The prov­i­dence that has brought this work into be­ing is re­mark­able. I owe it to the Lord to re­count his mer­cies, and per­haps in some mea­sure I owe this to the reader as well.

I was born into a Chris­tian fam­ily that em­pha­sized gen­eros­ity, and mul­ti­ple ser­mons from my child­hood on the topic of heav­enly trea­sures left an in­del­i­ble mark on me. In high school and col­lege, a larger phi­los­o­phy about the own­er­ship of ideas re­in­forced this pos­ture to­ward pos­ses­sions when I en­coun­tered the free and open source soft­ware move­ment, where I interacted per­son­ally with some of the more no­table thinkers in the field of free li­cens­ing, in­clud­ing Rich­ard Stall­man and Law­rence Les­sig. Com­plet­ing my higher ed­u­ca­tion, I con­tin­ued in that world pro­fes­sion­ally, work­ing on the An­droid Open Source Project, on Chro­mium, and in Goo­gle’s Open Source Pro­grams Of­fice.

I was in­tro­duced to Re­formed theol­ogy dur­ing an in­tern­ship in 2006 and came to af­firm the doc­trines of grace the fol­low­ing year. I did not im­me­di­ately make a dil­i­gent study of the mat­ter, but upon xivmov­ing to Cal­i­for­nia, I found a church—the same one I now pas­tor—that chal­lenged me to grow in that tra­di­tion. Study­ing through the Log Col­lege and Sem­i­nary, I was re­quired to write a the­sis but given the free­dom to take the time needed since the school op­er­ates with­out a se­mes­ter sched­ule. This pre­sented me with the op­por­tu­nity to an­swer ques­tions that had formed at the in­ter­sec­tion of my in­ter­ests in theol­ogy and in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty law. From this was born my the­sis on the do­rean prin­ci­ple,²The do­rean prin­ci­ple: in the con­text of gospel proc­la­ma­tion, ac­cept­ing sup­port as any­thing other than an act of co-la­bor com­pro­mises the sin­cer­ity of min­is­try. which I re­wrote as a book of the same name and pub­lished in 2021.³Owens, Do­rean Prin­ci­ple.

Of the responses it re­ceived, the one that most res­o­nated with me was the con­cern to see this prin­ci­ple echoed by theo­lo­gians of for­mer gen­er­a­tions. I also wanted much more than the scattering of quo­ta­tions I had man­aged to pro­duce from the pages of his­tor­i­cal writ­ings. How­ever, as I fol­lowed the trail of ci­ta­tions, it be­came ev­i­dent that what I sought was largely in­ac­ces­si­ble, hid­den away in Latin theol­ogy un­der the ti­tle of si­mo­nia (si­mony). Tech­nol­ogy soon bridged that gap. Not only have on­line ar­chives of his­tor­i­cal works grown im­mensely, but the re­cent avail­abil­ity of large lan­guage mod­els to the pub­lic has en­abled sourc­ing, tran­scrib­ing, and trans­lat­ing worthwhile works on the sub­ject at a scale pre­vi­ously un­imag­in­able. What is more, this study has be­come pos­si­ble at the very time that in­ter­est in re­trieval is grow­ing.

In all this, the hand of God is ev­i­dent. I have ne­glected count­less de­tails in this brief chronol­ogy, but even the few re­corded here show a dis­cern­ibly di­vine in­flu­ence that has pre­pared me for the present task. Calls to la­bor in un­tilled soil of­ten come out of sea­son so that an­other would en­joy the har­vest, and so it may be in my own case. But in the un­fath­om­able kind­ness of God, I sense that the church is ripe for this mo­ment as well.

Sigla§

ACO. Ed­uard Schwartz and Jo­hannes Straub, eds. Acta con­cil­io­rum oe­cu­me­ni­co­rum. Ber­lin: Wal­ter de Gruy­ter, 1914–1974.

C. Gra­tian, De­cre­tum, cited by causa, quaes­tio, and canon. Text in Fried­berg, vol. 1.

CO. G. Baum, E. Cu­nitz, and E. Reuss, eds. Io­an­nis Cal­vini op­era quae su­per­sunt om­nia. 59 vols. Bruns­wick: C. A. Schwet­schke, 1863–1900. Vol­umes 29–87 of the Cor­pus Re­for­ma­to­rum.

CSEL. Cor­pus Scrip­to­rum Ec­cle­si­as­ti­co­rum Lati­no­rum. Vi­enna, 1866–.

Ex­travag. comm. Ex­trav­a­gantes com­munes. Text in Fried­berg, vol. 2.

Fried­berg. Emil Fried­berg, ed. Cor­pus iu­ris canon­ici. 2 vols. Leip­zig: Bern­hard Tauch­nitz, 1879–1881.

GCS. Die grie­chi­schen christ­lichen Schrift­steller. Leip­zig and Ber­lin, 1897–.

JL. Phil­ipp Jaffé. Re­gesta pon­tif­i­cum Ro­ma­no­rum. 2nd ed., re­vised by S. Lö­wen­feld and oth­ers. Leip­zig: Veit, 1885–1888.

Mansi. Gio­vanni Do­menico Mansi, ed. Sa­cro­rum con­cil­io­rum nova et am­plis­sima col­lec­tio. 31 vols. Flo­rence and Venice: An­to­nio Zatta, 1759–1798.

MGH. Mon­u­menta Ger­ma­niae His­tor­ica. Han­over, Ber­lin, and Mu­nich, 1826–.

PG. J.-P. Migne, ed. Pa­tro­lo­gia Graeca. 161 vols. Paris, 1857–1866.

xviPL. J.-P. Migne, ed. Pa­tro­lo­gia La­tina. 221 vols. Paris, 1844–1864.

PS. René Graf­fin, ed. Pa­tro­lo­gia Syr­i­aca. 3 vols. Paris: Firmin-Di­dot, 1894–1926.

ST. Thomas Aqui­nas, Summa theo­lo­giae, cited by part, ques­tion, and ar­ti­cle.

WA. D. Mar­tin Lu­thers Werke: Kri­tis­che Ge­samt­aus­gabe. 127 vols. Wei­mar: Her­mann Böh­laus Nach­fol­ger, 1883–2009. The Tis­chre­den and Brief­wech­sel, cited as WA TR and WA Br.

X. Liber ex­tra (Dec­re­tal­ium Gre­gorii IX com­pi­la­tio), cited by book, ti­tle, and chap­ter. Text in Fried­berg, vol. 2.

Lo­ca­tors§

a., aa. Ar­ti­cu­lus, the ar­ti­cle of a ques­tion.

A, B, C… A seg­ment the edi­tion it­self marks off: a band of a Migne or Mansi col­umn, a sec­tion within a chap­ter in Hus. E.g., PL 76:1091B, 9.A–D.

ad. The re­ply to a num­bered ob­jec­tion—ad 3 an­swers arg. 3. Be­fore a dec­re­tal it points in­stead at the chap­ter a com­men­ta­tor is gloss­ing: e.g., ad X 5.3.24.

arg. Ar­gu­men­tum, an ob­jec­tion stand­ing at the head of a ques­tion.

c., cc. Canon, the chap­ter of a canon­i­cal col­lec­tion.

can. Canon, of a coun­cil.

cap. Ca­put, a chap­ter.

col., cols. Col­umn, in an edi­tion that num­bers columns rather than pages.

concl. Con­clu­sio, the mas­ter’s de­ter­mi­na­tion, or one of the num­bered the­ses he di­vides it into: e.g., concl. 2.

corp. The cor­pus, the body of an ar­ti­cle, where the mas­ter an­swers in his own voice.

d., D. Dis­tinc­tio.

xviid.a.c., d.p.c. Dic­tum ante canonem, dic­tum post canonem—Gra­tian’s own com­ment, stand­ing be­fore or af­ter the canon it is num­bered by.

disp. Dis­pu­ta­tio, a dis­puted ques­tion.

dub. Du­bium, a doubt ap­pended to a ques­tion.

fol., foll. Fo­lio, cited by leaf, side, and col­umn: e.g., fol. 147rb is leaf 147, recto, sec­ond col­umn; v is the verso.

hom. Homilia, a hom­ily.

lect. Lec­tio.

lib. Liber, a book within a larger work.

n., nn. Fol­low­ing a co­or­di­nate, the edi­tion’s own note rather than its text: e.g., PL 76:1091n3, 8:24n.

no., nos. The num­ber an edi­tion gives its pieces: a let­ter in a reg­is­ter, an en­try in the Tis­chre­den. In a printed com­men­tary, the num­bered nota of the lec­ture: e.g., ad X 5.3.34, no. 5.

p., pp. Page; in­side a structural locator, pars—IV, d. 20, p. 2 names the dis­tinc­tion’s sec­ond part, and II, p. 10, c. 2 the tenth part of a book.

P., Inq., Tract., S., Q., T., C., A., probl. The chain of di­vi­sions in the Summa Halen­sis—pars, in­qui­si­tio, trac­ta­tus, sec­tio, quaes­tio, ti­tu­lus, ca­put, ar­ti­cu­lus, pro­blema.

prol. Pro­lo­gus, the pro­logue.

q., qq. Quaes­tio.

qc. Quaes­ti­un­cula, a ques­tion within an ar­ti­cle.

quaest. Quaes­tio, marked off by an edi­tion as a di­vi­sion of its own.

rat. Rationes—the ar­gu­ments of a ques­tion taken to­gether: ad rat. replies to them as a set, where ad 3 an­swers one of them.

s.c. Sed con­tra, the ar­gu­ment set against the ob­jec­tions.

s.v. Sub voce, un­der the word—the en­try or lemma be­ing glossed.

serm. Sermo, a num­bered ser­mon.

sess. Sessio, the session of a coun­cil.

xviiisig. The printer’s sig­na­ture, by which a book with no fo­li­a­tion is cited: e.g., sig. q5vb.

sign. Signum, a num­bered “Sign” of Wil­liam of Saint-Amour’s Col­lec­tiones.

sol. So­lu­tio, the part of an ar­ti­cle in a Sen­tences com­men­tary where the mas­ter an­swers in his own voice.

tit. Ti­tu­lus.

tr. Trac­ta­tus, a trea­tise within a summa.

un. Unicus, -a, -um—the sole mem­ber of a di­vi­sion, where there is only one: e.g., q. un. is the one ques­tion of that dis­tinc­tion.

§, §§ A num­bered par­a­graph in­side a canon or a chap­ter: e.g., C. 1, q. 1, d.p.c. 24, § 1.

“There is hardly one sin in the world, whose na­ture is less known, and whose heinous­ness is less con­sid­ered, than the sin of si­mony.”¹“Re­view of The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus,” 502. These words be­gan the re­view of a work of re­trieval sim­i­lar to our own, and they are truer now than they were when they were penned over three and a quar­ter cen­turies ago. Si­mony once re­sided among the most dis­cussed sins in the Chris­tian tra­di­tion. It fea­tured prom­i­nently in canon­i­cal leg­is­la­tion from the pa­tris­tic pe­riod through the Mid­dle Ages, re­ceived am­ple treat­ment from nearly every ma­jor scho­las­tic theo­lo­gian, and en­tered the con­fes­sional stan­dards of the Ref­or­ma­tion. Yet to­day, it is vir­tu­ally for­got­ten. Most Chris­tians have never heard the word, and those who have tend to re­gard it as a relic of me­dieval cor­rup­tion with no bear­ing on the mod­ern church.

In the face of such ig­no­rance, we must be­gin our study as have those be­fore us, with the as­sump­tion that si­mony ex­ists. Scrip­turally, this ap­proach is war­ranted: though some may re­gard the trans­gres­sion of Si­mon Ma­gus (Acts 8:9–24Acts 8:9–24⁹But there was a certain man, Simon by name, who previously in the city used sorcery, and amazed the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:¹⁰to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is that power of God that is called Great.”¹¹And they gave heed to him, because for a long time he had amazed them with his sorceries.¹²But when they believed Philip preaching good news concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.¹³And also Simon himself believed, and being baptized, he continued with Philip. And beholding signs and great miracles being performed, he was amazed.¹⁴Now when the apostles that were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John:¹⁵who, when they had come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit,¹⁶for as yet it had fallen on none of them: only they had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.¹⁷Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.¹⁸Now when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money,¹⁹saying, “Give me also this power, that on whomever I lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Spirit.”²⁰But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you have thought to obtain the gift of God with money.²¹You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.²²Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray the Lord, if perhaps the thought of your heart will be forgiven you.²³For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.”²⁴And Simon answered and said, “Pray you for me to the Lord, that none of the things which you have spoken come on me.”), from whom the sin takes its name, as im­pos­si­ble to re­pro­duce af­ter the era of the apos­tles, bib­li­cal nar­ra­tive is given as an ex­am­ple to in­struct dis­ci­ples against temp­ta­tions that con­tinue to en­snare men in every age (1 Cor. 10:61 Corinthians 10:6Now these things happened as examples for us, that we should not desire evil things, as they also desired.; 2 Tim. 3:162 Timothy 3:16Every scripture inspired by God [is] also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction that is in righteousness.). Meth­od­o­log­i­cally, this ap­proach is nec­es­sary: the se­ri­ous study of any topic pre­sup­poses a real ob­ject.²“On ac­count of the con­ta­gion of this dis­ease, the Church must guard against it all the more war­ily. In treat­ing si­mony, then, one must first pre­sup­pose that it ex­ists.” Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 1 (2:1–4). How­ever, our start­ing as­sump­tion is not an ax­iom; we will dem­on­strate both the ex­is­tence and prev­a­lence of si­mony in due course, once we have suf­fi­ciently mapped out its bound­aries.³Adopt­ing the same strat­egy, the Pu­ri­tan Henry Bur­ton con­ceded that he “may seem to usurp the math­e­ma­ti­cian’s priv­i­lege, in beg­ging a sup­po­si­tum, that such a thing there is, as si­mony.” Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 1.

Si­mony is an ear­nest de­sire to buy or sell some­thing spir­i­tual or some­thing an­nexed to a spir­i­tual thing.⁴“stu­diosa vol­un­tas emendi et ven­dendi ali­quid spir­i­tuale vel spir­i­tu­ali an­nexum.” This pre­cise for­mu­la­tion comes from Thomas Aqui­nas,⁵Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 1. though all its con­stit­u­ent parts had been well es­tab­lished by his time.⁶For ex­am­ple, see Ray­mond of Pe­ña­fort, Summa de poe­ni­ten­tia, lib. I, tit. I, § I (p. 2); Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 2 (p. 88a). Later school­men typ­i­cally adopted it with­out mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Even John Wyc­liffe, who quib­bled with mul­ti­ple fea­tures of the phras­ing, ul­ti­mately ap­pealed to it along with the ap­proval of “Saint Thomas,”⁷Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 2 (14:13–15, 23–27). Trans­lat­ing Wyc­liffe’s trea­tise, Ter­rence A. Mc­Veigh re­ported that “Through­out the sec­ond chap­ter Wyc­lif seems to have Aqui­nas’ ex­po­si­tion of the sub­ject be­fore him.” Wyc­liffe, On Si­mony, 61n1. and Post-Ref­or­ma­tion Eng­lish trea­tises ren­dered it di­rectly.⁸E.g., “Si­mony is an ear­nest de­sire of buy­ing or sell­ing any spir­i­tual thing, or that which is an­nexed to that which is spir­i­tual.” Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 2. We will there­fore pro­ceed with this re­ceived def­i­ni­tion.

The present work is an ex­er­cise in his­tor­i­cal theol­ogy, which is to be dis­tin­guished from theo­log­i­cal his­tory. Sev­eral his­to­ries from the past cen­tury ad­dress the prac­tice of si­mony,⁹The full­est nar­ra­tive his­tory re­mains We­ber, A His­tory of Si­mony in the Chris­tian Church, though it reaches only to Charle­magne and treats the prac­tice rather than the doc­trine. but con­sid­er­a­tion of its at­ten­dant theol­ogy is typ­i­cally in­ci­den­tal, and ded­i­cated mon­o­graphs ex­plor­ing the doc­trine of si­mony from a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive are vir­tu­ally non­ex­is­tent. A num­ber of short ar­ti­cles sum­ma­rize the doc­trine, and some larger works ex­plore nar­row as­pects of it, but none brings the mat­ter to­gether into a uni­fied ac­count.¹⁰The lit­er­a­ture di­vides among stud­ies of par­tic­u­lar pe­ri­ods, e.g., Meier-Wel­cker, “Die Si­monie im frü­hen Mit­te­lal­ter”; canon­is­tic analy­ses, e.g., Leinz, Die Si­monie; and dis­crete ques­tions. On the term si­mo­ni­aca haere­sis, see Le­clercq, “Si­mo­ni­aca here­sis”; Rosé, Si­mon le Ma­gi­cien hé­ré­siar­que?. On the va­lid­ity of si­mo­ni­a­cal or­ders, see Gil­christ, ‘Si­mo­ni­aca haere­sis’; West, “The Si­mony Cri­sis”. On si­mo­ni­a­cal en­try into re­li­gious life, see Lynch, Si­mo­ni­a­cal En­try. Ac­cord­ingly, we in­tend to sup­ply what is lack­ing and present a his­tor­i­cal theol­ogy of si­mony that is com­pre­hen­sive in scope with­out pre­tend­ing to be ex­haus­tive in de­tail.

Though our method is his­tor­i­cal, it will not be neu­tral, as we will pro­ceed from de­cid­edly Re­formed con­vic­tions. This is nec­es­sary since true neu­tral­ity is im­pos­si­ble, but more im­por­tantly, com­mit­ment to a gov­ern­ing per­spec­tive is pre­req­ui­site for such a work to bear any real fruit. Re­trieval should be con­ducted for the ben­e­fit of the church rather than for its own sake, and this re­quires a frame­work both sound enough to sup­port an hon­est read­ing of the his­tory and ame­na­ble to a peo­ple ea­ger to take up what is re­cov­ered un­der its guid­ance. The Re­formed tra­di­tion fur­nishes just that. This com­mit­ment will in­form which sources we con­sider and in what mea­sure. It will like­wise shape our con­clu­sions and sub­se­quent analy­sis.

Our in­quiry is di­vided into six parts. Part I ad­dresses his­tor­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions, both the his­tory of the doc­trine of si­mony and our ap­proach to his­tor­i­cal theol­ogy and re­trieval. Part II ex­pounds the def­i­ni­tion of si­mony, clause by clause: some­thing spir­i­tual, some­thing an­nexed to a spir­i­tual thing, to buy or sell, and ear­nest de­sire. Part III turns to min­is­te­rial main­te­nance, set­ting the bound­aries of licit ex­changes in the gift, giv­ing, and re­ceiv­ing. Part IV gath­ers and pre­sents the bib­li­cal pas­sages that ear­lier gen­er­a­tions most fre­quently ad­duced to es­tab­lish and re­in­force the doc­trine. Part V con­sid­ers the cen­sure of si­mony, both the na­ture of the sin in gen­eral and its an­cient clas­si­fi­ca­tion as a spe­cies of her­esy. Part VI of­fers sev­eral fo­cused analy­ses of the his­tor­i­cal doc­trine in light of present cir­cum­stances.

While the doc­trine of si­mony may not be widely known or un­der­stood to­day, there is no rea­son it could not be oth­er­wise. More­over, we have every rea­son to sus­pect that its re­trieval would bring sub­stan­tial bless­ing. The Prot­es­tant Ref­or­ma­tion it­self be­gan in a dis­pute over the sale of spir­i­tual things. What new ref­or­ma­tion awaits the church if she learns again to dis­cern this sin in its present forms?

No com­pre­hen­sive his­tory of si­mony ex­ists.¹In 1952, Hans Meier-Wel­cker ob­served “The ab­sence of a ‘his­tory of si­mony,’ in­deed of any mon­o­graphic his­tor­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­pre­hen­sively treat­ing its na­ture and its sig­nif­i­cance in so­ci­ety and the Church.” Meier-Wel­cker, “Die Si­monie im frü­hen Mit­te­lal­ter,” 61. While this is a dated as­sess­ment, it still rings true in the twenty-first cen­tury. Pub­lished his­tor­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions on the topic of si­mony are typ­i­cally lim­ited to par­tic­u­lar ranges of his­tory and of­ten fo­cus on po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies and so­ci­o­log­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions. Such an ap­proach does lit­tle to ad­dress the de­vel­op­ment of the doc­trine it­self or aid in the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of our own doc­trine.

What fol­lows is a brief sur­vey of the his­tory of si­mony, de­signed to cover the rough clus­ters of sources that we will con­sult in sub­se­quent chap­ters. While other treat­ments may fo­cus on the in­sti­tu­tional di­men­sions of si­mony, our ap­proach will de-em­pha­size these in fa­vor of high­light­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant theo­log­i­cal in­flu­ences. We may di­vide these in­flu­ences his­tor­i­cally into four broad streams: the church fa­thers, the me­dieval canon­ists and school­men, the Re­form­ers and their pre­cur­sors, and the Eng­lish di­vines of the six­teenth and sev­en­teenth cen­turies.

8The Church Fa­thers§

The early pa­tris­tic era pro­duced many af­fir­ma­tions of the prin­ci­ple that grace must be of­fered freely, but spe­cific treat­ments of si­mony as a dis­crete prob­lem are harder to come by. The fa­thers fre­quently ref­er­enced the be­hav­ior of Si­mon Ma­gus in Acts 8Acts 8¹And Saul was consenting to his death. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church that was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.²And devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.³But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and dragging men and women committed them to prison.⁴They therefore that were scattered, went about preaching the word.[…] when ad­dress­ing the spir­i­tual dan­gers of av­a­rice, but be­fore the con­cil­iar leg­is­la­tion of the fifth cen­tury, ex­tended dis­cus­sion of the buy­ing and sell­ing of holy things as such re­mains lim­ited, though not al­to­gether ab­sent.

Re­gard­ing fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions in or­di­na­tions, sev­eral hand­fuls of ex­am­ples may be cited. As early as the sec­ond cen­tury, Ter­tul­lian’s de­scrip­tion of the Chris­tian as­sem­bly in­cludes a pointed re­mark on the in­teg­rity of its lead­er­ship that sug­gests an aware­ness of such cor­rup­tion else­where: “Ap­proved el­ders pre­side, hav­ing ob­tained that honor not by pur­chase but by tes­ti­mony; for no thing of God is ob­tained by price.”²Ter­tul­lian, Apo­lo­ge­ti­cum, cap. 39 (pp. 199–200). Basil of Cae­sa­rea con­fronted the prob­lem more di­rectly, re­buk­ing those who took money from can­di­dates for or­di­na­tion, con­tend­ing that those who sell the free gift of God are stripped of its grace, as though sold to Sa­tan them­selves.³Basil of Cae­sa­rea, Ep. 53 (p. 339).

Church coun­cils be­gan to ad­dress si­mony early on. Even be­fore the trin­i­tar­ian de­bates of Ni­caea (325), the Synod of El­vira (305) for­bade any fee as­so­ci­ated with bap­tism.⁴Synod of El­vira, can. 48 (PL 84:307B). The sec­ond canon of the Coun­cil of Chal­cedon (451) ad­dresses com­merce in or­di­na­tions and es­tab­lishes spe­cific pen­al­ties:

If any bishop has per­formed an or­di­na­tion for money and has sold a thing which is not ac­quired ex­cept by grace, and for money has or­dained a bishop or pro­vin­cial bishop or pres­byter or dea­con or any of those who are counted among the clergy, or for money re­ceived has ap­pointed a stew­ard or de­fender or door­keeper or any­one of this kind for the sake of shame­ful gain—who­ever is proved to have done this shall be in dan­ger of los­ing 9his own rank; and he who is or­dained shall de­rive no ben­e­fit from the or­di­na­tion which pro­ceeded through a com­mer­cial trans­ac­tion, but shall be a stranger to the dig­nity or of­fice which was en­trusted to him for money. And if any­one is seen to have acted as a go-be­tween in such shame­ful and wicked deal­ings, he too, if he is a cler­gy­man, shall be de­graded; if a lay­man or monk, let him be anath­e­ma­tized.⁵Ca­nones con­cilii Chal­ce­do­nen­sis, can. 2 (ACO II.2.2, 125).

This would be­come the cor­ner­stone of all later canon law re­gard­ing the mat­ter.

How­ever, it is not un­til Greg­ory the Great that the theo­log­i­cal treat­ment of si­mony gath­ered force. Greg­ory was the first to ap­ply the term si­mo­ni­a­cus to the buy­ing and sell­ing of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal of­fices, coin­ing the ex­pres­sion si­mo­ni­aca haere­sis (“si­mo­ni­a­cal her­esy”) that would dom­i­nate sub­se­quent dis­course.⁶Rosé, Si­mon le Ma­gi­cien hé­ré­siar­que? 204–5. He first used the term on March 11, 591, in a hom­ily on the Gos­pels,⁷Ibid., 205; cf. Greg­ory I, Ho­mil­iae in evan­ge­lia, 17.13 (p. 109). but the moral con­se­quences of this sin are par­tic­u­larly de­vel­oped in a let­ter to the bish­ops of Gaul in 599.⁸Rosé, Si­mon le Ma­gi­cien hé­ré­siar­que? 213; see Greg­ory I, Ep. IX.218. For Greg­ory, si­mony is a cor­rup­tion and her­esy “con­demned in its very ori­gin by apos­tolic de­tes­ta­tion.”⁹Ibid., IX.218.

Greg­ory’s in­flu­ence on theol­ogy as a whole is dif­fi­cult to over­state. With­out it, in the words of one bi­og­ra­pher, “the evo­lu­tion of the form of me­di­ae­val Chris­tian­ity would be al­most in­ex­plic­a­ble.”¹⁰Dud­den, Greg­ory the Great, 1.vi. Nor is his au­thor­ity con­fined to the me­dieval pe­riod. Though fre­quently styled “Pope Greg­ory,” the Re­form­ers gen­er­ally re­spected him as the last of the le­git­i­mate bish­ops of Rome.¹¹E.g., Cal­vin, In­sti­tu­tio, 4.17.49; Tur­re­tin, De Nec­es­saria Se­ces­sione, disp. 7, § 15 (p. 155). John Cal­vin cited him ex­ten­sively—and fa­vor­ably—through­out his In­sti­tu­tio, more than any other save Au­gus­tine.¹²Lit­tle, “Cal­vin’s Ap­pre­ci­a­tion of Greg­ory,” 146. Yet for all the breadth of his in­flu­ence, in hardly any 10area was Greg­ory’s leg­acy more pro­nounced than in that of si­mony, where the vo­cab­u­lary and con­cep­tual frame­work he es­tab­lished would dom­i­nate the dis­course for over a mil­len­nium.

