of a vocation beyond the home and the convent is significant because by the late seventeenth century a large percentage of French women entering religious communities joined active ones.76 By the end of the century, the Church accepted women’s active apostolate and women established a multitude of teaching and nursing communities in France. Active companies of women that developed in the seventeenth century and beyond used the Daughters of Charity as their model.77 Although the Daughters were the largest such community, many new foundations of unenclosed women established themselves in France in the second half of the seventeenth century.78 For example, as Judith Combes Taylor has demonstrated, after 1660 the number of women’s teaching communities increased greatly in France and most were non-cloistered communities that served poor girls. In addition, according to Elizabeth Rapley, ‘‘the active congregations became an integral part of modern France. The vast majority of schoolgirls in the Old Regime were educated by them. The hospitals depended on them absolutely. Society grew up around them, to the degree that it developed no alternative sources for the services which they provided.’’79

75

Colin Jones refers to the ‘‘torturous and frequently cunning ways’’ that de Paul maneuvered to keep the Daughters of Charity out of the cloister. I think this assertion is something of an overstatement; de Paul and de Marillac were certainly cunning, but I do not agree that their path to an active vocation was ‘‘tortuous.’’ See Jones, ‘‘Perspectives on Poor Relief,’’ 232. 76 Rapley, The De´votes, 6–7: ‘‘At mid-century . . . female religious life entered a new phase. The first active noncloistered congregations were born. Their members – filles se´culie`res, . . . knew full well that they were nuns in all but name. However, they accepted secular status, so as to remain free to pursue their active vocation.’’ 77 Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Regime and Revolutionary France (New York, 1989), 99. Jones asserts that many communities of active women religious founded after 1640 were ‘‘unequivocally modeled on the Daughters of Charity,’’ including the hospital sisters of Saint-Joseph, the Soeurs de la Charite´ de Notre-Dame, and the Soeurs de la Charite´ de la Pre´sentation. 78 Rapley, The De´votes, 95. 79 Ibid., 8.

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Conclusion Neither Louise de Marillac nor Vincent de Paul encountered significant resistance to the formal recognition of the Daughters of Charity. At least in France, the early modern Church was a fairly malleable institution and French bishops were independent from Rome and often did what was in their best interests regardless of Roman policy. For example, the French Church did not accept the decrees of the Council of Trent until 1615. Since the State did not ratify the decrees, individual bishops imposed them in their dioceses, with some bishops implementing reforms more rigorously than others. Moreover, many noble women joined the Ladies of Charity and the royal family supported the Company of the Daughters of Charity. On the local level, the Daughters worked in parishes and hospitals and proved themselves competent caregivers. It is reasonable to assume that the nobles, the Church, and the State would support an institution that provided France with extensive social services at minimal expense to its Church or its government. Ultimately, the Council of Trent lacked the mechanisms to impose conformity upon all of Catholic Europe. The Council sought to impose a new degree of doctrinal and behavioral uniformity on the Catholic population, but did not have the means to obtain uniformity. The central authorities of the Catholic Church in Rome could not control the decisions made on the periphery, and the Daughters of Charity thrived in France, and later across Europe, despite their circumvention of the decrees of Trent. I would argue that because the Church lacked mechanisms to impose control, there were many centers and peripheries in the sixteenth century. The center was not just Rome or Trent, but rather there were centers of reform efforts – some, like Milan, that followed Tridentine dictates closely and others, like Paris, that were less bound to Trent. Moreover, there can also be many peripheries. In fact, I think it is not unreasonable to say that Rome was somewhat peripheral to Paris because of the French Church’s Gallicanism. I would argue that overall the centers had some, but not complete, control over the peripheries. And the peripheries were important shapers of the center; indeed, across Catholic Europe, unenclosed communities of women religious developed in order to provide poor relief and medical services to those in need.

