CHAPTER XXV.

Against simony present in the exercise of ecclesiastical offices, or of any spiritual acts whatsoever, which are forbidden from being performed for temporal gain.

Justice and the administration of public affairs consists not only in the settlement of cases, but also in the celebration and conferral of the sacraments together with the exercise of ecclesiastical offices, or of any spiritual acts whatsoever. Sacred Scripture forbids these from being done for temporal gain, branding in many passages the greed of those who receive payment unlawfully and who, together with Judas, sell justice and God. First, in the Gospel, thus: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4) — that is, one must worship for spiritual and true goods, so that worship embraces the performance of all spiritual things. Scripture does not say: for temporal things, but for eternal ones. Otherwise, “if your eye is not single, your whole body will be in darkness” (Luke 11).

Likewise Tullius [Cicero] in the De Officiis (book II, after the midpoint): No vice is more foul than greed in princes and those who govern public affairs. For to treat public affairs as a source of profit is not merely base, but criminal, wicked, and sacrilegious. And thus the oracle that Apollo at Delphi delivered — that Sparta would perish by nothing other than greed — seems to have been a prophecy not for the Lacedaemonians alone but for all prosperous peoples. For those who preside over public affairs can win the goodwill of the multitude by nothing more easily than by abstinence and self-restraint.

Those, however, who wish to ingratiate themselves with the people and grasp for the administration of public affairs in order to pursue profit and glory, undermine the foundations of public life. Likewise the same author: Continence and abstinence and the flesh are born from the same womb of nature. [Cato:] How much more, then, ought continence and abstinence and the Christian people to be born from the same womb of grace and evangelical teaching? Likewise the Apostle: “Seek the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth” (Colossians 3) — not for earthly things.

Likewise the Lord: “Seek” first and above all “the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6). He does not say: seek these things and seek those things, but seek this above all, “and those things shall be added to you.” Likewise: “His left hand is under my head” — not above it — “and his right hand shall embrace me” (Song of Songs 2). The right hand is eternal blessedness, and all the things that prepare the way and path toward it; as it were, let the left be for the right’s sake, not the right for the left’s. Hence: “Let not your left hand know what your right hand does” (Matthew 6).

From this also arises the distinction that is established between the Old and New Testaments: because the latter promises eternal things, while the former promised temporal things. The reading [of the New Testament] is also raised at its end, as a sign of this, while the reading of the Old is lowered.

Likewise: For this reason the sandals of apostles and bishops have soles below and openings above — as if to say: preaching, and whatever spiritual thing is attached to it, should never touch or regard earthly gain, nor be hidden beneath the earth in the vessel of worldly fear, but should regard heavenly things alone, freely and without hope of any earthly benefit. Likewise: For this reason a censer has solidity at its base but holes and openings at the top — namely, so that the smoke of prayer may ascend, not descend in regard to some earthly benefit. If it should look downward, the sandals and censer are inverted.

And note that spiritual acts are done for three kinds of cause: the cause on account of which [causa propter quam], which ought to be God alone; the cause without which [spiritual acts] could not be done; and the cause without which they would not be done. If a spiritual act is done for a temporal purpose only and not for God, it is execrable and diabolical. But if it is done for God’s sake and for the sake of earthly benefit without which it would not be done — when it could be done [without that benefit] — then the cause “without which” turns into the cause “on account of which.” “For my cloak is too short, etc.” (Isaiah 28) — “and my bed is too narrow, etc.” (ibid.) — “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6) — “How long will you limp between two sides?” (3 Kings 18). You cannot “enter the land by two roads” (Sirach 2). The third cause, however, necessity arising from human frailty, excuses. “For the laborer is worthy of his food” (Matthew 10). Likewise the Apostle in the second Epistle to the Corinthians 4: “not adulterating the word of God.”

Augustinus: [In contrast to those] preaching for profit, like false preachers, or for vainglory — “but out of sincerity and from God,” for God’s sake alone, “and we speak before God” (2 Corinthians 2) and act — so that by “word” every good and spiritual work is understood. Likewise: There are two ends between which every act ought to be enclosed — fear of punishment (which is not altogether an undue end, since it excuses and removes one from sin; nor altogether a fully due end, since it does not by itself bring [the act] to full merit) and love of God, namely the right eye. The left eye looks to punishment; the right eye to loving God. Where, then, is a third eye — for loving money — on account of which you act? Likewise, these are the ends, the two millstones, of which the Lord speaks in Deuteronomy, chapter 24: “You shall not take in pledge”

either millstone — that is, the millstone of fear; but above all do not remove the millstone of love of God from any of your works. Since, then, the first millstone is not meritorious without the second — indeed, without it, it is in a sense forbidden — all the more is the third millstone of concupiscence, or a fourth millstone of vainglory, forbidden from every work, so that not even the third may be mingled with either of the two. For just as a divided mind does not obtain [its request], so neither does a work thus divided, in which there is no division under God or for God’s sake, but against God — so that it is no longer a division and participation, but a total seizure of that work by the devil. But if a work of the right hand, performed for the cause or love of acquiring money or receiving it anew, begets simony: what if it is done out of fear of losing money already possessed, or of receiving [new money]? Will it be simoniacal? It is agreed that it is a lesser evil. Likewise: it is read (Exodus 2) that Amram, a man of the house of Levi, fathered a son, Moses, by his wife; and seeing that he was beautiful, hid him for three months. You too, therefore, hide your works from cupidity and vainglory, lest they be seized by the Egyptians and submerged, and lest, made womanish by mingling with the left hand, they be reserved for the work of the devil. Likewise: “Enter your chamber and, having closed the door” against cupidity and vainglory, “pray” by acting well, “to your Father” (Matthew 6). Likewise: since a twofold invitatory is read — the psalm and the signal bell — a third is found in the Church more efficacious than the others: the gift. Likewise: The Lord commands the Passover to be celebrated “in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5). Augustinus: Without any corruption of vices, in the truth of good works, which belong to the right hand. If the left hand is mingled with these, the Passover is then celebrated with the old leaven. The priest celebrates the Passover as often as he approaches the altar to immolate the Paschal Lamb. Likewise: “Therefore I loved your commandments above gold and topaz” (Psalm 118). Augustinus (on this psalm, verse 1): Not on account of gold and topaz, or any temporal thing — as a Jew needed to be enticed by temporal things — how much less so a Christian, if he performs spiritual acts for temporal things, who is bound to love God’s commandments above them, not for their sake. Whose life ought to be a cross and martyrdom, so that he attends to this: “You shall weep and mourn” (John 16) — not earthly consolation — so that he may await the eternal blessedness to be conferred on him in the future. Likewise Augustinus (Enchiridion ch. 66 and book II of On the Merit and Remission of Sins ch. 34): For this reason the Lord did not will to remove punishment by baptism as he removed guilt — lest belief in God be made too comfortable, motivated, that is, by the removal of punishment rather than by love of faith and justice.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Against those who seek temporal benefit in spiritual matters.

By analogy I say that temporal things are not to be held out as enticements in spiritual matters, whether so that they may be done at all or so that they may be done more readily and quickly — lest men run to them from love of money rather than from zeal for justice, and lest, at the pleasant voice promising temporal things rather than speaking [truth],

(Jeremiah 12, 24). Likewise Psalm 135: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good”: Augustinus: This is the primary cause of thanksgiving. “For his mercy endures forever” — this is the secondary cause. For he is a hireling who praises God for something other than God himself. Likewise: “We will praise you when you have done him good” (Psalm 48). Gregorius: In God’s sight the sacrifice of confession made by temporal prosperity is despised. Hieronymus: One who confesses thus with the mouth eats the iniquity of his heart, which he digests in the torments of hell. Likewise the Lord in the Gospel: “You seek me not because of me, but because I fed you with loaves of bread” (John 6). Likewise: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who have power over them are called benefactors” (Luke 22) — on account of the benefits conferred upon themselves. “But you are not to do so. For even the pagans and tax collectors do this” (Matthew 5). Likewise: To the condemnation of this [practice] serves the example of clerics who, playing dice, rushed disorderly and indecently to Vespers when they heard that a monetary payment for singing Vespers would be distributed in the church before the service. Likewise: the example of one who petitioned in church that the feast of St. Stephen be kept as a double feast with silks and ecclesiastical chants — but who obtained his request only after promising an annual meal and refreshment for the clerics, and moreover that the monetary payment for the night office of that night be doubled; so that they thus celebrated the feast of the doubled coin rather than the feast of St. Stephen. Likewise: the example of the weeping and wailing mourners of the Lombards, hired solely for pay to weep and lament at the funerals of the dead. To these are like certain men in the church who sing psalms and chant for a fee, of whom each might say:

O money, money, to you he renders this honor. (Juvenal, Satires 5)

Brothers — or rather, those for whom money is discipline, the coin is dean, and even god — who are idolaters, adoring the coin rather than God: they will sing to God only on account of the coin. Likewise the Apostle, first Epistle to the Thessalonians, chapter 5: “Test all things; hold fast what is good; abstain from every form of evil.” Augustinus: Not only from things illicit in themselves, but also from those things which, though it is lawful both to do them and to leave them undone, appear evil to those of lesser understanding — from these too “abstain,” “providing honorable things, not only before God but also before men” (Romans 12). But it is a base and evil appearance that scandalizes a neighbor by the left hand, while enticing someone with the right. If you object that it presents a good appearance because many and frequent [clerics] thus sing psalms and chant and serve God in the church — hear Augustinus condemning this when he says: It is better that spiritual things be entirely omitted than that they be performed, handled, or touched impurely and insincerely. In the carrying out of ecclesiastical offices, the Lord approves not the frequency of the many, but the devotion of souls. Likewise: When the last bell of the monetary hour had rung in a certain church, and the bolt had been set at the little gate

[continuing] of the choir was being prepared, the clerics ran as if to a feast, and like old women to a greased pan: some stooping low, some leaping over the barrier to get in; others entering through the main gate in disorder, though entry through it was permitted only to persons of the Church. On account of this shameful pursuit of petty gain, a layman said — and begged a certain cleric — that he should absent himself from that hour for the sake of decorum. But what was he to do? If he entered the choir, the laity would note that he was touched by greed; if he did not, the clergy would note his pride. Likewise: a certain prebendary in two neighboring churches was present at the nocturnal hours in one and the daytime hours in the other, and so, with Oliviero running back and forth and answering for him in both, he was swiftly enriching himself. Likewise: a certain man appointed as a fixed paymaster over the distribution of this kind of merchandise, when he saw the great number of clerics attending the hours, began to grumble and grieve, and to reproach the clerics for attending the hours so assiduously and in such numbers. Likewise: what is more degrading than that in a certain church, because no fixed sum of money had been established for singing them, two of the hours were called by the laity “the Lord’s hours,” while the rest were called “the penny hours” — indeed, the devil’s hours? Moreover, clerics are not present for the singing of the hours and even of the hours of the Blessed Virgin; though present for others, they flee from these, so that the Holy Spirit may claim no work for itself in the Church, since nothing is done there freely, but money claims everything for itself. And in sum: just as, before this wretched commerce was established, it was honorable and praiseworthy to enter the choir, to celebrate the ecclesiastical offices, to be assiduous in these things — so now it is dishonorable and unpraiseworthy, since in our assiduousness at these rites we are reckoned greedy rather than devout; and so now:

The Church’s noble name, once venerable,Prostitutes herself, and sits for hire like a harlot.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Against Simony in the Substance of the Sacraments, Especially the Eucharist.

If venality — the leprosy of Gehazi and the simony of Simon — is so shameful and damnable in the appendages of the sacraments, as has been shown above, how much more so in the very substance of the sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist? For there the whole 75 Christ is received, the source and origin of all graces, whereas in the other sacraments graces are distributed.