The Me­dievals§

Af­ter the time of Greg­ory the Great, Chris­tian­ity in­creas­ingly spread out­ward from the cities into the coun­try­side. Whereas churches near ur­ban cen­ters were typ­i­cally founded di­rectly by the dio­cese and sup­ported from its own re­sources, the ru­ral churches that now mul­ti­plied across the West owed their ex­is­tence to no­bles who built them upon their es­tates.¹³Wood, The Pro­pri­etary Church, 10–11. This of­ten en­tailed a mea­sure of pro­pri­etor­ship at­tended by a cer­tain level of con­trol over ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal func­tions, es­pe­cially the se­lec­tion of church of­fi­cers, whether by di­rect ap­point­ment or priv­i­leged rec­om­men­da­tion. Such rec­om­men­da­tions would come to be known as pre­sen­ta­tions, and the broader au­thor­ity bound up with di­rect own­er­ship and as­so­ci­ated en­dow­ments would be­come known as the right of pa­tron­age. By the eighth cen­tury, the vast ma­jor­ity of parish churches across West­ern Eu­rope had come to be treated as the pri­vate prop­erty of the wealthy on whose es­tates they stood.¹⁴Ibid., 437. Wood’s ac­count re­vises the clas­sic the­sis of Stutz, Die Eigen­kirche, which framed the Eigen­kirche as a dis­tinc­tively Ger­manic le­gal in­sti­tu­tion that dis­placed Ro­man ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal norms; cf. Wood, The Pro­pri­etary Church, 1–2. It was also in the eighth cen­tury that the sev­enth ec­u­men­i­cal coun­cil, the Sec­ond Coun­cil of Ni­caea (787), felt the need to de­cree its own pen­al­ties on si­mony be­fore quot­ing Chal­cedon’s canon 2 in full.¹⁵Con­cil­ium Ni­cae­num II, can. 5 (Mansi 13:421E).

The prob­lem in­ten­si­fied in the ninth cen­tury with the dis­so­lu­tion of the Car­o­lin­gian dy­nasty. As the pro­tec­tion of prop­erty de­volved upon lo­cal mag­nates, even bish­oprics and ab­beys ceded the em­i­nent do­main of their es­tates to lay pro­tec­tors in ex­change for se­cu­rity. Though de­bated in mod­ern schol­ar­ship, this has tra­di­tion­ally been de­scribed as the rise of “feu­dal­ism.”¹⁶Saltet, Les Ré­or­di­na­tions, 173–74. Re­gard­less, the gen­eral re­gime of lay own­er­ship over churches grew stead­ily and, along with it, fi­nan­cial 11ne­go­ti­a­tions in ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal po­si­tions. By the end of the tenth cen­tury, si­mony was en­demic. Of­fices were rou­tinely bought and sold like any other as­set, and those who ac­quired them re­couped the out­lay by charg­ing for bless­ings, or­di­na­tions, and sac­ra­ments.¹⁷See ibid., 174–76.

In the early elev­enth cen­tury, there arose a num­ber of con­certed move­ments against si­mony.¹⁸See Cush­ing, Re­form and the Pa­pacy, 97–98. As con­cerns grew, they reached the high­est lev­els of im­pe­rial power, cap­tur­ing the at­ten­tion of Henry III. At the Coun­cil of Pa­via in Oc­to­ber 1046, en route to the synod of Sutri and his cor­o­na­tion in Rome, Henry sum­moned the arch­bish­ops and bish­ops of his realm and ad­dressed them:

I be­gin to speak to you in mourn­ing, you who have been set in the place of Christ in his Church, which he him­self es­poused to him­self and re­deemed by the price of his own blood. For just as he, by his free good­ness, deigned to come from the bo­som of God the Fa­ther through the Vir­gin to re­deem us, so he com­manded his own, send­ing them into the whole world, and said: Freely you have re­ceived, freely give. But you, cor­rupted by av­a­rice and cu­pid­ity, who ought to con­fer these things by the Lord’s bless­ing, are cursed by the most sa­cred canon for this kind of trans­gres­sion in giv­ing and re­ceiv­ing. For my own fa­ther, too, for the peril of whose soul I greatly fear, ex­er­cised this same dam­na­ble av­a­rice ex­ces­sively in his life­time. There­fore, who­ever among you knows him­self con­tam­i­nated by this stain ought, ac­cord­ing to canon­i­cal dis­po­si­tion, to be barred from sa­cred min­is­try. It is there­fore most man­i­festly clear that, on ac­count of this of­fense, var­i­ous ca­lam­i­ties have come upon the sons of men, namely fam­ine and pes­ti­lence, and also the sword. For in­deed every ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal or­der, from the high­est pon­tiff down to the door­keeper, is weighed down by the price of its own dam­na­tion; and, ac­cord­ing 12to the Lord’s own word, in all things spir­i­tual rob­bery is ram­pant.¹⁹Raoul Glaber, His­to­ri­arum libri quin­que, 5.5.25 (pp. 133–34).

This speech would set the tra­jec­tory of the church for cen­turies. In the near term, the threat of wide­spread ca­lam­ity on hu­man­ity it­self would fur­nish the im­pe­rial gov­ern­ment with theo­log­i­cal cover for in­ter­ven­tion in ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal af­fairs. Be­yond this, theo­lo­gians, canon­ists, and church au­thor­i­ties would con­tinue to en­gage the mat­ter with a fo­cus un­par­al­leled by any other time in his­tory.

The Si­mo­ni­a­cal Or­ders Con­tro­versy (1046–1060)§

By the au­tumn of 1046 the pa­pacy it­self was in dis­ar­ray, with three ri­val claim­ants: Ben­e­dict IX, Syl­ves­ter III, and Greg­ory VI. In De­cem­ber Henry pre­sided along­side Greg­ory VI at the Synod of Sutri, and on the twen­ti­eth of that month, Syl­ves­ter was charged with si­mony and de­posed. Henry ex­pected Greg­ory to for­mally as­cend, but it emerged that Greg­ory had pur­chased the pon­tif­i­cate from Ben­e­dict, so the synod de­posed him as well. With all three guilty of si­mony—though Ben­e­dict was not for­mally charged—the see was va­cant. On 24 De­cem­ber 1046, Suid­ger of Bam­berg, who had ac­com­pa­nied Henry from Ger­many, was elected Pope Clem­ent II. The fol­low­ing day, Christ­mas, he was con­se­crated and crowned Henry as em­peror.

The fol­low­ing month, the new pope con­vened a Lat­eran synod with Henry in at­ten­dance—a nat­ural con­tin­u­a­tion of the re­form pro­gram in­au­gu­rated at Sutri. There, a ques­tion was raised: though in­no­cent of si­mony them­selves, what was to be done with the clergy that a si­mo­niac had or­dained? Clem­ent con­cluded that those who had know­ingly re­ceived or­ders from a si­mo­niac were to per­form forty days of pen­ance and there­after con­tinue in the of­fice they had re­ceived.²⁰Pe­ter Da­mian, Liber gra­tis­si­mus, p. 499. The im­por­tance of this judg­ment would not be­come ap­par­ent un­til later, but Clem­ent would die in Oc­to­ber of that year.

In Feb­ru­ary 1049, Leo IX was elected pope. Gen­er­ally re­garded as lay­ing the ground­work for the Gre­go­rian re­form, he im­me­di­ately 13took up the ques­tion of those or­dained by si­mo­ni­acs at the Lat­eran synod of April 1049. Leo first de­clared all such or­di­na­tions null, but the priests of Rome and many bish­ops pro­tested that si­mony was so prev­a­lent that this would leave the basil­i­cas de­void of min­is­try. Af­ter long de­bate, Clem­ent’s ear­lier judg­ment was re­counted, at which point, Leo re­lented and with­drew his sen­tence.²¹Ibid., p. 499.

Yet Leo did not let the mat­ter rest. The ques­tion came up again in the next Lat­eran synod (1050).²²Ibid., p. 390. Cf. ibid., pp. 390–92n9. Af­ter this, at the Synod of Ver­celli (1050), the pope went as far as to re-or­dain such priests, im­ply­ing that their for­mer or­di­na­tion was in­valid. Be­ing re­buked af­ter­ward, he asked for­give­ness, but then fell back into the same prac­tice.²³Ber­en­gar of Tours, De sacra co­ena, 40–41. Cf. Pe­ter Da­mian, De priv­i­le­gio Ro­manae ec­cle­siae, p. 237; Michel, “Die fol­gen­schwe­ren Ideen des Kar­di­nals Hum­bert,” 80n73. At the Lat­eran synod of 1051 he begged the as­sem­bly to pray for di­vine guid­ance on the mat­ter.²⁴Pe­ter Da­mian, Liber gra­tis­si­mus, p. 392.

This ap­peal led Pe­ter Da­mian the fol­low­ing year (1052) to pub­lish the let­ter known as Liber gra­tis­si­mus, ar­gu­ing for the va­lid­ity of or­ders for those or­dained gra­tis by si­mo­ni­acs. Five years later, Hum­bert of Silva Can­dida wrote against this view with Libri tres ad­ver­sus si­mo­ni­a­cos (1057) ar­gu­ing against any le­git­i­macy to the spir­i­tual ac­tiv­i­ties of si­mo­ni­acs, re­quir­ing that any or­dained by them be de­posed or or­dained anew.²⁵See Whit­ney, “Pe­ter Da­mi­ani and Hum­bert” for an over­view of lit­er­ary de­bate.

Al­though this ques­tion grew acute in the elev­enth cen­tury, it was not en­tirely new. For one, Greg­ory the Great had al­ready con­cluded that such or­di­na­tions were le­git­i­mate.²⁶See, for ex­am­ple, Greg­ory I, Ep. II.45 (p. 145). More fa­mously, this de­bate was, in sub­stance, a re­play of the Don­a­tist con­tro­versy of the fourth cen­tury. The Don­a­tists had in­sisted that sac­ra­ments ad­min­is­tered by tra­di­tores—clergy who had suc­cumbed un­der threat of per­se­cu­tion—were void, and that those bap­tized or or­dained by such men must 14re­ceive the rites anew. This rig­or­ist po­si­tion may be la­beled “Cyp­ri­anic,” af­ter Cyp­rian of Carthage, to whose writ­ings the Don­a­tists ap­pealed. Au­gus­tine, whose view ul­ti­mately pre­vailed, ar­gued the con­trary, lo­cat­ing the ef­fi­cacy of the sac­ra­ments in the work rather than the worker (ex opere op­er­ato vs. ex opere op­er­an­tis, in the ter­mi­nol­ogy of later school­men).

Though the de­bate did not sub­side im­me­di­ately af­ter­ward, we may mark the Lat­eran synod of 1060 un­der Nich­o­las II as grant­ing its ul­ti­mate res­o­lu­tion with its sec­ond canon, which per­mit­ted those or­dained gra­tis by si­mo­ni­acs to re­main in the or­ders they had re­ceived.²⁷“But con­cern­ing those who were or­dained by si­mo­ni­acs not for money but gra­tis: since the ques­tion has long been de­bated at length, we loose every knot of doubt, so that we may al­low no one to be in any fur­ther un­cer­tainty on this head. Since, then, this poi­soned plague has so far taken root by now that scarcely any church can be found which is not cor­rupted by the dis­ease in some part, those who up to now have been con­se­crated gra­tis by si­mo­ni­acs we per­mit to re­main in the or­ders they have re­ceived, not so much by the strict­ness of jus­tice as out of re­gard for mercy, un­less per­haps some other fault aris­ing from their life stands against them con­trary to the canons.” Con­cil­ium Lat­er­a­nense pos­te­rius, can. 2 (p. 550). This mea­sure was granted as a tem­po­rary dis­pen­sa­tion,²⁸“For so great is the mul­ti­tude of such men that, since we can­not main­tain the rigor of canon­i­cal force over them, it is nec­es­sary that for the present we in­cline our minds, by way of dis­pen­sa­tion, to­ward the pur­suit of a mer­ci­ful ac­com­mo­da­tion. Yet by the au­thor­ity of the holy apos­tles Pe­ter and Paul we for­bid al­to­gether that any of our suc­ces­sors should ever take or set up for him­self or for any­one else a rule out of this our per­mis­sion, since it was not the au­thor­ity of the an­cient fa­thers that pro­mul­gated this by way of com­mand or con­ces­sion, but the over­whelm­ing ne­ces­sity of the time that ex­torted it from us by way of per­mis­sion.” Ibid., can. 2 (p. 550). but would be pre­served by the pri­mary au­thor­i­ta­tive com­pi­la­tion on si­mony writ­ten in the twelfth cen­tury.²⁹C. 1, q. 1, c. 107, § 2.

It is pos­si­ble to over­state the level of con­tro­versy on this mat­ter. While there was cer­tainly de­bate over the prac­ti­cal han­dling of those or­dained by si­mo­ni­acs, ev­i­dence of thor­ough­go­ing rig­or­ism out­side of Hum­bert is scant. No other canon­ist fol­lowed him ex­plic­itly in his 15con­clu­sions.³⁰Gil­christ, ‘Si­mo­ni­aca haere­sis’, 234. More­over, ev­i­dences for a rig­or­ist move­ment pre­ced­ing Sutri have been sub­stan­tially dis­cred­ited by more re­cent schol­ar­ship.³¹The Epis­tola Wido­nis—con­ven­tion­ally dated to around 1031—has of­ten been ad­duced as ev­i­dence that anx­i­ety over si­mo­ni­a­cal or­di­na­tions ran deep, well be­fore Sutri. It ap­pears to have en­tered cir­cu­la­tion only in 1074–1076 (Gil­christ, The Epis­tola Wido­nis, 58), and the let­ter it­self may only date to around 1060 (West, “The Si­mony Cri­sis,” 252).

The In­ves­ti­ture Con­tro­versy (1076–1122)§

Even­tu­ally, at­ten­tion turned up­stream, from si­mony it­self to the lay in­flu­ence at the root of its spread. The fo­cal point be­came lay in­ves­ti­ture: the au­thor­ity of a civil ruler to ap­point clergy, sym­bol­ized by his be­stowal of the ring and staff that marked the con­fer­ral of of­fice. The mat­ter reached its cri­sis point un­der Greg­ory VII, who sought to re­verse this claim to au­thor­ity. Cat­a­logu­ing the prin­ci­ples of what would come to be known as the Gre­go­rian re­form in his Dic­ta­tus pa­pae (1075), he claimed that the pope alone held uni­ver­sal au­thor­ity, with the power to de­pose not only bish­ops but even em­per­ors.³²Greg­ory VII, Reg. 2.55a.

Con­cern over lay in­ves­ti­ture had al­ready sur­faced be­fore Greg­ory, even among sev­eral of the afore­men­tioned par­ties. When Leo IX, then Bruno of Toul, was se­lected as pope by Henry III in 1048, he ac­cepted only on the con­di­tion that his elec­tion be con­firmed by the clergy and peo­ple of Rome.³³Gil­christ, “Canon Law As­pects,” 21. Like­wise, the third book of Hum­bert’s Libri tres ar­gued that lay in­ves­ti­ture not only en­cour­aged si­mony but was it­self in­her­ently si­mo­ni­a­cal. To be­stow the ring and the staff pre­sup­poses pos­ses­sion of the pas­toral au­thor­ity they sym­bol­ize; in con­fer­ring them, the civil ruler in­vades the or­der of the clergy by rob­bery.³⁴Hum­bert of Silva Can­dida, Libri tres ad­ver­sus si­mo­ni­a­cos, 3.6; cf. Blu­men­thal, The In­ves­ti­ture Con­tro­versy, 89–92. Like Greg­ory, Hum­bert saw the true na­ture of au­thor­ity re­versed, and it was ul­ti­mately con­ten­tion over pa­pal su­prem­acy that led him to ex­com­mu­ni­cate Ce­ru­lar­ius, trig­ger­ing the Great Schism of 1054.³⁵Gil­christ, “Canon Law As­pects,” 27–28. 16Whether his theol­ogy lay di­rectly be­hind Greg­ory’s cam­paign re­mains only a the­ory,³⁶Blu­men­thal, The In­ves­ti­ture Con­tro­versy, 92. but the two were as­so­ciates be­fore Greg­ory’s pa­pacy, and the par­al­lels be­tween the Dic­ta­tus pa­pae and Hum­bert’s work are pro­nounced.³⁷Gil­christ, “Canon Law As­pects,” 38.

Jan­u­ary 24, 1076, marks the for­mal be­gin­ning of the in­ves­ti­ture con­tro­versy. On that date, Henry IV con­vened a synod at Worms, at which a ma­jor­ity of the Ger­man epis­co­pate re­nounced their obe­di­ence to the pope. From this as­sem­bly, Henry dis­patched a let­ter to Rome call­ing on Greg­ory to re­sign. Soon af­ter, on March 27, an ex­panded ver­sion of the same let­ter greeted him as “now not pope but false monk” and con­cluded, “de­scend, de­scend, to be damned through the ages.”³⁸Henry IV, Hein­rici IV. epis­tola, no. 62 (pp. 110–11). Some have con­cluded that Greg­ory in­sti­gated the con­tro­versy by a de­cree against lay in­ves­ti­ture in 1075, but the ev­i­dence that in­ves­ti­ture was ad­dressed there is lim­ited.³⁹Cush­ing, Re­form and the Pa­pacy, 106–7; Blu­men­thal, The In­ves­ti­ture Con­tro­versy, 120–21.

Greg­ory re­sponded at his own Lenten synod the fol­low­ing month. On Feb­ru­ary 22, he ex­com­mu­ni­cated Henry through a prayer to St. Pe­ter, de­pos­ing him from the king­ship and re­leas­ing all Ger­mans and Ital­ians from any past or fu­ture oath of fi­del­ity sworn to him. It was at this same synod, a few days ear­lier—some­time be­tween Feb­ru­ary 14 and 20—that the word “si­mony” (si­mo­nia) it­self may have made its first ap­pear­ance, in the ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion of one Her­mann, bishop of Vi­enne.⁴⁰Rosé, Si­mon le Ma­gi­cien hé­ré­siar­que? 203n9; cf. Greg­ory VII, Reg. III.10a (p. 269), though the ap­pa­ra­tus re­ports it as a cor­rec­tion from the ad­jec­tive si­mo­ni­aca.

Greg­ory’s of­fen­sive proved de­ci­sive. With Ger­man princes al­ready mov­ing to elect a suc­ces­sor in his place, Henry had lit­tle choice but to seek rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. He se­cretly crossed the Alps—avoid­ing hos­tile Ger­man dukes who wanted to pre­vent his re­in­state­ment—and, in late Jan­u­ary 1077, pre­sented him­self as a pen­i­tent be­fore Greg­ory at the cas­tle of Ca­nossa, where af­ter three days he was ab­solved. The king who had set out to de­pose the pope now sub­mit­ted to him and be­came, 17in ef­fect, a ser­vant of the church.⁴¹Blu­men­thal, The In­ves­ti­ture Con­tro­versy, 123–24. With the po­lit­i­cal ground se­cured, Greg­ory is­sued ad­di­tional de­crees in 1078 and 1080 for­bid­ding any cleric from re­ceiv­ing sym­bols of au­thor­ity and clergy from a lay­man.⁴²Cush­ing, Re­form and the Pa­pacy, 107.

Much more tran­spired be­fore the con­tro­versy ran its course—Greg­ory ex­com­mu­ni­cated Henry a sec­ond time in 1080, Henry in­stalled the an­ti­pope Clem­ent III and marched on Rome, and Greg­ory him­self died in ex­ile at Sa­lerno in 1085—but the de­tails lie be­yond our present con­cern. The dis­pute reached a more set­tled end at the Con­cor­dat of Worms (1122), where Henry V re­nounced in­ves­ti­ture with ring and staff. From a Prot­es­tant per­spec­tive, ex­chang­ing civil au­thor­ity over the church for pa­pal su­prem­acy hardly rep­re­sents clear prog­ress, yet by strip­ping no­bil­ity of the power to ap­point church of­fi­cers, the end of lay in­ves­ti­ture ef­fec­tively mit­i­gated the most ex­plicit forms of si­mony.

The Clas­si­cal Pe­riod of Canon Law (1140–1234)§

Of course, as rights of pa­tron­age con­tin­ued, si­mony through lay in­flu­ence con­tin­ued as well, as did many other forms of si­mony. How­ever, these for­mer con­tro­ver­sies had whet­ted an ap­pe­tite for in­sti­tu­tional re­form and like­wise pro­duced an ex­pand­ing body of canon law ad­dress­ing the mat­ter. This ush­ered in what has come to be known as the clas­si­cal pe­riod of canon law.

The be­gin­ning of this pe­riod is marked by the com­ple­tion of Gra­tian’s De­cre­tum, con­ven­tion­ally dated to ca. 1140.⁴³More re­cent schol­ar­ship has shown that the De­cre­tum cir­cu­lated in at least two re­cen­sions, com­pli­cat­ing older as­sump­tions about its com­po­si­tion; the con­ven­tional date none­the­less re­mains the stan­dard ref­er­ence point. See Win­roth, The Mak­ing of Gra­tian’s De­cre­tum, 3–4. This ac­com­plish­ment has earned Gra­tian the ac­co­lade “fa­ther of canon law” for draw­ing con­cil­iar leg­is­la­tion and tra­di­tional pro­nounce­ments into a sin­gle, di­alec­ti­cally ar­ranged com­pen­dium. The very first causa of the work is a long and ded­i­cated body of judg­ments on si­mony, sig­nal­ing the cen­tral­ity of the topic.

18From this point, canon law as a dis­ci­pline un­der­went a for­mal­iza­tion, giv­ing rise to ded­i­cated guilds and a pro­fes­sion that en­tailed ed­u­ca­tion re­quire­ments and oaths upon en­try into the prac­tice.⁴⁴Brun­dage, The Prac­tice of Canon Law; Brun­dage, Me­dieval Ori­gins of the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion, 283–343. This grow­ing aware­ness around canon law led to a grow­ing rec­og­ni­tion of si­mony and mea­sures against it. Re­li­gious so­ci­eties, which had pre­vi­ously been lax on the mat­ter, be­gan to en­force rules against pay­ments for en­try.⁴⁵Lynch, Si­mo­ni­a­cal En­try, 147–69. In the thir­teenth cen­tury, even hos­pi­tals—them­selves or­ga­nized as re­li­gious so­ci­eties—of­ten re­quired of en­trants an oath that they had not ob­tained their place by si­mony.⁴⁶Ibid., 168.

Less than a cen­tury af­ter the De­cre­tum, Greg­ory IX com­mis­sioned a new com­pi­la­tion, the Dec­re­tales, un­der­taken by Ray­mond of Pe­ña­fort and pro­mul­gated in 1234. De­signed to be the of­fi­cial com­pi­la­tion of pa­pal de­crees, it would re­main in force among Ro­man Cath­o­lics un­til 1918. It came to be known as the Liber ex­tra since its con­tents func­tioned as an ad­di­tion to Gra­tian’s De­cre­tum. Only the third ti­tle of the fifth book is ded­i­cated to si­mony,⁴⁷X 5.3. but it so­lic­ited a sub­stan­tial body of com­men­tary around it, en­sur­ing its for­ma­tive in­flu­ence on the sub­ject.

By many ac­counts, the De­cre­tum and the Liber ex­tra form the book­ends of the clas­si­cal pe­riod of canon law. They be­came the foun­da­tional ref­er­ence points for vir­tu­ally all sub­se­quent treat­ments on the sub­ject of si­mony, whether scho­las­tic, proto-Re­former, Ro­man Cath­o­lic, or Prot­es­tant. Even when cit­ing ear­lier au­thor­i­ties on the topic—Am­brose, Au­gus­tine, Je­rome, Greg­ory the Great, etc.—au­thors of­ten did not quote them pre­cisely as re­corded di­rectly in their works, but as trans­mit­ted by these two com­pen­di­ums. Al­ter­na­tive end dates for the clas­si­cal pe­riod have been pro­posed to ac­com­mo­date later de­vel­op­ments, as sig­nif­i­cant works of canon law con­tin­ued to ap­pear, most no­tably the Liber sex­tus, com­mis­sioned by Bon­i­face VIII and named as the work fol­low­ing the five books of the Liber ex­tra. 19None of these, how­ever, treated si­mony with sim­i­lar depth, and more im­por­tantly, none had sim­i­lar im­pact on the study of the topic.

The Rise of the Uni­ver­si­ties (1150–1215)§

The schools that emerged in the Mid­dle Ages fea­tured such a di­ver­sity that the no­tion of the me­dieval uni­ver­sity re­sists def­i­ni­tion.⁴⁸Verger, Pat­terns, 45. Un­der suf­fi­ciently broad pa­ra­me­ters, there were doz­ens,⁴⁹Ibid., 62–65 pro­vides a list. though only a hand­ful—Bo­lo­gna, Paris, Ox­ford, and a few oth­ers—dom­i­nate the his­tor­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. We might cen­ter the def­i­ni­tion on the ex­is­tence of a guild of mas­ters and/or stu­dents.⁵⁰Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 32; Hask­ins, The Rise of Uni­ver­si­ties, 5. These ex­er­cised po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence over the uni­ver­sity and were typ­i­cally or­ga­nized into “na­tions,” sub­groups re­flect­ing the re­gion of ori­gin of their mem­bers.⁵¹Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 84–90. The term that came clos­est to our mod­ern con­cept of a uni­ver­sity was stu­dium gen­erale, though it did not be­come a tech­ni­cal ex­pres­sion un­til the four­teenth cen­tury.⁵²Ibid., 23–24. Be­gin­ning in the thir­teenth cen­tury, pa­pal or im­pe­rial en­dorse­ment was re­quired for its sense of le­git­i­macy.⁵³Ibid., 32.