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Index Abelard, Peter 67 Aelred of Rievaulx 187 Aethelwold of Winchester, Bishop 25 aggiornamento xiv, 63, 67, 92 Agrippinus 160, 161, 162, 165 al-Faˆraˆbi 55, 56 Alberigo, Giuseppe xxi, 139–52, 204 Alexander II 107 Ambrose, St 17, 41, 98, 169 Anselm of Canterbury 32, 41, 42 Proslogion 58 Antioch, synod (328) 93 apostolic tradition 6, 30–31, 33–4, 44, 52, 75, 77, 128, 130–31, 134, 163, 205 Aquinas, Thomas, St xviii, 40, 41, 42–3, 44–6, 47, 51–2, 55, 56, 57 and knowing 48 Summa Theologiae 42, 49 Super Boetium De Trinitate 58 Arabic Peripateticism 39, 43, 57, 59 Arian controversy xx, 93, 96 Aristotelianism xviii, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 54, 56, 58–9, 66 Aristotle xviii, 39, 41–5, 47, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 73 Arles, Council of (314) 157, 159, 164–5, 167 asceticism xvii, xxii, xxiv, 17, 98, 168 growth 10–14, 17–18 Athanasius 93 Atto of Vercelli 30 Augustine, St xviii, 8, 17, 18, 42, 48, 58, 169 on baptism 63, 64 City of God 15 on grace 63 Neoplatonism 39–41, 47, 49–52, 54–6, 59 Austin, J.L. 16 baptism Augustine on 63, 64 Gilbert of Poitiers on 63–4 Gregory the Great on 62 of heretics xxii, 159–65, 172 holy innocents 64 immersions 62

and scholastics 63 Basil of Caesarea 170–71 Bede, The Venerable 17, 111 Benedict, St, discretio 191–2 Benedictine Rule xxii, 175, 176, 185, 186, 189, 190, 191, 193, 194, 196, 198 Berengar of Narbonne, Viscount 24 Berman, Constance H. 177, 178 Bernard of Clairvaux 174, 181, 184, 186, 187–8, 189, 193, 198 Berthold of Carinthia 33 bishops donations to 97, 98, 100, 102 post-Constantinian recognition 7, 87–103 reform by xix–xxi, 11, 13, 14, 16–17, 23–5, 32, 60, 75–6, 78, 105–37, 139, 150, 156, 159, 162–3, 165, 166–8, 170, 172, 204, 206–8, 209–10, 213–15, 217 reform of xxii, 6, 13, 33–4, 76, 77–8, 145–9, 157–8, 164, 168, 205 Boethius 52, 58 Platonism 41 Bonaventure, St xviii, 44 Itinerarium Mentis in Deum 44, 58 Boniface VIII 204 Borromeo, Carlo 209–10 Brandolini, Lippo, De veri pastoris munere 139 Bruno of Segni xx–xxi, 33, 106, 124, 137 career 123 on episcopal vestments 135, 136 on papal vestments 129–30 works De Laudibus Ecclesiae 128–9 De Sacramentis Ecclesiae 123, 125– 7, 129, 130–32, 133, 134–5, 136 Bull, Marcus 29 Burckhardt, Jakob 34 Burgundy 23 Bynum, Caroline W. 193 Caecilianus 91, 92 Caesarius of Arles 16 Calcidius 41

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Calistus II 176 Calvin, John 69, 71, 78 canon law xvi, xix, 22, 31, 34, 61, 70–73, 156 rejection by Luther xix, 78–80 canons Church councils xix, 16, 69, 75, 77–8, 81, 82, 157–9 collections 31, 168–9, 171 Council of Elvira 156–7 Capranica, Domenico 139 Cassian, John 11 celibacy, clerical 30, 70, 72, 75 Chalcedon, Council of (451) 171, 172 charity, Peter Damian on 118–19 Charter of Charity 173, 176–7, 185, 189, 194–7, 198 Chenu, M.-D., Pe´re 40 Christendom, Western 18–19 Christianisation, Roman society 7–8, 14–15 Christianity Greek 50 Latin 40, 57, 59 Church, The ‘authentic’, search for xvi–xvii Constantinian xix–xx, 5 and images 80 as legal institution, recognition 87 as mystery of holiness 3–4 post-Constantinian 8–9, 14–15, 88 reform Councils 157–9, 166–7 and the Roman Empire 7–8 churches building 22–5 building, by Paschal II 126 dedication exegesis 110 and reform 105–37 iconography 136–7 Cicero 80 Cistercians origins xxii, 173–4, 176 reform 177 Clarke, G.W. 162 Clement VI 45 Clement IX 215 clergy, laity, distinction 70–71 Cluny 29, 190, 193 Colish, Marcia xviii, 61–8 concomitance 66 confirmation, sacrament 62 Confraternity of Charity 200, 201, 203