We nowhere read that the Lord was so angered and inflamed by any shameful enormity of sin as by the selling of the dove — above all the eucharistic dove. For the sake of purging and driving out this plague from the Church, we read that the Lord, stirred by the ardor of the Spirit to a wrath inborn in him and to an ineffable meekness and patience (which he could not, however, put aside, because he is greatly merciful [Joel 2], etc.) — as though setting aside his gentleness — “drove from the temple, with a whip made of cords, those who were selling and buying sheep and doves, and overturned the tables of the money-changers (John 2; Matthew 21).” He calls the altars of God such things on account of the avarice of the priests. Likewise: inflamed with zeal for the house of God,

of whom it is written: “The zeal of thy house hath consumed me (Psalm 68),” he says to them: “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves (Matthew 21).” In a den both plunder is seized and the seized plunder divided. A thief, moreover, is one who, in exchange for the spiritual things of the Church, pursues temporal gain — who also pursues bodily those who give nothing and offer nothing, seeking how he may receive and snatch gifts from them; and who spiritually slays those who do give, since while he schemes after the injury and robbery of his neighbors’ goods, he sits, like a thief, in his den. Likewise Augustinus (Tractate 10 on John): “All who seek in the Church what is their own, and not what belongs to Jesus Christ (Philippians 2),” make it a house of commerce. Of this same matter Augustinus also says: let no one do anything in the oratory except that for which it was made — hence also its name. Likewise: inflamed with this same zeal for the house of the Lord, Peter, in order to imitate his master in punishing the madness and heresy of simony, said to Simon Magus, who supposed the grace of the Holy Spirit to be for sale: “May thy money perish with thee (Acts 8).” He spoke this as an imprecation [optatively], caught up into the lofty judgment of God, foreseeing the plague this man would bring upon the Church. With the same zeal he struck down Ananias and Sapphira, so that they were carried out dead before him, saying to them while they still lived: “How did you dare to lie to the Holy Spirit?” Likewise: it is notably worthy of note that the Lord, still a youth, possessing no authority of public administration, but quite abject and lowly among them, “drove out those who were selling and buying (John 2),” etc. In this he gave to all a form and example for accusing, rebuking, and expelling, as far as we are able, every species and plague of simony — above all the selling of the Eucharist. Likewise: we read that he drove out the buyers and sellers from the temple twice, giving us the form and example that not once only, but always, as often as we see the dove being sold, we must rebuke and challenge the seller and the buyer, so that this plague may be driven from the Church (John 2 and Matthew 21). Likewise: if the Lord thus corporally punished the figure of the sale of the dove, how incomparably more will he punish the very reality and leprosy of simony? Likewise: “If then, when the whip was made of cords (John 2),” the sale of the dove was punished, how much more ought it to be punished now — not merely with a whip, but even with nails, swords, and all other weapons, and with every force be combated? Likewise: how great is the enormity of this crime is clear from the fact that, while the Lord waited with patience for men ensnared in other crimes to come to repentance — as in the case of Judas the betrayer — 76 instructing us that we should not accuse, expose, or prosecute the sins of our neighbors by an irregular judicial process, but rather conceal and bear with them, as he himself bore with the betrayal of Judas; this one offense alone he could not endure without punishing it immediately and corporally, whereas he corrected and punished all others by word alone. Likewise: in driving out those who sold doves and overturning the tables of the money-changers, whom the avarice of the priests had placed there so that they might lend on credit to those who did not have offerings, in order that these might find them more readily at hand.

He showed also that every occasion of simony, and every facility for receiving even trifling gifts in exchange for spiritual things, must be rooted out and extirpated from the Church. Likewise: what is more dangerous than, as if blind, to allow God himself to be sold more shamefully than Judas sold him, while we clearly discern venality in the other sacraments but not in this one? As when some priests in a single day celebrate two complete masses, while others, ashamed and afraid to celebrate two in full, multiply one — doubling it, tripling it, and manifolding it — that is, celebrating it with many faces [i.e., repeating it with different introits]. Likewise: what is more shameful than, if no offering is made at the first face and first introit, to assume another face — indeed a third and a fourth — in order to elicit an offering? These men are like those who sing tales and deeds of valor. When they see that a song about Landric does not please their audience, they immediately begin to sing about Narcissus; and if that too gives no pleasure, they sing of another. The reason why the other ecclesiastical offices remain in their simplicity, purity, and original institution and are not doubled, whereas this one alone is doubled against its institution, is plainly this: because of the offering that is brought for it, and not for the others.

Likewise: that we may press further on the root — that is, the extirpation of simoniacal greed — “So will I bless thee in my life, namely in thy name,” not in the name of money, not of greed, “I will lift up my hands (Psalm 62):” he lifts up his hands in the honor and glory of the Lord who, persevering in good, seeks not his own glory, nor the world’s, but the Lord’s. As if he were saying: I begin from myself, “because I crucify myself with [my] vices and concupiscences (Galatians 5),” I preach the Crucified, I adore the Crucified, and — what is more — I purely consecrate the Crucified, receive him, and distribute him to others to eat. How then shall I, with hands crucified to the world and consecrating thee, O Christ, lift them up to any price save thee, the price of the world? How to gain — above all, to sin? Likewise, Simon Magus, who wished to be a Christian and to work miracles for the sake of profit, was repelled by Simon Peter. To avenge this repulse he said, as it were, to Peter: you repel me, and I shall triumph over you — indeed, over the whole body of the Church (Acts 8). “Even upon the very altars I shall place my throne, my couch, and my seat (Isaiah 14),” and my dominion; so that even with the angels present and as it were gathered in one corner of the altar to consecrate the body of the Lord, I, in another corner — with the minister of the altar, or rather with my own — shall consecrate it for a price. Greed holds dominion over this sacrament, which is nonetheless beyond all price. Likewise: even if I am driven from the altar, it is not for that reason that simoniacal greed, my daughter — daughter of the high priest — will be any the less [present]; rather, she will burst all the more into the Holy of Holies, setting everything upon the altars for sale. And what is wicked: from those very offerings altars are erected, holy places adorned, and monasteries of religious built — thus abusing this apostolic precept: “asking no questions for conscience’ sake (1 Corinthians 10)” — although the Apostle was speaking only to those who sometimes ate with idolaters in order to preach to them. Likewise: we sell Christ more shamefully than Judas did, in that we are worse than he (Matthew 26). He

sold him whom he believed to be a mere man, when his household was in need; but we sell him whom we know to be true God and man. He [sold him] for thirty silver pieces; we, for a penny and the most paltry price. Likewise: he, repenting — though not truly — returned and cast back the “thirty silver pieces”; but among us in the Church there is no one who casts back what has been shamefully acquired. Likewise: the thirty silver pieces, “being the price of blood, were not put into the treasury (Matthew 27)”; yet now, from offerings and gains more shamefully gotten, altars are erected, churches built, and the like. Likewise: while all other vices tremble and flee from consecrated places, simony itself has invaded the very altars.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Against the Sale and Multiplication of Masses.

Toward rooting out the sale and multiplication of masses — which the sale of altars and the greed of ministers has engendered — [let it be argued thus]: if Christ was immolated for us but once, let him also be represented as once immolated, by his sole vicar on any given day (Hebrews 9).

Likewise: if Christ, offered once, was a sufficient sacrifice and redemption of the human race, it suffices for a single priest to represent once a day him who suffered once and was immolated once. “Whatsoever is more than this cometh of evil (Matthew 5).” Likewise: those who consecrate twice in a day “are again crucifying in themselves the Son of God, and making him a mockery (Hebrews 6).” Likewise Augustinus: receiving the Eucharist as a daily communion I neither praise nor blame; but I leave it to each one’s conscience — provided he is not conscious of any [grave sin], provided [he brings] a troubled spirit and a contrite heart (On Ecclesiastical Dogmas, c. 55). If therefore Augustinus barely grants a single reception in a day, and only to one thus humbled, with a contrite and devout heart — would he, if asked, have granted to anyone the right to consecrate twice in a day? By no means! — but he would have repelled such a one with all his force, and perhaps struck him with anathema. Likewise: to receive the Eucharist belongs to all Christians; to consecrate, to a few; therefore it is greater to consecrate than to receive; but it is detestable and exceedingly disordered to repeat [communion] in a single day — that is, to have the body of the Lord given to anyone more than once in a day; therefore it is disordered and perilous to repeat in a single day what is the greater thing, namely to consecrate twice — especially when necessity does not compel it. Likewise: just as in Exodus the children of Israel were commanded that for each person only one omer of manna should be gathered daily, except on the sixth day: “for then they should gather double portions of food, that is, two omers per person (Exodus 16),” so that the omer gathered on the day of preparation would suffice for the Sabbath, on which they were not permitted to gather or to do any work. But whoever had gathered more than an omer, and beyond what was sufficient for eating, found what he had collected rotten and full of worms — so it is to be feared lest the sacrament of the altar, consecrated twice in a single day by one and the same [priest], rot — not in the sacrament itself, I say, but in the conscience of the one who consecrates it — on account of his sins and crimes in thus doubling it. At Christmas, however, on account of the solemnity and its quasi-Sabbath character, and on account of the mystery,

It was conceded to the rural priest to celebrate [Mass] three times on account of the solemnity [of Christmas] and as a kind of Sabbath, and also on account of the mystery. But a greater prelate on that day celebrates once in one church, twice in another; yet now by multiplying Masses we celebrate the Nativity of the Lord every day. Item: if assiduous preaching does not bear fruit but rather grows cheap, how much more does this sacrament, when repeated in a single day, grow cheap and turn to a weariness and a detriment to devotion? Item: in those days the word of the Lord was precious because it was rare, and so likewise the confection of the Eucharist because it was rare; but now it is cheap, because so often repeated. Item: if, in prefigurement, a single Lamb was immolated in a single house, offered to the Lord once at Passover, immolated, eaten whole, and eaten in haste (Exodus 12); how do you, sinner, dare irreverently and constantly to double, triple, and multiply the very truth of that figure under the well-known appearance of venality, “since those who serve the tabernacle,” [that is,] the body, “have no right to eat from this altar” (Hebrews 13)? Item: if the levitical priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year with blood, and the holy place once daily with incense (Exodus 30; Hebrews 9), how do you, sinner, evangelical priest, dare to enter daily — and, what is abominable, twice in a day — into the most holy of holies, the holy and heavenly pledges of all the saints, so irreverently and with so little fear because so constantly, and perhaps without blood and incense? “With blood,” that is, with faith in the Passion and with sorrow of heart, from which [sorrow] a kind of blood flows through the eyes, “and with bitter herbs” (Exodus 12), with the incense of prayer, let approach be made to these holy things. For tears make this cup the sweeter. Item: if the holy order of the Carthusians, offering a holocaust here also of those purified by abstinence and mortification of the flesh from the stain of the world, “and now flying upon the wings of the winds” (Psalm 17), dares to celebrate [Mass] only on feasts and observed days designated by the spiritual office, how do you, sinner-priest, dare fearlessly to handle [it] so often so irreverently — twice in a day? Item: a certain just man, observing and considering that the Lord was placed in a new tomb on the sixth day of the week, wrapped in a clean shroud (Matthew 27), and did not change his sepulcher but rested in it throughout the Sabbath, and rose on the Lord’s Day and the third day, resolved that he would celebrate [Mass] only on the third day, with one day of rest interposed, in which he might cleanse his shroud — that is, his conscience — with tears and penance, so that he might rise more strongly and devoutly on the third day to the confection of the Lord’s body. Item: if in fasting one approaches the bodily table only once in a day, how much more should this be so at the spiritual table? If at that [table] there is a single food, the spiritual [food] is now spiritually multiplied through certain external condiments inwardly, to the point of nausea, to the point of drunkenness. Item: certain persons interpret badly that place of the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Luke 11) — it does not say twice “today.” Item: the Hebrew in place of “daily” has “sogolla,” which is rendered ἐπιούσιον, and has a twofold inter[pretation].

Hence Matthew translated it thus: “our supersubstantial bread” (Matthew 5); Luke, “daily”; Mark, “our own” — which they make neither “supersubstantial” nor “our own” nor “daily,” but as far as in them lies cheap and venal, two-days’ bread and three-days’ bread.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Against Masses of Many Faces

All falsehood seeks corners, etc.:

While fools flee one vice, they run into its opposite.

(Horace, Satires, book I, 20.)

So while certain persons, seeking a refuge and a covering for their greed, flee the plurality of Masses, they fall not merely into a vice but into a monstrosity, fabricating monstrous double-faced and triple-faced Masses. And, while in the Apostle one reads that the Church consists of persons of many aspects, nowhere does one read of a Mass of two or three faces (2 Corinthians 1). Item: among the poets we read of two-headed Janus, the seven-headed Hydra, hundred-handed Briareus, two-bodied Geryon, and another three-bodied; nowhere do we read of a two-headed, double-faced, or many-faced Mass. For to make Masses double-faced, triple-faced, and the like is more monstrous than any monster. Item: such persons work against the mystery of the Mass, because:

The office expresses sighs, glories, praises,

Kyrie eleison, thrice tripled, and prayers.