Much could be said about the cur­ric­u­lum of me­dieval uni­ver­si­ties, but the prin­ci­pal ar­eas of study may be sum­ma­rized eas­ily enough. The seven lib­eral arts—the triv­ium (gram­mar, logic, and rhet­o­ric) and the quad­riv­ium (arith­me­tic, geom­e­try, mu­sic, and as­tron­omy)—formed the pre­par­a­tory cur­ric­u­lum. Upon mas­ter­ing these, stu­dents could ad­vance to one of the three higher fac­ul­ties: med­i­cine, law (both canon and civil), or theol­ogy. Our par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est lies with theol­ogy—the “queen of the sci­ences”—since this is where the doc­trine of si­mony was most fully de­vel­oped. This fo­cus en­tails a ge­o­graphic dis­tinc­tion as well: while canon law had its seat at Bo­lo­gna, where both Gra­tian and Ray­mond of Pe­ña­fort had taught, much of the theo­log­i­cal work that con­cerns us came out of Paris and its Eng­lish off­shoot, Ox­ford. It is at these cen­ters in par­tic­u­lar that scho­las­ti­cism 20thrived and where the great­est minds flour­ished who would give si­mony its doc­tri­nal ar­tic­u­la­tion, such as Thomas Aqui­nas (Paris) and John Wyc­liffe (Ox­ford).

It was like­wise at Paris that Pe­ter Lom­bard com­pleted his Sen­ten­tiae (c. 1150), a work con­sist­ing prin­ci­pally of cat­e­go­rized pro­nounce­ments com­piled from church fa­thers. It func­tioned as a sys­tem­atic theol­ogy text­book, and through the rest of the Mid­dle Ages, theo­log­i­cal train­ing in the uni­ver­si­ties con­sisted largely of lec­tures on the Sen­tences, with the most ac­com­plished theo­lo­gians pro­duc­ing their own com­men­tar­ies on it. With over a thou­sand known com­men­tar­ies, it stands as the most fre­quently an­a­lyzed work of Chris­tian lit­er­a­ture out­side the Bible it­self.⁵⁴Rose­mann, The Story of a Great Me­dieval Book, 14; cf. Steg­mül­ler, Rep­er­to­rium. This con­cen­tra­tion came at the ex­pense of di­rect en­gage­ment with Scrip­ture, draw­ing crit­i­cism early on⁵⁵Janin, The Uni­ver­sity in Me­dieval Life, 53. and more point­edly in the Ref­or­ma­tion. Mar­tin Lu­ther, him­self hav­ing lec­tured and com­mented on the Sen­tences, once af­firmed the judg­ment that Pe­ter Lom­bard was the great­est theo­lo­gian, add­ing that he was like­wise a great man and “had he chanced upon the Bible, he would with­out doubt have been the great­est.”⁵⁶Lu­ther, Tis­chre­den, no. 192 (WA TR 1, 85:15–20). Cal­vin made a sim­i­lar re­mark re­gard­ing the par­a­dox of Lom­bard’s wis­dom and blind­ness, Cal­vin, In­sti­tu­tio, 3.15.7. An­thony N.S. Lane has cat­a­logued sev­enty-five ex­plicit ci­ta­tions of Lom­bard in Cal­vin and fifty-nine im­plicit, Lane, John Cal­vin, 159, 165, 175–87. Lane notes that most of these uses are neg­a­tive, but in­cludes some ex­am­ples of pos­i­tive ci­ta­tions as well, ibid., 160, 171. How­ever, for our pur­poses, such res­er­va­tions about Lom­bard’s work are nei­ther here nor there. His value to the de­vel­op­ment of the doc­trine of si­mony lies less in his method than in the long tra­di­tion of com­men­tary on it that he set in mo­tion. By treat­ing the topic in dis­tinc­tion twenty-five of the fourth book of his Sen­tences, he en­sured that gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion of school­men would be obliged to take up the topic in turn.

The or­ganic de­vel­op­ment of the uni­ver­si­ties com­pli­cates at­tempts to date their ori­gins,⁵⁷Rüegg, Themes, 6–7; Verger, Pat­terns, 45ff. but for any given in­sti­tu­tion, one can trace a se­ries of for­mal bench­marks. For ex­am­ple, the Uni­ver­sity of Paris 21re­ceived its first royal char­ter from Philip Au­gus­tus in 1200, and its first pa­pal priv­i­lege bull from Greg­ory IX in 1231. Per­haps 1215 gives us the most in­ter­est­ing mark­ers to con­sider. In that year, Rob­ert of Cour­son pro­mul­gated his stat­utes for Paris, the first reg­u­la­tions to des­ig­nate the stu­dium a uni­ver­si­tas,⁵⁸Bald­win, Paris, 1200, 211. and the Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil ex­plic­itly sided with Lom­bard on a trin­i­tar­ian de­bate, thereby se­cur­ing the Sen­tences as the stan­dard for theo­log­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion.⁵⁹See Rose­mann, Pe­ter Lom­bard, 119.

The Reg­u­la­tion of Ac­a­demic Fees (1179–1215)§

Me­dieval uni­ver­si­ties shaped the doc­trine of si­mony not only in pro­vid­ing the ac­a­demic arena for its for­ma­tion, but also in sup­ply­ing a par­tic­u­larly il­lu­mi­nat­ing case study in the econ­omy of re­li­gion. At the lead­ing schools, dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms of sup­port yielded cor­re­spond­ingly dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tional forms. The school at Bo­lo­gna was largely stu­dent-run be­cause the mas­ters took their pay di­rectly from the stu­dents.⁶⁰Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 65–66. The com­mune, the cor­po­ra­tion of cit­i­zens that gov­erned Bo­lo­gna, even­tu­ally took over the bur­den by sal­ary­ing the doc­tors out of civic funds.⁶¹Ibid., 66–67. The school at Paris, by con­trast, evolved a mag­is­te­rial gov­er­nance be­cause fi­nan­cial lev­er­age cen­tered around in­cep­tion, that cer­e­mony by which a newly li­censed teacher was for­mally in­cor­po­rated into the guild of mas­ters.⁶²Rash­dall, The Uni­ver­si­ties of Eu­rope, 1.284–87; cf. Post, Alex­an­der III, the Li­cen­tia Do­cendi, 266. These pri­mary mech­a­nisms, how­ever, hardly ex­hausted the fi­nan­cial pic­ture. Any me­dieval uni­ver­sity drew on a va­ri­ety of rev­enue streams.⁶³See Gieysz­tor, Man­age­ment and Re­sources, 133–36 for a de­tailed over­view.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is the sale of teach­ing li­censes. The li­cen­tia do­cendi dem­on­strated an ac­a­demic pro­fi­ciency that per­mit­ted one to in­struct oth­ers in the schools. Though con­tem­po­raries did not la­bel all forms of this as “si­mony,” some have termed it scho­las­tic si­mony on ac­count of the sim­i­lar­ity to si­mony in or­di­na­tions.⁶⁴Post, Alex­an­der III, the Li­cen­tia Do­cendi, pas­sim. The sim­i­lar­ity of 22rhet­o­ric cen­tered around Mat­thew 10:8Matthew 10:8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give. is also no­table.⁶⁵E.g., Alex­an­der III, Ep. JL 12096 (PL 200:840B–C). Alex­an­der III re­peat­edly pro­hib­ited the sale of teach­ing li­censes, but did so most widely in the Third Lat­eran Coun­cil (1179), canon 18. Liber ex­tra, 5.5, De mag­is­tris—two ti­tles af­ter 5.3, De si­mo­nia—would be ded­i­cated to this topic. Alex­an­der had first taken up the cause on March 16 of 1166 or 1167,⁶⁶Post, Alex­an­der III, the Li­cen­tia Do­cendi, 258n15; cf. Alex­an­der III, Ep. JL 11329 (PL 200:440D). and the prac­tice had been con­demned al­most three dec­ades prior at canon 17 of the Coun­cil of West­min­ster (1138).

Alex­an­der con­nected the prob­lem with sell­ing teach­ing li­censes to a broader prin­ci­ple that knowl­edge it­self should not be sold.⁶⁷E.g., De­nifle and Chate­lain, eds., Char­tu­lar­ium Uni­ver­si­tatis Pa­ri­si­en­sis, pars in­tro., no. 4; cf. X 5.5.3. In the afore­men­tioned canon 18 of Third Lat­eran, Alex­an­der also re­quired that cathe­dral schools staff a ben­e­ficed mas­ter in or­der that he may pro­vide free ed­u­ca­tion to the clergy and the poor. This de­mand for free ed­u­ca­tion was not a novel claim, but rep­re­sented an ex­ist­ing sen­ti­ment that would soon de­velop as a com­mon dic­tum: “Knowl­edge is a gift of God, there­fore it can­not be sold” (sci­en­tia do­num dei est, unde vendi non po­test).⁶⁸See Post et al., “The Me­dieval Her­itage” for an ex­ten­sive sur­vey of the tra­di­tion. Even in the early twelfth cen­tury, Pe­ter Abe­lard re­flected on hav­ing re­sorted to liv­ing off his stu­dents’ vol­un­tary gifts with a de­gree of em­bar­rass­ment Abe­lard, Hist. calam. 26–27. By Alex­an­der’s de­cree, schools such as the one at Paris—then the cathe­dral school of Notre-Dame—were, at least os­ten­si­bly, free of charge.⁶⁹Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 81; Verger, Teach­ers, 151.

Alex­an­der’s man­date, how­ever well-funded in other re­gions, came up against the lim­its of avail­able re­sources in Paris. Alex­an­der’s hand was forced to make spe­cial ex­cep­tions for the Chan­cel­lor of Notre-Dame in 1174, and the prob­lem was so per­sis­tent that In­no­cent III was still fight­ing the is­sue in 1212 and 1213.⁷⁰Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 1.122–23; cf. Bald­win, Paris, 1200, 183. Ac­cord­ingly, the Pa­ri­sian schol­ars took up the ques­tion, weigh­ing not only which ac­a­demic fees were morally un­be­com­ing but, more point­edly, which crossed 23the line into si­mony. The most pro­nounced de­lib­er­a­tions is­sued from Pe­ter the Chanter and his cir­cle, cul­mi­nat­ing pri­mar­ily in Rob­ert of Cour­son.⁷¹See Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 1.124; cf. Bald­win, Paris, 1200, 184. This is sig­nif­i­cant, for as we have al­ready seen, Rob­ert would go on to serve as the pa­pal leg­ate who gave the Uni­ver­sity of Paris its first stat­utes in 1215. While not all of his con­clu­sions made their way into those rules of op­er­a­tion, it is rea­son­able to sus­pect that they would have been es­pe­cially re­spected on this ac­count.⁷²See Ken­nedy, “Rob­ert Cour­son on Pen­ance,” 292.

The Pa­ri­sians con­ceded that knowl­edge it­self could not be sold, but con­tended that the la­bor of teach­ing could be. This was fur­ther qual­i­fied, how­ever, by the sub­ject mat­ter. While the la­bor of teach­ing the lib­eral arts could be sold law­fully, the la­bor of teach­ing theol­ogy could not, since theol­ogy is di­vine truth, and to sell such a spir­i­tual thing is si­mony. The same re­stric­tion ex­tended to moral phi­los­o­phy, which they like­wise classed as di­vine truth. In these cases, one who had no in­come was per­mit­ted to re­ceive vol­un­tary do­na­tions from his stu­dents, but any al­ready ben­e­ficed by the church for the sake of in­struc­tion com­mit­ted si­mony if he ac­cepted any fur­ther do­na­tion from his stu­dents.⁷³See Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 1.124–27; cf. Bald­win, Paris, 1200, 184. Schol­ars at Bo­lo­gna reached com­pa­ra­ble con­clu­sions for their own dis­ci­pline of law,⁷⁴Post et al., “The Me­dieval Her­itage,” 206, 206n32. though they showed lit­tle cor­re­spond­ing in­ter­est in theol­ogy.⁷⁵Ibid., 207. They main­tained that law was it­self a di­vine sci­ence, no less sa­cred than theol­ogy.⁷⁶Ibid., 209n43.

Canon 11 of the Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil (1215) ob­served that Alex­an­der’s de­cree had been but lit­tle ob­served and ac­cord­ingly re­it­er­ated and ex­tended it. Even with this re­newed in­sis­tence, the pro­vi­sion of ben­e­fices for free in­struc­tion con­tin­ued to fall short of en­force­ment well into the thir­teenth cen­tury and be­yond.⁷⁷Post, “Mas­ters’ Sal­aries and Stu­dent-Fees,” 196–98. The fate of the de­cree, how­ever, need not de­tain us. This ep­i­sode in his­tory con­cerns us 24be­cause it ac­counts for what would ap­pear in writ­ings on si­mony in the cen­turies that fol­lowed, echoes of the doc­tri­nal con­clu­sions forged in the pre­mier theo­log­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion at the turn of the thir­teenth cen­tury.

The Sec­u­lar-Men­di­cant Con­tro­versy (1253–1300)§

The open­ing of the thir­teenth cen­tury saw the rise of a new form of re­li­gious life. Fran­cis of As­sisi, hav­ing re­nounced his fam­ily’s wealth, first with­drew as a her­mit but soon em­braced what came to be called the “apos­tolic life” (vita apos­tol­ica), a life of itin­er­ancy and evan­ge­lism mod­eled on Christ and the apos­tles. In 1209, he went with his small party to Rome and se­cured a for­mal ap­proval from In­no­cent III. Around the same time, Dom­i­nic of Ca­le­ruega gath­ered a band of preach­ers to con­front the Cath­ars, also known as the Al­bi­gen­ses, a du­al­ist sect in south­ern France. The com­mu­ni­ties that grew up around these found­ers styled them­selves not as monks but fri­ars (that is, broth­ers). Fran­cis’s fol­low­ers be­came the Or­der of Fri­ars Mi­nor, Dom­i­nic’s the Or­der of Fri­ars Preach­ers. To the Fran­cis­cans and Do­mini­cans would be added the Au­gus­tini­ans and the Car­mel­ites.⁷⁸For a larger over­view of the fri­ars, see Law­rence, The Fri­ars.

These were sim­i­lar to the monas­tic or­ders that pre­ceded them, but dif­fered on ac­count of their men­di­cancy. Not merely swear­ing off per­sonal prop­erty, they aban­doned com­mu­nal prop­erty as well. The pov­erty of these new or­ders could not abide by the vow of sta­bil­ity that char­ac­ter­ized Ben­e­dict’s rule. Rather than keep­ing to them­selves, work­ing re­motely in a mon­as­tery, the fri­ars took to the cities both on ac­count of their mis­sion to preach and their need to beg.⁷⁹Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 7–8. The fri­ars sourced char­ity pri­mar­ily through their re­li­gious ac­tiv­ity. For ex­am­ple, one who gave alms to them might ex­pect them to give prayers on ac­count of the char­ity. Their preach­ing like­wise was at­tended with calls for alms ei­ther be­fore or af­ter. Re­mark­ing how this for­mal­ized men­di­cancy had nor­mal­ized the prac­tice of beg­ging, one 25nine­teenth-cen­tury scholar wrote, “Many a man who would have been ashamed to dig was not ashamed to beg.”⁸⁰Rash­dall, The Uni­ver­si­ties of Eu­rope, 3.407.

The fri­ars quickly made their way into the uni­ver­si­ties. On Au­gust 15, 1217, Dom­i­nic dis­patched seven of his fol­low­ers to Paris to es­tab­lish a pri­ory de­voted to study and preach­ing. The Fran­cis­cans fol­lowed, more grad­u­ally, in the years there­after.⁸¹Law­rence, The Fri­ars, 130. Within dec­ades they had at­tracted some of the great­est minds of the age, such as Bo­na­ven­ture among the Fran­cis­cans and Thomas Aqui­nas among the Do­mini­cans. So suc­cess­ful was their re­cruit­ment that wealthy fam­i­lies grew re­luc­tant to send their sons to the schools at all, lest they be lost to the men­di­cant or­ders.⁸²Ibid., 127. Their ad­vance was re­in­forced by pa­pal priv­i­lege. In 1231 Greg­ory IX re­quired bish­ops to grant the fri­ars an al­most un­lim­ited free­dom of ac­tion for the sake of their pas­toral mis­sion, ef­fec­tively erect­ing a par­al­lel hi­er­ar­chy along­side the sec­u­lar clergy.⁸³See ibid., 152. “Sec­u­lar,” in this con­text, refers to the parish priests and bish­ops who served in the world, as dis­tin­guished from those liv­ing un­der a re­li­gious rule. Be­cause they were per­mit­ted to preach, hear con­fes­sions, etc., they of­ten even had their own churches that com­peted with the parish churches. Their ad­vance in the uni­ver­sity was so great that by 1254, the sec­u­lar mas­ters at Paris would hold only three of the fif­teen chairs in the fac­ulty of theol­ogy.⁸⁴Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 92.

Such gains bred fric­tion, as did the in­de­pen­dence with which the fri­ars op­er­ated within the uni­ver­sity. Since their vows com­mit­ted them to a life apart from the world, im­mer­sion in the sec­u­lar arts was for them in­com­pat­i­ble with their re­li­gious call­ing, and so they trained within their or­der, cir­cum­vent­ing the arts fac­ulty.⁸⁵Law­rence, The Fri­ars, 133–35; cf. Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 93. They like­wise by­passed the in­cep­tion by which the mas­ters reg­u­lated ad­mis­sion into their own ranks and de­clined to swear the oaths that would bind them to the stat­utes of the uni­ver­sity.⁸⁶Janin, The Uni­ver­sity in Me­dieval Life, 82. In 1252 the sec­u­lar mas­ters at Paris at­tempted a stat­ute cap­ping the num­ber of men­di­cant chairs,⁸⁷Law­rence, The Fri­ars, 154. but 26mat­ters par­tic­u­larly boiled over in March of the next year, when a stu­dent was killed in a clash with the town watch. The sec­u­lar mas­ters called a strike to com­pel re­dress from the civil au­thor­i­ties, but the fri­ars re­fused the oath and con­tin­ued lec­tur­ing.⁸⁸Ibid., 154; Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 11, 14; Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 92. The dis­pute was car­ried to Rome in 1254, where In­no­cent IV re­voked nearly all of the dis­tinct priv­i­leges en­joyed by the men­di­cants. How­ever, he died six­teen days later, and his suc­ces­sor Alex­an­der IV re­versed this judg­ment in April 1255.⁸⁹Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 15–16. The Pa­ri­sian con­flict was re­pro­duced, on a smaller scale, at Ox­ford and Cam­bridge.⁹⁰Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 93.

The an­ti­fra­ter­nal move­ment swiftly took on an apoc­a­lyp­tic fram­ing. This partly had to do with the con­tem­po­rary an­tic­i­pa­tion of the year 1260,⁹¹See Rev. 11:3Revelation 11:3And I will give to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”; 12:6. but was also brought on in 1254 by a Fran­cis­can who him­self had claimed that his or­der her­alded a third age of the Holy Spirit.⁹²Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 26–28; Law­rence, The Fri­ars, 154. In 1256, Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, a lead­ing sec­u­lar mas­ter of theol­ogy at Paris, gave the an­ti­fra­ter­nal cause its found­ing text in De per­i­culis no­vis­si­mo­rum tem­po­rum (“Con­cern­ing the Per­ils of the Last Days”). Its fi­nal and most in­flu­en­tial chap­ter enu­mer­ated forty-one signs of false apos­tles,⁹³The pre­cise count var­ies across edi­tions; the num­ber­ing fol­lowed here is that of the 1632 Op­era om­nia. and the twen­ti­eth of those signs in­ter­sected his two pri­mary con­ten­tions with the fri­ars: their men­di­cancy and want of a proper of­fice. He con­demned beg­ging from those to whom one preaches as si­mony; a pas­tor may re­ceive from his flock with au­thor­ity, but the fri­ars have no such claim.⁹⁴Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, De per­i­culis, cap. 14, sig. 20 (pp. 64–65). The men­di­cants had ap­pealed to the bib­li­cal prin­ci­ple that those who preach the gospel should live of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:141 Corinthians 9:14Even so did the Lord ordain that those who proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel.).⁹⁵See, e.g., Bo­na­ven­ture, Apo­lo­gia pau­pe­rum con­tra ca­lum­ni­a­to­rem, VII.39 (p. 285). Yet for Wil­liam, it was not merely the per­for­mance of la­bor that makes a worker wor­thy; with­out for­mal stand­ing none is granted the au­thor­ity to make such a re­quest. This con­sid­er­a­tion of church of­fice rep­re­sented a sub­stan­tial de­vel­op­ment over pre­vi­ous ap­proaches to the doc­trine of si­mony.

Wil­liam’s work was met with am­ple re­sis­tance. Thomas Aqui­nas re­sponded that same year with Con­tra im­pug­nantes Dei cul­tum et re­li­gionem (“Against Those Who At­tack the Wor­ship of God and Re­li­gion”), ded­i­cat­ing the sixth chap­ter in the de­fense of the fri­ars’ re­cep­tion of alms. Alex­an­der IV con­demned De per­i­culis in Oc­to­ber, and be­cause Wil­liam posed an ob­sta­cle to the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of the war­ring par­ties at the uni­ver­sity, Louis IX ban­ished him from France on Au­gust 9 of the next year. Though this dealt a blow to the move­ment, the vo­cab­u­lary and fram­ing of De per­i­culis would fur­nish the con­trol­ling cat­e­gories of an­ti­fra­ter­nal po­lemic for the re­main­der of the Mid­dle Ages.⁹⁶See Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 4–5. For the view that this in­flu­ence has been over­stated, see Gelt­ner, Wil­liam of St. Amour’s De per­i­culis. Be­yond the many ded­i­cated trea­tises against the fri­ars, an­ti­fra­ter­nal po­lemic also worked its way into cel­e­brated lit­er­a­ture, such as Chau­cer’s Can­ter­bury Tales and Dante’s Di­vine Com­edy.⁹⁷For the ex­tent of such lit­er­a­ture, see Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion. John Foxe would later re­pro­duce Wil­liam’s signs of false apos­tles in his Acts and Mon­u­ments.⁹⁸Foxe, Actes and Mon­u­ments, 4.319–22. The move­ment spread across Eu­rope, and pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment soured to the point that the fri­ars suf­fered a num­ber of phys­i­cal at­tacks.⁹⁹For a cat­a­log of the var­i­ous in­ci­dents, see Gelt­ner, The Mak­ing of Me­dieval An­ti­fra­ter­nal­ism, 48–50, 140–53. The in­sti­tu­tional dis­pute it­self ended in a mea­sured set­tle­ment, Bon­i­face VIII’s Su­per cathe­dram (1300), which cur­tailed the fri­ars’ priv­i­leges, con­di­tion­ing them on the ap­proval of lo­cal bish­ops.

But Wil­liam’s cause out­lived the le­gal com­pro­mise. Late in the next cen­tury, it found a par­tic­u­lar cham­pion in John Wyc­liffe. Many of Wyc­liffe’s works were ex­plic­itly ti­tled as po­lem­ics against the fri­ars, but even his other writ­ings fre­quently men­tioned their er­rors and iden­ti­fied their beg­ging as si­mony. One fa­mous anec­dote rec­ords that four doc­tors—one from each of the men­di­cant or­ders—vis­ited Wyc­liffe when he fell deathly ill in 1379. At his bed­side, they urged him to re­tract his at­tacks while there was still time, but he raised him­self up and an­swered, “I shall not die, but live, and de­clare the worst deeds of the fri­ars.”¹⁰⁰Bale, Scrip­to­rum Il­lus­trium Ma­ioris Bry­tan­niae, 469. In 1382, a coun­cil in Lon­don drew up charges of her­esy and er­rors against the Ox­ford mas­ter, record­ing as a fi­nal point his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the fri­ars’ beg­ging as si­mony.¹⁰¹Specif­i­cally, the ar­ti­cle charged Wyc­liffe with hold­ing that both the giver of alms and the beg­ging or preach­ing friar who re­ceived them were ex­com­mu­ni­cate, but this has been in­ter­preted as a sum­mary analy­sis of Wyc­liffe’s con­dem­na­tion of the fri­ars’ beg­ging as si­mony, Shir­ley, ed., Fas­ci­culi zi­za­ni­o­rum, 282; cf. How­ard, The Life and Reign of King Rich­ard, 43. When a ma­jor earth­quake in­ter­rupted the pro­ceed­ings, Wyc­liffe read this as the earth cry­ing out where the faith­ful would not and took to call­ing it the “Earth­quake Coun­cil” (con­cil­ium ter­rae­mo­tus).¹⁰²Shir­ley, ed., Fas­ci­culi zi­za­ni­o­rum, 272–73, 283–85. He con­tin­ued un­til his peace­ful death on the eve of 1385, and his fol­low­ers, the Lol­lards, car­ried on his cam­paign against the si­mony of the fri­ars.

The Sale of In­dul­gences (1184–1517)§

The ori­gins of in­dul­gences are ob­scure, and sev­eral the­o­ries have been pro­posed.¹⁰³For a rep­re­sen­ta­tive if dated over­view, see Lea, A His­tory of Au­ric­u­lar Con­fes­sion, 3–9. What seems clear­est is that they grew out of the bishop’s dis­cre­tionary power to com­mute canon­i­cal pen­ance, sub­sti­tut­ing what­ever may be pre­scribed in con­fes­sion with an­other pi­ous work. The first ple­nary in­dul­gence came at the Coun­cil of Cler­mont (1095), where Ur­ban II de­creed that ser­vice in the First Cru­sade would be reck­oned “in lieu of all pen­ance.”¹⁰⁴Coun­cil of Cler­mont (1095), can. 2 (Mansi 20:816E). If one form of ser­vice could sub­sti­tute for an­other, a gift of money was no great leap, par­tic­u­larly since fund­ing the cru­sade be­came a much de­sired form of ser­vice. In 1184, that sub­sti­tu­tion took a con­crete form. Henry II of Eng­land and Philip Au­gus­tus of France jointly as­sessed a grad­u­ated tax for the re­lief of the Holy Land,¹⁰⁵Rates ranged be­tween one part in two hun­dred forty and one part in one hun­dred, vary­ing by the kind and amount of one’s wealth and paid over three years, Mitch­ell, Tax­a­tion in Me­dieval Eng­land, 118. and the bish­ops of Nor­mandy at­tached an in­dul­gence to those who paid.¹⁰⁶For the text of the or­di­nance, see Lunt, “The Text of the Or­di­nance,” 240–42. For a gen­eral over­view, see Cazel, “The Tax of 1185”.