Congar, Yves-Marie, Vraie et fausse re´forme dans l’Eglise 3, 4, 5 Congregation of the Mission 201 Constantine the Great xxi, 87, 88, 164 bishops, recognition of 87–103 conversion, and reform xxi Corrigan, Kevin 55 Counter-Reformation 45, 59, 69 credo quia absurdum 73, 82, 83 credo ut intelligam 71, 73, 75, 82, 83 crusades 28–9 Curia, reform of 145–6 Cyprian of Carthage 63, 89, 90, 91, 92, 159, 166 and baptism of heretics 160, 161–4, 172 Damasus I, St 97, 98, 99–100, 102 Damian, Peter 26, 32–3, 106, 107, 136, 137 career 108 on charity 118–19 church dedication sermon 110–13 allegory 113–23 typological context 114 Dante Alighieri 44 Daughters of Charity xxii–xxiii and Council of Trent 215–16, 217 enclosure, avoidance 212–17 foundation 199 membership 203 seminary 203 structure 212–13 vows 212 Dawson, Christopher 17 de Chantal, Jeanne 208 de Gondi, J.-F.-P. (cardinal de Retz) 213–14 de Libera, Alain 55 de Marillac, Louise 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 217 de Marquement, Denis-Simon 209 de Moulin, Charles 206 de Paul, Vincent 199, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 217 founds Confraternity of Charity 200 Congregation of the Mission 201 reforms 200 de Retz, cardinal see de Gondi de Sales, Franc¸ois 208–9, 211 Decentius of Gubbio 169 deiformity 46, 49, 51, 52, 57, 58, 59

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Index and self-knowledge 39–40 Desiderius see Victor III dianoia, and the soul 53 Dinan, Susan xvi, xxii, xxiii, 199–217 Dionysius 44, 52 discretio St Benedict’s 191–2 Stephen Harding’s 195 doctrine, reform of xviii, xxi, 50, 52, 55– 6, 58, 61–8, 73, 76, 159, 171–2, 204, 207 Donatism 92 Dracilianus 93 ecclesiologies 82–3 Egidio of Viterbo 139 Elvira, Council of, canons (305) 156–7 Erasmus xix, 80, 82, 84 Colloquies 81 De matrimonio christiano 79 ‘Paraclesis’ 81, 83 Erdmann, Carl 28 Eriugena, John Scottus 41, 51, 58 ethics, intentionality 64–5 Eucharist xviii, 74, 76, 158 and sign theory 66 Eusebius of Caesarea 8, 92, 96, 166–7 Ecclesiastical History 9 Eusebius of Nicomedia 97 faith 42–3 and reason 44, 82 festivals, Roman 10–11 Foucault, Michel 78 Fowler-Magerl, Linda 31 France, Tridentine decrees, acceptance of 205–8, 217 Francis of Assisi, St 29 Francis I 76 Frankish Church 16, 17 Galerius, Edict of 92 Gallicanism 206, 217 Gaudium et Spes 21–2, 83 Gelasius I 15 Gelasius II (John of Gaeta) 123 Gennadius of Marseille 169 Geoffrey of Auxerre 188 Gilbert of Poitiers 62 on baptism 63–4 Gilson, E´tienne 44, 45, 56 Giustiniani, Tommaso 139, 140, 141–2 Glaber, Rodulfus 22

grace Augustine on 63 sacrament 63 Gratian 31 Gregorian Reform xix, 29–35, 69–70, 79, 105, 136, 137 results 70–71 Gregory the Great, St 4, 5, 15, 170 on baptism 62 sermon 13–14 works Dialogues 178, 180, 191, 192 Moralia in Iob 174, 178, 179, 181–4, 186, 187, 188, 189, 196, 198 Pastoral Care 180 Gregory of Tours 16, 17 Gregory VII (Hildebrand) 5, 26, 30, 33, 34, 107, 109, 123 Gualbertus, John 26 Guerric of Igny 187 Guido d’Arezzo 25 Guiscard, Robert 107 Guitmund of Aversa 34 Hadot, Pierre 45 Haggai 111, 121 Hamilton, Louis xvi, xx, 105–37 Hankey, Wayne xvi, xviii, 39–60 Harding, Stephen xxii, 173, 176, 184–5, 191, 192, 193, 196 Bible 180, 181 discretio 195 monitum 185, 189, 190 on texts 185–7 Harnack, Adolf von 6, 10 Henry II 207 Henry IV 33 Henry V 123, 124, 125, 134 heresy, and reform xx, 15, 61, 65, 66, 74, 124, 161, 163 heterodoxy, and orthodoxy xv, xix, xxii heretics, baptism of xxii, 159–65, 172 hermits 29 High Middle Ages 22, 26, 27, 59, 61, 70 social changes 28 Hildebrand see Gregory VII Howe, John xv, xvii, 21–35 Hugh of St Victor 61 Huguenots 200, 207 Iamblichus 50, 51, 53, 57 incastelamento xvii, 27, 107