But now in the Mass the [Kyrie] is tripled seven or more times, and the mystery and order of the Mass is thrown into confusion. Item: to which of the two introits will the double-faced Mass be assigned, and from which of them will it take its name? If from the second, which is for the faithful, then the kiss of peace ought not to be given in it; or if it is given, it will conflict with the general institution and custom of the Church. If from the first, which is in memory of the sending of the Holy Spirit, then the one so celebrating does not celebrate Mass for the faithful, and thus is not released from an anniversary or trental to be celebrated; and if he confess this, saying: because under one canon he celebrates two Masses — but of what kind? Is it only the Mass of the catechumens? It seems so, since the offered host has not yet been represented as sent. So it should rather be said that under two canons one Mass is celebrated — since there is one representation of the host sent — than that two Masses are celebrated under one canon. Item: such persons conflict with the institution of a synod or council, provincial though it was, but celebrated by authority of a legate of the Roman See, in which it was commanded that no one should celebrate twice in a day except in the greatest necessity — as when a body were present, or a married woman to be purified, or another case of necessity arising. It was altogether forbidden that, even under pressing necessity, Masses should be made double in this way; rather, the chasuble being set aside after the host had been sent, the introit of the Mass of the catechumens was to be begun, one and another at the priest’s pleasure. Item: this conflicts with the mystery of the Mass usefully approved by the Church. For the priest standing at first at the right horn of the altar signifies the coming of Christ to the Jewish people, [his] right [hand] and his own. His first return from the right horn to the left [signifies] the coming of Christ to the idolatrous nations, in

whose gathering [Christ] still lingers. The return from the left horn to the right signifies the gathering of the remnant to the faith, which will take place in the time of Elijah and Enoch, which [the Mass] anticipates and hastens — or rather figures as already accomplished — thus returning frequently from horn to horn; yet it does not yet signify or represent the host as sent. Item: through the Mass is [signified] the Passion of the Lord, who from the bosom of the Father (John 1), as if from the right horn of the altar, came into the sinister and malignant world (John 5). When his hour came to pass from this world through the Passion to the Father (John 13), he was sent as a host for us into heaven; and ascending on high, Christ led captivity captive (Ephesians 4). Such persons destroy this principal figure of the Mass, or show it to be false and empty, when they return from horn to horn — from right to left and from left to right — before the Mass has been celebrated. Item: the visitations or insertions of Masses were instituted not by Church authority but by greed. Evidence of this is that the more popular Masses are inserted, and no others — such as the Mass of blessed Linus or of Sebastian, and the like. Item: since no other ecclesiastical offices are inserted, why is the office of the Mass inserted out of greed? For the multiplication of prayers is not the insertion of offices; prayers may be multiplied in any of the hours without those hours being thereby inserted. Item: a Mass so inserted is like the idol of Nebuchadnezzar described in Daniel at the first vision (Daniel 2), whose head was of gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, some parts of the feet of iron, and some of clay. Item: good examples are to be taken from good [men]. We know that the conventual churches do not have this custom of inserting Masses. Item: the example of the obligation of the first Mass owed to certain monks and the second to the priests; therefore it was the greed of the monks that compelled such a priest to celebrate twice in a day. Item: the example of the matron to be purified, who at the offertory of the second Mass — the one for the faithful — made her offering at the priest’s instigation, not at the first, even though a monk was lying in wait to collect the offerings of the first introit, and so went away disappointed. Item: the example of the soldiers offering resistance by making offerings one by one at each introit; one of whom said to the priest thus inserting a Mass: “Even if you begin single Masses in this way until vespers, I will not cease from making an offering until he [the priest] has consecrated the holy Eucharist.” Item: the example of the priest who, not yet vested in the chasuble, began to multiply introits so that the gathered people would not depart. Item: souls are injured in this way. They are defrauded of what is owed and promised them, for if the authority holds that the more often and more specially the sacrament of the altar is offered for them, the greater refreshment they receive — [then they are cheated]. Item: since it is established in the Church that special prayers avail more than general ones, if therefore the trental of one person or an anniversary is combined and aggregated with the trental of another, an injury will be done to the other — indeed to both — since each soul, by promise, expects to be helped not merely by a general prayer but also by a special one for each. Item: would a soul

[be] freed from purgatory by a Mass inserted in this way — [the soul] of the just man of Aachen who asked that a Mass be celebrated for him by a just man, and so would obtain his liberation? Item: the example of Master Fulco, dean of Reims, who was unwilling for his father’s anniversary to be aggregated with the bishop’s anniversary. Item: the example of the matron who refused Masses offered by a priest to be sung for the faithful in Lent, which, although enjoined upon her as a penance, she nevertheless did not wish to have sung by a priest already bound to the Lenten [liturgical] service.

But what shall a priest do when asked by this person and that to perform trentals, if he is insufficient to carry out the individual trentals? Let him say to those asking: “Therefore I will remember your dear ones in so many Masses.” Let him not say: “I will perform a trental for them,” unless he intends a special [trental]. For one carrying out general [Masses] is not thereby released from the special ones that the petitioner understood to be promised to him. Item: if this kind of insertion and plurality of Masses is lawful, a priest is obliged to concede to each person asking for however many Masses that they be sung for him, since what is asked can easily be fulfilled through such an arrangement. Item: a dry Mass, which is without the grace and moisture of the confection of the Eucharist, is not celebrated for the faithful. If therefore two introits are prefixed to the [consecrated] host, one of them will be a dry Mass and so will benefit [souls] no more than one said after the Mass; and [the proponents] say it too is prefixed to the host. Why then is it prefixed to the host in an inserted Mass? Out of greed and to the defrauding of souls? Item: besides the duplication and insertion of Masses, greed has invented novel Masses, such as a single Mass to be sung for all the apostles. Item: a Mass of the Epiphany or of some other solemnity to be sung every day, even on Easter day — contrary to [the principle]:

(Let each thing keep the place fittingly allotted to it.)

So that in Paschaltide Masses and praises belonging to another [season] are sung, and likewise in other seasons, so that the variety of offices may increase the devotion of the ministers and remove the tedium of sameness. I do not censure such devotion if practiced by custom even on Easter day — if it is a Mass of the angels — except on account of scandal. Item: certain [persons] even have anniversary Masses celebrated for themselves while still living, and these conflict with the suffrages and prayers instituted for the dead. Item (and I say this weeping): certain persons have turned this great sacrament to magic, celebrating Masses over wax images to put a curse on someone; indeed, they order a Mass to be sung ten or more times as a curse upon someone, so that within ten days or shortly after he may die and be buried with the dead. Item: now certain persons are inventing a Mass for the slaughtered as if new martyrs, prostrated “in the circuit of Jerusalem” (Psalm 78), thinking it an effective attraction for offerings on account of popular sympathy for the slain. To expel this manifold sickness from the Church I believe there is one sole remedy, namely: if there were fewer churches, fewer altars in them, fewer and more selective ordinations, selectiveness among those ordained and admitted, and above all selectiveness especially in the appointment of the lesser superiors of priests —

and the supreme remedy deliberated by Gregory VIII would be the removal of offerings, except on three days of the year, namely Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and on the feast day of the church’s patron, and when a corpse is present, and on anyone’s anniversary. Consider that throughout all Israel there was but one temple, one tabernacle, and even in the courtyard of the temple under the open sky but one altar of offerings (3 Kings 6). In the sanctuary there was indeed an altar of incense, but upon it only a small amount of incense was offered (Exodus 27). Osee, detesting this multiplication of altars, says (ch. 8): “Because my people have multiplied altars to sin, the altars have become to them an occasion of sin. They offer sacrifices; the Lord will not receive them.” Following the example of the single temple, therefore, in each city there ought to be a single church, or, if the city were populous, a few, yet all under one greater church. For the multiplicity of chapels has given birth to illegitimate ministries and many other monstrosities and irregular practices.

CHAPTER XXX.

Against those who celebrate or receive the body of Christ unworthily.

Because the aforementioned plurality, multiplication, and novelty of Masses proceeds from the greed and irreverence of those who celebrate them, it remains to speak of those who celebrate and receive the body of Christ unworthily. Writing therefore against unworthy celebration, as well as against unworthy reception, the Apostle in his first letter to the Corinthians 11 says: “Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. For he who eats and drinks unworthily,” etc. Augustinus [says]: by celebrating this mystery without devotion, or otherwise than it has been handed down by the Lord or by the Church, or by remaining in a will to sin (Aug., De eccles. dogm., c. 53), “he eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord” — that is, not distinguishing it with due reverence from other food, out of the habit of celebrating or receiving the body of Christ. Likewise, Gregorius speaks of anyone who celebrates or receives the body of Christ unworthily, just as the Lord says of Judas: “But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me at the table” (Luke 22). For whoever presumes to violate that inviolable sacrament of the Lord’s body, following the example of Judas, betrays the Son of man. One who celebrates not according to the rite of the Church, or who receives unworthily, is such a traitor.

83 He sells [Christ] who, neglecting fear and love of him, is shown to love transient and sinful things. Likewise Augustinus [says]: those who deliver Christ to sinful members sin more than he who delivered him to the Jews who crucified him. Likewise the same [Augustinus] on Psalm 68: “And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” — those who celebrate and receive unworthily are like these. For they sin more gravely who despise Christ reigning in heaven than those who crucified him walking on earth. For those [who crucify him now] are already inexcusable, the truth having been set forth plainly and in broad daylight. “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have the sin of unbelief —

but now,” etc. (John 15). Those others [who crucified Christ in the flesh] crucified the Lord through ignorance — hence he prayed for them: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23). Likewise: if John, who had lived in the wilderness from childhood, who was sanctified in his mother’s womb (Luke 1), and who was even invited by the Lord, did not dare to touch that crown of the Lord’s head — so dreadful to angels and worthy of reverence — (Mark 1): how is it that you, a sinner and one defiled, dare not merely to touch but to enclose and imprison within the prison of your polluted body not just the crown of Christ’s head, but the whole Christ, God and man? Or if he feared to baptize Christ, by whom he himself ought rather to have been baptized, how is it that you, a sinful soul, by whom you ought entirely to be inhabited, do not shrink from enclosing him wholly in the squalid little lodging of your body? Likewise: if it was said to Mary, who loved the Lord with such great fervor and who attended him so devoutly both in life and in death, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father” (John 20) — [meaning] in your heart. If, I say, it was not permitted to her to touch “the footstool of his feet” (Psalm 109) in the outward sense, because she did not believe him equal to the Father, [not believing] that “his going out is from the highest heavens” (Psalm 18): how do you, a sinner, believe it lawful and permitted to you not only to touch the whole God, but to place him in your entire unclean body? Fear lest it be said to you not only “Do not touch me,” but also: “Friend, how did you come in here” — namely to the heavenly banquet — “not having a wedding garment” (Matthew 22), that is, charity? Likewise, 2 Kings 6: if Oza, because he stretched out his hand to the symbolic ark lest it tip when the oxen kicked, was struck dead by the Lord, how much more should he be struck by the Lord who celebrates or receives the true ark — namely the body of the Lord — unworthily? Yet Oza approached to support the ark in the performance of his proper duty, since he was of the tribe of Levi and a priest, though he did so unworthily. For the Hebrews report that on the preceding night he had lain with his wife. How much more, then, will those be punished who approach the body of Christ as men who have lain with males, concubines, or harlots? Likewise, 2 Chronicles 26: Ozias, who presumed to offer incense to the Lord contrary to the office of the priests, was struck with leprosy by the Lord; how much more will one be struck with leprosy — indeed with eternal death — by the Lord who presumes to offer the heavenly victim to the Lord unworthily? Likewise, from the institution of the primitive Church, after the Gospel was read it was said to the catechumens: “Go out, go out.” If therefore it was not lawful for members of Christ — that is, those who have charity — to be present at the confection of the body of the Lord, it is all the more to be feared 84 by members of the devil, and by those who do not have charity, [that they dare] to celebrate or receive so great a sacrament. I say without doubt that ministers of the altar who celebrate or receive [the Eucharist] in such a state, or who serve at the altar in this condition, sin mortally. It is written: “Be clean, you who carry the vessels of the Lord” (Isaiah 52). Whether those who are in the outer precincts and choir of the church also sin mortally — those who yet ought by devotion and assent together with the ministers of the altar to ce-

lebrate the body of Christ, and to receive it spiritually if not sacramentally — this I do not define. Yet they have much to fear, since while they are still members of the devil they are present at the celebration of the body of the Lord, when it was not lawful even for the catechumens, though sanctified, to be present. Likewise: “Appoint a solemn day among the dense [branches] even to the horn of the altar” (Psalm 117). Note the firmness and stability of mind in what is good. “A day” of virtues, so that you may say: “This is the day which the Lord has made” (Psalm 75). — “And a solemn one,” so that “the remnants of thought might keep feast to the Lord,” that is, in serenity of conscience, and this “among the dense [branches]” of all the articles of faith, of virtues, of good works, of tears — which make this drink sweeter — of penitential fasting, for you who desire to draw near “to the horn of the altar” (Psalm 117), that is, to the celebration or reception of the body of Christ. Likewise, Exodus 12. If the Lord commands that the paschal and symbolic lamb be eaten “roasted with fire and with wild lettuces,” and this by those “with loins girded, holding staffs in their hands”: how much more does he command that whoever approaches the eating of the true paschal Lamb must come with bitterness of heart and penance, purified also in the furnace of the Holy Spirit — chaste, without reproach of conscience, strong, clothed entirely in virtues, so that even on his feet he is not unshod (whence: “feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace” [Ephesians 6]), but is firmly grounded in faith, virtues, affections, and good works. Likewise, to inspire awe in those who approach the Eucharist, there avails the example of that holy sinner of Egypt, who, doing penance in the desert, was visited by the Lord in this sacrament once in forty years by the abbot Zosimas of the hermits of that desert (Life in Sur., vol. II). To him she first made her confession; and when he came to her a second time to give her the Eucharist, at the coming of the Lord’s body she was dissolved entirely in tears. For although she had wept every single day, she wept then more, and nearly to the point of the flooding of her eyes.