At the Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil (1215) the prac­tice was both cen­tral­ized and for­mal­ized. Canons 60 and 62 re­served the grant­ing of in­dul­gences to pa­pal au­thor­ity, while canon 71 gave money pay­ments a set­tled place in the sys­tem, of­fer­ing ple­nar­ies to those who would “con­gru­ously” con­trib­ute to the as­sis­tance of the Holy Land. By the mid­dle of the thir­teenth cen­tury, in­dul­gences had be­come vir­tu­ally ex­clu­sively fi­nan­cial.¹⁰⁷Lea, A His­tory of Au­ric­u­lar Con­fes­sion, 61, 179 makes this judg­ment by ex­am­in­ing the fi­nan­cial as­sump­tions of the scho­las­tic theo­lo­gians in their dis­courses on in­dul­gences. In 1300, Bon­i­face VIII in­sti­tuted the Ju­bi­lee to be cel­e­brated every hun­dred years, of­fer­ing a ple­nary in­dul­gence to pil­grims at Rome. The wind­fall was so great that suc­ces­sive popes re­peat­edly short­ened the in­ter­val and, from 1390, dis­patched com­mis­sion­ers to sell the ju­bi­lee in­dul­gence at home for the price of the fore­gone pil­grim­age, ex­plod­ing the sale of in­dul­gences across Eu­rope.

Sev­eral theo­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ments re­in­forced the growth of this prac­tice. At this time, the no­tion of pur­ga­tory had tran­si­tioned from a pu­ri­fi­ca­tion that takes place in this life to a dis­tinct lo­ca­tion in the next,¹⁰⁸For one com­monly ref­er­enced ac­count­ing, see Le Goff, The Birth of Pur­ga­tory, 168, 173, 237, who dates the tran­si­tion to be­tween 1170 and 1220. sharp­en­ing de­mand for such a re­mis­sion. Ad­di­tion­ally, pa­pal grants be­gan omit­ting the con­di­tion of con­tri­tion,¹⁰⁹For ex­am­ple, in 1253, In­no­cent IV of­fered ple­nary in­dul­gences to those who con­trib­uted to the sev­enth cru­sade with­out ex­press­ing any con­di­tion of con­tri­tion or con­fes­sion, In­no­cent IV, Planxit hac­tenus. Bon­i­face VIII’s ju­bi­lee bull of 1300 was pro­mul­gated in the same fash­ion, Ex­travag. comm. 5.9.1. im­plic­itly re­duc­ing the trans­ac­tion to a sim­ple sale.¹¹⁰See Lea, A His­tory of Au­ric­u­lar Con­fes­sion, 62–63. In 1343, Clem­ent VI gave de­fin­i­tive pa­pal sanc­tion to the doc­trine of the trea­sury of merit (thesau­rus mer­i­to­rum), giv­ing le­git­i­macy to the ef­fec­tively lim­it­less sup­ply of in­dul­gences.¹¹¹Clem­ent VI, Uni­gen­i­tus Dei fil­ius, Fried­berg, ed., Cor­pus Iu­ris Canon­ici, 2:1304–6. Fi­nally, in 1476, Six­tus IV ex­tended in­dul­gences to the dead for the first time, trans­form­ing such pur­chases into a mat­ter of fil­ial duty.¹¹²Six­tus IV, Sal­va­tor nos­ter, fol. 3v; cf. Lea, A His­tory of Au­ric­u­lar Con­fes­sion, 345–46.

The school­men gen­er­ally de­fended this prac­tice. While they em­ployed a num­ber of ex­pla­na­tions for the va­lid­ity of this prac­tice and ab­solved it from charges of si­mony,¹¹³See ibid., 96–97 for an over­view of ar­gu­ments. He re­marked that the po­ten­tial clas­si­fi­ca­tion of in­dul­gences as a spe­cies of si­mony “was a point which nat­u­rally trou­bled the pre-Ref­or­ma­tion doc­tors not a lit­tle.” Ibid., 97. these typ­i­cally boiled down to dis­tin­guish­ing the sense in which the money given by a pa­rish­ioner was the cause of the grant­ing of the in­dul­gence. The in­dul­gence was not given in ex­change for such money as a gift, but on ac­count of it “as a fruit […] pro­ceed­ing from the root of a good will.”¹¹⁴Pel­bar­tus, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. In­dul­gen­tia, 5. In other words, the money counted not as pay­ment, but alms. Of course, these jus­ti­fi­ca­tions did not im­press all of that time. For ex­am­ple, Wyc­liffe and Jan Hus fre­quently iden­ti­fied the sale of in­dul­gences as si­mony.¹¹⁵E.g., Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 2 (15:24–26); Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 4.G.

The sale of in­dul­gences reached its height when it was em­ployed to fund the re­build­ing of St. Pe­ter’s Basil­ica in Rome. Ju­lius II is­sued the bull Li­quet om­ni­bus in 1510, which Leo X in­her­ited, ul­ti­mately grant­ing its most no­table com­mis­sion, that of Al­bert of Mainz in North Ger­many. A 20,000 gulden fee had been im­posed for the pal­lium of Mainz, and Al­bert se­cured his unan­i­mous elec­tion to the arch­bish­opric in 1514 by prom­is­ing to pay the fee him­self, which he did through bor­row­ing from the Fug­gers, the Augs­burg bank­ing house. They, in turn, had ar­ranged with the pope to re­ceive half the pro­ceeds of the St. Pe­ter’s in­dul­gence in Al­bert’s ter­ri­to­ries. The bar­gain was con­cluded in 1515 and ex­e­cuted in 1517, when Al­bert en­gaged the Do­mini­can John Tet­zel as his com­mis­sioner. Tet­zel op­er­ated with a no­to­ri­ously bald mer­can­til­ism, his cam­paign later be­ing sum­ma­rized in a rhyme: “As soon as the coin in the cof­fer rings / The soul from pur­ga­tory springs.”¹¹⁶Bain­ton, Here I Stand, 78; cf. Lu­ther, Ninety-Five The­ses, th. 27 (WA 1, 234). In short or­der, this preach­ing would pro­voke the Prot­es­tant Ref­or­ma­tion.¹¹⁷For an over­view of these events, es­pe­cially as they re­late to the de­tails of in­dul­gences, see Lea, A His­tory of Au­ric­u­lar Con­fes­sion, 387–90.

The Re­form­ers§

On Oc­to­ber 31, 1517, Mar­tin Lu­ther, an Au­gus­tin­ian friar and pro­fes­sor of theol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Wit­ten­berg, sent his let­ter of re­mon­strance to Al­bert of Mainz, and on the same day, he posted his ninety-five the­ses on the door of the Cas­tle Church at Wit­ten­berg. While we lack the space to re­hearse the oft-re­peated de­tails of this mo­men­tous event and those that would fol­low, it suf­fices to say that Lu­ther’s chal­lenge suc­ceeded. The St. Pe­ter’s cam­paign col­lapsed in Ger­many, and the move­ment it oc­ca­sioned would in time sever much of North­ern Eu­rope from Ro­man ju­ris­dic­tion. The charge of si­mony left a last­ing mark on Prot­es­tant con­fes­sional writ­ing as well. For ex­am­ple, the Sec­ond Hel­vetic Con­fes­sion (1566) con­demned the pope’s “si­mony and his si­mo­ni­a­cal in­dul­gences” among the marks of his usurped au­thor­ity.¹¹⁸Bul­lin­ger, Sec­ond Hel­vetic Con­fes­sion, 14. Even in the wake of the Ref­or­ma­tion, Rome her­self con­ceded that its prac­tice had grown si­mo­ni­a­cal. Pius V wrote in 1570 that the in­dul­gence trade, among its other scan­dals, “reeks of the wicked­ness of si­mony.”¹¹⁹Pius V, Quam ple­num, § 1 (p. 801).

Many re­gard the Ref­or­ma­tion as a bat­tle over the na­ture of the gospel and rightly so. Yet two de­tails tether our present topic to the Ref­or­ma­tion as more than an in­ci­den­tal thread of its nar­ra­tive. The first is that—as we have seen—si­mony it­self prompted the Ref­or­ma­tion. Even ig­no­rant of the three-way fi­nan­cial ar­range­ment or­ches­trated by Al­bert and the Fug­gers,¹²⁰Lea, A His­tory of Au­ric­u­lar Con­fes­sion, 392. Lu­ther ob­jected par­tic­u­larly to the sale of spir­i­tual things, later iden­ti­fy­ing the sale of in­dul­gences as “si­mony proper” (si­mo­nia pro­pria) in com­par­i­son to other forms nom­i­nally la­beled as si­mony by canon law.¹²¹Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 281:37–42); cf. ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 424:5–6). The sec­ond is that the mat­ter of si­mony can­not be cleanly sep­a­rated from the mat­ter of the gospel. For Lu­ther, si­mony was not merely an er­ror but a de­nial of the gospel. More­over, it was no iso­lated de­nial of the gospel but the very root of all false re­li­gion. He spelled this out most clearly in his lec­tures on Gen­e­sis:

It is to be seen, how­ever, how mis­er­able and dan­ger­ous a thing it is to have fallen away from the chief doc­trine of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that is of faith apart from works. For once it is ob­scured and ex­tin­guished, the whole world be­comes si­mo­ni­a­cal. Thus even the Turks strive to ap­pease God with their own works and to buy spir­i­tual things for money and for mer­its. There­fore, the si­mony de­scribed in canon law is merely nom­i­nal, for they nei­ther re­deem nor ob­tain any­thing by price and mer­its. But that zeal and will has dri­ven its roots deep into the hu­man heart by which every man is nat­u­rally a si­mo­niac, by which he would wish God to be one who would be ap­peased by hu­man works and mer­its, to whom he could ob­ject: “I have done many things; I have fasted much; may you look upon these things and sell me sal­va­tion and eter­nal life.” But God nei­ther ac­knowl­edges nor hears such work­ers of in­iq­uity. And he pro­poses his will in the apos­tolic doc­trine: “By grace and freely [gra­tia et gra­tis] you are jus­ti­fied, with­out any work” [Eph. 2:8–9Ephesians 2:8–9⁸for by grace have you been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, [it is] the gift of God;⁹not of works, that no man should boast.]. With that grace re­moved, there is no longer any dis­tinc­tion be­tween the Turk and the Pope, Hea­thens and Jews; all are si­mo­ni­acs and night­jars [buck-milk­ers].¹²²Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 423:32–424:4). See also, Lu­ther, Op­er­a­tiones in Psal­mos, 13 (WA 5, 397:10–39). The pe­jo­ra­tive at the end comes from the leg­end that night­jars—a kind of noc­tur­nal bird—suck milk from the ud­ders of goats, caus­ing the goats to go blind and die (see Pliny the El­der, Nat­u­ralis his­to­ria, 10.56). While their Latin name (ca­pri­mulgi) lit­er­ally means “goat-milk­ers,” Lu­ther re­peated it with his own Ger­man trans­la­tion (Bock­melker) in or­der to pro­vide the gen­dered “buck-milk­ers.” In other words, the si­mo­niac is quixot­i­cally par­a­sitic.

Be­yond his ded­i­cated treat­ments in his lec­tures on Gen­e­sis,¹²³Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4; 25:31–34 (WA 43, 277:31–283:28; 419:30–430:18). Lu­ther made pass­ing com­ments about si­mony fre­quently through­out his works.

Iron­i­cally, how­ever, writ­ings on si­mony dwin­dled af­ter the Ref­or­ma­tion. The over­whelm­ing vic­tory over the out­ward, fi­nan­cial prac­tices of si­mony en­tailed the de­cline of its as­so­ci­ated doc­trine. Theo­log­i­cal in­quiry rarely sur­vives the abuses that sum­mon it.

The Eng­lish Di­vines§

All the same, the wan­ing of in­ter­est in the doc­trine of si­mony was grad­ual. Lu­ther’s con­clu­sions car­ried over into the Eng­lish Ref­or­ma­tion. The sale of in­dul­gences was still re­garded as si­mony,¹²⁴For ex­am­ple, Wil­liam Guild de­voted an en­tire chap­ter to pa­pal “spir­i­tual mer­chan­dise or si­mony,” cat­a­logu­ing the sale of in­dul­gences among the of­fenses, Guild, An­ti­christ, 144. and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of works-right­eous­ness as a form of si­mony did not im­me­di­ately end but was re­peated fre­quently through the sub­se­quent cen­tury.¹²⁵E.g., Hars­nett, A Cor­diall for the Af­flicted, 448. Works-right­eous­ness is “the worst si­mony in the world,” Jo­seph Caryl wrote, “Bet­ter of­fer lit­eral money for those gifts of the Holy Ghost, than this fig­u­ra­tive money for the fa­vor of God in the par­don of sin.” Caryl, Ex­po­si­tion of Job, 7:20 (2, pp. 666–67).

This re­la­tion be­tween si­mony and the gospel was also stated con­versely. As many have play­fully re­marked that we are saved by works—Christ’s works—John Donne preached the same in the lan­guage of si­mony. Christ in our na­ture “mer­ited the Holy Ghost, pur­chased the Holy Ghost, bought the Holy Ghost, which is a sanc­ti­fied si­mony.”¹²⁶Donne, LXXX Ser­mons, serm. 28 (p. 280). Else­where, med­i­tat­ing on the es­tab­lish­ment of the Church, Donne em­ployed the same con­ceit: Christ “de­sired a Church, and he pur­chased a Church; but by a blessed way of si­mony.”¹²⁷Ibid., serm. 37 (p. 369). Oth­ers used the term with ref­er­ence to min­is­ters who preached at their own ex­pense. Fran­cis Rous wrote of Paul that “he feeds his sheep some­times at his own costs, and with an holy si­mony buys the work of his own min­is­try.”¹²⁸Rous, The Heav­enly Acad­emy, 80–81. Thomas Cooke, de­fend­ing the en­dow­ments of bish­ops, com­mended the an­cient found­ers who gave their sub­stance to the church, “with a holy kind of si­mony, to pur­chase for them the gifts of the Holy Ghost.”¹²⁹Cooke, Epis­co­pacy As­serted, 24.

The sale of spir­i­tual things re­mained a live con­cern in Eng­land for some time. The for­ti­eth canon of the Church of Eng­land (1604) re­quired an oath against si­mony from every can­di­date for ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal of­fice, de­clar­ing the buy­ing and sell­ing of spir­i­tual func­tions “ex­e­crable be­fore God.”¹³⁰Church of Eng­land, Con­sti­tu­tions and Canons Ec­cle­si­as­ti­call, can. 40. But the con­sid­er­a­tions of si­mony among the Eng­lish di­vines rarely ap­proached the depth of the school­men. These writ­ers were the heirs of a largely set­tled in­her­i­tance. The ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal con­tro­ver­sies of their own day typ­i­cally re­quired le­gal ap­pli­ca­tion more than theo­log­i­cal re­fine­ment.

Si­mony also en­tered Eng­lish dis­course from a dif­fer­ent and less or­tho­dox di­rec­tion. Quak­ers, An­a­bap­tists, and other rad­i­cal dis­sent­ers were will­ing to ap­ply the la­bel of si­mony to any form of reg­u­lar min­is­te­rial sti­pends. When the more es­tab­lished fig­ures ad­dressed si­mony, they fre­quently did so in the course of re­fut­ing such rad­i­cal de­ri­sion—named or un­named—rather than by way of a pos­i­tive pre­sen­ta­tion.¹³¹E.g., Brown, Quak­erisme, 407–8.

The is­sues them­selves evolved sub­stan­tially over time. With Rome re­moved, in­dul­gences were no longer a con­cern, and the old pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with com­merce in or­di­na­tions gave way to dis­putes over the buy­ing and sell­ing of rights of pa­tron­age.¹³²See Willis, Si­mony: In Two Parts, 21–24. Later cen­turies would see the ad­vent of dif­fer­ent fi­nan­cial con­tro­ver­sies in the church. But by then, the vo­cab­u­lary of “si­mony” and its theo­log­i­cal cat­e­gories had largely fallen out of use, even when the un­der­ly­ing con­cerns re­mained the same. For ex­am­ple, in the Church of Scot­land in the early nine­teenth cen­tury, James Begg wrote a ded­i­cated trea­tise against pew rents, im­posed fees whereby con­gre­gants se­cured their seats in wor­ship.¹³³Begg, Seat Rents. Though he con­structed sim­i­lar ar­gu­ments to those who had ad­dressed si­mony be­fore and ap­pealed to many of the same verses, he com­pleted his work with­out once em­ploy­ing the term.

Con­clu­sion§

The arc is one of rise and fall. The church fa­thers af­firmed the prin­ci­ple that grace must be given freely; the me­dievals gave that prin­ci­ple its full­est theo­log­i­cal and le­gal elab­o­ra­tion. But af­ter the Ref­or­ma­tion, at least among Prot­es­tants, the doc­trine re­ceived pro­gres­sively less sys­tem­atic at­ten­tion. The Re­form­ers wielded it as a weapon against Rome, the Eng­lish di­vines ap­plied it to the con­tro­ver­sies of their own par­ishes, and as the most egre­gious abuses were cor­rected, the ur­gency faded. By the time the early mod­ern pe­riod came to a close, si­mony had ceased to be a sub­ject of de­tailed theo­log­i­cal re­flec­tion.

Yet the doc­trine of si­mony ad­dresses more than the gross cor­rup­tions that oc­ca­sioned it; the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of spir­i­tual things and the cor­rup­tion of min­is­try by money did not dis­ap­pear with the Ref­or­ma­tion but only changed shape—some­times sub­tler, some­times not. The chap­ters that fol­low at­tempt to re­cover what has been lost, draw­ing on all four streams.

One might sup­pose that if the church has man­aged with­out a par­tic­u­lar doc­trine for cen­turies, per­haps it was never es­sen­tial to be­gin with, but this line of rea­son­ing con­fuses ne­glect with ob­so­les­cence. The doc­trine of si­mony is a case in point. From the time of Greg­ory the Great through the scho­las­tic era, it was one of the most dis­cussed sins of the Chris­tian tra­di­tion. It oc­cu­pied en­tire sec­tions of the great le­gal com­pi­la­tions and was treated at length by most ma­jor scho­las­tic theo­lo­gians. For over a mil­len­nium, the doc­trine of si­mony was a stan­dard fea­ture of Chris­tian moral theol­ogy.

The Re­form­ers in­her­ited the doc­trine and ap­plied it vig­or­ously against Ro­man cor­rup­tion. The Sec­ond Hel­vetic Con­fes­sion con­demns the pope’s “si­mony and his si­mo­ni­a­cal in­dul­gences,” em­ploy­ing Pe­ter’s male­dic­tion, “Thy money per­ish with thee.”¹Bul­lin­ger, Sec­ond Hel­vetic Con­fes­sion, 14. The Church Or­der of Dort names it among the prin­ci­pal of­fenses war­rant­ing sus­pen­sion or de­po­si­tion from of­fice.²Synod of Dort, Church Or­der, art. 80. The West­min­ster Larger Cat­e­chism lists si­mony among the sins for­bid­den by the sec­ond com­mand­ment.³West­min­ster As­sem­bly, The West­min­ster Larger Cat­e­chism, Q. 109. The doc­trine of si­mony was, in short, im­por­tant enough to be cod­i­fied into the con­fes­sional stan­dards of the Re­formed tra­di­tion.

To­day it has passed out of mem­ory. It re­ceives the oc­ca­sional his­tor­i­cal or so­ci­o­log­i­cal treat­ment but lit­tle doc­tri­nal con­sid­er­a­tion. It is 38stud­ied as one might study the dodo—with ac­a­demic cu­rios­ity about how it lived, but no prac­ti­cal ex­pec­ta­tion of en­counter. John T. Noo­nan, Ninth Cir­cuit judge and le­gal his­to­rian, ob­served that “nei­ther brib­ery nor its sub­species si­mony have to­day the con­sis­tency, the sta­bil­ity, the ex­i­gency of a true moral con­cept.”⁴Noo­nan, Bribes, 690. This is not be­cause all the prob­lems have been re­solved. It is be­cause the frame­work for dis­cern­ing them has lapsed. Now is the time to re­trieve the doc­trine of si­mony.

Yet sev­eral ques­tions nat­u­rally arise be­fore such an un­der­tak­ing. What con­fi­dence can we have in our sources? How do we ap­proach a re­trieval of such breadth? And what does the doc­trine, once re­trieved, have to of­fer the present age?

The Value of Re­trieval§

Some ob­ject that works of re­trieval pri­or­i­tize the words of men over the word of God by ex­alt­ing his­tor­i­cal theol­ogy over sys­tem­atic theol­ogy, doc­trine drawn from Scrip­ture it­self. Yet such con­cerns are typ­i­cally mis­guided. To lis­ten to the words of men is not to pri­or­i­tize them, and the two dis­ci­plines can­not be neatly ranked since each feeds into and re­fines the other.

Two works we will re­turn to through­out serve as ex­am­ples for us: Henry Bur­ton’s A Cen­sure of Si­monie (1624)⁵Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie. and The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus (1700), an anon­y­mous trea­tise.⁶The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus. Re­spec­tively au­thored by a Pu­ri­tan and a con­form­ist, the for­mer is an at­tempt at di­rect ap­pli­ca­tion of the doc­trine of si­mony from an­cient sources, while the lat­ter—writ­ten at a later time when the doc­trine had fallen into fur­ther de­cline—goes about it by way of a more thor­ough re­con­struc­tion. Both are ex­er­cises in re­trieval in their own right and dem­on­strate a will­ing­ness to dig deeply into ne­glected pa­tris­tic and me­dieval sources to make ap­pli­ca­tion in their own time.

39Em­brac­ing Wis­dom§

Many sup­pose that the words of men nec­es­sar­ily cor­rupt what would oth­er­wise be a pure re­cep­tion of Scrip­ture. We are no tab­ula rasa; we come to Scrip­ture al­ready shaped by tra­di­tions and as­sump­tions, whether we rec­og­nize them or not. God has in­tended that we be peo­ple who are shaped not only by the word di­rectly, but also by el­ders—both in of­fice and age—those who have blazed the trail a lit­tle fur­ther and are able to share what they have seen (Heb. 13:7Hebrews 13:7Remember those who had the rule over you, men who spoke to you the word of God; and considering the outcome of their life, imitate their faith.). For ex­am­ple, who would ad­vise that those who have not read the Bible for them­selves should ab­sent them­selves from the preach­ing of the word? The Bere­ans are rightly praised for test­ing what they heard against Scrip­ture, but they heard Paul first, then searched the Scrip­tures to ver­ify (Acts 17:11Acts 17:11Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of the mind, examining the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so.).

Scrip­ture it­self com­mends the prac­tice of look­ing back­ward. Mo­ses in­structed Is­rael: “Re­mem­ber the days of old; con­sider the gen­er­a­tions past. Ask your fa­ther, and he will tell you, your el­ders, and they will in­form you” (Deut. 32:7Deuteronomy 32:7Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you.). Bil­dad re­peats the charge: “Please in­quire of past gen­er­a­tions and con­sider the dis­cov­er­ies of their fa­thers. For we were born yes­ter­day and know noth­ing; our days on earth are but a shadow. Will they not teach you and tell you, and speak from their un­der­stand­ing?” (Job 8:8–10Job 8:8–10⁸For inquire, please, of the former age, and apply yourself to what their fathers have searched out;⁹(For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow);¹⁰Will they not teach you, and tell you, and utter words out of their heart?).

John Owen cap­tured this con­vic­tion in an or­di­na­tion ser­mon: “Let us take heed in our­selves of any in­cli­na­tion to novel opin­ions, es­pe­cially in, or about, or against such points of faith as those wherein they who are gone be­fore us and are fallen asleep found life, com­fort, and power.”⁷Owen, The Duty of a Pas­tor, 459. From there, he pro­ceeded to ex­plain that its par­tic­u­lar dan­ger is not merely er­ror but “in­dif­fer­ency,”⁸“Who would have thought that we should have come to an in­dif­fer­ency as to the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and quar­rel and dis­pute about the in­ter­est of works in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion; about gen­eral re­demp­tion, which takes off the ef­fi­cacy of the re­deem­ing work of Christ; and about the per­se­ver­ance of the saints; when these were the soul and life of them who are gone be­fore us, who found the power and com­fort of them? We shall not main­tain these truths, un­less we find the same com­fort in them as they did.” Ibid., 459–60. a loss of zeal and watch­ful­ness. In­deed, when we en­counter ques­tions to which we do not know the an­swer, our first in­stinct should be to ask whether those who came be­fore us have al­ready an­swered them. But per­haps more im­por­tantly, when we find saints of old ad­dress­ing ques­tions we have not thought to ask, we should con­sider why they thought them worth ask­ing rather than im­me­di­ately dis­miss­ing them as dated con­cerns.

Bur­ton and the Anat­o­mist ex­em­pli­fied this dis­po­si­tion. The Anat­o­mist di­ag­nosed the loss of the doc­trine it­self as a symp­tom of cooled af­fec­tion: “when that prim­i­tive fer­vor be­gan to de­cay, and the spirit of the world to take hold of the luke­warm clergy, then be­gan Si­mon Ma­gus again to set up the head.”⁹The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 7. Bur­ton made the same di­ag­no­sis: too many “have cho­sen the place of the min­is­try, but not the zeal.”¹⁰Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 76, quot­ing Ber­nard of Clair­vaux; cf. ibid., 79. De­cay in doc­trine is mu­tu­ally linked to a de­cay in dis­po­si­tion; to re­cover the one is to re­cover the other.

Re­ject­ing Er­ror§

A book that draws so heav­ily on me­dieval sources will nat­u­rally raise ques­tions for Prot­es­tant read­ers. If the doc­trine of si­mony was de­vel­oped pri­mar­ily by theo­lo­gians op­er­at­ing within the Ro­man sys­tem that Prot­es­tants re­ject, what con­fi­dence can we have in their con­clu­sions? The con­cern is un­der­stand­able but over­stated. An ex­am­i­na­tion of the proto-Re­form­ers dem­on­strates that their theol­ogy on the topic was nearly iden­ti­cal; their main dif­fer­ence was that they were will­ing to ap­ply it to the Ro­man in­sti­tu­tion. Like­wise, we will see that inas­much as the Pu­ri­tans ad­dressed the topic, they echoed scho­las­tic dis­tinc­tions.