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Innocent I, St 101, 169 intentionality ethics 64–5 Peter Lombard on 64 scholastics 64 Investiture Controversy 26, 106, 133–5 Jaeger, Stephen 179, 196 Jedin, Hubert 205 Jerome, St 98, 102, 168 John of Gaeta see Gelasius II John of Gorze 26 John of Segovia 139 John XXIII xiii, 3 Julius II 141 justification Council of Trent 74–5 Luther 72, 81 Justinian I 103, 171 Kelley, Donald 206 Kerr, Fergus 48 Kery, Lotte 31 Kingdon, Robert 206 knowing, and Aquinas 48 Ladner, Gerhart 4, 5 Lafleur, Claude 55–6 Lateran Council, First 105 Lateran Council, Fourth 61, 66 Lateran Council, Fifth 139, 140, 152 Laudage, Johannes 30 Lazarists 201–2, 213 Leander of Seville 62, 63, 170 Leclercq, Jean 29 Leo I 62 Leo IX 30 Leo X 139 Libellus ad Leonem X xxi, 139–52 Licinius 92, 93 Liturgy xv, xx–xxii, 64, 66, 76, 101, 106–7, 110, 158–9, 169, 171, 181–2, 184–6, 189, 193 books 24–5, 185, 194 of dedication 105–37 of martyrs 9, 169 Lizzi Testa, Rita xx, 87–103 logoi 53, 54 Lombard, Peter 41, 66, 67 on intentionality 64 Louis XIIII 214 Louis XIV xxii, 214

Luther, Martin xix, xxi, xxii, 69, 71–2, 82, 84 canon law, rejection 78 church reform 71–4, 79 justification by faith 72, 81 paradox, use of 73–4 on scholasticism 73 Tower Experience 72–3 works ‘Appeal to the Nobility’ 72 ‘Heidelberg Disputation’ 74 MacKinnon, Donald 19 Magus, Simon 33–4 Maimonides, Moses 49 Maiorinus 91 Marcrobius 41 Marion, Jean-Luc 45 Markus, Robert xvi, xvii, xxii, 3–19 marriage, sacrament 65 Marseille 11 Marsicanus, Leo 108 Martin, Victor 207 martyrs, cult xvii, 9–10, 169 Matilda of Tuscany 33 Mauretania 161, 165, 166 Medici, Catherine de 206, 207 mediocrity 10 Melun, Assembly of (1579) 207 memory, history of 34–5 mentalite´ xvii, xviii, xxiv Merici, Angela 209 Milbank, John 45 Miltiades of Rome 92 Milvian Bridge 93 Molesme 190, 191 monasticism xvii, xxii, 11–12, 29, 173, 175, 178, 198 Montanism 6 Morone, Giovanni, Cardinal 77 munera civilia 87, 88, 93 munera curialia 88, 96 Munier, Charles 168 Muslim conquests xvi, xvii, 6, 28 Naseau, Marguerite 202–3 Neoplatonism xviii, 39, 41, 49–57 and the soul 52–3 New Prophecy 6 Newman, Martha xvi, xxii, 173–98 Nicaea, Council of (325) 93 Nicholas of Cusa 139 nominalism 67