Whence [Hildebertus writes]:

She, her sins now done, came to the cup of piety,She offers herself wholly in tears and is joined to the chalice.

(Hildebertus of Le Mans, bishop)

Likewise, concerning those who approach this altar unworthily, the Lord makes complaint, saying: “And they gave me gall for my food” (Psalm 68) — the bitterness of their sin — “and in my thirst” — with which I thirsted to drink of them and to incorporate them into myself — “they gave me vinegar to drink” — the sharpness of their depravity. But one must note that the Lord, “when he had tasted the vinegar, would not drink it” (Matthew 27) — so likewise he does not incorporate such persons into himself, even if they receive the Eucharist sacramentally, those who are of the Church in name but not in spirit.

85 Likewise Augustinus [says]: whoever has not first been crucified with Christ to the flesh, the world, and its concupiscences (Galatians 5), before approaching the celebration or reception of the body of Christ, crucifies Christ again insofar as it lies in him, and is to be numbered among those of whom the Apostle says: “Again crucifying the Lord to themselves and making a mockery of him” and “being against him (Hebrews 6).”

Likewise: Mark [the Evangelist] cut off his own thumb so that he would be disqualified from the priesthood, fearing lest he be forced into ordination as a priest — such was his reverence for celebrating the body of Christ, which he had nevertheless received sacramentally many times.

But now those to be ordained do not remove their natural members; rather they bring lawful and unlawful [offerings] so that they may be ordained, and more for the sake of gain than of devotion and divine service. Likewise in the Lives of the Fathers: a certain elder among the hermits, when he was chosen by them as a priest and had been ordained by the bishop of Egypt, said: although I am a priest, I will not celebrate [Mass] in my life — judging himself unworthy to celebrate the body of Christ, even though, not celebrating it himself, he would receive it from another. But now some celebrate the body of Christ far too frequently, as though it were a daily feast, out of greed, while others do so far too rarely out of sloth. Likewise in the Psalm: “Send out your light and your truth; these have led me and brought me into your tabernacles”; “I will go in to the altar of God” — celebrating or receiving the body of Christ — “to God who gives joy to my youth” (Psalm 42), that is, grants me glad youth, namely the youth of grace, in present reality, and the youth of glory in hope. The youth of nature too must be attended to in one who is to be ordained, unless gravity of character and holy life has supplied for the deficiency of age. Moreover, one who celebrates and stands at the altar while celebrating is as it were in paradise, forgetful of all that lies behind. Likewise: “I will wash my hands among the innocent,” and thus innocent and clean, following the example and imitation of those who are as angels, “I will encompass your altar, O Lord” (Psalm 25), so that I may celebrate your body. Likewise, when Joshua was in the territory of Jericho, meditating on something, “he saw an angel with a drawn sword,” to whom he said: Who are you? “Are you ours, or of our enemies?” Who, answering, said: “I am the prince of the host of heaven. Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground” (Joshua 5). Consider therefore, you who approach the altar to celebrate and receive the Eucharist, that “the place where you stand is holy ground; a place of awe, the house of God and the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28). Fear “the angels ascending and descending there upon a ladder” with a drawn sword, lest they cut down your pos-

terity (3 Kings 21); fear lest “the axe be already laid to the root of the tree” (Matthew 3), because you approach unworthily. Fear the choir of angels standing by, bearing witness against you and ready to avenge their injury and the Lord’s wrath, if you approach unworthily; or [fear them as] bearing the sacrifice of praise of your prayers up before the sight of God on high, if you offer worthily. Whence [Hildebertus writes]:

At the hour when the priest stands suppliant at the altar,The very Son is immolated to the Father, yet remains.

The heavens open, the celestial choir is present, the depths are joined to the heights, the one who acts and the act become the same.

(Hildebertus of Le Mans, On the Mystery of the Mass)

The like is read in Exodus as having been said to Moses: “When Moses had driven the flocks of Jethro to the interior of the desert,

and he had come to the mountain of God, Horeb, the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush; and he saw that the bush was burning yet was not consumed (Exodus 3). As he drew near to see that great vision, the Lord said to him: “Do not come closer, but remove the sandal from your foot, for the place where you stand is holy ground” (Exodus 12). If, therefore, Moses was forbidden to approach a burning bush that was merely a figure, how much more are you forbidden to approach the true body of Christ, unless you have first cast off from yourself and from your affections all dead and carnal works? Likewise: since the Lord forbade the stranger, the foreigner, and the unclean person from eating of the paschal lamb, how much more should a sinner — not yet made a citizen and member of God’s household — be kept from the true Lamb, the stained from the spotless? Likewise David: “Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord, or who shall stand in his holy place? He who is clean of hands and pure of heart,” etc. (Psalm 23). Likewise: if you have not yet watered and kissed the feet of Christ with tears of repentance as Mary Magdalen did (Luke 7); if you have not yet sat down “to eat the bread of sorrow” (Psalm 126); if you have not yet humbled yourself to kiss the feet of the Lord; if you have not yet risen to the strong works, as it were to the kiss of the Lord’s hands — how do you presume to approach the kiss of his head, indeed the consecration, reception, and kiss of the whole Christ? “These things come in due order and by degrees, just as do the ranks of ordination.” In this sacrament, if any degree is omitted, one sins more gravely than in omitting a degree of holy orders. Likewise Solomon: “If you sit at the table

of a rich man, know that you must set before him such things as have been set before you” (Proverbs 23, after the Septuagint). The Lord has set before us countless courses and gifts, yet all of them are contained under three headings. He set himself before us as the price [paid] for us on the cross; as the [viaticum, the] provision [placed] on the altar; as the future reward in heaven. The first we set before him in return “if we have crucified our flesh with its vices and concupiscences; if we have been crucified to the world and the world to us” (Galatians 5–6); “if we have denied ourselves and daily taken up the cross of Christ and followed him” (Luke 9); “if we bear on our body the marks of the Lord Jesus” (Galatians 6) with the Apostle; if we have mortified our flesh for Christ; if to die for him has been granted from above; if we have suffered with our neighbor; if we have lived according to the Gospel. The second we set before him if we have fed Christ himself — not in his own person, but in his members — by distributing to the poor whatever alms we give, whether bodily or spiritual, for “whatever we have done for one of the least of his members, we have done for him” (Matthew 25). The third we cannot set before him, “for he has no need of our goods” (Psalm 15), but he himself will set it before us in the future; yet his inheritance is ours, for the sake of which he sanctified himself — the inheritance of which the Father says to the Son: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance” (Psalm 2). Those who come to the table of Christ otherwise, without having set before him the two aforementioned courses, shall find that “their table becomes a snare

before them, for retribution and for a stumbling block” (Psalm 68). They “eat and drink judgment upon themselves” (1 Corinthians 11), and die in good odor [outwardly]. Likewise, Epistle 87, to the Hebrews: “We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle of the body have no right to eat” (Hebrews 13) — that is, those who do not mortify and “crucify their flesh with its vices and concupiscences” (Galatians 5); those who “do not open their hand to the poor,” etc. (Proverbs 31). Likewise: who ought to approach the Eucharist for its consecration or reception, and how worthily and fearfully they ought to do so, the Apostle declares in 1 Corinthians 11, saying: “When you come together, it is no longer” (that is, it is not fitting) “to eat the Lord’s Supper,” unless you are first tested and prepared, as is shown below in the same passage. Likewise: if when we pray, “admonished even by saving precepts, we scarcely dare to say: Our Father” (Matthew 6) — unless we are his sons by adoption, and unless we have fulfilled all the petitions that follow — how much more difficult is it to dare to consecrate and receive him whole, since here greater devotion and purity of conscience is required? And so this prayer is placed before the reception of the holy Eucharist. Likewise: take care lest you gather and receive this heavenly manna beyond one gomor — that is, the measure of sobriety — lest it breed worms in your conscience through sins (Exodus 16). Take care that “in a clean and new linen cloth” (Matthew 27) and a pure conscience you wrap the body of the Lord. Take care that “you lay it in a tomb in which no one has yet been placed” (John 19): or if the devil was once lodged there, lay the Lord only in your clean tomb once the devil has been cast out from it.

Take care “not to put new wine into old wineskins” (Matthew 9) corrupted by sins. Take care to carry the heavenly ark of the Lord upon a new cart (1 Samuel 6). And if you yoke cows to it, yoke such as these: namely yourself and others who have not learned to turn their necks back after the calves (1 Samuel 7) — that is, after their affections and carnal desires — but who, proceeding on a straight path, though lowing, carry the ark of the Lord into the promised land, into the heavenly house of Aminadab. Likewise, Psalm 117: “He has established a solemn day in the thickets, even to the horn of the altar.”

CHAPTER XXXI.

Against the Geryon-like monsters with two bodies, two-headed in holding multiple churches.

Not unlike — indeed not out of harmony with — the plurality and the two-faced or three-faced nature of masses is the plurality of persons, dignities, and offices around one and the same person, whether in a single church or in different ones. For there are certain men who, like Geryon, like Briareus — two-bodied, three-bodied, monstrous beasts of many heads — contend to be assimilated to God, who is three in persons yet one in substance. For each of them, though one in substance and person, nevertheless desires to be many persons in the personages and dignities of the Church. This kind of monstrous men, and this monster of cupidity, the Lord refutes in the Law and in Numbers chapter 4, distinguishing and dividing the offices of the ministers of the tabernacle, assigning to some the duty

of the Merarites, to others that of the Caathites, to others the Gersonites, to others the Levites and Aaronites. Now if in the Synagogue and under the figure no interchange of offices could exist, no mixing of order or alternation, how much more in the Church, where the truth resides, ought this interchange and indistinction of offices, personages, and dignities to be prohibited and eliminated — something that has so disfigured and confounded her that it is no longer known how, or under what title, such creatures should be addressed.

Likewise: if offices, dignities, and personages were kept distinct, [the Church] would truly be “a terrible place” (Genesis 28), “arrayed like an army in battle order” (Song of Songs 6), against which “the gates of hell would not prevail” (Matthew 16). But if in a physical battle line and in material warfare it is not permitted that the same man be a front-rank soldier and an armor-bearer and a constable and a commander of the army, a seneschal, the same man guardian of the right flank and the left, the same man of the northern and southern wings — how much more in the Church and in spiritual warfare, where one must fight not merely against visible enemies but against invisible ones, namely demons and vices, ought offices not to be confused? On account of this undivided state of personages and offices, the Church was easily triumphed over by the devil, the world, and vices; hence she may say: “Though an army encamp against me, my heart will not fear” (Psalm 26) — on account of my confused, undistinguished, and disordered members. Likewise Augustinus: “If under secular law one who sought two or more guardianships is held suspect, and on that account was excluded from all — how much more ought one who in the Church covets and usurps multiple offices to be excluded and held suspect, lest in attempting both offices at once he perform neither well?” Likewise: Jethro, even though a gentile, is recorded in Exodus and Deuteronomy to have said to Moses — who was judging between one case and another from morning until evening, held in such esteem by all that he had no time for himself — “You are wearing yourself out with foolish labor” (Deuteronomy 1); “divide your burden among many,” etc. On which Augustinus says: “It seems to me that a mind too much occupied with the many affairs of men is in some measure rendered less available to God; it becomes the fuller the more freely it is extended toward heavenly and eternal things. How much more, therefore, does he become empty of God who is intent on many offices?” For,

The mind spread over many things has less power for each.

On account of this Solomon says: My son, let not your deeds be many (Sirach 11).

The wise man sets a limit even to honorable pursuits.

(Juvenal, Satires VI.)

Moses therefore, at the counsel of Jethro, appointed some as officers over tens, others over fifties, others over hundreds, others over thousands — pentacontarchs, others as chiliarchs — and all without overlap (Exodus 18). Why, then, in the Church does the same man hold the deanery and the archdeaconry, or two archdeaconries, and the like? For only the greater cases were referred to Moses; on minor matters he did not judge, unless he held the dean or another official suspect who by his office had jurisdiction

to adjudicate. And so it seems that appeals ought not to be made in minor cases. Today, however, even an unjust appeal made in a minor case is sustained. But, they say, we are not burdened with toil as Moses was, even though we are attached to several dignities and offices. For we discharge them through vicars, through hired substitutes, through concubinaries.

Hence there is no need to distribute them, for in those [substitutes] we rest.