The Re­form­ers them­selves did not re­gard me­dieval theol­ogy as uni­formly cor­rupt. Liken­ing it to Christ’s ac­cep­tance of Jew­ish theol­ogy in the midst of Phar­i­sa­i­cal cor­rup­tion, Lu­ther con­ceded, “un­der the pa­pacy there is much that is Chris­tian and good—in­deed, that all Chris­tian good ex­ists there and has come down to us from there.”¹¹Lu­ther, Von der Wie­der­taufe, WA 26, 147:13–15. Cal­vin re­jected ac­cu­sa­tions of nov­elty, claim­ing that Re­formed doc­trine is an­cient, be­long­ing to Chris­tians by a “right of re­cov­ery” (post­li­mi­nii iure).¹²Cal­vin, In­sti­tu­tio, Prae­fa­tio. Tur­re­tin de­fended the same prin­ci­ple when he dis­tin­guished “the sub­stance of the faith from the cor­rupt­ing ac­ci­dents.”¹³Tur­re­tin, In­sti­tu­tio, 18.10.10. Wil­liam Per­kins pop­u­lar­ized the no­tion of be­ing a Re­formed Cath­o­lic, one who “holds the same nec­es­sary heads of re­li­gion with the Ro­man Church, yet so, as he pares off and re­jects all er­rors in doc­trine.”¹⁴Per­kins, A Re­formed Catho­like, ¶3v.

The pur­pose of re­trieval is not to ac­cept every an­cient con­clu­sion un­crit­i­cally or to per­mit the cul­tural pres­sures of their own time to set our agenda to­day. Some points of gen­eral con­sen­sus among an­cient writ­ers are in er­ror; the de­fenses of in­dul­gences as any­thing other than si­mony are a con­spic­u­ous ex­am­ple. But even where the an­swers fail, the lines of in­quiry re­main val­u­able. Those who have gone be­fore iden­ti­fied prob­lems, drew dis­tinc­tions, and worked out im­pli­ca­tions that we have sim­ply ceased to con­sider. We should be more con­cerned that we might re­main ig­no­rant of the ques­tions they were ask­ing than that we might be mis­led by their an­swers.

It is also im­por­tant to dis­tin­guish what we are re­triev­ing from me­dieval sources. We are not af­ter the prem­ises of their de­lib­er­a­tions, their as­sump­tions about the na­ture of sac­ra­ments and or­ders, etc. We are in­ter­ested in the ap­pli­ca­tion of their doc­trine of si­mony to those prem­ises. For ex­am­ple, that they re­stricted the sale of con­se­crated ves­sels is in­for­ma­tive to us not be­cause we should con­clude that plates and cups can be made holy but be­cause grant­ing that prem­ise for the sake of ar­gu­ment re­veals prin­ci­ples about com­merce in things that truly are.

Our cho­sen ex­em­plars em­bod­ied this dis­crim­i­nat­ing pos­ture. Bur­ton de­ter­mined to give his def­i­ni­tion from “the tes­ti­mony of the whole Church from the prim­i­tive age thereof till this present.”¹⁵Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 2. The Anat­o­mist sim­i­larly sought to dem­on­strate the heinous­ness of the crime of si­mony “by the judg­ment of the Cath­o­lic Church, and joint suf­frages of many fa­thers to­gether.”¹⁶The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 114. Nei­ther au­thor ap­proached these sources un­crit­i­cally, but they re­peat­edly ap­pealed to canon­ists, school­men, and pa­pal pro­nounce­ments. Bur­ton ex­plained this dis­po­si­tion: “the Church of Rome it­self (though now the mother and nurse of abom­i­na­tions) hath cried out against this sin. For we must put a great dif­fer­ence be­tween the now Church of Rome and that which it hath been for­merly, and that even within these three or four hun­dred years.”¹⁷Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 48. The pre-Ref­or­ma­tion tra­di­tion is a her­itage to be sifted, not quar­an­tined.

This same prin­ci­ple holds fur­ther afield. Me­dieval­ists and other his­to­ri­ans have pro­duced val­u­able work on si­mony as a mat­ter of his­tor­i­cal cu­rios­ity, or even with Ro­mish sym­pa­thies, yet their la­bors prove ser­vice­able to ends they did not en­vi­sion. As Sol­o­mon ob­served, God has given the sin­ner the busi­ness of gath­er­ing and col­lect­ing, only to give to one who pleases him (Ec­cles. 2:26Ecclesiastes 2:26For to the man who pleases him [God] gives wisdom, and knowledge, and joy; but to the sinner he gives labor, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.). Egypt lies open to plun­der.¹⁸See Au­gus­tine, De doc­trina Chris­ti­ana, 2.40.60. Au­gus­tine’s ac­count­ing for the use of pa­gan phi­los­o­phy ap­plies at least equally to sec­u­lar his­tory.

Our Ap­proach§

Many his­tor­i­cal works pur­sue cu­rios­ity with­out a def­i­nite end. They fall short of be­ing ex­haus­tive yet are be­yond ex­haust­ing. A work of re­trieval re­quires more dis­ci­pline. To that end, we must de­cide where to fo­cus our at­ten­tion and ac­knowl­edge the con­straints on our scope, whether self-im­posed or im­posed by cir­cum­stance.

Ar­eas of Em­pha­sis§

The topic of si­mony is vast, branch­ing into a great num­ber of sub­top­ics, each with its own tan­gle of dis­tinc­tions and dis­puted cases. To treat each of these with equal care would ei­ther swell the work into mon­strous vol­umes or, kept to a read­able length, ne­glect the con­cerns that mat­ter most. There­fore, we can­not let the his­tor­i­cal lit­er­a­ture it­self dic­tate where the weight of our study falls. The sub­jects that drew the most ink are not nec­es­sar­ily the ones that most re­quire our present at­ten­tion. Our aim is to be com­pre­hen­sive in scope but not pro­por­tional in at­ten­tion. Sev­eral pri­or­i­ties will gov­ern what we take up and what we leave be­hind.

First, our pri­or­i­ties will be in­formed by Re­formed and Prot­es­tant con­vic­tions. While en­gag­ing the me­dieval sources crit­i­cally, we will take our cue from the Re­form­ers and proto-Re­form­ers when they dif­fer from oth­ers on sub­stan­tial mat­ters. We will not waste time en­ter­tain­ing po­si­tions that run counter to our own tra­di­tion, such as the le­git­i­macy of in­dul­gences or men­di­cancy. Those who ob­ject to re­trieval­ist pro­grams on the grounds that they take their march­ing or­ders from thinkers la­bor­ing within a cor­rupted sys­tem will find no rea­son to ob­ject here.

Sec­ond, our pri­or­i­ties will be in­formed by present cir­cum­stances within the Re­formed tra­di­tion. Lu­ther voiced frus­tra­tion that the ques­tion of the le­git­i­macy of a si­mo­niac’s or­di­na­tions had amassed “wag­on­loads—in­deed, seas of books,” while weight­ier si­mo­ni­a­cal abuses drew no com­pa­ra­ble scru­tiny.¹⁹Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 280:22–24). The same in­stinct must guide us. Some si­mo­ni­a­cal prac­tices of the past have no liv­ing coun­ter­part in the Re­formed tra­di­tion: the in­dul­gence trade, the sale of the pal­lium, or the pur­chase of masses for the dead. Oth­ers ap­pear ex­tinct yet per­sist by mod­ern anal­ogy; pay­ments for en­try into re­li­gious so­ci­eties and monas­tic ap­proaches to sus­te­nance re­late to the as­so­ci­a­tions and par­a­churches of our day. Oth­ers per­sist in near-iden­ti­cal form, even grow­ing in weight, es­pe­cially that which re­lates di­rectly to pay­ments for in­struc­tion in the word of God. Our aim, then, is to ren­der the doc­trine of si­mony in the shape best suited to present use, not to re­pro­duce its pre­mod­ern con­tours.

Sources§

Many ef­forts in theo­log­i­cal re­trieval fo­cus on a sin­gle his­tor­i­cal theo­lo­gian—re­cov­er­ing the thought of a sin­gle thinker on a sin­gle topic. The task be­fore us is dif­fer­ent. The doc­trine of si­mony has re­ceived so lit­tle at­ten­tion that we do not have the lux­ury of drill­ing down into any one au­thor; we must first es­tab­lish a base­line by draw­ing on many voices. To pro­ceed with such a broad scope car­ries the dan­ger of se­lec­tive bias, but it has the cor­re­spond­ing ad­van­tage of see­ing past any mis­lead­ing, idio­syn­cratic per­spec­tives. Where a broad con­sen­sus emerges across di­verse sources, we can have greater con­fi­dence in our con­clu­sions. Yet, as with ar­eas of em­pha­sis, the quan­tity of sources re­quires a pri­or­i­ti­za­tion.

First, we will take a par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est in the church fa­thers. As the clos­est wit­nesses to the apos­tolic age and a shared in­her­i­tance the Re­form­ers them­selves re­lied on, they carry dis­tinc­tive weight. The vo­cab­u­lary of si­mony came into com­mon use af­ter their time, but to re­quire ex­plicit use of the term would be to si­lence the very sources from which the doc­trine was later dis­tilled. We will there­fore ap­ply a lower bar for in­clu­sion to pa­tris­tic sources than to those who came af­ter­ward, ex­pect­ing from later writ­ers more ex­plicit en­gage­ment with the doc­trine.

Sec­ond, among the me­dieval sources, we will pri­or­i­tize the school­men over the canon­ists. While the dis­tinc­tion has been de­scribed as ar­bi­trary,²⁰So Gil­christ, ‘Si­mo­ni­aca haere­sis’, 210. the canon­ists were chiefly con­cerned with what could be ad­ju­di­cated. As is ev­i­dent in some of the con­ster­na­tions ex­pressed by the school­men, peo­ple of­ten care only about what may be pe­nal­ized for in hu­man courts, ig­nor­ing the di­vine.²¹E.g., Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 3, ad 1; Alex­an­der of Hales, Summa Halen­sis, III, P. 2, Inq. 3, Tract. 2, S. 1, Q. 2, T. 7, C. 5, A. 4, n. 1 (p. 569). Since this is a work of theo­log­i­cal re­trieval and not of his­tor­i­cal so­ci­ol­ogy, our ul­ti­mate con­cern is with what con­sti­tutes si­mony be­fore God rather than es­tab­lished church or­der. We will bring in the canon­ists where their con­clu­sions are fre­quently taken up by the theo­lo­gians, but the theo­log­i­cal tra­di­tion, not the le­gal, will gov­ern our dis­course.

Third, we will pri­or­i­tize proto-Re­form­ers over other me­dieval sources. Though less di­alec­ti­cal in na­ture, Wyc­liffe and Hus pro­duced some of the long­est treat­ments of si­mony ever writ­ten, and we will en­gage them ac­cord­ingly. Be­cause much of Hus’s trea­tise is sim­ply a di­rect trans­la­tion of Wyc­liffe into Czech, we will be es­pe­cially in­ter­ested where he de­parted from his Eng­lish pre­de­ces­sor. The iden­tity of Wil­liam of Saint-Amour as a proto-Re­former is de­bated, but we will pri­or­i­tize his con­tri­bu­tions on the topic as well.

Fourth, we will dis­pro­por­tion­ately fea­ture Ref­or­ma­tion and post-Ref­or­ma­tion au­thors as we have op­por­tu­nity, for we should value our own tra­di­tion. That said, be­cause they were not con­front­ing the same in­sti­tu­tional abuses that had prompted the me­dieval treat­ments, Pu­ri­tans and other Prot­es­tant di­vines wrote com­par­a­tively lit­tle on si­mony. Where such voices can be found, we will fore­ground them.

This pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of our own tra­di­tion ex­tends to the ex­clu­sion of Counter-Ref­or­ma­tion sources. Not that they di­verge from other sources we will be ex­am­in­ing; on the con­trary, the Coun­cil of Trent and the works of Le­o­nar­dus Les­sius, Fran­cisco Suá­rez, and the like only fur­ther cor­rob­o­rate our find­ings. But our goal is to re­cover a doc­trine from within our own theo­log­i­cal stream. Post-Ref­or­ma­tion au­thors oc­ca­sion­ally ap­pealed to Counter-Ref­or­ma­tion sources on the topic, but these in­stances are lim­ited and most of­ten func­tion as syn­cri­sis, sug­gest­ing the rhetor­i­cal ques­tion “if even Rome un­der­stands these things, why don’t we?”

Within this Prot­es­tant em­pha­sis, we will give par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to Eng­lish sources. In both lan­guage and dig­i­tal avail­abil­ity, these are the most ac­ces­si­ble re­sources to us to­day. But more im­por­tantly, the Eng­lish-speak­ing Re­formed tra­di­tion is the im­me­di­ate lin­eage to which we are most di­rectly ac­count­able.

Lim­i­ta­tions§

Even with these pri­or­i­ties in place, an ac­count of the sources re­quires ac­knowl­edg­ing sev­eral lim­i­ta­tions. The body of writ­ing on si­mony has reached us un­evenly, shaped by both the vi­cis­si­tudes of his­tory and the re­al­i­ties of our own time.

Genre shaped how much was writ­ten on si­mony and what form it took. The con­fes­sors’ man­u­als (sum­mae con­fes­so­rum) and kin­dred pen­i­ten­tial hand­books gath­ered the doc­trine into com­pact treat­ments. Me­dieval theol­ogy was con­ducted largely through com­men­tary, which ac­counts both for the wealth of writ­ing on si­mony in some forms and its scarcity in oth­ers. That is, many of these writ­ings are pre­served in com­men­tar­ies on stan­dard texts: the De­cre­tum, the Liber ex­tra, and the Sen­tences. The doc­trine there­fore comes down to us not as it might have been or­ga­nized in a free­stand­ing trea­tise but as it was dis­trib­uted across the ques­tions those com­pi­la­tions hap­pened to raise. When the loci com­munes model later sup­planted the Sen­tences tra­di­tion, si­mony had no place among the stan­dard heads of doc­trine. The shape of our ev­i­dence is thus partly an ac­ci­dent of ped­a­gog­i­cal con­ven­tion.

Fur­ther­more, not every­one who cham­pi­oned the doc­trine of si­mony did so in a ca­pac­ity that has sur­vived well in print. Rep­u­ta­tions of zeal­ous re­form­ers reach us through chron­i­clers and bi­og­ra­phers even when their own words do not. Those whose writ­ings sur­vive are not nec­es­sar­ily those who were most ea­ger to ad­dress in­sti­tu­tional cor­rup­tion.

Even where the works sur­vive, ac­ces­si­bil­ity var­ies. Some works have not been scanned or re­printed. Some man­u­scripts have been scanned and pub­lished, but never tran­scribed out of me­dieval short­hand or put into print. This is the case for many of the writ­ings of the early mas­ters of Paris. While we will con­sult these in some mea­sure, we will lean on sec­ondary source re­ports of their con­tents for fuller use. More is avail­able each year, but sev­eral im­por­tant wit­nesses still sur­vive pri­mar­ily in man­u­script.

Sim­i­larly, copy­right re­stricts ac­cess to ma­te­ri­als that would oth­er­wise be prime for re­trieval. Much of the Lol­lard cor­pus, for ex­am­ple, has been well edited in mod­ern crit­i­cal edi­tions but re­mains too re­cently pub­lished to be freely avail­able in a dig­i­tal form that would per­mit broad con­sul­ta­tion. We will make use of Wyc­liffe and Hus, whose ma­jor works were pub­lished in their sur­viv­ing edi­tions many years ago, but the broader proto-Re­former tra­di­tion of ver­nac­u­lar preach­ing and po­lem­ics against si­mony will likely prove a fruit­ful area of re­search at a later time.

Tak­ing note of these con­straints ap­pro­pri­ately tem­pers what­ever the emerg­ing pat­terns seem to sug­gest. The ab­sence of treat­ment on a given ques­tion may say more about the me­dium of trans­mis­sion than its his­tor­i­cal rel­e­vance. We will draw our con­clu­sions from what is avail­able, while re­mem­ber­ing that much re­mains in the ar­chives.

Ap­pli­ca­tion for To­day§

Many who read Acts 8Acts 8¹And Saul was consenting to his death. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church that was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.²And devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.³But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and dragging men and women committed them to prison.⁴They therefore that were scattered, went about preaching the word.[…] sup­pose that Si­mon’s sin is one few oth­ers—if any oth­ers at all—will ever com­mit. Both Bur­ton²²“For in the opin­ion of many, si­mony hath lost its be­ing, in re­rum na­tura, as be­ing long ago an­ti­quated, and out of date, dead and buried with Si­mon him­self. And if (as Chrys­os­tom saith) the gift of giv­ing the Holy Ghost was pe­cu­liar to the apos­tles, so that not even Philip bap­tiz­ing gave the Holy Ghost withal; for this gift was proper only to the twelve: and if si­mony be sur­named of Si­mon the sire, and Si­mon’s sin was about the buy­ing of the Holy Ghost: then that gift ceas­ing, and Si­mon be­ing de­ceased, where is there left so much as the name of si­mony, to lend a ti­tle to our in­tended trea­tise?” Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 1. and the Anat­o­mist²³“Many who have read these words [of Acts 8Acts 8¹And Saul was consenting to his death. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church that was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.²And devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.³But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and dragging men and women committed them to prison.⁴They therefore that were scattered, went about preaching the word.[…]], think it an easy mat­ter to wipe off the guilt of si­mony from them­selves, sup­pos­ing that there is no si­mony, but the of­fer­ing to buy the ex­tra­or­di­nary gift of the Holy Ghost, which they deem to have been the pe­cu­liar fact of Si­mon Ma­gus, which none, or few else, can ever stum­ble upon. But how su­per­fi­cially they pass over the text, and that they ei­ther do not, or are not will­ing to un­der­stand the same, may eas­ily ap­pear to any who looks more nar­rowly into, and more se­ri­ously con­sid­er­eth the mat­ter con­tained therein.” The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 11–12. be­gin their works with the ob­ser­va­tion that those nom­i­nally aware of the his­toric doc­trine fre­quently re­gard them­selves as free of such dan­gers. This may be es­pe­cially true in our own times, when the cor­rup­tion that ex­ists takes sub­tler forms than in for­mer days. Many evan­gel­i­cals con­sider them­selves pro­tected from temp­ta­tion to the sin since they op­er­ate in an en­vi­ron­ment rel­a­tively clear of in­sti­tu­tional brib­ery. How­ever, the cor­rup­tion known as “si­mony” reaches fur­ther than these shal­low no­tions, and where sin is poorly un­der­stood, it will be poorly avoided. As the An­gli­can di­vine Jer­emy Tay­lor ob­served, “Most men choose the sin, if it be once dis­put­able whether it be a sin or no.”²⁴Tay­lor, The Flesh and the Spirit, fol. 136.

There­fore, our study will front­load def­i­ni­tion and ex­plo­ra­tion be­fore at­tempt­ing to ad­dress any mod­ern con­cern di­rectly. The ul­ti­mate goal is to de­velop prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tions for our own time, but con­sid­er­able ex­po­sure to the doc­trine must come first in or­der to es­tab­lish the ex­per­tise by which any di­ag­no­sis can be made. This is, of course, the or­di­nary way of re­trieval stud­ies—to un­der­stand a his­tor­i­cal doc­trine in its own right be­fore bring­ing it to bear on the present—but it is no­table that the same need was felt by those who han­dled the doc­trine in past gen­er­a­tions. Bur­ton ob­served it with an anal­ogy to civil law:²⁵“The Ger­mans have very good laws to pun­ish drunk­en­ness, but they find it very hard to de­fine what drunk­en­ness is. So in Eng­land, we have good laws to pun­ish adul­tery, but we find a great dif­fi­culty in con­vinc­ing any of com­mit­ting the act of adul­tery. So it may be said of si­mony. First there­fore let us see what si­mony is.” Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 1. charges do lit­tle to con­vict apart from terms of the of­fense. Like­wise with di­vine law, clar­ity of con­science re­quires clar­ity of def­i­ni­tion.

Sub­se­quently mak­ing con­tem­po­rary ap­pli­ca­tion will nec­es­sar­ily en­tail fol­low­ing the im­pli­ca­tions of this doc­trine be­yond their tra­di­tional lim­its to log­i­cal con­clu­sions that have not been pre­vi­ously ar­tic­u­lated. This is the task of a truly re­for­ma­tional theol­ogy. Wyc­liffe and Hus were among the first to turn the doc­trine of si­mony against the sale of in­dul­gences. Lu­ther spoke of “true si­mony” to ex­press dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the lim­ited con­cep­tion of Rome and ap­ply the doc­trine to its whole sys­tem of works right­eous­ness.²⁶Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 25:31–34 (WA 43, 419:30–430:18). Bur­ton pro­duced a cat­a­log of com­mon­place ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal ar­range­ments, la­bel­ing them si­mo­ni­a­cal though they were not then ad­mit­ted as such.²⁷Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie. As each of these ex­panded the doc­trine’s reach in his own day, we in­tend to do the same in ours.

Such en­deav­ors have a ten­dency to stir up more than a lit­tle re­sis­tance. Pe­ter Da­mian re­ported that when the elev­enth-cen­tury monk Ro­muald in­tro­duced this doc­trine to those who had been or­dained for money, they plot­ted to kill him be­cause up un­til that time, no one knew it was a sin.²⁸Pe­ter Da­mian, Vita beati Ro­mualdi, cap. 35 (PL 144:986C–D). In 1494, a Car­mel­ite friar was found mur­dered in his bed with twenty wounds af­ter preach­ing against si­mony.²⁹The friar was Adam of Genoa, who had preached at Rome against the si­mony of Alex­an­der VI. Ma­li­piero, An­nali ve­neti, 318; cf. Burck­hardt, Civil­i­sa­tion of the Re­nais­sance, 155. Jan Hus was burned at the stake on a num­ber of charges, but in his own as­sess­ment as well as pop­u­lar opin­ion, it was pri­mar­ily for his preach­ing against ac­cepted prac­tices that he iden­ti­fied as si­mony.³⁰“En­e­mies abound every­where, both Czech and Ger­man, seek­ing my life: […] For it af­fects both the pope and the car­di­nals when one preaches against pride, against av­a­rice, and es­pe­cially against si­mony.” Hus, Pos­tilla, 114.G; cf. Spinka, John Hus and the Czech Re­form, 38–40n62. See also, Spinka, John Hus: A Bi­og­ra­phy, 87. Be­fore it dis­solved, Mau­rice of Prague warned the Coun­cil of Con­stance that “the com­mon opin­ion of the peo­ple, al­though false and he­ret­i­cal, cries out that Jan Hus was sen­tenced by the coun­cil as though it had judged him as se­verely as the Sav­ior judged the si­mo­ni­acs, against whom he, though con­demned, had preached most ve­he­mently.” Mau­rice of Prague, Con­sil­ium de Ec­cle­si­as­tico Statu, 870. It may seem mel­o­dra­matic to re­count these events as though we do not live in a time of boun­ti­ful broth­er­hood and ex­cep­tional lib­erty, but it would be naïve to sup­pose that a mod­ern ap­pli­ca­tion of the doc­trine of si­mony would be met with uni­ver­sal grat­i­tude. But faith­ful theol­ogy has never been mea­sured by its re­cep­tion. Truth re­mains truth whether it is wel­comed or re­sented. Magna est ver­i­tas et prae­va­let—truth is great and pre­vails.

Con­clu­sion§

If the fore­go­ing has dwelt on what has been lost, let us close by con­sid­er­ing what stands to be gained. The goal here is not to add one more sin to the list to avoid. The law, in its third use, is given to guide the re­deemed in grate­ful obe­di­ence. To re­trieve a ne­glected doc­trine is to re­cover a rule of life.³¹West­min­ster As­sem­bly, The West­min­ster Con­fes­sion of Faith, 19.6; Par­tic­u­lar Bap­tist As­sem­bly, Sec­ond Lon­don Bap­tist Con­fes­sion of Faith, 19.6. A re­cov­ered doc­trine of si­mony sup­plies a frame­work for think­ing clearly about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween money and min­is­try, com­merce and the things of God. Where these dis­tinc­tions have been lost, con­fu­sion reigns; but where they are re­stored, we are taught and equipped to glo­rify God in the things he has freely given.

Be­cause many mod­ern read­ers know “si­mony” as a term for the pur­chase of church of­fice, they may be sur­prised to learn its clas­sic def­i­ni­tion is much broader. Rather than eclips­ing every other cat­e­gory, com­merce in or­di­na­tions falls un­der the same head­ing as the sale of sac­ra­ments, of prayer, of preach­ing, and of teach­ing, which to­gether re­ceive com­pa­ra­ble at­ten­tion.

Pre-Ref­or­ma­tion works sup­ply many def­i­ni­tions to this ef­fect, but an ini­tial dem­on­stra­tion may be made from an early Prot­es­tant work. In his Loci, the Lu­theran scholar Jo­hann Ger­hard con­tended against the Je­suit Rob­ert Bel­lar­mine on the na­ture of or­di­na­tions. Bel­lar­mine ar­gued that or­di­na­tion must be a sac­ra­ment since sell­ing or­di­na­tion would be si­mony, but ac­cord­ing to Ger­hard, this is an in­suf­fi­cient proof since si­mony is con­sti­tuted not merely in the sale of sac­ra­ments but in the sale of any spir­i­tual thing what­so­ever.¹“cu­jus­vis rei spir­i­tu­alis” Ger­hard, Loci Theo­lo­gici, 23.3.12.150. In the words of one Lol­lard preacher, if one sells “any ghostly [spir­i­tual] thing, he errs and doth si­mony.”²Foxe, Actes and Mon­u­ments, 5.468.

If si­mony per­tains to any spir­i­tual thing, what ex­actly con­sti­tutes a “spir­i­tual thing”? To an­swer this, we will first lay the nec­es­sary foun­da­tions by ex­am­in­ing the dis­tinc­tions theo­lo­gians de­vel­oped to iden­tify a spir­i­tual thing, and then put those foun­da­tions to work by sur­vey­ing the con­crete cat­e­gories to which they have been ap­plied.

54Dis­tinc­tions§

We must now pro­ceed ac­cord­ing to the scho­las­tic maxim: qui bene dis­tin­guit, bene do­cet—he who dis­tin­guishes well, teaches well. These dis­tinc­tions mark the bound­aries of def­i­ni­tion for spir­i­tual things.

Cre­ated vs. Un­cre­ated§

First, the term “spir­i­tual” is not a syn­onym for “im­ma­te­rial.” Even ideas them­selves are spir­i­tual in the broader sense of be­ing im­ma­te­rial, and yet if there is any sin in traf­fick­ing in such things, it be­longs to a dif­fer­ent cat­e­gory of con­cern. For ex­am­ple, it is sin­ful to pro­vide a civil judg­ment for a bribe, though such an ac­tiv­ity is not strictly sac­ri­le­gious.