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Index Normandy 23 notation, musical 25 nous, and the soul 53, 58 Numidia 160, 161, 165 nuns, enclosure avoidance 212–17 Council of Trent decree 204–5 Ursuline order 210–11 Visitandine order 209 O’Cleary, J.J. 53, 54 O’Malley, John xix, xxi, xxii, 69–84 O’Meara, Dominic 58 opulenti 95 oral, literate culture, shift 27 orthodoxy, and heterodoxy xv, xix, xxii Ossius of Cordova 91, 92, 96 paradox, Luther’s use of 73–4 Paschal II xx, 106, 109, 123, 124, 125, 132, 134 church building 126 Paul III 209 pauperes 95 peace movements 28, 106 Pecham, John 43–4 Pelagianism 10 Pelagius 10, 12, 14 penance 65–6, 183 Peter the Venerable 193–4 Philip II 76 Pico della Mirandola, De reformandis moribus oratio 139 Pieper, Josef 41 Pius II 139 Pius IV 205 Pius V 205 Plato xviii, 51, 53, 57 Platonism 39, 46, 47, 56 Plotinus 41, 49, 51, 52, 54–5 Porphyry 50 Proclus 47, 52, 53 Commentary on the First Alcibiades 54 Elements of Theology 58 pseudo-Areopagite 41, 50 Pseudo-Dionysius 58 Querini, Vincenzo 139, 140, 141–2 Quid Significet 110, 113, 116, 130, 131 Quintilian 80 Rapley, Elizabeth 21

Rather of Verona 30 reason, and faith 44, 82 reform agents of 165–7 of bishops 145–9 by bishops 168, 169–70 centre/periphery 167–72, 199–200, 213, 215, 217 Church councils 157–9, 166–7 and church dedications 105–37 Cistercians 177 and conversion xxi of Curia 145–6 of doctrine 61–8 and heresy 61, 66 Libellus to Leo X 139–52 and liturgy: see liturgy Martin Luther 71–4, 79 monastic 175–6 notion of 155–6 papal bulls on 140 personal, and institutional xxiii–xxiv, 5, 16, 198 proposals 62, 139–41 terminology 4–5 and texts xxii, 173–98 Vincent de Paul 200 vocabulary 156 see also Gregorian Reform reformare 4 reformatio ad pristina xviii, 158 ‘renaissance’, meaning xv Renaissance, The xv renovare 4 Roland of Bologna 62 Roman Empire, and the Church 7–8 Roman society, Christianisation 7, 7–8, 14–15 Romuald of Ravenna 26 Rudolf of Swabia 33 Rudolph, Conrad 181, 182 sacraments 105–6 administration 61–2 definition 62 see also baptism; confirmation; Eucharist; grace; marriage salarium 88, 89, 90, 93 Salvian, To the Church 12 Savanarola 139 Saxer, Victor 169 scholasticism 46, 60 Luther on 73

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Reforming the Church before Modernity

scholastics xviii and baptism 63 intentionality 64 role 61 Siger of Brabant 44 simony 15, 30, 124 sin, personal, and institutional xvi, xxii, 4–5, 12–13, 33, 64, 65, 120, 147 Smit, Houston 56–7 social changes, High Middle Ages 28 Sotinel, Claire xxi, xxii, 155–72 soul and dianoia 53 and Neoplatonism 52–3 and nous 53, 58 Stephen IX 108, 123, 159, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 171 Sylvester I xxi, 129–30, 157 Syrianus 53 Taleazi, Stefa´no 139 Tallon, Alain 207 Taylor, Judith Combes 216 terminology, of reform 4–5 Tertullian 6 texts charismatic qualities 174, 178–80, 197–8 and reform xxii, 173–98 Stephen Harding on 185–7 Theobaldus, Bishop 25 Theodosian Code 93 Theodosius I 103 Three Chapters, condemnation 171 Toubert, Pierre 30 transformation, personal 174–5, 198 transubstantiation 66 Trent, Council of (1545–63) xvi, xix, xxiii, 80, 83

aims 204 and Daughters of Charity 215–16, 217 decrees, French acceptance 205–8, 217 justification 74–5 nuns, enclosure 204–5 and papal supremacy 76–7 reform, Church offices 77–9 on vernacular liturgy 76 Urban II 109, 123 Ursinus 98, 99 Ursuline order 208, 209 enclosure 210–11 utraquism 66 Valentinian I, laws 97–8, 99, 102 Vatican Council, First (1869–70) 40 Vatican Council, Second (1962–65) xiii, xv, 3, 40, 60, 70, 71, 83 Venice 23 Victor III (Desiderius) 107, 114, 123 Victorinus 50 Visitandine order 208 enclosure 209 vita activa 80 vita contemplativa 80 Wallace-Hadrill, Michael 16 Walter of Maguelonne 123, 125, 133 Warnemund of Ivrea, Bishop 25 White, Lynn 29 Wifred the Hairy, Count 24 William of Malmesbury 190, 191, 193 Williams, Rowan, Archbishop 14–15 Zaluska, Yolanta 181 Zimmerman, Harald 31