To such men the answer must be: Therefore, because you do not labor, neither shall you eat (2 Thessalonians 3). To one such bishop a certain people said: “Do not appoint over us a concubinary priest, that you may wander and be carried about through the land, given over to idleness.” Likewise: if Jethro, in giving counsel, said to Moses “Divide your burden among many,” etc. (Exodus 18), today it is said in the Church: “Gather burdens and many offices into one, and the Lord will depart from you.” Likewise in Numbers: the leaders of the families of Gilead from the tribe of the sons of Joseph approached Moses, saying: “The Lord commanded you to divide the land among the children of Israel by lot, and to give the inheritance due to their father to the daughters of Zelophehad; but he forbade them to be taken in marriage by men of another tribe, lest the distribution of the lots be confounded and the possession of some pass to others.” To them Moses replied: “Let them marry only men of their own tribe, that the possession of the children of Israel may not be transferred from tribe to tribe; let these remain as the Lord has assigned them” (Numbers 27; 36). How much more, then, ought churches to say to a prelate: “Give our church a man from its own tribe, and let our church [keep its minister], lest the minister of one church be transferred to the ministry of another — a dean in one transferred to an archdeaconry in another, and so on — so that the distribution of offices and personages is thrown into confusion, and one who was useful to one church becomes useless to both.” Likewise: See that Christ had no place to lay his head (Luke 9). And do you seek various resting places — personages, that is — in which to lay your head, in which to rest? These resting places will bring you rather to eternal punishment than to repose. Likewise in the Psalm (Psalm 67): “The king of virtues, of the beloved, of the beloved” — of the beloved, I say, that is “to divide the spoils of the beauty of the house” — that is, to make the house beautiful. Hence: “O Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house” (Psalm 25). This division of the spoils of the beauty of the house, the Apostle teaches in the Epistle to the Ephesians chapter 4: “And the Lord himself gave some to be apostles, others prophets, others evangelists, others pastors and teachers,” etc. Likewise Luke in the Gospel chapter 2: “When a strong man armed guards his courtyard, all his possessions are at peace. But if one stronger than he comes and overcomes him, he takes away all his armor in which he trusted and distributes his spoils.” These spoils are faithful souls, ecclesiastical dignities, and offices. Likewise Isaiah: “They shall rejoice before you as men rejoice in the harvest, as victors exult in taking prey, when they divide the spoils” (Isaiah 9). Likewise it is read of Paul: “Bless[ed]

“Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, and in the evening he divides the spoils” (Genesis 49). For Paul himself ordained certain men and, according to the distinct ranks of persons, assigned them diverse offices in the Church — as he did for Timothy, Titus, and others. Observing this delightful variety and beautiful house of the Lord, David said: “The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing, surrounded by variety, and thus clothed about with golden fringes and varieties” (Psalm 44). But what makes this variety praiseworthy is the variety of chants, readings, responsories, antiphons, and ornaments. Most of all, the variety of harmonious persons and offices renders [the Church] most delightful and beautiful — a variety of ministers ought to be established corresponding to this variety [of offices]. When these things are observed in the Church, one will rightly and truly be able to say of her: “You are beautiful and comely, O daughter of Jerusalem, terrible as an army set in array” (Song of Songs 6). Likewise in the Epistle of James, chapter 3: “Do not become many teachers, my brothers” — the interlinear gloss says: that is, ministers of many churches — “knowing that we shall receive the greater judgment.” For by promiscuous actions the offices of churches are thrown into confusion. Likewise [in the appendix to the Third Lateran Council, under Alexander III]: if it is forbidden for one church, one prebend, one bishopric to be divided among many, then by the contrary analogy, neither should many be assigned to one person — unless perhaps on account of a shortage of ministers and a multitude of cases — and this on account of the shameful and ignominious enormities that arise therefrom. Rather, let one belong to one, not many to one. If your father was content with one wife, why are you not content with one church? Consider what the Apostle says: “He who serves the altar shall live by the altar” (1 Corinthians 9). He does not say: “He who serves altars shall live by altars”; nor does he say: “He who serves altars shall live by the altar”; nor does he say: “He who does not serve the altar or altars shall live by the altar or altars.” For he says: “He who does not work shall not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3): and so, where one does not work, or when one does not work, let him not eat either. If someone objects that he serves in several churches, I reply that he cannot serve several churches at one and the same time, and thus he should receive a benefice from each church in which he serves at least in proportion to the time [spent there] and according to how he serves. Let each person consult his own conscience, having understood the formula of the words of the one granting and the one receiving an ecclesiastical benefice, [and consider] how he ought to conduct himself in the church. For a book is handed to him and it is said: “I give you this church, or prebend, for the honor of God and the service of this church” — as if to say: “Be assiduous in the office of this church.” In some churches this formula is expressed more explicitly: “I give you this church, or prebend, for the honor of God and the service of this church, that you be resident and a permanent dweller in this church.” Likewise, those men seem to interpret badly: “Seven women shall lay hold of one man” (Isaiah 4). Let them take care lest they fall into that amusing fiction of the young man who, having lingered for a long time with the conscript fathers in the Capitol, was asked by his mother what they had been deliberating;

not wishing to reveal the counsel of the Fathers, the young man hit upon a new stratagem and replied to his mother that he had heard that henceforth there would be several wives for one man. Upon hearing this, his mother gathered the matrons to the door of the Capitol and cried out: “Not two for one, but one for two!” (Macrobius, Saturnalia, bk. 1). But [the problem here is] not “two for one” but “two for one man” — indeed today [there are] more than two, as in the church of Saint-Merry and many others. It should also be noted that in secular jurisdictions a single soldier cannot perform military service for two lords without keeping safe his prior allegiance, and thus the jurisdiction of the other is diminished. How much less can anyone divide himself so as to serve God in several churches, when he ought to present himself wholly and always so as to minister in each one individually? Someone also reproaches another for having taken on the care of more peoples than he himself had persons in his own parish. “I have heard,” he says, “that when a certain dean was sharply rebuking his subordinate for the negligences he committed at all hours, day and night, that subordinate replied in turn: ‘What right have you to rebuke me, when in so many churches where you hold dignities and from which you receive revenues and proceeds every day, you commit so many defaults and negligences by your absence?’ So that dean fell silent and afterward dared not rebuke him or anyone else for such default and negligence, sensing a greater cause for reproach in himself.” I have also heard that when two canons belonging to two churches were [in question] — one being a dean in one church and the other a dean in the other — it was asked which was the spiritual father of the other and which was the subject of the other. The answer was that for as long as they are in one of those churches, the one who is dean in the church where they happen to be is the spiritual father of the other, and the other his subject.

But if they are not in any of those churches but perhaps in another or in others, which is the father and which the spiritual son? Such paternity and such sonship is contrary to nature and monstrous. That physician too would be held in ill repute who took on the care of twenty or thirty sick persons in the same village, let alone in different villages; how much more ought he who has taken on the cure of so many souls — not in one village but in different villages, not in one region but in different regions — be struck with a mark of infamy. Likewise John in his Gospel: “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep; but the hireling, and he who is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and abandons the sheep and flees” (John 10). If he sees the wolf coming, then he is present. Likewise: if he flees, then he is present. Often too the hireling does not flee but leads the sheep away and brings them back to the folds, and preaches on occasion — therefore the hireling sins less than the man whose church it is, since that man is always absent. But by what name shall that one be designated who is always absent? He is not a shepherd, because he does not feed the sheep; he is not even a hireling, because the hireling is always present, whereas this man is not. So let monstrous cupidity devise a new word for this new monster. To brand this monster, it suffices

that the Lord has distributed the diversity of gifts of grace of the Holy Spirit in the spiritual body — which the Apostle teaches in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 12: “There are divisions of graces, but the same Lord,” etc., and he immediately adds: “To one indeed by the Spirit is given the word of knowledge, and to another the word of wisdom,” etc. He did not bestow everything on one person, so that the individual members might serve one another mutually. Similarly the Apostle assigns diverse offices to the individual members in the human body. Thus in the same passage: “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?” etc. And he immediately adds: “The eye cannot say to the hand: I have no need of your works; or again the head to the feet: You are not necessary to me.” So too in the household of the father of a family, there are diverse offices serving human need. For he appoints one as swineherd, another as oxherd, another as coachman, another as courier, and so forth, according to each person’s own capacity, lest any damage to his property be incurred. How much more, then, is a distinction of offices and dignities to be made in the spiritual body (that is, in the Church), so that charity may bind all together and spread more widely? Hence that excellent versifier [writes]:

Eyes as sentinels for the head, ears for harmony, Feet as guides, and hands that accomplish all things.

Chapter XXXII.

Against bigamists and Lamechites holding several churches.

It is a shame that certain bishops borrow eyes from other bishops. And since there are four bishops who have but two eyes between them, they have been made not only blind or one-eyed but even monstrously bereft of eyes, when they ought to be creatures full of eyes before and behind, as one reads in Ezekiel (ch. 1). For each ought to be an Argus, so as to see spiritually and make others see. For as the poet says:

Argus bore a head encircled with a hundred eyes. (Ovid, Metamorphoses I, fable 10.)

Such men are worse than Julius Caesar. When Lucanus had enumerated Caesar’s individual vices, he said of him in one phrase:

Caesar was all things. (Lib. III, Pharsalia.)

As if he had usurped to himself all the dignities of Rome. For he was consul, quaestor, etc., and this in the same city. Still worse, then, is he who wishes to hold all honors in different places at once. [He is] a beast of many heads, resembling that monster over which theologians dispute — which from the navel downward appears uniform, but above is manifold. And so those lie who say that Gaul alone is free of monsters. Note that nothing deforms the body or the head more than absent eyes; no parts are more necessary to the body. It is also doubtful whether this person of many faces ought likewise to have a plurality of seals, or different seals. And how he should write, or how one should write to him — whether with the title of dignity: whether all the names of [his] dignities should be appended, or only one; or his proper name without the names of dignities, in which case he might perhaps take offense. If it is said that the name of the higher dignity alone should be used —

— what if he held equal dignities? If it is said that he should be given the name of that church’s dignity which he frequents most — but what if he runs now here, now there?

By what knot shall I hold Proteus, who changes his face? (Horace, Epistles I, epist. 1.)

Ask him what he is called, or by what name he wishes to be addressed, and he himself will not know. When someone was writing to such a beast of many heads and had prefixed in the salutation the names of all [his] dignities and prebends, he heard from someone else: “One more thing should be added: ‘Serf and peasant of Sancerre.’” This person of many faces will also need to have a multiple wardrobe and many breviaries on account of the diverse liturgical uses of the churches over which he presides. But what is to be done if in this church all those wearing such-and-such vestments are excommunicated? What if in that church everyone is excommunicated who wears garments that the other church forbids? This person is also the many-formed monster of Horace, whose likeness cannot be found in the natural world. Hence:

If a painter wished to join a horse’s neck to a human head, and to lay on varied plumage — (Horace, Ars Poetica.)

The same author elsewhere:

The jackdaw will provoke laughter, stripped of its stolen plumage. (Epistles I, ep. 3.)

For it is theft, or rather plunder, to seize and usurp so many goods belonging to the poor. Against such men the Lord speaks in the Gospel of Luke: “Into whatever city you enter, choose who in it is worthy, and remain in his house, and do not pass from house to house (Luke 10).” If therefore a guest of one night must be chosen as worthy, and one must not pass “from house to house,” how much more must he who ought to be permanent resident and minister in one and the same church [remain in his place]?

Chapter XXXIII.

On holy uniqueness.

This monstrous plurality of dignities and the like, gathered around the same person in the same or in different churches, is also condemned by a threefold and holy uniqueness — lest such a man be able to say with David: “Look upon me and have mercy on me, for I am alone and poor” (Psalm 24). If therefore, by analogy, you set riches against [this argument], I shall reply: that it is possible to be poor amid riches. The Apostle did not dread riches, but their effects. The first uniqueness is that of faith, sacraments, and morals, by which the distracted man should take care against heresies and schisms: “One faith, one baptism, one Lord,” etc. (Ephesians 4). “One thing I have asked of the Lord,” etc. (Psalm 26). “My dove is one” (Song of Songs 2). The ark was completed in one cubit. The second uniqueness is that of action. Hence Solomon: “My son, let not your deeds be many” (Sirach 11).

The wise man sets a limit even to honorable pursuits, And elsewhere:

“He who attends to many things gives less attention to each one.”

“Divide your burden among many,” etc. By analogy: a third kind of unity is therefore also derived from this, namely unity of dignities, offices, and revenues. For if the consequent is denied, so is the antecedent. If a plurality of actions is denied and forbidden, then so too is a plurality of dignities and the like. To hold several dignities or revenues is the antecedent to exercising many activities within them. “For he who does not work, let him not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3). And indeed before a secular judge, one who seeks the guardianship of two wards is regarded with suspicion, lest, in seeking both, he perform neither well. If, therefore, it is forbidden that “your acts be in many things,” the antecedent is still more strongly forbidden — namely that “your acts be in many” churches, revenues, and dignities. Take care lest you hold things from all or from many churches, revenues, and the like in such a way that you do not even possess yourself.

Chapter XXXIV.