Rather, in the con­text of con­cerns around si­mony, a thing is “spir­i­tual” in­so­far as it is a su­per­nat­ural grace of the Holy Spirit. Par­al­lel vo­cab­u­lary from so­te­ri­ol­ogy is in­struc­tive: we speak of our union with Christ as be­ing “le­gal” and “spir­i­tual.” The for­mer most im­me­di­ately ef­fects our jus­ti­fi­ca­tion as our iden­tity with Christ is fo­ren­si­cally de­clared by the Fa­ther, and the lat­ter most im­me­di­ately ef­fects our sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion as our in­graft­ing into him is or­gan­i­cally wrought by the Holy Spirit. Both these un­ions are spir­i­tual as re­gards their im­ma­te­ri­al­ity, but only the lat­ter is termed “spir­i­tual” on ac­count of the Spirit’s agency.

The school­men dis­tin­guished that which is of the Holy Spirit (a spir­itu in­cre­ato) from those things of men and an­gels (a spir­itu cre­ato).³See Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 318b). The for­mer in­cludes sav­ing graces, while the lat­ter en­com­passes the nat­ural en­dow­ments and prod­ucts of the ra­tio­nal soul. For this rea­son, in the pas­sage men­tioned ear­lier, Ger­hard ob­served that when any spir­i­tual thing is sold, the Holy Spirit him­self is con­sid­ered to be sold.⁴Ger­hard, Loci Theo­lo­gici, 23.3.12.150.

55Right vs. Fact§

In dis­cus­sions about the abil­ity to en­gage in com­merce, a dis­tinc­tion needs to be made be­tween au­thor­ity and power. When deny­ing that some spir­i­tual thing may be sub­ject to sale, theo­lo­gians are usu­ally deny­ing that it is morally per­mit­ted to buy and sell a thing, but some­times they are deny­ing that it is pos­si­ble to sell it at all. Such a thing can­not be sold by right (de jure) or in fact (de facto).⁵See Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 318b).

This is the case with all spir­i­tual things, most prop­erly speak­ing. Whether things of the un­cre­ated Spirit or things of cre­ated spir­its, as such things can­not be phys­i­cally ma­nip­u­lated, they can­not be trans­ferred from one per­son to an­other. Nei­ther vir­tues, nor knowl­edge, nor any kind of grace ac­tu­ally trans­mits from one to an­other when money changes hands. As Mar­tin Lu­ther re­marked, “in re­al­ity si­mony is im­pos­si­ble, but in pre­tense it is most com­mon.”⁶Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 282:8–9).

Yet this re­quires us to ex­pand our def­i­ni­tion of “spir­i­tual things” be­yond those things which are prop­erly spir­i­tual in them­selves, oth­er­wise Si­mon Ma­gus him­self es­capes the charge of si­mony. Not only did the sor­cerer fail to pur­chase the gift of the Spirit be­cause of Pe­ter’s ob­struc­tion, he also failed be­cause noth­ing of the Spirit—strictly speak­ing—may be bought in any sense, ei­ther eth­i­cally or met­a­phys­i­cally. When Pe­ter de­nied that Si­mon could buy the Spirit with money, he did not merely re­buke his ac­tiv­ity but de­clared it fu­tile, such an ex­change be­ing im­pos­si­ble (Acts 8:20Acts 8:20But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you have thought to obtain the gift of God with money.).

Es­sence vs. Cause§

Things may be spir­i­tual ei­ther by es­sence (per es­sen­tiam) or by cause (per cau­sam). Things like grace and vir­tues are them­selves spir­i­tual things and can­not be prop­erly sold. How­ever, other things like the sac­ra­ments are iden­ti­fied as “spir­i­tual” on ac­count of their spir­i­tual ef­fects. These, hav­ing an out­ward phys­i­cal pres­ence, can be sold.⁷Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 1, qc. 1, ad 3; Pel­bar­tus, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 1; Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 318b); Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, sol. (p. 93a). John Ma­jor dis­missed these cat­e­gories in his ear­lier edi­tion but af­firmed them in his later one. Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 145va); Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 183ra).

For ex­am­ple, some­one who sells an or­di­nance such as bap­tism is not ca­pa­ble of sell­ing the grace of bap­tism it­self but, by sell­ing the act of bap­tiz­ing, com­mits si­mony. Note that while Pe­ter ac­cused Si­mon of de­sir­ing to traf­fic in the Holy Spirit, Si­mon specif­i­cally sought to buy—and pre­sum­ably sell—the phys­i­cal act of lay­ing on hands.

To Prot­es­tant ears, the no­tion of caus­ing a spir­i­tual thing may sug­gest the con­fer­ring of grace ex opere op­er­ato, but this is not in­tended by the dis­tinc­tion. Rather, it speaks of causes in a more ab­stract sense as those things which are in­stru­men­tal in bring­ing about an ef­fect. The Re­formed fol­lowed suit in af­firm­ing this dis­tinc­tion.⁸Ames, Con­science, 5.229.

Some might re­gard the sale of such things as ei­ther a lesser form of si­mony or not si­mony at all, since cor­po­real signs are not them­selves spir­i­tual but one step re­moved from spir­i­tual things. On the con­trary, be­cause out­ward signs can ac­tu­ally be sold un­like grace it­self, it is the worst form of si­mony.⁹“Imo is­tud est pes­si­mum ge­nus Si­mo­niae” Au­riol, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. un., a. 2 (p. 166a).

Of course, no one ac­tu­ally in­tends to buy some­thing that is spir­i­tual in it­self; the si­mo­ni­a­cal pur­chaser al­ways in­tends to buy some out­ward op­er­a­tion of a min­is­ter as a “sac­ra­men­tal cause of a spir­i­tual re­al­ity.”¹⁰Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 1, qc. 3, ad 3. The point in de­scrib­ing the cause as “sac­ra­men­tal” is not to im­ply that the only thing that could be sold would be a sac­ra­ment, prop­erly speak­ing. Rather, the point is that the pur­chase oc­curs in or­der to re­ceive some grace of the Spirit.

Prin­ci­ple vs. End§

A re­lated dis­tinc­tion ap­plies to spir­i­tual ac­tions. An act may be called spir­i­tual ei­ther as to its prin­ci­ple (ex parte prin­ci­pii, its source), when it be­longs to some­one from a spir­i­tual gift or of­fice; or as to its end (ex parte fi­nis, its pur­pose), when some­thing spir­i­tual is at­tained by means of it. For ex­am­ple, a min­is­ter’s work of ad­min­is­ter­ing the sac­ra­ments is spir­i­tual as to its prin­ci­ple since it pro­ceeds from a spir­i­tual of­fice. How­ever, the giv­ing of alms is spir­i­tual only as to its end. While it has the de­sign of char­ity, giv­ing money is not it­self a spir­i­tual thing.¹¹See ibid., IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2; Aqui­nas, Quod­li­bet, VIII, q. 6, a. 1 (p. 175).

These two cat­e­gories carry dif­fer­ent con­se­quences for com­merce. In acts that are spir­i­tual as to their prin­ci­ple, no one may con­tract to re­ceive any­thing for per­form­ing them with­out si­mony. In acts spir­i­tual only as to their end, one may buy and sell the acts them­selves be­cause they are not in­her­ently spir­i­tual. For ex­am­ple, one may guilt­lessly hire an­other to dis­trib­ute alms on his be­half. How­ever, it would be si­mony for one hold­ing min­is­te­rial of­fice to sell his ser­vice by ar­rang­ing for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of a sac­ra­ment by con­tract.

Ap­pli­ca­tions§

The fore­go­ing dis­tinc­tions may risk leav­ing an overly ab­stract im­pres­sion of “spir­i­tual things.” To give the cat­e­gory con­crete shape, we will sur­vey prin­ci­pal ex­am­ples of those things to which the la­bel has been ap­plied.

Sac­ra­ments§

As al­ready ob­served, sac­ra­ments are spir­i­tual things. The pro­hi­bi­tion against charg­ing for the sac­ra­ments is among the old­est and most fre­quently re­peated in­junc­tions in the his­tory of the church. As early as the Synod of El­vira (c. 305), clergy were for­mally for­bid­den from ac­cept­ing a fee for bap­tism.¹²Synod of El­vira, can. 48 (PL 84:307B). In the fifth cen­tury, Ge­la­sius I pro­hib­ited ask­ing for com­pen­sa­tion for bap­tism or con­fir­ma­tion.¹³Ge­la­sius I, Ep. 14.5; cf. C. 1, q. 1, c. 99. The Elev­enth Coun­cil of To­ledo (675) ex­tended the pro­hi­bi­tion to cover bap­tiz­ing, con­firm­ing, con­fer­ring chrism, and or­di­na­tion.¹⁴Elev­enth Coun­cil of To­ledo, c. 8 (PL 84:461D–462B); cf. C. 1, q. 1, c. 101. Chrism fre­quently ap­pears in lists of things for­bid­den to sell.¹⁵X 5.3.8, 16, 21, 36; C. 1, q. 1, cc. 101–2, 105–6.

Thomas Aqui­nas de­voted an ar­ti­cle to the ques­tion of “whether it is al­ways un­law­ful to give money for the sac­ra­ments,” han­dling a num­ber of ob­jec­tions to the the­sis.¹⁶Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 2. Early Prot­es­tant Thomas Be­con drove the point home by con­trast­ing the sale of the Lord’s sup­per with the na­ture of its in­sti­tu­tion: “Whereas Christ at his sup­per gave the sac­ra­ment of his body and blood freely to his dis­ci­ples, ye sell your masses, and make mer­chan­dise of the sac­ra­ment, as the cos­tard­mon­ger doth of his cos­tards and of his other fruits.”¹⁷Be­con, Dis­play­ing of the Popish Mass, 283. A “cos­tard” is a type of ap­ple.

Or­di­na­tions§

The sale of or­di­na­tions was the most prom­i­nent form of si­mony in pa­tris­tic and me­dieval writ­ings. Such ac­tiv­ity car­ries great po­ten­tial for cor­rup­tion. If one is will­ing to sell an or­di­na­tion, he has no rea­son to with­hold it from un­qual­i­fied men. If one is will­ing to pur­chase his or­di­na­tion, he cares not for true honor and would as read­ily cor­rupt the word and sell the sac­ra­ments. One may even con­clude that “of all other kinds of si­mony, this is the most per­ni­cious and dam­na­ble.”¹⁸Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 47. This fo­cus in the lit­er­a­ture left such an im­pres­sion that to­day, many are un­aware that the term “si­mony” refers to any­thing other than the pur­chase and sale of or­di­na­tions.

The Apos­tolic Canons—a fourth-cen­tury work of Syr­ian ori­gin—de­clares, speak­ing in the voice of the apos­tles, “If any bishop ob­tains pos­ses­sion of that dig­nity by money, or a pres­byter or dea­con, let him be de­posed, both he and the one who or­dained him, and let him be cut off en­tirely from com­mu­nion as well, as Si­mon Ma­gus was by me, Pe­ter.”¹⁹Ca­nones apos­to­lo­rum, can. 29 (p. 572). Sim­i­larly, the Coun­cil of Chal­cedon (451) stip­u­lated that when money changes hands for an or­di­na­tion, both the or­dainer and the or­dained must for­feit their rank.²⁰Ca­nones con­cilii Chal­ce­do­nen­sis, can. 2 (ACO II.2.2, 125); cf. C. 1, q. 1, c. 113. In the early church, none can com­pare to Greg­ory the Great, whose fight against si­mo­ni­a­cal or­di­na­tions was per­sis­tent. In a hom­ily de­liv­ered at the Lat­eran on March 11, 591, he made his first known use of the term “si­mo­ni­a­cal her­esy”: “I speak in grief to you who are bish­ops, be­cause we have learned that some of you make or­di­na­tions for pay­ment, sell spir­i­tual grace, and heap up tem­po­ral gains from oth­ers’ in­iq­ui­ties at the cost of sin. […] the sa­cred canons con­demn the si­mo­ni­a­cal her­esy and com­mand that those who seek a price for con­fer­ring or­ders be de­prived of the priest­hood.”²¹Greg­ory I, Ho­mil­iae in evan­ge­lia, 17.13 (p. 109).

At the be­gin­ning of the clas­si­cal pe­riod of canon law, Gra­tian de­voted eight con­sec­u­tive canons to si­mo­ni­a­cal or­di­na­tion, draw­ing pri­mar­ily from Greg­ory the Great’s let­ters and hom­i­lies for his au­thor­ity.²²C. 1, q. 1, cc. 113–20. At the end of that pe­riod, the Liber ex­tra opens its De si­mo­nia with Greg­ory’s syn­od­i­cal pro­hi­bi­tion and re­turns to the ques­tion of or­di­na­tions re­peat­edly through­out its forty-six chap­ters.²³X 5.3.1, 5, 18, 20, 22, 35, 37, 39, 45.

Canon law like­wise ad­dressed en­try into or­ders that par­al­leled for­mal of­fices of the church. En­try into re­li­gious life—pro­fes­sion in a mon­as­tery, in a men­di­cant or­der, or in a house of canons—was deemed si­mony if it was granted for a price.²⁴C. 1, q. 2. Lynch, Si­mo­ni­a­cal En­try pro­vided an ex­haus­tive his­tory of the ques­tion. For uni­ver­si­ties, sim­i­lar laws gov­erned ad­mis­sion into the ranks of mas­ters. Be­cause au­thor­ity to teach in a uni­ver­sity should be granted on merit alone, the sale of teach­ing li­censes (li­cen­tia do­cendi) was banned,²⁵See X 5.5.3. but in the par­tic­u­lar case of theo­log­i­cal teach­ing li­censes, im­posed fees were ad­di­tion­ally la­beled as si­mo­ni­a­cal.²⁶E.g., Huguc­cio of Pisa, Summa de­cre­to­rum, D. 37, c. 12 (fol. 48rb); cf. Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 2.83n50. Pe­ter the Chanter took the charge a step be­yond, ap­ply­ing it to li­censes in the lib­eral arts as well on the ground that the arts pre­pare for theol­ogy.²⁷Ibid., 1.123; 2.83n51.

A re­lated con­cern is si­mony in the res­ig­na­tion of an of­fice. The me­dieval canon­ists ad­dressed this in some mea­sure, con­clud­ing that those who would re­nounce their ti­tle for a sum are guilty.²⁸E.g., “if a pact goes be­fore […] that res­ig­na­tion is si­mo­ni­a­cal.” Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.8 (fol. 70rb). The sev­en­teenth-cen­tury cler­gy­man James Met­ford sum­ma­rized the po­si­tion: a res­ig­na­tion is only law­ful pro­vided one makes “no cor­rupt bar­gain, nor re­serve no pen­sion; for that would make the res­ig­na­tion un­law­ful both in law and con­science; as the canon­ists gen­er­ally con­clude.”²⁹Met­ford, A Gen­eral Dis­course of Si­mony, 79. Early in Eng­lish Prot­es­tantism, Wil­liam Tyn­dale ob­served hy­poc­risy in the mat­ter and framed it thus: “it is si­mony to sell a ben­e­fice (as they call it) but to re­sign upon a pen­sion and then to re­deem the same, is no si­mony at all. Oh crafty jug­glers and mock­ers with the word of God.”³⁰Tyn­dale, Obe­di­ence of a Chris­tian Man, fol. 27r. Later lit­er­a­ture more fre­quently ad­dresses the no­tion of a bond of res­ig­na­tion, which es­tab­lished fi­nan­cial pen­al­ties for cler­gy­men who would not re­sign when re­quested by their pa­tron.³¹See Willis, Si­mony: In Two Parts, 123–25. Si­mon Degge ob­served that the dif­fer­ence be­tween such a bond and out­right pay­ment is neg­li­gi­ble: “for what dif­fer­ence is there be­tween a bond ex­pressly to pay money, and a bond to re­sign, which is to pay money, if the pa­tron say, ei­ther pay me so much or re­sign, when all the world knows in such a case the par­son must pay the money, or re­sign and be un­done?”³²Degge, The Par­son’s Coun­sel­lor, 50.

Mar­riage and Bur­i­als§

Both mar­riage and bur­i­als fre­quently fea­ture in lists of things for which charg­ing would con­sti­tute si­mony.³³E.g., X 5.3.8, 9, 29, 42; Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 7.H; Tyn­dale, Obe­di­ence of a Chris­tian Man, fol. 77r. But it is not enough to know that me­dieval writ­ings for­bade sell­ing such things; we must also know why they did so. The com­mon pre-Ref­or­ma­tion view of mar­riage and bur­i­als was sac­ra­men­tal; mat­ri­mony it­self was re­garded as a sac­ra­ment, and last rites were a se­ries of sac­ra­ments ad­min­is­tered to the dy­ing. If these pro­scrip­tions were mo­ti­vated by their sac­ra­men­tal na­ture, then we are not ob­serv­ing any­thing more than we have al­ready with bap­tism and com­mu­nion. If they were mo­ti­vated by some­thing more, then the na­ture of spir­i­tual things may be fur­ther elu­ci­dated.

Re­gard­ing mar­riage, scho­las­tic theo­lo­gians ac­knowl­edged that mar­riage is es­tab­lished in na­ture it­self, and there­fore re­cip­ro­cal trans­ac­tions made in its con­text—whether for a dowry, a civil of­fi­ciant’s fee, or the like—may be per­fectly valid.³⁴“Mar­riage is not only a sac­ra­ment but also an of­fice of na­ture. There­fore, on the side on which it is a sac­ra­ment, […] he com­mits si­mony who ex­acts money for the bless­ing of those mar­ry­ing. But on the side on which it is an of­fice of na­ture, noth­ing pre­vents ac­cept­ing a price for mar­riage.” Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 1, ad 2. How­ever, in the cer­e­mony of Chris­tian mar­riage, there is some­thing spir­i­tual that is given. While the lit­er­a­ture ad­dresses the sac­ra­men­tal na­ture of mar­riage, al­most al­ways the re­marks turn to the dis­tinct no­tion of the bless­ing of nup­tials. On ac­count of sell­ing that spir­i­tual bless­ing, the priest who would of­fi­ci­ate for a price com­mits si­mony. For ex­am­ple, Bo­na­ven­ture, de­fend­ing the prac­tice of a dowry as be­ing non-si­mo­ni­a­cal, ex­plained, “the spir­i­tual char­ac­ter con­sists prin­ci­pally in the priestly bless­ing.”³⁵Bo­na­ven­ture, In Sent. IV, d. 26, q. 2 (p. 669). Later, he wrote, “grace is not given in the same man­ner as in the other sac­ra­ments, […] un­less per­haps by rea­son of the added bless­ing, which would make the seller si­mo­ni­a­cal.” Ibid., IV, d. 30, a. un., q. 3, ad 3 (p. 711).

Re­gard­ing bur­i­als, the con­cern of­ten cen­tered on the sale of the plot,³⁶This will be ad­dressed in the next chap­ter, pp. 75–76. but canon­ists as­serted that any as­so­ci­ated re­li­gious ser­vice should be per­formed freely.³⁷Among oth­ers Hos­ti­en­sis made the dis­tinc­tion of the use of the term “bur­ial” (se­pul­tura) to re­fer to the plot of land and the ser­vices per­formed in the process; the lat­ter may not be sold. Hos­ti­en­sis, Summa au­rea, ad X 3.28 (fol. 387rb). The Eng­lish an­ti­quary Henry Spel­man in­voked Hos­ti­en­sis in the sev­en­teenth cen­tury to ar­gue that bur­ial ser­vices must be given freely. Spel­man, De Se­pul­tura, 18–20. These ser­vices are not merely any­thing that might be con­sid­ered sac­ra­men­tal, but even things like read­ing a psal­ter are in­cluded among that which must not be sold in the process.³⁸Hos­ti­en­sis, Summa au­rea, ad X 5.3 (fol. 535ra). Those who would hold a body hos­tage for pay­ment (fu­nus ar­res­tare) were plainly la­beled si­mo­ni­acs.³⁹E.g., Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 321a); C. 13, q. 2, c. 12; cf. Greg­ory I, Ep. VIII.35. One story that ap­pears re­peat­edly in later lit­er­a­ture is that of Gio­vanni Ma­ria Vis­conti, the fif­teenth-cen­tury Duke of Mi­lan who dis­cov­ered a widow in dis­tress with the corpse of her hus­band in her home be­cause the priest re­fused to per­form the bur­ial ser­vice apart from pay­ment. The duke com­manded that the av­a­ri­cious cler­gy­man have a deep pit dug and, upon its com­ple­tion, had him tossed in ahead of the body of the de­ceased, bury­ing the liv­ing along with the dead.⁴⁰See Cas­ti­glione, Ri­cordi, 119. This ap­pears to be the ear­li­est tell­ing in print.

Ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Ab­so­lu­tion§

The church’s power to bind and loose—to dis­ci­pline and re­store—is spir­i­tual. To sell the ex­er­cise of that power, or to sell its sus­pen­sion, is there­fore si­mo­ni­a­cal. Ac­tiv­i­ties wrongly ex­changed for a fee may in­clude con­ceal­ing sin, re­stor­ing with­out due pen­ance, or even re­stor­ing with due pen­ance.⁴¹X 5.3.14, 24. John Wyc­liffe ob­served that im­pos­ing an an­nual fine to pun­ish sin­ners is an es­pe­cially dam­na­ble si­mony.⁴²Wyc­liffe, De blas­phe­mia, cap. 10 (153:21–30). Like­wise, it is si­mo­ni­a­cal to pay for an of­fense to be pun­ished less se­verely.⁴³Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 320b).

This pro­hi­bi­tion ex­tends into the do­main of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal vis­i­ta­tion—the for­mal process by which a bishop in­spected a parish or dio­cese for needed cor­rec­tions. To re­quire or give money for this process was re­garded as si­mony, al­though theo­lo­gians and canon­ists had some al­low­ance for fees to be re­quired for the vis­i­tor’s board and lodg­ing.⁴⁴Ibid., IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 320b); Pel­bar­tus, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 3. The Glossa or­di­na­ria on the De­cre­tum warns about “fraud­u­lent” claims to such ex­penses, Glossa or­di­na­ria ad C. 1, q. 1, c. 115.

Prayer§

Given our es­tab­lished dis­tinc­tions, prayer is spir­i­tual on a num­ber of counts: prin­ci­ple and end,⁴⁵See Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2, ad 2. es­sence and cause.⁴⁶See Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 3, q. 2, ad 8 (p. 387). Its ef­fi­cacy de­rives from spir­i­tual de­vo­tion, and its aim is a spir­i­tual ef­fect. There­fore, “prayer must not be made for money, but for God and on ac­count of good af­fec­tion.”⁴⁷Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 320b). Wyc­liffe de­scribed those who trade in prayers as “dull-wit­ted mer­chants trad­ing in shad­ows, as the sun is sink­ing to­ward eve­ning.”⁴⁸Wyc­liffe, De ora­cione, cap. 3 (347:13–14).

A ques­tion arises at this point re­gard­ing the prac­tice of giv­ing alms to the poor so that they will pray for the giver. The school­men oc­ca­sion­ally pro­vided jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for this in their writ­ing, sim­i­lar to those given for in­dul­gences: the money is not a pay­ment in ex­change for prayer, but an act of char­ity meant to give rise to prayer.⁴⁹E.g., Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2, ad 2; Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 2.

How­ever, this line of logic was re­jected by the proto-Re­form­ers and Re­form­ers. Wyc­liffe de­scribed such sub­tleties as a mock­ery of God.⁵⁰Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 7 (86:12–28). In his Dec­ades, Hein­rich Bul­lin­ger ad­dressed the monks and priests who would take a fee to pray: “I know what these word-jug­glers bring for­ward here, and plead in de­fense of prayers hired out for a fee; but in a few words I set be­fore them this knot to un­tie. These men who pray ei­ther have faith and char­ity or they do not: if they have them, they pray freely, out of char­ity; if they do not, their prayers are empty, and so with a false show they de­ceive the stu­pid crowd, which lays out its money for just prayers, while these men pay out un­just ones. And even if they were just, they were none­the­less nei­ther to be sold nor to be bought.”⁵¹Bul­lin­ger, Dec­ades, V.5 (foll. 311v–312r).

Preach­ing§

Preach­ing is a spir­i­tual thing. There­fore, the sale of ser­mons or the ac­tiv­ity of preach­ing as such is for­bid­den. This has been the judg­ment of theo­lo­gians from the early church to the Re­form­ers. The lit­er­a­ture raises fewer griev­ances against the sale of preach­ing than against other forms of si­mony, but still does so in abun­dant mea­sure. And with min­i­mal var­i­a­tion, the re­sponse has been that min­is­ters must not charge for the proc­la­ma­tion of the word.

The early church spoke on the mat­ter di­rectly on a few oc­ca­sions. The Di­dache warns of proph­ets who would ex­pect pay­ment for their mes­sage,⁵²Di­dache (Doc­trina du­o­decim apos­to­lo­rum), 11.4–6, 12. and the Shep­herd of Her­mas warns that one who charges for his proph­ecy has an earthly spirit rather than the di­vine Spirit.⁵³“He takes pay­ment for his proph­esy­ing, and if he does not re­ceive it, he does not proph­esy. Can a di­vine spirit, then, take pay­ment and proph­esy? A prophet of God can­not pos­si­bly do this; the spirit of such proph­ets is earthly.” Her­mas, The Shep­herd, Mand. 11.12. The school­men ar­rived at sim­i­lar judg­ments. John Ma­jor, a Scot­tish mas­ter at Paris, ap­pealed to Mat­thew 10:8Matthew 10:8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give. in his as­ser­tion that “it is si­mo­ni­a­cal to ac­cept any­thing for preach­ing.”⁵⁴Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 148ra). The word he used for “ac­cept” (ca­pere) might sug­gest a re­quire­ment/de­mand rather than a pas­sive re­cep­tion, but in con­text, he was con­struct­ing an ar­gu­men­tum a for­ti­ori to for­bid sell­ing a church of­fice. The ar­gu­ment from the lesser to the greater against all re­cep­tion in ex­change for church of­fice only works if he is for­bid­ding all re­cep­tion in ex­change for preach­ing.