On Evil Uniqueness

There is also a fourth kind of unity, namely an evil one, by which a person seeks to stand apart from others, setting up his own standard of justice, “thinking himself to be something, when he is nothing” (Galatians 6) — exceeding proper measure, or arrogating to himself what he does not have: singular, wild, one-horned, proud. Of such a one it is said: “Woe to the solitary man, for when he falls” — falling through pride — “he has no one to lift him up” (Ecclesiasticus 4). Likewise: all the questions that can be raised about Jacob’s double marriage of wives and about the handmaidens brought in to him (Genesis 29), and against such persons — Jacob is nevertheless excused, on the grounds that he married two women to provide offspring for the worship of God and to multiply the people of one faith. Let those persons themselves consider whether they have taken on several churches and dignities for the spiritual fruitfulness and benefit of the Church, rather than for temporal income and profit. If they have taken these on in order to multiply the people in the worship of God, to multiply children and the fruit of good works therein. This hardly seems credible, given that Rachel — that is, some church richer in revenues and temporal fruits — is preferred over Leah, who is yet more fruitful in spiritual fruit. For Leah is despised, while Rachel is chosen. And Rachel said to Leah: “Give me some of the mandrakes of your son Reuben. She replied: Is it a small thing that you have taken my husband from me, unless you also take the mandrakes of my son? Rachel said: He shall sleep with you tonight in exchange for the mandrakes of your son” (Genesis 30).

Yet those who are at present attached to two churches care not to sleep, rest, read, or sing even one night in one of them — let alone for “the many mandrakes and revenues which they claim.” But the Church would be more fruitful if individual ministers were assigned to individual churches. If you object that there is a shortage of clergy and ministers: yet today many churches are entrusted to many who are unlearned, while learned and prudent men receive none at all, even though no church

ought to be committed to them [the unlearned], and several could be entrusted to a prudent man who is not lacking in resources. But just as several sick persons are not committed to one physician, nor several wards to one guardian without difficulty and danger, so much the less ought several churches to be committed to one man, where the peril of souls is at stake — there [it is a matter only] of bodies and possessions. Likewise: upon such persons falls the curse of God spoken of in Deuteronomy, chapter 28: “You shall take a wife, and another shall sleep with her” — shall rest, sing, and minister in the church. What follows does not apply to them, but is quite the contrary: “You shall plant a vineyard and not gather its vintage; you shall sow a field and not reap its harvest” (Deuteronomy 28). These men, on the contrary, do not plant, do not tend, do not stake the vineyard, nor do they put dung on it — and yet they harvest it and drink of its wine. They do not sow the field, and yet they gather its fruits; so that they may also be likened to the one of whom the Lord says in the Gospel: “You are a harsh man; you reap where you did not sow, and gather where you did not scatter” (Matthew 25). Likewise: if scandal is caused in a church when someone who ought to read or sing in it is absent for a single day, how much greater [the scandal] if a person has been absent for a year, or even a decade, or longer, from the church in which he ought to minister? But the greatest offense and absence is this: that one man reads or sings twice in a single night in some church — how much greater, then, ought the offense to be when one man is assigned to two churches, since he cannot read, sing, and minister in both on the same day or night? But in a certain noble church — what is more shameful — there are five or more very wealthy dignities in revenues and receipts, for the collecting of which no service is rendered in it, whether by a vicar or by anyone else. I say not merely that singing and reading are absent, but not even attendance at its councils is given. Indeed, not one of the five persons is found present in it even once a year. Likewise: such men are more detestable than Lamech, who was the first to introduce bigamy (Genesis 4). For these men are found to be not merely bigamists, but trigamists, and tetragamists, and pentagamists, and beyond. And such a man — whatever he leaves as heir to one of his churches from all that has been gathered in it — will have difficulty distributing and leaving to each of his churches what belongs to it. Likewise, Isaiah, chapter 5: “Woe to those who join house to house” — coupling church to church — “and field to field unto the boundary of the place” — the larger one, that is: “Will you alone dwell in the midst of the land?” As if to say: Are you alone wise, or do you alone know how to sing in the church, that you therefore usurp many of them?

Chapter XXXV.

Against External Simony, Namely in Offices, Dignities, and Revenues of the Church

The plague and leprosy of simony as it concerns the interior sacraments, even “to the horn of the altar” (Psalm 17), we have already rebuked above. Now we shall rebuke that form of it which consists in external matters — namely ecclesiastical offices, churches, dignities, revenues, benefices, and whatever else is annexed

to spiritual things, the Lord rebukes in the Gospel of John, chapter 10: “He who does not enter through the door” — that is, through Christ, humbly, lest by standing erect he strike against the lowly gate, which is Christ; otherwise he will fall on the other side — “and who does not enter” (even one called by God through canonical election, lest he hear: “Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?” [Matthew 22]) “into the sheepfold,” that is, into the Catholic Church and into the fellowship of the faithful, whatever community of the saints it may be: “but climbs in by another way” — by any means whatsoever apart from Christ, whether by thinking wrongly of him, as a heretic, or by “seeking in the Church what is his own and not what belongs to Jesus Christ” (Philippians 2), as a pseudo [false shepherd], a hireling, or a simoniac, of whom it is said:

Himself sold, he desires to sell all things.

(For things that begin with an evil principle are scarcely exercised in a good manner or brought to a good end.) “That man is a thief” (John 10), because he calls what is another’s his own — that is, he calls God’s sheep his own — and yet the care of souls is entrusted to him; if not: like a hidden plunderer, he usurps for himself what is not his, namely the patrimony of the Crucified and the goods of the poor. “He is also a robber” (ibid.), because he has stolen God’s sheep. If he has the governance of souls, he kills himself; even if he does not, he both destroys himself and violently seizes and detains the goods of the poor. “But he who enters through the door” (John 10) — that is, through Christ, sincerely — “not seeking his own things, but those of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 2), “he is the shepherd of the sheep.” “To him the doorkeeper” — that is, Holy Scripture, which leads to Christ and to his eternal blessedness —

or the Holy Spirit, “who teaches all truth” (John 14), “opens” a wider way to blessedness, [namely] the hidden meanings of the scriptures, of questions, confessions, and counsels. “For he who follows me does not walk in darkness” (John 8) — whether of ignorance or of sin. “And the sheep” — that is, those predestined to life, his subjects — “humbly and devoutly hear him, obeying his voice, because he preaches Christ and nothing else.” And this pastor “calls his own sheep by name” (John 10) — he summons, promotes, and exalts them in the offices and dignities of the Church, each by name, namely by the name of merit, predestination, or spiritual grace (Philippians 4). Of names of this kind it is said: “Rejoice, because your names are written in the book of life” (Numbers 4). Likewise: Moses called each one by his own name — not by the name of the crowd, not by the name of money paid, not by carnal affection, not by any private condition such as birth or the like. “For whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven” — whether Greek, Scythian, or whatever barbarian — “this person is fit for the kingdom of God” (Matthew 7).

And the poet:

Chosen from every shore he advances, and seeks character, not the cradle.

(Claudianus, book ii, In Praise of Stilicho.)

This shepherd “leads out the sheep” (John 10) and sends them forth by word and

“And he goes before them” by counsel toward perfection, and by the merit and example of his life. “And the sheep follow him” (John 10) — even into the kingdom of God, by obeying and persevering to the end — “because they know his voice, wherever he goes” (Revelation 14). “But a stranger” — one in whom there is not the voice of Christ but of temporal gain, even if he otherwise appears to be a good man — “they do not follow, but flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers” (ibid.). Now just as Christ is “the door” for entering into the Church both militant and triumphant, so too is he “the way — I am the way” in example, “the truth” in promise, and “the life” in reward (John 14) — making a bridge and a way for us into the present and the future Church. Hence the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 9: “Christ, appearing as the high priest of the good things to come, through a greater and more manifest tabernacle not made with hands” — that is, “not of this creation” — etc. There are four bridges, ways, or means of entering into the Church, into the heaven of the saints through Christ. The first was the burning of the censers of Aaron, the flowering and bearing of fruit on his staff, by which it was shown that he was called by the Lord. Concerning his calling we read in Numbers, chapters 17 and 18, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 5: “Nor does anyone take this honor upon himself, but only one who is called by God, as Aaron was.” I do not speak of a miraculous calling, but of the signs of works, knowledge, and virtues, by which one shows that he is pleasing to God. The second bridge was the voice from heaven, which declared that the Son had been glorified by the Father: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3). And through the Prophet: “You are a priest forever” (Psalm

By this calling Nicolaus was called. The third bridge was the casting of lots, by which “Matthias received the place of ministry and apostleship from which Judas transgressed, that he might go to his own place” (Acts 1). And it is notably to be observed that the apostles chose only two from the disciples of Christ for the office of the apostleship — those whom they recognized as more suitable — and they did not presume to name either of them as apostle, but left this to divine grace. And had Simon Peter chosen the seven deacons as stewards of the goods of the poor (Acts 6) out of private love and carnal affection, the disciples so chosen — being useless to him — would have merely petitioned [for their own interests]. Now, however, the casting of lots has been removed from use on account of its proximity to sortilege; it has been succeeded by canonical election, which, unless it be pure, sincere, and holy, will be at variance with Christ and sacrilegious. Granted that nowadays lots are not trusted — even for the blind judgment of electing someone to an archdeaconry and other such worldly offices in the Church, lest an unworthy person be elected — how can they be trusted for the perpetrating of homicide through foreign and blind judgments?

Chapter XXXVI.

On Those Who Impede the Integrity of Canonical Election

The integrity and purity of canonical election are impeded and destroyed by the leprosy of Gehazi (2 Kings 5),

the cupidity of Simon (Acts 8), the violence of the doorway and of the powerful (Numbers 16), and various other causes, which we shall pursue, some of which Hieronymus touches upon in his letter, C. VIII, q. 1, saying thus: Moses, the friend of God, to whom the Lord spoke face to face (Exodus 33), could certainly have made his sons successors of his authority and left his own dignity to his descendants; yet Joshua was chosen from another tribe as a stranger, so that we might know that rule over peoples is to be given not to lineage but to the merit of one’s life (Numbers 27). But now we see very many making this thing a benefice — that is, they do not seek to raise up in the Church those whom they have known to be of greater benefit to the Church, but rather those whom they love with private affection, or to whose services they are bound, or for whom some great person has interceded, and — to say nothing of worse things — those who obtained clerical status by gifts.

It must also be added that nowhere do we read the Lord to have gnashed his teeth and burned with anger on account of any crime as [he did] over the monster of simony. For, about to fight against this monster so as to cast it out of the Church, “having made a whip of cords” (John 2), armed and laying aside, as it were for a moment, his natural meekness according to his humanity, “he drove out those selling doves in the temple and overturned the tables of the money-changers” (John 10). As if to say: through me one must enter into my house. “For I am the door” (John 10) — you do not approach churches, or spiritual things, or things annexed to spiritual things, through yourselves. “For thus you make my house, a house of prayer, a den of thieves and a house of commerce” (Matthew 21). If therefore the Lord blazed and gnashed so against the figure, how much more against the truth and the monster of simony — which, to be cast out of the Church today along with the monsters it could [already] cast out, would require not merely cords but swords, staves, and thunderbolts falling from heaven? The Lord, expressing canonical election as the imitator and successor of the aforesaid three modes of choosing, says in the Gospel: “Come after me,” etc. (Luke 9). “Fulfilling the precepts” without which there is no salvation, “crucifying your flesh with its vices and lusts” (Galatians 5). Because, “If anyone wishes to come after me,” it is necessary “that he deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Luke 16). Thus a prelate of the Church must be chosen from among those crucified in this way. And because the aforesaid qualities common to all are not sufficient for those to be chosen, he adds: “I will make you” — through authority, the infusion of gifts and virtues, so that one who presides in dignity may preside in the uprightness of morals and excel in knowledge. And so, when the aforesaid [qualities] have been fulfilled and conferred, “I will make you become,” through the ministry and canonical election of the electors, “fishers of men” (Matthew 4) — of souls, not of money. Those elected otherwise, or who have obtained a spiritual benefice [by other means], are like the priests of Jeroboam, who made priests of idols from the lowest and most base of the people: “Whoever wished filled his hand and became a priest of the high places.

Because of this sin the house of Jeroboam sinned, and was overthrown, and wiped from the face of the earth (1 Kings 13).” But was this [act of Jeroboam’s] simoniacal? It is certain that selling the legal priesthood was simony. Whether [selling] the priesthood of idols [was simony] is a question — unless perhaps we say that simony was present there for the reason that even “priests of the high places,” on account of the dignity of the priesthood, were necessarily obliged by their office to preach and to have uprightness of morals, just as true priests are.

Likewise the Lord in Luke, chapter 12: “Who do you think is the faithful servant,” or “steward and prudent?” (Luke 12) “Faithful” — fulfilling those things that are necessary for salvation: whence the Apostle says, “Entrust these things to faithful men who will be capable of teaching others also” (2 Timothy 2). “Capable” in life, knowledge, and eloquence. “And prudent” — so as not to “give what is holy to dogs” (Matthew 7). “Whom God has appointed” — by his authority and the ministry of the electors, that is, by canonical election. Otherwise [such a one] is not sent by the Lord, of whom, and of those like him, it is said: “As many as came” — that is, not sent by God — “are thieves and robbers” (John 10). There follows: “Over his household,” so that as he presides in dignity, so he may preside in the uprightness of morals. “That he may give them” — he is appointed over them not to receive from them milk and wool, oil and lees, but rather “to give them a measure of wheat,” [that is,] of the divine word, “according to the capacity of his hearers, and this in due season. For everything has its season. There is a time for silence, and a time for speaking” (Ecclesiastes 3). For preaching, if it is constant, becomes cheap. But those who are otherwise constituted over the Lord’s household are like the priests of Bel (Daniel 14), who, with the true door “Christ” broken through, enter — insofar as it lies in them — by furtive little doors (that is, by sordid gifts, counted money, carnal affection, and the like) to the altar, into the Holy of Holies, eating and devouring and carrying off the offerings of princes and peoples.

Against such persons may also be set what is said in Deuteronomy, chapter 20: “What man is there who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another dedicate it. What man is there who has planted a vineyard and has not yet made it common, from which all may be permitted to eat? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another enjoy the use of it. Or what man is there who has betrothed a wife and has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another take her.” But these men receive churches and ecclesiastical benefices and do not dedicate them by any work or any service, and so they die in battle. Often too they plant good conduct and doctrine in themselves, but have not yet made it common to others by example and by the word of preaching; and therefore let them return to their own house and church, if they have not done these things, before they are chosen for another. But now those are elected who stand in need of pedagogues; and when they ought to be teaching others, they themselves need rather to be taught by them — “as newborn babes,” who be-

troth churches to themselves, while others come to know them by ministering and preaching in them. Likewise: How great the purity and sincerity of canonical election ought to be is evident from the words and figures of Truth itself. See how purely and sincerely Joshua was elected, how purely and sincerely other judges [were chosen] (1 Samuel 11): Saul too, although reprobate, [was elected] as king — but given to the people in the wrath of God, even because they had requested him (2 Samuel 5). See most holy David, most sincerely “chosen from the nursing ewes” (Psalm 77), and anointed king with the horn of oil. See Gideon reject those who drank like cattle in a manner fitting the belly-hungry, and those given to pleasure; and choose the few and sober (who would go forth in virtue to battle against the Amalekites, lapping up the ground) (Judges 7). See in Numbers how men from twenty years of age and upward were chosen in virtue to fight against the Midianites (Numbers 1): how much more ought prelates, manly in age, in spirit, and in gravity of morals — who would advance in virtue to battle against invisible enemies — be chosen in the Church? Likewise, [consider] the word of choosing. For to “elect” is to read out the better from among the good. One who elects otherwise rather dejects and casts down than elects. Now, in order that simony may be more openly censured, let us suppose some kind of definition by which its roots may be made known, of the following sort. Simony is whenever something is done by a man whereby a spiritual benefice is given not freely, or less freely. I say “is done,” not “exists.” For blood relationship exists in nature, from God; it is not made by man. But when a spiritual benefice is given on account of nature rather than grace, “flesh and blood reveal this” (Matthew 16) to the one who gives it, not the Spirit — nor is this simony, but a sin of another kind and a mortal one. Whether, however, one who thus receives a spiritual benefice in preference to a more worthy person in the church is bound to resign it, I do not determine. For the greatest havoc will arise in the church if this be said. I say “is done” — [that is,] some undue thing is done, such as a sordid gift or service that has been rendered or is to be rendered. Due service is excluded, as when someone who is called to share in the solicitude of a bishop serves the Church at the bishop’s expense, so that the bishop may thereby be assured of his dignity, knowledge, virtues, and good morals — to one so endowed he confers an ecclesiastical benefice, and not therefore less freely. By the adverb [“freely”], however, there is excluded the expectation of a gift, or of service, or of a spiritual benefice to be conferred or already conferred, whether or not a compact has intervened. “For God looks upon the heart” (1 Samuel 16); but a compact and a condition sine qua non [that] the priestly office could not be exercised in the church is not excluded. For a bishop or priest makes a compact with a patron concerning the provision of the necessities of nature for the ministers of the altar before the dedication of the church. This definition encompasses the simoniacal plague and the Giezitic leprosy, but not the Korathite violence, which breaks down the door of the church. This [Korathite violence] is worse than the first two plagues. I would rather be a thief than a robber, a simoniac than a Korathite [who proceeds] by the prayers and extortions of princes.

Chapter XXXVII.

On the Four Kinds of Spiritual Things.

There are four kinds of spiritual things. First, there are spiritual things through which the Holy Spirit is had or is presumed to be had, such as virtues and miracles. Second, there are also spiritual things through which the grace of the Holy Spirit is conferred on someone, or, once conferred, increased in him, such as the ecclesiastical sacraments (see notes) — except matrimony — orders, and also ecclesiastical offices. Third, there are spiritual things annexed to spiritual things, that is, attached to ecclesiastical persons or churches, such as dignities, tithes, first-fruits of the field, and the revenues of the church. Fourth, vessels and vestments consecrated to the church are called spiritual things. The first may be obtained by petition, both in law and in fact. The second, in law, though not in fact — for they are sold, but this engenders simony. The third may be obtained by petition in law, except in cases to be discussed elsewhere. The fourth: if they can be melted down, once melted they may be sold to anyone; but if not, then only to ecclesiastical persons, not to laymen. For we are forbidden in the fifth distinction of the consecration [rite] to reduce to common use things once dedicated to God, even the consecrated stones of a church.

That temporal things may be offered for spiritual ones seems to follow from Numbers, chapter 31, at the end: The sons of Israel came to Moses and said: “For this reason we offer as gifts to the Lord, each of us what he was able to find as booty in gold: anklets, bracelets, rings, armbands, necklaces, that you may intercede for us before the Lord.” Therefore, for trentals, anniversaries, and things of this kind, is it lawful to exact and give money? It is not so. Payment of this kind is understood from what follows: “Moses and Eleazar the priest received all the gold that was offered, and having received it brought it into the tabernacle of testimony, as a memorial of the sons of Israel before the Lord.” From this it is clear that money may be given to the church as a memorial and an incentive toward it, as a sign of the devotion of one seeking the suffrages of the Church, and as an example to others; and it is not given in exchange for spiritual things. For in the same way Peter in heaven prays for someone when he sees that person drawing near to God in devotion and work, just as the Church [prays] for a sign of the devotion and work of one who thus seeks its prayers and suffrages. Therefore, on that reasoning, is it lawful for me to give to the Church so that I may be inscribed in it and receive its revenues? It is not so. For a different reasoning on either side reshapes the compact. For the suffrages and prayers of the Church are necessary for salvation; but salvation is possible without ecclesiastical revenues; and one who gives less or nothing ought to be equally admitted to the suffrages of the Church as one who has given more, provided he has sought them devoutly and from [genuine] affection — otherwise it will appear to be shameful trafficking and venality within [the Church]. Second, money is given to the church out of necessity for the support of the ministers’ natural [needs] and for the provision of the church’s lights, and things of this kind, without which the divine office cannot rightly be celebrated therein. Third, money is sometimes given in church (which must then be spent on pious causes — otherwise it is cupidity, not justice, that exacts it), not for spiritual things and abso-

lution to be conferred, but as a penalty and punishment for sin. In the first case, all compact and condition is excluded. In the second, a compact is admitted — namely, that a priest may make an agreement with a patron concerning the provision of the necessities of life. Likewise a priest lacking an ecclesiastical benefice may make an agreement with another to minister in his church, while he is away at school, covering sufficient necessities for carrying out his office — that is, he should have not only enough to live on but enough to feed the poor, so that what he preaches in word he may confirm in deed. Similarly in the third case a compact is admitted; yet when it occurs in either the second or the third case, it must be arranged so that on account of it the weak are not scandalized. A shameful, dishonorable, and grasping compact is always excluded. Moreover, since ecclesiastical offices belong to the category of spiritual things, just as a priest who sells his office — for instance by hiring out himself, his labor, his works, and the instruments of the church, even the nuptial blessing — commits simony. So too does one who accepts a poor benefice insufficient for his person on account of a temporal emolument to be attached to it, who would never have submitted his neck to the yoke, burden, and duties of that office unless for the sake of extrinsically added or promised increase of revenues — he is branded and I mark him not only for the venality of the office but for the venality of his own person in carrying it out. For it is more shameful to sell oneself than to sell something external. On the same point, Causa 1, q. 2: “With what pious affection of mind,” etc. Whether one who has thus obtained a dignity or ecclesiastical benefice is obliged to resign it is a question. Now just as a vocal compact in spiritual matters is a mark and effective cause of venality and simony before men, so too a mental compact is such before God and the angels, who speak only in mental terms. Simony therefore consists in the expectation of receiving a gift and in the intention of giving one, and in the hope of both parties — that is, of the one giving the ecclesiastical benefice and hoping for a return, and of the one receiving or hoping to receive the ecclesiastical benefice. To give is sometimes the same as to receive. Whether one who has thus obtained an ecclesiastical benefice is required to resign it is also a question. But since expectation and intention of gifts both produce simony, a question arises about the difference between simony and the Gehazi-leprosy in this case. Simony is committed in the will — both in the intention of the one who resolves to give and in the expectation of the one who hopes to receive; but the Gehazi-leprosy consists only in the act, namely when something is given or received. Likewise: if only expectation intervened on the part of the one receiving the ecclesiastical benefice — if he [the recipient] knew nothing by inference that the other expected a return, even though the recipient himself had formed no intention to give a gift — his entry into that benefice is shameful, because it was not freely conferred upon him. But is he required to resign it? If, however, the [grantor] did not know that he expected a gift, and if the prelate was in need, he will be able and ought to give to him and assist him. But if a priest has granted a small portion or fragment of ecclesiastical revenues to someone, and that person then sells it, will he be a simoniac? No; since such

money equally belongs to a layman as to a cleric. For if money from the church is given by a priest to someone, that person holds it for life as a kind of annual pension, yet is not thereby bound to perform any divine or ecclesiastical office.

Chapter XXXVIII.

In How Many Ways Is Simony Committed?

Simony is committed by breaking the door that is Christ, in three ways: by gift of the hand, of the tongue, and of service. This distinction can be derived from the Moralia of Gregorius (Book IX, ch. 17), on the passage in Jeremias (ch. XLVIII): “Cursed is everyone who does the work of God deceitfully” — that is, for the reward of a material thing, or for a word of praise, or for the favor of human judgment. For there is the coin of vainglory, the coin of pride, the coin of greed, and the coin of base servility. But regarding this last, the question arises: does it produce simony even without an explicit compact? Yes, indeed. But what of service rendered in an honorable manner? The philosopher seems to address this, saying (Seneca, Letter 42): “Therefore in those things which we pursue, toward which we strive with great effort, we ought to examine whether there is any benefit in them at all, or whether the disadvantage outweighs it.”

Some things are superfluous, some not worth their cost. But we do not foresee this, and those things seem free to us which cost us most dearly. Our foolishness is revealed in this: that we think only those things are bought for which we pay money; we call those things free for which we spend ourselves — things we would not purchase if we had to give up our house or our pleasant and fruitful estate for them. Yet toward these things we are most ready to press on, with anxiety, with peril, with the sacrifice of honor, freedom, and time. So little does anyone value himself. Let us therefore do in all our counsels and affairs what we customarily do when we have gone to the seller of some commodity. Let us see at what price this thing we desire is offered. Often the highest price is one for which no money is paid. I can show you many things which, once acquired and possessed, have wrested our freedom from us. We would be our own masters if these things were not ours. But [the philosopher] seems to speak of labor that follows upon a benefice already conferred, not of labor that precedes it. Likewise: the coin of greed, with an explicit compact and without one, together with the corrupt hope of expectation and intention on the part of both giver and receiver, produces simony. Does the coin of service therefore likewise [produce simony] apart from a compact? Yes, indeed, if the service rendered is base. If honorable — for instance, if the one conferring the ecclesiastical benefice looks in the recipient at grace, learning, probity, that is, at Christ rather than at temporal advantage rendered to himself through the service performed — then there is no simony; nor should the recipient render that service with the intention of receiving a temporal reward. Likewise the question arises: does a mental compact, with the hope of both parties, giver and receiver, which is at least undue before God, constitute a fraudulent entry into simony and produce a vitiated entry into a spiritual benefice? For example:

Suppose an elderly uncle gives his church to his upright and even honorable nephew, but would not have done so except in the hope of receiving the revenues and income of that church for as long as he lives, and the nephew would not have accepted the spiritual [benefice] unless those attached fruits were given to him — then the giver (and if he who thus holds an ecclesiastical benefice) is obliged to resign it. It is settled, however, that if an oath has been or is to be interposed over the concession of the receipt of revenues, and thus by means of a vocal compact, such an entry is vitiated. But what of the election of someone, if he has sworn or promised to swear that he will observe the customs of that church and the like? “Blessed is the man who is fearful in such matters” (Proverbs 28). Likewise: what if someone has conferred the administration of an ecclesiastical dignity upon another, who would not have conferred it, nor would the other have accepted it, unless he had granted him the revenues thereof for three years in order to marry off the sister of the one receiving that benefice — so that a spiritual thing is received and a temporal one given? Likewise: what of one who resigns a church or prebend so that a prelate may confer it upon his nephew, compelling him by oath not to offend his uncle, 104 but to minister to him from the incomes the necessities of life — which many approve, and count as ungrateful the one who refuses to provide necessities to an impoverished uncle, as though the latter had received the benefice with that hope and intention, and the former had conferred it with the same intention? Likewise: if a prelate would not otherwise grant ecclesiastical benefices to his young nephews, and if the flesh urges him ever so slightly to do so, unless he receives the revenues and fruits — in all these cases the question arises whether the entry has been vitiated and whether [the parties] are simoniacs. Likewise: one who sells one of two things — a spiritual benefice and its annex — leaves neither one unsold; and one who buys one leaves neither one unbought; therefore one who gives one gives the other as well, and one who receives one receives the other. But suppose a prelate confers an ecclesiastical dignity upon someone, which he would not have conferred otherwise, unless he had pledged its fruits to purchase or redeem fields or revenues of the church, or had granted the revenues for a period for building or [other] expenses; then he receives one but not the other — or rather not immediately. The same objection applies to annual, biennial, triennial [grants] and the like, all of which appear to constitute fraud against the law of simony. Here some draw a distinction, saying that the sequestration of ecclesiastical goods made by common authority of the Church and for her benefit is licit, but that which proceeds from the bishop’s private advantage and greed is simoniacal. Likewise: by this same rule — “whoever sells one [sells both],” etc. — others are shown to be receiving simoniacally, and at least unjustly, the fruits of someone’s prebend for a year along with another spiritual thing to which those fruits are annexed, whether in that year the instituted canon has served in the church or not. If he has not served, then those receiving the fruits thus deprive that church for a year of both its servant and its service. If he has served, then they are detaching what is annexed to the spiritual [benefice] and “muzzling the ox that treads the grain” (1 Corinthians 9), so that

one who serves at the altar does not live from the altar, and one who sows spiritual things does not reap material ones? I believe that if this cause were brought before a just judge, he would assign to such a person at least a portion of the revenues sufficient to live on. For it is unjust that someone should have the full integrity of spiritual duties — such as singing in the choir, entering the chapter, ministering at the altar — yet not have the full integrity of the things annexed to them. Such revenues may not be spent even on pious causes. From the common portion of the church, indeed, an annual alms of this kind could be assigned to monasteries or other religious houses; but from the spiritual and particular portion belonging to someone in the church, it could not.

Moreover, since a mental compact proceeding from both parties makes an entry vitiated, it makes the entry more vitiated on the part of the one conferring the ecclesiastical benefice. For it is in his hands and his will to give it or not. He is the door through which entry is made well or badly; let him take care that he not be corrupted, lest the gift be less freely given. If, however, the recipient had in his will to give a gift, whether personally or through another, but had not yet done so, and the prelate conferred the ecclesiastical benefice upon him sincerely and without any hope of a gift, the recipient shall receive it while doing penance for his corrupt will — and his entry shall not be vitiated, since the integrity of the door remains. 105 For he received freely and the other gave freely. And even if he had a corrupt and, before God, simoniacal will, by repenting of it, since he did not carry it into effect, he acquires or possesses nothing simoniacally. It is as if I had in my will to buy your daughter from you as my wife, yet you gave her to me freely — I would have her as a wife freely and without purchase. Likewise: if a theft from the church were secret in his private judgment — that is, in the judgment of confession — it is simply a theft, and what was taken is ordered to be restored by the confessor; therefore a secret, mental simony — judged by the interior forum of the church, not the exterior — is simony, and a benefice thus obtained, namely furtively and secretly, must be resigned. For the confessor as interior judge ought to judge that it must be restored, since simony has been committed before God; but the judge of external causes will not judge this to be simony unless the accused has publicly confessed it or been convicted of it. Likewise: suppose someone coming to a church or monastery says: “I offer myself and my goods to this church or monastery, to serve in it perpetually.” If he is received without distinction, his entry will be sound. But if more than what he offered is demanded of him, or if a distinction is drawn between his goods and his person — so that his goods are the reason he is received — his entry will be vitiated. If, however, the distinction is drawn between his goods and his person in such a way that he himself is the reason his goods are received along with him, then the entry will be sound and licit. But if the monastery is so poor that it cannot receive or sustain one who offers himself without money, let it grant him spiritual fellowship, not bodily [membership]; or on grounds of poverty and for the sustenance of his life it can require of him, when receiving him, also the temporal revenues by which

by which he may be sustained as long as he lives. But if the monastery demands perpetual revenues, then open cupidity makes the entry corrupt. From all this it is clear that no monastery ought to be founded or established without a fixed number of fields, livestock, and persons. For once these things increase, it will be very difficult to avoid the snares and temptations of simony. What if I give something to the bishop’s household servants so that they will not harm my reputation with him but will keep silent and refrain from working against my receiving an ecclesiastical benefice? To have the pledge of their silence — they being counselors to the bishop — makes the entry corrupt. What if they are not the bishop’s household servants, and yet I give to them so that they will not besmirch my reputation? The entry will not be corrupt on that account. But what if I give something to the bishop’s doorkeeper so that I may enter his chapel to be ordained? No [simony is committed], since the order is already owed to me by reason of the examination and my enrollment in the register that has preceded it — even if the examination or enrollment has not yet taken place, yet if I enter for this purpose with the hope of being ordained because I am worthy of ordination, the entry will not be corrupt if I give something to the doorkeeper for that reason, since the care of ordinations is not his concern. Simony extends its branches from the altars where it sits rooted and nests all the way to the doors and the entrance of the orders to be conferred. For a chaplain stands at the side of the ordaining minister so that, once the order is conferred, he may immediately seize the shears and the hand-towel from his hands, alleging custom as his justification; he even complains that he does not receive a separate hand-towel from each of those ordained; and often the sacrilegious hand [of such a one] snatches even what the widow had borrowed. Furthermore, the arch-cock [archigallus, a satirical name for the archdeacon], as the price of presenting a candidate for ordination as subdeacon, demands three solidi; for deacon, five or four; for priest, seven — as a meal-fee. Just as buying and selling is the principal form of simony, so too is the accessory form, along with everything attached to the ecclesiastical office which is owed as of right to the one to whom the principal thing is conferred. Therefore, to sell the seal, the hand-cloth, the [benefit of] justice, the wax, and such things — unless poverty excuses it — is simony. Hence Gregorius [says] (Homily 39, on Luke 19), on the verse: “And entering the temple he began to cast out those who sold and bought therein.” Many, while they receive a place among the sacred orders through the religious habit, convert the office of religion into the commerce of earthly trade.

“He sells the dove in the temple” (John 2), who bestows for payment what rightly belongs to certain persons. “He sells justice,” who preserves it only upon receipt of a payment. “He buys in the temple,” who, when he denies to his neighbor what is rightly owed him, and pays patrons a fee to support an unjust cause, purchases sin. To these it is said: “You have made my house a den of thieves” (Matthew 21; Luke 19). For through malice and cupidity they kill where they ought to give life. Item: The question is raised whether buying that common form of fraternity from which one is expelled if his promise is not fulfilled is simony. It seems that it is, since spiritual benefits are annexed to it — such as solemn Masses, suffrages, and the prayers of the faithful — though this we do not settle definitively.

Item: Whether it is simoniacal for an abbot to purchase a mitre, letters of emancipation, and such things in order to avoid being subject to the bishop. It seems that it is, since these things are annexed to spiritual matters — which is indeed the case. Yet it is lawful for anyone to redeem his own rights even in spiritual matters. Hence: spend money to purchase paradise for yourself. Item: The question is raised whether it is simony to give a procuration or revenues to a chapter so that it may celebrate the feast of some saint in the double rite, whereas it had previously celebrated it only in the simple rite, or also for singing a new, unaccustomed hymn, and such things. There is not complete purity here either. The blessed Thomas of Canterbury, in order to banish simony entirely from his household, when he appointed Master Arnulph as chancellor, bound him by oath that he would accept nothing — neither by compact nor without compact, not so much as a hand-cloth [canipulum] — for administering the office of the chancellery.

Chapter XXXIX.

On the punishment of simoniacs.

There follows [a discussion of] the punishment of simoniacs. Gehazi, on account of the enormity of his crime, was struck with leprosy (2 Kings 5). Simon was condemned to hell. In the present life the sentence of his condemnation was pronounced: “Your money be with you in perdition” (Acts 8). A certain man, who for the ransom of the Church’s liberty sold rights and ecclesiastical benefices to princes, was deprived of his accustomed grace of preaching. Another, while conferring orders and saying “In the name of the Father and the Son,” failed at the third sign. For he fell mute when he was bound to invoke “the Holy Spirit” — as if God were saying to him: “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10).

The accessory [is punished] just as the principal.

Hence the deacon Cyriacus, when gifts were offered to him so that he would come and heal the daughter of King Sapor, said: “Far be it from me that the grace of Christ should be for sale through me! Go ahead,” he said to the messengers, “I will not mount a horse, just as Christ did not, but I will follow you on foot.” A certain devout woman also, who ate virtually nothing and was often rapt into ecstasy and angelic visions, lost her former grace, her spirit of prophecy, and her converse with angels when, under the pretext of building a chapel and purchasing fields for the use of that monastery, she began to receive gifts from those who offered them. And others have been gravely punished by God in many other ways.

Chapter XL.

On the exchange of spiritual things.

There follows [a discussion of] the exchange of spiritual things, which draws near to the contract of buying and selling, and thus appears to incur the mark of simony. The exchange of goods in certain provinces where coin is scarce takes the place of the contract of buying and selling, so that goods are received for goods, and livestock for livestock. So too the exchange of spiritual things seems not very unlike buying and selling, and appears to constitute simony. By this reasoning, a commercial agreement — a compact of exchange on account of which an ecclesiastical benefice is resigned, and through which an entrance into another is opened — constitutes simony between a bishop who gives [a benefice], though cognizant of

this exchange, and the one who resigns a benefice that the bishop then confers on his own nephew. Therefore [simony arises] also between those who resign, even without the knowledge of the giving bishop — in which case (that is, the bishop being unaware of this compact of exchange) he will not give the benefice to his nephew in a simoniacal manner, yet that nephew will acquire it simoniacally. Item: By an exchange of this kind, especially of tithes redeemed from lay hands and of revenues deriving from lay investment funds, any ecclesiastical benefice whatsoever could be obtained; and thus all the prebends of some church could be acquired through lay exchange without simony — which is plainly false. Item: Deuteronomy 22: “If a man has taken a wife and seeks occasion to put her away, once the elders of the city have learned of this, they shall punish him according to the law and adjudge her to him as wife, so that he may not put her away at any time during his life.” By analogy, therefore: if a man has lawfully received a church and seeks occasion to abandon it because another is fatter and richer, he ought to be punished according to the penalty established in the canons and to remain in it for all the days of his life.

Note, however, that an exchange both of persons and of benefices, made by the authority of the Church and for its benefit, is permitted; whereas one made for temporal advantage — where one’s own utility is attended to more than the Church’s — appears to carry a blemish. Nevertheless I do not wish “to set my mouth against heaven” (Psalm 72) by asserting that this is simoniacal, since the supreme pontiff Alexander II granted that an exchange of this kind may be made by dispensation — I do not know whether in writing or without writing. Item, the Lord: “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10). And likewise, the same Lord elsewhere: “If you are invited to a dinner, recline in the lowest place, waiting until it be said to you: Friend, go up higher” (Luke 14). And the Apostle: “No one takes honor to himself,” etc. (Hebrews 5). From these three authorities it is gathered that “grace, unless it is given freely, is not grace” (Romans 10). But will there be a middle way between “being called by God” and “taking honor to oneself”? (Hebrews 5.) One who errs from both sides is at fault. Far be it! For you are not called by God unless you ascend through him, unless you receive freely — that is, as one who attributes nothing to his own merit — rather than taking honor to yourself. “Entering by another way than the door” (John 10), ascending by another path, you are called by another than God. But what if the breaking down of the door lies only in the will and not in the deed? Repent of the will and retain the benefice received — even though it was received with a bad will, it was nonetheless freely given. For I will not accept your book less [freely] if you have given it to me as a gift, even though I had intended to buy it. It is established from all this, therefore, that a compact concerning the augmentation of a pension — especially one made between claustral religious (who have no cure of souls) and a perpetual vicar established or to be established — constitutes simony if the question is between a secular cleric and a perpetual vicar. For it would be safer that fixed and certain pensions be assigned to each. A compact, however,

between such a one and a temporary vicar does not constitute simony, because it is excused by necessity.