The proto-Re­form­ers con­curred on this point.⁵⁵E.g., Wil­liam Swin­derby, Foxe, Actes and Mon­u­ments, 5.468. Jan Hus num­bered preach­ing among the spir­i­tual gifts the devil coun­sels priests to sell, cast­ing the trade as a sa­tanic in­ver­sion of Mat­thew 10:8Matthew 10:8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give..⁵⁶Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 7.H. In a ser­mon on the same text, Wyc­liffe preached: “For Christ says thus: You took of God freely, and there­fore give freely your la­bor to the peo­ple; and then it shall be mer­i­to­ri­ous—and oth­er­wise it is si­mony. And here the beg­ging of preach­ers is for­bid­den by God, since it is a hid­den sell­ing of the preach­ing of God’s word.”⁵⁷Wyc­liffe, Ser­mons, serm. LXIV (1, p. 200). Else­where, he wrote sim­i­larly, “he bade not only preach to men that gave to them, but to all man­ner of men, with­out re­spect of per­sons. And so, in a quiet man­ner, Christ for­bade si­mony and beg­ging and cov­etous­ness to all his preach­ers. For as they freely took their knowl­edge from God, so should they freely deal it to the peo­ple.” Wyc­liffe, Of the Seven Deadly Sins, cap. IX (p. 130).

This pro­hi­bi­tion was main­tained by the Re­form­ers. Lu­ther ar­gued that “True si­mony, there­fore, is com­merce ex­er­cised in the Word of God, in the Sac­ra­ments, in the Church, and in the Saints.”⁵⁸Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 25:31–34 (WA 43, 422:10–11). He com­mented to this ef­fect of­ten through­out his works, and in sur­pris­ing places. On Psalm 104:12Psalms 104:12By them the birds of the heavens have their habitation; they sing among the branches. (“the birds […] sing among the branches”), he re­marked that preach­ers ought to preach with­out charg­ing be­cause “even the lit­tle birds sing for free.”⁵⁹Lu­ther, Dic­tata su­per Psal­te­rium, 103 (WA 4, 182:28–30).

The Eng­lish heirs of the Ref­or­ma­tion like­wise iden­ti­fied the sale of preach­ing with the sin of Si­mon. As Thomas Man­ton said, “This is the true si­mony, to huck out the gospel, and sell our holy things.”⁶⁰Man­ton, Ser­mons upon the Elev­enth Chap­ter, 13.456. Ap­peal­ing to Prov­erbs 3:15Proverbs 3:15She is more precious than rubies; and none of the things you can desire are to be compared to her. (“she is more pre­cious than ru­bies”) and Acts 8Acts 8¹And Saul was consenting to his death. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church that was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.²And devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.³But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and dragging men and women committed them to prison.⁴They therefore that were scattered, went about preaching the word.[…] (Pe­ter’s ad­mo­ni­tion of Si­mon Ma­gus), Ralph Cud­worth, in com­plet­ing Wil­liam Per­kins’s com­men­tary on Ga­la­tians, wrote that the sale of the preach­ing of the word is con­demned by vir­tue of its price­less­ness.⁶¹“the graces of God ex­hib­ited unto us in the preach­ing of the word are so pre­cious that they can­not be val­ued at any price, all earthly things a man can de­sire, are not to be com­pared to them, as the wise man saith; there­fore Pe­ter said to Si­mon Ma­gus, ‘Thy money per­ish with thee, be­cause thou think­est that the gift of God may be ob­tained by money.’” Cud­worth, The Sup­ple­ment, 537. His con­tem­po­raries iden­ti­fied the sale of the word of God as si­mony, most of­ten in the con­text of preach­ing.⁶²E.g., Bax­ter, A Chris­tian Di­rec­tory, 4.19.2.34 (p. 119). Eng­lish au­thors also oc­ca­sion­ally spoke of that si­mony that oc­curs when some­one preaches with ex­cep­tional ef­fort for the sake of praise or pre­fer­ment.⁶³E.g., Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 42; Bos­ton, A So­lil­o­quy on Man-Fish­ing, 48–49.

Teach­ing§

How far the fore­go­ing pro­scrip­tions reach de­pends on how we in­ter­pret the vo­cab­u­lary of “preach­ing” and “the word of God.” Taken nar­rowly, they gov­ern the for­mal el­e­ment of wor­ship and evan­ge­lis­tic en­coun­ters, but many au­thors seem to ap­ply these terms to doc­tri­nal in­struc­tion more gen­er­ally. Re­gard­less, we may also turn to those sources that treat teach­ing more di­rectly.

As early as the third cen­tury, Clem­ent of Alex­an­dria counted “the dis­trib­ut­ing of both teach­ings [δογμάτων] and money to those in need” among the sac­ri­fices the true Chris­tian of­fers.⁶⁴Clem­ent of Alex­an­dria, Stro­mata, VII.7.49.5 (GCS 17, 37:7–9). In the fol­low­ing cen­tury, Aphra­hat the Per­sian opened his Dem­on­stra­tions by com­mit­ting him­self to freely teach the one who re­quests it.⁶⁵“For the things you have asked of me were given freely, and freely they are re­ceived as well; and if any­one who has them wishes to with­hold them from one who asks, what­ever he re­fuses to give is taken away from him. Who­ever re­ceives freely ought to give freely.” Aphra­hat, Dem­on­stra­tiones, 1.1 (PS 1.1:6); cf. ibid., 10.8 (PS 1.1:460–64).

Me­dieval writ­ings di­rectly iden­ti­fied the sale of doc­tri­nal in­struc­tion as si­mony.⁶⁶A mi­nor­ity iden­ti­fied the sale of any teach­ing as si­mony on the claim that knowl­edge is im­me­di­ately a gift from God and that the Holy Spirit teaches all things (John 14:26John 14:26But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.), Wil­liam of Aux­erre, Summa au­rea, III, tr. 21 (foll. 229vb–230ra). Ac­cord­ing to Ge­of­frey of Poi­tiers, the one who teaches theol­ogy for a price sells the word of God and falls un­der the curse of Jer­e­miah 48:10Jeremiah 48:10Cursed be he who does the work of Jehovah negligently, and cursed be he who keeps back his sword from blood. (“Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord fraud­u­lently”).⁶⁷“Con­cern­ing the mas­ter who teaches for the sake of pence, it is asked whether he falls un­der this curse [the male­dic­tion of Jer­e­miah 48:10Jeremiah 48:10Cursed be he who does the work of Jehovah negligently, and cursed be he who keeps back his sword from blood., un­der dis­cus­sion in the sur­round­ing ques­tions]. We say that if he does not act out of av­a­rice or vain­glory, he does not. But of theo­lo­gians it is said oth­er­wise, since they are pub­lice per­sone—pub­lic per­sons—and their lec­tur­ing bears wit­ness to the truth. There­fore, since they are teach­ers of the word of God, it is not law­ful for them to teach for a re­ward, lest they be found sell­ers of the word of God. […] Whence in Mi­cah [3:11] the Lord, re­count­ing other sins, says: ‘Their priests taught for hire.’” Ge­of­frey of Poi­tiers, Summa, 39va; cf. Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 2.86n69. As was noted in the first chap­ter, this was first fully ex­pressed by Rob­ert of Cour­son in his Summa.⁶⁸“As to what Sol­o­mon says—‘Do not sell wis­dom, doc­trine, or un­der­stand­ing’—we say that he is speak­ing of the un­der­stand­ing, doc­trine, and wis­dom of spir­i­tual or moral things, which pro­ceed from the Spirit of wis­dom, un­der­stand­ing, and knowl­edge. These things can­not be sold, as we have said be­fore, by right.” Cour­son, Summa, 10.3 (fol. 47va); cf. Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 2.86n70. There, he con­tended that not only theol­ogy, but all moral phi­los­o­phy pro­ceeds from the Spirit of wis­dom, and there­fore con­sti­tutes si­mony just as sell­ing Scrip­ture it­self.⁶⁹“If any­one with this as his prin­ci­pal end con­signs spir­i­tual or moral things to a tem­po­ral use so as to gain ad­van­tage thereby, then just as si­mony is com­mit­ted by the sale of manna—which sig­ni­fies sa­cred Scrip­ture—so also is si­mony com­mit­ted by the sale of the flour car­ried in their cloaks from the land of Egypt, which sig­ni­fies the moral teach­ings of the phi­los­o­phers.” Cour­son, Summa, 10.4 (fol. 47va); cf. Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 2.86–87n71. A cen­tury later, Pe­ter Pa­lu­danus re­layed this as the re­ceived opin­ion, dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween that which comes from man’s spirit and that which comes from the Holy Spirit. Though one can­not sell knowl­edge it­self, one can charge for the act of teach­ing. How­ever, when it comes to mat­ters of theol­ogy—rev­e­la­tion that arises only from the Spirit—one can­not charge.⁷⁰“But there are other acts for which it is law­ful to re­ceive [pay­ment] for la­bor, such as for teach­ing and other spir­i­tual things from a cre­ated spirit. But for teach­ing it­self, some say that it is not si­mony, be­cause it is not by re­la­tion to the Holy Spirit, but to the hu­man spirit; oth­ers say that it is. But re­gard­ing theol­ogy, it is seen as si­mony.” Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 320b).

Pe­ter Au­riol ex­plained this dis­tinc­tion:

But if we take a freely given grace [gra­tia gra­tis data; i.e., a spir­i­tual gift]—for ex­am­ple preach­ing, teach­ing, and the like—ei­ther it will be taken with re­spect to the in­trin­sic act, and here no sale takes place, for I can­not sell you the habit of my knowl­edge; or it is taken with re­spect to the ex­trin­sic act—for ex­am­ple the pro­jec­tion of the voice, the move­ment of the body, and the like—and thus in such things a sale does in­deed fall out and have its place; and in this way teach­ing, coun­sel, tes­ti­mony, and the like are sold, and all of these turn out to be sin­ful.⁷¹Au­riol, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. un., a. 2 (p. 166a).

While this pro­hi­bi­tion on the sale of doc­tri­nal in­struc­tion was only oc­ca­sion­ally stated so di­rectly, it is in­ti­mated fre­quently by oth­ers who specif­i­cally ex­cepted in­struc­tion in the lib­eral arts from those things which must not be sold. In each of these cases, the pro­hi­bi­tion of mer­chan­dis­ing in theol­ogy, the queen of the sci­ences, is sim­ply pre­sumed by the ex­plicit per­mis­sion to en­gage in com­merce with her hand­maid­ens.⁷²E.g., Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2, ad 8; Aqui­nas, Quod­li­bet, VIII, q. 6, a. 1 (p. 175). In the fifth book of the Liber ex­tra, ti­tles three and five con­tain the bulk of de­tail on this topic. As one sev­en­teenth-cen­tury re­source sum­ma­rizes, it for­bids as si­mony “mas­ters and preach­ers to teach for money.”⁷³Rid­ley, A View of the Ci­vile and Ec­cle­si­as­ti­call Law, 76. A num­ber of com­men­ta­tors on these ti­tles al­lowed the un­ben­e­ficed mas­ter to re­ceive a vol­un­tary gift for his teach­ing, while clar­i­fy­ing that no such gift should be asked of the poor.⁷⁴E.g., Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 3, q. 2 (p. 386b); Hos­ti­en­sis, Summa au­rea, ad X 5.5 (fol. 541r).

For Wyc­liffe, not only did proper im­i­ta­tion of Christ re­quire teach­ing freely,⁷⁵“The faith­ful ought to be mind­ful that it is more blessed to give than to re­ceive, and in im­i­ta­tion of Christ to give freely and gen­er­ously spir­i­tual teach­ing.” Wyc­liffe, De fun­da­cione sec­ta­rum, cap. 2 (p. 21). but the sale of teach­ing was a “nearer and more hate­ful si­mony” than the sale of church of­fice.⁷⁶Ibid., cap. 11 (p. 56). In his ver­nac­u­lar trea­tise on the seven deadly sins, he wrote:

But men that should be pro­fes­sors of the sci­ence of God sin many ways about this sci­ence [knowl­edge]. As some men hide this trea­sure and deal it not about; and yet, the more that it is dealt, the more it in­creases. And this is much more sin than to hide gold. […] And so, with beg­ging, and pride of their speech, they sell God’s word, as one would sell an ox. Nev­er­the­less, Christ teaches that, since his sci­ence is freely given to him, it should be freely dealt. And be­cause the tell­ing of God’s law would most profit his Church, the fiend is full busy to hin­der this ghostly [spir­i­tual] profit.⁷⁷Wyc­liffe, Of the Seven Deadly Sins, cap. III (p. 123).

Re­form­ers were con­sis­tent with the proto-Re­form­ers on this point. For Lu­ther, teach­ing freely was the nec­es­sary an­tith­e­sis to the “Sa­tanic au­dac­ity” of of­fer­ing for­give­ness of sins at a price.⁷⁸In the con­text of si­mony, Lu­ther wrote, “But this is not law­ful, and the Pope with Sa­tanic au­dac­ity es­tab­lished this trade. We are com­manded to teach, con­sole, [and] ab­solve all who re­ceive and be­lieve; and they all re­ceive from us freely, ac­cord­ing to the say­ing: ‘Freely you have re­ceived; freely give.’” Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 282:23–26).

Con­clu­sion§

The term “si­mony” em­braces far more than com­merce in or­di­na­tions. While the sev­eral scho­las­tic dis­tinc­tions keep it from ap­ply­ing too broadly to any­thing im­ma­te­rial, they do not pre­vent it from ap­ply­ing to man­i­fold or­di­nances and ac­tiv­i­ties: sac­ra­ments, the sol­em­ni­za­tion of mar­riage, fu­neral ser­vices, ab­so­lu­tion, prayer, preach­ing, and teach­ing. Wher­ever the Holy Spirit works or his in­stru­ments of grace are ad­min­is­tered, there stands a spir­i­tual thing that can­not be ex­changed for money.

Our def­i­ni­tion of si­mony for­bids the buy­ing or sell­ing of any­thing “an­nexed” to a spir­i­tual thing. Given that we are us­ing the ex­act def­i­ni­tion of Aqui­nas, a cou­ple of notes on our trans­la­tion of the phrase “spir­i­tu­ali an­nexum” may be help­ful.

First, the more lit­eral ren­der­ing of the Latin is not “some­thing an­nexed to a spir­i­tual thing,” but sim­ply “a spir­i­tual an­nex,” as we will oc­ca­sion­ally use through­out this chap­ter. The “an­nex” in this con­text refers to the ob­ject to which the spir­i­tual thing has been joined. The fact that this an­nex is “spir­i­tual” iden­ti­fies it as hav­ing been joined with a spir­i­tual thing.

Sec­ond, a num­ber of trans­la­tions use the word “con­nected,” but more tra­di­tional ones—as ours here—ren­der it “an­nexed.” This is to be pre­ferred not only be­cause it is the et­y­mo­log­i­cal cog­nate of the Latin term (an­nexum), but also be­cause it bet­ter cap­tures the sense. To be con­nected might sug­gest some kind of loose as­so­ci­a­tion or jux­ta­po­si­tion, but to be an­nexed de­scribes a join­ing to­gether of two into that which be­comes func­tion­ally one.

For ex­am­ple, many na­tions are con­nected to other lands in var­i­ous ge­o­graph­i­cal and po­lit­i­cal senses, but when a na­tion an­nexes a ter­ri­tory, that re­gion joins with the na­tion in such a way that one can­not at­tack it with­out at­tack­ing the na­tion it­self. It is sim­i­lar with spir­i­tual an­nexes. One can­not sell some­thing an­nexed to a spir­i­tual thing with­out sell­ing 72the spir­i­tual thing it­self. Thus, both are re­garded as si­mony.

Dis­tinc­tions§

Once again, sev­eral dis­tinc­tions will help us un­der­stand the no­tion of a spir­i­tual an­nex.

An­nex vs. Cause§

In the pre­ced­ing chap­ter, we dis­tin­guished be­tween the es­sence of spir­i­tual things and an­other thing which func­tions as its cause. In some ways, this may seem to be iden­ti­cal to the no­tion of an an­nex. In­deed, Wyc­liffe found the term “spir­i­tual things” to be suf­fi­cient, pre­fer­ring not to add on “spir­i­tual an­nexes” since they are con­cep­tu­ally sim­i­lar.¹Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 1 (3:8–13). How­ever, he ap­pears to be unique in this re­gard.

The vast ma­jor­ity of theo­lo­gians who ad­dressed the topic con­sid­ered the no­tion of spir­i­tual an­nexes to be a help­ful cat­e­gory.²E.g., Ames, Con­science, 5.229. These are dis­tin­guished from causes of spir­i­tual things in that an an­nex is one step re­moved from the no­tion of a cause. In the words of Aqui­nas, “some things are spir­i­tual in their own right, such as the sac­ra­ments and other things of this kind; how­ever, cer­tain things are called spir­i­tual from the fact that they ad­here to such things.”³Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 1, ad 6.

For ex­am­ple, con­sider a min­is­ter who would pro­vide and of­fi­ci­ate bap­tism freely but only upon pur­chase of a bap­tism cer­tif­i­cate. The bap­tism it­self is the cause of a spir­i­tual ben­e­fit, but the cer­tif­i­cate has been joined to bap­tism, its pur­pose and value be­ing de­ter­mined thereby. Bap­tism is there­fore a spir­i­tual thing while the cer­tif­i­cate is a spir­i­tual an­nex.

73De­pen­dent vs. Di­rected§

It may ap­pear at first that there are many things an­nexed to spir­i­tual things that may be sold with­out charge of si­mony. For ex­am­ple, church prop­erty—whether the land, or the build­ing, or fur­ni­ture, etc.—is all con­nected to the wor­ship of God.

How­ever, there are two modes of an­nex­a­tion, one be­ing of more con­se­quence for charges of si­mony. Some­thing can be an­nexed to a spir­i­tual thing by be­ing “de­pen­dent” (de­pen­dens) on that thing, or by be­ing “di­rected” (or­di­na­tum) to that thing.⁴Ibid., II‑II, q. 100, a. 4; Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 1. In the case of church prop­erty like the land, build­ing, or fur­ni­ture, these things are merely di­rected to spir­i­tual things. That is, they are be­ing used for the pur­pose of wor­ship, etc., but these may be bought and sold so long as it is not for rea­son of the spir­i­tual.⁵See As­te­sanus of Asti, Summa de ca­si­bus, VI, tit. 55, q. 1 (fol. 165r). Other things are an­nexed as de­pen­dent on a spir­i­tual thing, such as the work of open­ing the tem­ple doors (Mal. 1:10Malachi 1:10“Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle [fire on] my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you,” says Jehovah of hosts, “neither will I accept an offering at your hand.).⁶C. 1, q. 3, d.a.c. 1. While this ac­tiv­ity is it­self merely phys­i­cal, its im­por­tance and value are en­tirely de­pen­dent on sa­cred ac­tiv­ity in­side. Fur­ther­more, to ac­cess the al­tar, one must go through the doors, so it would be for­bid­den to charge for the open­ing of the doors. On this point, many ap­pealed to a dec­re­tal os­ten­si­bly of Pas­chal I:⁷The pas­sage is in fact ex­cerpted from the Epis­tola Wido­nis, an anti-si­mony po­lemic of the elev­enth cen­tury. Canon­ists trans­mit­ted it as a dec­re­tal of Pas­chal I, Fried­berg, ed., Cor­pus Iu­ris Canon­ici, 1:357n24; the true iden­tity of its au­thor re­mains un­cer­tain, West, “The Si­mony Cri­sis”. “just as the soul does not live cor­po­re­ally with­out the body, who­ever sells one of the two, with­out which the other can­not be had, leaves nei­ther of them un­sold.”⁸E.g., C. 1, q. 3, c. 7; Lom­bard, Sent. IV, d. 25, c. 4 (p. 910); Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4; Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25.

Pre­sup­pos­ing vs. Pre­ced­ing§

Aqui­nas of­fered an ad­di­tional way to dis­tin­guish an­nex­a­tion by de­pen­dence or di­rec­tion by spec­i­fy­ing that the sec­ond form fea­tures a tem­po­ral or­der­ing. Those things which are di­rected to­ward a spir­i­tual thing pre­cede it. For ex­am­ple, the land a church is built on pre­cedes its use for the con­gre­ga­tion. A pas­toral sal­ary, on the other hand—inas­much as it truly is for honor of clergy—pre­sup­poses the spir­i­tual of­fice. It is con­cep­tu­ally de­pen­dent on the of­fice since any who re­ceive it be­come clergy and any who be­come clergy re­ceive it.

The Pu­ri­tan Wil­liam Ames de­scribed an­nexes as things so ad­joined to a spir­i­tual func­tion or of­fice that they “go be­fore, ac­com­pany, or fol­low af­ter it, that they can no ways be sep­a­rated from it.”⁹Ames, Con­science, 5.229. How­ever, his de­scrip­tion of var­i­able or­der­ing does not un­der­mine the other. In speak­ing of things which might go be­fore a spir­i­tual thing, he did not re­fer to an in­de­pen­dent ex­is­tence, but that which might be re­ceived be­fore the per­for­mance of a spir­i­tual ser­vice.

Ap­pli­ca­tions§

In the lit­er­a­ture, a num­ber of ex­am­ples make re­peated ap­pear­ances to il­lus­trate the na­ture and bound­aries of an­nex­a­tion. While a num­ber of the as­sumed prem­ises may not be agree­able to a Prot­es­tant au­di­ence, the im­por­tant thing to note is the ap­pli­ca­tion of the prin­ci­ples of an­nex­a­tion to the prem­ises rather than the prem­ises them­selves.

Con­se­crated Things§

Among the most fre­quently dis­cussed ap­pli­ca­tions of an­nex­a­tion is the case of con­se­crated things: ves­sels, build­ings, and land that have been blessed and set apart for sa­cred use. Be­cause these things are di­rected to­ward holy pur­poses, they are an­nexed to spir­i­tual things, con­strain­ing the terms un­der which they may be ap­pro­pri­ately sold.

Church ves­sels that are con­se­crated (for ex­am­ple, chal­ices and trays for the Eu­charist) may not be sold. How­ever, the ma­te­rial that com­poses them may be sold for a proper cause.¹⁰Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4, ad 2; Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain, In Sent. (red. C), IV, d. 25, q. 3 (fol. 315r); John of Frei­burg, Summa con­fes­so­rum, I, tit. 1, q. 16 (fol. 2vb). Break­ing them first, in or­der to des­e­crate them, was typ­i­cally rec­om­mended to guar­an­tee that they are be­ing sold as merely ma­te­rial things.¹¹Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4 (fol. 150r); Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, sol. (p. 93a). On this point, many ap­pealed to Am­brose, who prac­ticed the same.¹²Am­brose, De of­fi­ciis min­is­tro­rum, 2.28.136 (pp. 167–68). He enu­mer­ated three pur­poses—re­deem­ing cap­tives, build­ing churches, and en­larg­ing bur­ial grounds—for which “it is law­ful to break, melt down, and sell even the con­se­crated ves­sels of the church.”¹³Ibid., 2.28.142 (p. 170); cf. ibid., 2.28.143 (p. 170).

Church build­ings and land func­tion sim­i­larly to con­se­crated ves­sels. They are di­rected to­ward holy pur­poses such that upon con­se­cra­tion, they may not be sold. How­ever, prop­erly des­e­crated, they may be sold. Aqui­nas ex­plained, “It is also law­ful now to sell or buy the land where a church for­merly stood, in a case of ne­ces­sity: just as was said con­cern­ing the ma­te­rial of sa­cred ves­sels.”¹⁴Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4, ad 3. The im­pli­ca­tion seems to be that just as with ves­sels, the church would need to be de­stroyed in or­der for the ma­te­rial and land to be sold. Eng­lish writ­ings main­tained a con­cern over the sale of church prop­erty, but the de­bate ceased to be framed in terms of si­mony but rather in terms of sac­ri­lege.¹⁵E.g., Warner, Church-Lands Not to Be Sold, ch. 5 (pp. 15ff.).

Bur­ial grounds—a cem­e­tery or tomb—are like­wise di­rected to­ward a sa­cred use. If un­con­se­crated land is sold for the pur­pose of be­ing put to holy use, it is per­mit­ted. If the land is sold at a cer­tain value on ac­count of it be­ing holy, it is si­mony.¹⁶See Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 3, ad 2. Abra­ham’s pur­chase of the tomb of the pa­tri­archs from Eph­ron the Hit­tite (Gen. 23Genesis 23¹And the life of Sarah was 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah.²And Sarah died in Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron), in the land of Canaan. And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.³And Abraham rose up from before his dead, and spoke to the children of Heth, saying,⁴“I am a foreigner and a sojourner with you. Give me a possession of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”[…]) pro­vided a com­mon ex­am­ple for con­sid­er­a­tion among the school­men. Be­cause Abra­ham bought the land as an or­di­nary piece of ground, and Eph­ron sold it as an or­di­nary piece of ground, no si­mony was com­mit­ted, though it could not be made sub­ject to sale af­ter­ward.¹⁷Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4; Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 147ra); C. 13, q. 2, c. 12–13. The bur­ial site tem­po­rally pre­cedes its use for bur­ial, hav­ing its own value apart from any in­ter­ment. Prot­es­tants who ad­dressed the mat­ter con­curred with this judg­ment.¹⁸“Must Abra­ham there­fore be called a Si­mo­niac, since a bur­ial place is among sa­cred things, and the buy­ing or sell­ing of sa­cred things is called Si­mony? But we have heard that the field that was bought was a sec­u­lar thing, sub­ject to an earthly lord. And the sell­ing of a field is al­to­gether a civil trans­ac­tion. There­fore, Abra­ham did not sin when he bought the field and es­tab­lished a tomb there; oth­er­wise, what­ever is bought by Chris­tians for nec­es­sary uses would be si­mo­ni­a­cal—bread, meat, wine, all of which are turned to the use of the saints—which is ab­surd.” Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 25:31–34 (WA 43, 420:26–34). He con­tin­ued by af­firm­ing the canon law and theo­lo­gians who re­jected sell­ing such things as cem­e­ter­ies af­ter hav­ing been es­tab­lished for a sa­cred use. Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 420:35–40). See also, Spel­man, De Se­pul­tura, 2–4.

Ben­e­fices and Tithes§

Two closely re­lated ap­pli­ca­tions of an­nex­a­tion are ben­e­fices and tithes. A ben­e­fice is an in­come at­tached to a spir­i­tual of­fice: the sal­ary of a min­is­ter, po­ten­tially at­tended by other ben­e­fits. Tithes are the funds given by the peo­ple that are ded­i­cated to the good of the church. These no­tions over­lap since a ben­e­fice is typ­i­cally con­sti­tuted of tithes. Each is an­nexed to some­thing spir­i­tual, but on dif­fer­ent grounds and in dif­fer­ent ways.

A ben­e­fice is an­nexed to an ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal po­si­tion, and it is an­nexed by de­pen­dence: one can­not buy the rights to the in­come with­out buy­ing the of­fice.¹⁹See Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 145v). In such an ex­change, the spir­i­tual of­fice and the ma­te­rial sus­te­nance have been so joined to­gether that to trade in the one is to trade in the other. Com­merce in ben­e­fices was con­demned as si­mo­ni­a­cal by both the me­dievals and later theo­lo­gians.²⁰Quot­ing Gra­tian, Bur­ton wrote, “Si­mony is com­mit­ted both in re­spect of or­ders, and in re­spect of the ben­e­fice it­self.” Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 2; cf. C. 1, q. 3, d.a.c. 1.

Tithes, on the other hand, are an­nexed to spir­i­tual things on ac­count of be­ing ded­i­cated to God and set apart for sa­cred pur­poses.²¹See Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4, ad 3; Wil­liam Per­al­dus, Sum­mae vir­tu­tum, 2.7 (p. 114); The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 21. Theo­lo­gians and canon­ists fre­quently ob­jected to sell­ing tithes,²²E.g., Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4; cf. C. 1, q. 1, c. 3. a sale that re­di­rects them from their proper pur­pose for the sake of money. Be­ing an­nexed by di­rec­tion rather than de­pen­dence, it may seem that there would be a way to dis­solve that an­nex­a­tion, but this never ap­pears to be en­ter­tained, per­haps on ac­count of them not merely be­ing ded­i­cated for a par­tic­u­lar use, but ac­tu­ally hav­ing been given to God.

The au­thors at is­sue here wrote un­der an es­tab­lished church, where the term “tithes” typ­i­cally refers to funds com­pelled by civil law rather than given vol­un­tar­ily. In other words, they are func­tion­ally a tax im­posed by the civil mag­is­trate. Since the agency in such ded­i­ca­tion of re­sources is thereby com­pli­cated, this mat­ter was de­bated ex­ten­sively, at least in the Eng­lish sys­tem. John Mil­ton was ar­guably the loud­est op­po­nent of all such com­pul­sory sup­port for min­is­try, de­nounc­ing it as si­mony.²³Mil­ton, Hire­lings, 66–67. Wyc­liffe had sim­i­larly main­tained that tithes ought to be vol­un­tary and with­held from un­wor­thy clergy.²⁴Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 5 (56:3–4). Iron­i­cally, in his de­fense of an im­posed tithe, Thomas Hall ob­served that in­de­pen­dent churches were more pru­dent in en­sur­ing their own min­is­ters were suf­fi­ciently pro­vided for than those who re­lied on pub­lic funds.²⁵Hall, Sal Ter­rae, 107–8.

The Right of Pa­tron­age§

When land car­ry­ing a right of pa­tron­age was sold, that right nat­u­rally trans­ferred to the new owner. In other words, by pur­chas­ing the prop­erty, the buyer also ac­quired the power to nom­i­nate the cleric who would hold the as­so­ci­ated of­fice or ben­e­fice. On this ques­tion, the school­men typ­i­cally con­cluded that such real es­tate trans­ac­tions were not nec­es­sar­ily si­mony. The right of pa­tron­age was seen as a non-es­sen­tial fea­ture of the prop­erty. One who buys the land—so long as his in­tent is pure—does not at­tempt to pur­chase the right of pa­tron­age.²⁶E.g., Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4; Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4 (fol. 150r); Wil­liam of Aux­erre, Summa au­rea, III, tr. 21 (fol. 230ra–230rb). How­ever, many only ar­rived at that con­clu­sion af­ter sub­stan­tial de­lib­er­a­tion and hes­i­ta­tion.²⁷See esp. Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 146vb).

On this point, the proto-Re­form­ers dif­fered. If the prop­erty comes with such spir­i­tual pow­ers, it can­not be sold apart from be­ing di­vested of those as­so­ci­ated priv­i­leges.²⁸Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 8.F; Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 3 (36:5–16). Wyc­liffe went as far as to sug­gest the abol­ish­ment of all rights of pre­sen­ta­tion, ob­serv­ing that the prim­i­tive church op­er­ated by con­gre­ga­tional suf­frage. While pa­trons should still ex­ist and grant their en­dow­ments to the church, men should be ap­pointed to church of­fice by an elec­tion among the la­ity.²⁹Ibid., cap. 3 (36:19–30).

Re­gard­less, this prac­tice con­tin­ued into the Eng­lish Ref­or­ma­tion, only to be op­posed by some later An­gli­cans.³⁰“Si­mony,” 286; The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 29,34. In Eng­lish ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal law, the op­er­a­tive right flow­ing from pa­tron­age, that of pre­sent­ing a clerk to a va­cant ben­e­fice, was termed an ad­vow­son. Part of the cause for con­cern was be­cause the com­plex­i­ties of this mech­a­nism per­mit­ted the Pu­ri­tans to sig­nif­i­cantly ad­vance their in­flu­ence.³¹Willis, Si­mony: In Two Parts, 127–46. See also, Kirby, “The Lay Fe­of­fees”. At the in­sti­ga­tion of John Pres­ton, the Fe­of­fees for Im­pro­pri­a­tions pooled funds to pur­chase ad­vow­sons and in­stall Pu­ri­tan lec­tur­ers, min­is­ters who preached out­side of the pri­mary ser­vices of the church. The sale­able ad­vow­son en­tered its sun­set in 1898, as a se­ries of re­stric­tions cur­tailed the trans­fer and use of the right of pa­tron­age.³²Ben­e­fices Act 1898. This process was com­pleted only when the sale of ad­vow­sons was abol­ished al­to­gether by the Pa­tron­age (Ben­e­fices) Mea­sure 1986.

Cer­tif­i­cates§

Cer­e­monies of spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance, such as or­di­na­tions or bap­tisms, of­ten came with a cer­tif­i­cate or let­ter of con­fir­ma­tion. These doc­u­ments are an­nexed to the spir­i­tual act they serve by de­pen­dence. The cer­tif­i­cate only has mean­ing in light of the cer­e­mony, and ac­quir­ing the cer­tif­i­cate is nec­es­sary in or­der for the cer­e­mony to be rec­og­nized as ac­tu­ally in­duct­ing some­one into church mem­ber­ship or church of­fice. There­fore, it is si­mony to charge for such cer­tif­i­cates or any­thing per­tain­ing to the cer­tif­i­cates: ink, pa­per, the la­bor of pro­duc­ing it, etc.

In a syn­odal ad­dress in July 595, Greg­ory the Great pro­vided this foun­da­tional pro­hi­bi­tion:

Fol­low­ing the an­cient rule of the fa­thers, I de­cree that noth­ing is ever to be re­ceived for or­di­na­tions, nei­ther from the giv­ing of the pal­lium, nor from the de­liv­ery of doc­u­ments, nor from that which a new pre­tense born of am­bi­tion has de­vised un­der the name of a writ­ing-tablet. For in or­dain­ing a bishop, the pon­tiff lays on his hand; the min­is­ter reads the Gospel les­son; and the no­tary writes the let­ter of con­fir­ma­tion. And just as it is not fit­ting for the pon­tiff to sell the hand he lays on, so nei­ther should the min­is­ter or the no­tary sell his voice or his pen in the or­di­na­tion. There­fore for or­di­na­tion, or for the pal­lium, or for doc­u­ments and the writ­ing-tablet, I en­tirely for­bid the one who is to be or­dained or who has been or­dained to give any­thing. If any­one pre­sumes to ex­act or seek any­thing un­der the name of profit from the afore­said things, he shall be sub­ject to guilt at the strict judg­ment of Al­mighty God.³³Greg­ory I, Ep. V.57a.5 (1, 364:23–365:8); cf. X 5.3.1; C. 1, q. 2, c. 4.

This pas­sage be­came the stan­dard au­thor­ity on the sub­ject. Many sub­se­quent au­thors who ad­dressed fees for or­di­na­tion doc­u­ments made ref­er­ence to this par­tic­u­lar let­ter.

This pro­hi­bi­tion was none­the­less widely flouted. Wyc­liffe gave a pic­ture of fees ex­acted for or­di­na­tion: “the clerk of the pon­tiff who in­scribes the name of the can­di­date, the bar­ber even if he has not shaved the can­di­date—which is more as­ton­ish­ing—and the one pre­sent­ing let­ters di­mis­sory will not get them back un­til the tax has been paid to the devil, so that when all the si­mo­ni­a­cal tak­ings of the lesser min­is­ters are col­lected, in the bishop’s an­nual or­di­na­tion there ac­cu­mu­lates a great heap of si­mony amount­ing to many pounds.”³⁴Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 6 (78:10–17). Af­ter ap­peal­ing to the pas­sage from Greg­ory, he ex­plained that “in­fi­nite ex­cuses could be fab­ri­cated” that one does not pur­chase a spir­i­tual thing, apart from rec­og­niz­ing that “an ex­change is made re­gard­ing the tem­po­ral thing an­nexed to it.”³⁵Ibid., cap. 6 (79:19–24).

Books§

Books are like­wise an­nexed to spir­i­tual things. Of­ten, the school­men spoke of them sim­i­larly to con­se­crated things, sub­ject to the same rules.³⁶E.g., Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, sol. (p. 93a). Other times, they were de­scribed in re­la­tion as an­nexed merely to things of the hu­man spirit.³⁷E.g., Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 146ra); Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 183rb). Rarely was the dis­tinc­tion be­tween nat­ural sci­ence and theol­ogy dis­cussed in the con­text of con­cerns around the sale of books, but oc­ca­sion­ally it was ad­dressed in­di­rectly.

Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton is rep­re­sen­ta­tive: “Con­cern­ing things an­nexed to spir­i­tual things with ref­er­ence to the hu­man spirit, it can be said that things an­nexed to teach­ing of nat­ural phi­los­o­phy—such as schools, books, and sim­i­lar things—can be sold as far as com­mon law is con­cerned, un­less the church sup­plied such things to a teacher for the in­struc­tion of cler­ics; in that case, he would not be per­mit­ted to ex­act any price for them.”³⁸Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 3, q. 3 (p. 388a). Rich­ard pos­i­tively as­serted that the books “an­nexed to teach­ing of nat­ural phi­los­o­phy” (an­nexa doc­trine phys­ice) may be sold. He seemed to be op­er­at­ing on the as­sump­tion that this de­scribes all books, im­ply­ing that dif­fer­ent rules may ap­ply to books of theol­ogy. How­ever, it is not clear what these rules would be; per­haps they are the same as his stated rules on books ded­i­cated by the church for the ed­u­ca­tion of clergy, treated as con­se­crated things with the afore­men­tioned con­straints.

Sev­eral of the Eng­lish Re­form­ers com­mented on the sale of books as well, al­beit not fre­quently in the con­text of de­fin­ing si­mony.³⁹The his­to­rian Thomas Fuller ex­plic­itly re­jected that sell­ing books con­sti­tuted si­mony, giv­ing ex­am­ples of sev­eral fa­mous theo­lo­gians who dou­bled as their own pub­lish­ers, Fuller, The Church-His­tory of Brit­ain, 8.36 (p. 36). In iden­ti­fy­ing books as only be­ing holy in a sense of be­ing di­rected to a par­tic­u­lar use, the Pu­ri­tan Jer­e­miah Bur­roughs likened it to spe­cial days of thanks­giv­ing or fast­ing: they are made holy by their use, not by any in­her­ent prop­erty. The day has no in­her­ent ho­li­ness and is set apart by man for God rather than di­rectly by God him­self. Sim­i­larly, the pa­per that makes up a book has no in­her­ent ho­li­ness.⁴⁰With days of thanks­giv­ing or fast­ing, “there is a ho­li­ness in them when out of their use, as in min­is­ters etc., but there no more ho­li­ness in days and times set apart by man for God, than there is ho­li­ness put upon the pa­per which the Bible is printed upon; the printer takes out so many reams of pa­per from his heap, and sets them apart to print the Bible; now will any man think this pa­per is more holy than the rest.” Bur­roughs, Hosea 4–7, 661. The Pu­ri­tan Ben­ja­min Needler used books as an il­lus­tra­tion to ex­plain the fi­nan­cial main­te­nance of min­is­ters. The gospel can­not be put to sale, but Bibles can be­cause you are not sell­ing the truth but the cover, pa­per, and bind­ing. Sim­i­larly, when one sup­ports a min­is­ter, he is not buy­ing the truth that the min­is­ter gives.⁴¹“But is it not a wicked thing to set the gospel to sale? Yes, with­out ques­tion: but pray mark, you say some­times you have bought a Bible; the truth is, a Bible in some sense can­not be said to be bought; what then do we buy? I an­swer, you buy the cover and the pa­per, and the bind­ing, and the print­ing, but the Bible it­self is God’s gift: So peo­ple do not buy the gospel, nor min­is­ters sell it.” Needler, Gen­e­sis, 136–37.

All of the fore­go­ing ad­dresses the sale of phys­i­cal books as an­nexed to theo­log­i­cal doc­trine rather than sale of their con­tents or the la­bor in­volved in their au­thor­ship. Such con­cerns over the sale of theo­log­i­cal train­ing were im­plic­itly ad­dressed in the pre­vi­ous chap­ter un­der the head­ing of Teach­ing, but by way of dem­on­stra­tion, con­sider one his­to­rian’s sum­mary eval­u­a­tion of the au­thor’s ethos through the time of the Ref­or­ma­tion:

Un­til the mid­dle of the eigh­teenth cen­tury it was con­sid­ered bad man­ners to write for re­mu­ner­a­tion in­stead of for rep­u­ta­tion. Up to that time only a few writ­ers had ever re­ceived a fee from their pub­lish­ers; and if they re­ceived it they were anx­ious to hide the fact. Eras­mus, for in­stance, was deeply hurt when some Ital­ian col­leagues hinted that Al­dus Ma­nu­tius had paid him for a book; and he vi­o­lently de­fended him­self against sim­i­lar in­sin­u­a­tions on the part of Hut­ten and oth­ers. Lu­ther never re­ceived so much as a far­thing for his hun­dreds of books and pam­phlets. Thomas Murner, the Ro­man Cath­o­lic pam­phle­teer, seems to have been the first to re­ceive a fee for his Geuch­matt in 1514.⁴²Stein­berg, Five Hun­dred Years of Print­ing, 145.

An es­pe­cially no­table ex­am­ple can be found in the life of Lu­ther. In 1539, the print­ers of Wit­ten­berg of­fered him a sup­ple­men­tal sal­ary that would have tri­pled his an­nual in­come, all merely for the op­por­tu­nity to be the first to pub­lish his new works; ex­clu­sive rights did not ex­ist at the time. Lu­ther re­jected the of­fer; he would not, he said, sell his grace. Re­mark­ing on how God had am­ply pro­vided so that he never needed to re­sort to such mea­sures, he con­tin­ued, “I have all my life never sold a sin­gle copy [of my writ­ings] nor held a lec­ture for a fee; and I mean to take that boast with me into the grave, God will­ing. Hav­ing food and cloth­ing, I shall be con­tent.”⁴³Lu­ther, Tis­chre­den, no. 4690 (WA TR 4, 431:27–432:11); cf. Pet­te­gree, Brand Lu­ther, 279.

Price as a Dis­cern­ment Mech­a­nism§

Fre­quently, the cost of some­thing would be used to ei­ther dis­cern or re­move doubts of an­nex­a­tion. While true an­nex­a­tion is fun­da­men­tally a mat­ter of de­pen­dence, whether one can be had with­out the other, the price of­ten makes the na­ture of the re­la­tion­ship ev­i­dent. For the lesser form of an­nex­a­tion—tem­po­ral ob­jects di­rected to spir­i­tual uses—costs be­yond the value of the ma­te­rial thing in­di­cate that the spir­i­tual thing is in­tended in the sale. In the words of Thomas of Stras­bourg, “the sale of that which is an­nexed to a spir­i­tual thing does not con­sti­tute si­mony un­less it is sold in­so­far as it is an­nexed—that is, if in the sale re­gard is had to the spir­i­tual thing, and on ac­count of such an­nex­a­tion the tem­po­ral thing is sold more dearly.”⁴⁴Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 1, ad 5 (fol. 150v); cf. ad 4; Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, sol. (p. 93a).

Nu­mer­ous ex­am­ples can be given. This ap­plies to the cost of con­se­crated ves­sels match­ing the cost of the metal that com­poses them,⁴⁵Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain, In Sent. (red. C), IV, d. 25, q. 3 (fol. 315r). con­se­crated wa­ter be­ing sold at the same price as reg­u­lar wa­ter,⁴⁶Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 5, q. 3 (p. 91a). land with the right of pa­tron­age be­ing sold at the same rate as any other land,⁴⁷Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain, In Sent. (red. C), IV, d. 25, q. 3 (fol. 315r); Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 4 (p. 317a). etc. Wyc­liffe as­serted that ex­ces­sively high prices for bless­ings and con­se­cra­tions in­di­cate that it is the spir­i­tual thing that is be­ing sold rather than any ef­fort on the part of the bishop.⁴⁸“Nor is it valid to say that the bishop’s bod­ily la­bor in this is more val­u­able than so much la­bor of a lay­man, be­cause this would have no color [plau­si­bil­ity] ex­cept on ac­count of the spir­i­tual thing an­nexed; and con­se­quently, since so ex­ces­sive a price is taken on ac­count of it, it seems that prin­ci­pally it is the spir­i­tual thing that is be­ing sold so dearly.” Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 6 (74:32–75:4). Hus ob­served the same re­gard­ing steep and widely vary­ing prices for let­ters con­firm­ing an or­di­na­tion.⁴⁹“But if one were to in­sist that the doc­u­ment must be paid for, then I say: a let­ter costs two pen­nies; why then must one pay two kopy, an­other five, an­other four? No one can truly say that the pa­per, or the wax, or the writ­ing costs so much; and they give noth­ing be­yond those things ex­cept spir­i­tual power. How then can it truly be said that they do not sell that power for money? And that the let­ter is not so costly is proved by the fact that when he re­ceives it, he af­ter­ward throws it in a cor­ner or in the mud.” Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 7.B.

Pos­i­tive Law Si­mony§

A sec­ond way an­nex­a­tion can be con­sid­ered be­yond those al­ready ad­dressed is in terms of pos­i­tive law (ius pos­i­tivum). That is, can tem­po­ral things be an­nexed to spir­i­tual things merely by hu­man reg­u­la­tions?⁵⁰Some his­to­ri­ans have framed the term an­nex­a­tion as chiefly ad­dress­ing this cat­e­gory of hu­man reg­u­la­tion. E.g., Leinz, Die Si­monie, 11–12, 39. We might re­state the ques­tion us­ing sev­eral dis­tinc­tions, such as the dif­fer­ence be­tween some­thing that is in­trin­si­cally wrong (ma­lum in se) vs. ex­trin­si­cally wrong (ma­lum pro­hi­bi­tum). How­ever, the typ­i­cal scho­las­tic ap­proach on this topic was to con­trast things pro­hib­ited be­cause they are si­mo­ni­a­cal (pro­hi­bita quia si­mo­ni­aca) vs. things si­mo­ni­a­cal be­cause they are pro­hib­ited (si­mo­ni­aca quia pro­hi­bita).⁵¹E.g., Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 3 (fol. 185vb).

The gen­eral con­sen­sus is that the laws of the church do not have the power to make some­thing si­mony. A num­ber of dis­cus­sions on this go back to Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain. Within a larger dis­cus­sion on the mat­ter, he wrote, “the pro­hi­bi­tion of the law does not change the na­tures of things so as to make what is tem­po­ral spir­i­tual or vice versa; there­fore where there is no si­mony from the na­ture of the thing, there can­not be si­mony from the pro­hi­bi­tion of the law.”⁵²Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain, In Sent. (red. C), IV, d. 25, q. 5 (fol. 318r). A mi­nor­ity will­ingly ac­knowl­edged a sec­ond spe­cies of si­mony merely by church law, though cat­e­gor­i­cally lesser.⁵³E.g., “an­other is si­mony from the pro­hi­bi­tion of the church […] such as the ex­change of some tem­po­ral thing an­nexed to a spir­i­tual.” Henry of Ghent, Quod­li­beta, VI, q. 26 (fol. 247v); “this chap­ter [rul­ing that pen­ance suf­fices with­out res­ti­tu­tion] is to be re­stricted to si­mony pro­hib­ited by the con­sti­tu­tion of the church.” Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.46 (fol. 83rb). For ex­am­ple, the con­fes­sors’ man­u­als de­ter­mined that pos­i­tive law si­mony re­quired a pact to in­cur guilt, rather than be­ing es­tab­lished by the will alone.⁵⁴E.g., John of Frei­burg, Summa con­fes­so­rum, I, tit. 1, q. 5 (fol. 1va).

The most com­pre­hen­sive Eng­lish-lan­guage treat­ment of this ques­tion ap­pears to ex­ist in a tract writ­ten by John Caw­ley, Arch­dea­con of Lin­coln, af­ter his con­vic­tion for si­mony for let­ting out his ar­chi­di­a­co­nal ju­ris­dic­tion to a lay­man un­der a yearly pen­sion. Caw­ley mar­shaled Du­ran­dus and oth­ers to de­fend him­self, ar­gu­ing that his of­fense was only wrong be­cause it was pro­hib­ited (ma­lum pro­hi­bi­tum), not pro­hib­ited be­cause it was wrong (pro­hi­bi­tum quia ma­lum).⁵⁵Caw­ley, Na­ture and Kinds of Si­mony, 2–3. Fur­ther, he saw his pen­alty as a con­tin­u­ing tyr­anny of Rome that man­aged to work its way into the as­sump­tions of the Eng­lish Church.⁵⁶Ibid., 3. Later, upon pe­ti­tion, he was re­in­stated by the crown.

Lu­ther de­cried the ex­pan­sion of the def­i­ni­tion of si­mony merely on the ba­sis of hu­man law: “And now to the Pa­pists ‘spir­i­tual goods’ means rev­enues, taxes, build­ings, towns, and ter­ri­to­ries, which are en­tirely po­lit­i­cal things.”⁵⁷Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 280:11–12). He con­sid­ered these things to be “a most per­verse abuse and hor­ri­ble blind­ness in Canon law in the dis­pu­ta­tions about si­mony.”⁵⁸Ibid., 23:3–4 (WA 43, 280:16–17). He fur­ther gibed that while the Pope was guilty of vi­o­lat­ing his own laws in seiz­ing phys­i­cal prop­er­ties, “our teach­ing frees him from his own books and de­crees and ab­solves him from the crime of si­mony.”⁵⁹Ibid., 23:3–4 (WA 43, 280:42–281:2). On this count, Lu­ther of­fered a con­so­la­tion: “we ab­solve the Pope from this crime ac­cord­ing to the true def­i­ni­tion, in which he has en­tan­gled him­self by his own law: be­cause he does not sell spir­i­tual things—prop­erly so called—for he does not have them.”⁶⁰Ibid., 23:3–4 (WA 43, 281:6–8).

Con­clu­sion§

The cat­e­gory of spir­i­tual an­nexes ex­tends the pro­hi­bi­tion of si­mony be­yond the sale of spir­i­tual things them­selves to in­clude tem­po­ral things so joined to them that one can­not be sold with­out the other. As we have seen, an­nex­a­tion prin­ci­pally comes in the mu­tu­ally ex­clu­sive cat­e­gories of be­ing an­nexed by way of de­pen­dence or by way of di­rec­tion, al­though some have ar­gued for a third cat­e­gory in pos­i­tive law si­mony. Stan­dard ex­am­ples of spir­i­tual an­nexes in­clude con­se­crated things, ben­e­fices, land with rights of pa­tron­age, cer­tif­i­cates, and books. In each case, the cen­tral ques­tion is whether the tem­po­ral thing was so bound with a spir­i­tual thing that the lat­ter could not be ac­quired apart from the for­mer.

Be­cause Si­mon Ma­gus sought to pur­chase the gift of the Spirit, some as­so­ciate si­mony par­tic­u­larly with the sin of buy­ing the Holy Spirit.¹See Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 1, arg. 1 (fol. 150r). How­ever, all se­ri­ous treat­ments of the mat­ter af­firm that si­mony is com­mit­ted in both sell­ing and buy­ing. On this point, many re­ferred back to fifth-cen­tury pope Ge­la­sius I and his epis­tle to the bish­ops of Lu­ca­nia, Brut­tium, and Sic­ily, whose twenty-fourth chap­ter de­clares, “both giver and re­ceiver alike are caught in the dam­na­tion of Si­mon.”²Ge­la­sius I, Ep. 14.24 (p. 375). cf. C. 1, q. 1, c. 6. Pe­ter Lom­bard wrote, “both the giv­ers and the re­ceivers are called si­mo­ni­acs, and both are struck by the same sen­tence.”³Lom­bard, Sent. IV, d. 25, c. 2 (p. 909).

Re­fer­ring to older sources, per­haps go­ing back to Chal­cedon, canon 3 of the Sec­ond Coun­cil of Braga (572) de­scribes “the an­cient de­cree of the fa­thers” as say­ing “cursed be the giver and re­ceiver.”⁴Con­cil­ium Bra­ca­rense se­cun­dum, c. 3 (PL 84:571C–D). Henry Bur­ton cited this canon fa­vor­ably⁵Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 52. and else­where wrote that sell­ers “are as deep in si­mony, as buy­ers.”⁶Ibid., 31. In sup­port, he cited Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cus 27:2 (“As a nail stick­eth fast be­tween the join­ings of the stones; so doth sin stick close be­tween buy­ing and sell­ing.”).

In this chap­ter, we will first ex­am­ine the sym­me­try and asym­me­try be­tween buy­ing and sell­ing, con­sid­er­ing the rel­a­tive grav­ity of each. We will then turn to cases where the buyer may be en­tirely in­no­cent 88even while the seller is guilty. From there, we will con­sider the si­mo­ni­a­cal na­ture of with­hold­ing spir­i­tual things, whether by si­lence, false teach­ing, or re­fusal to min­is­ter. Fi­nally, we will sur­vey the broader cir­cle of guilt, trac­ing the ways one may par­tic­i­pate in­di­rectly in the sin.

Rel­a­tive Grav­ity§

Wyc­liffe iden­ti­fied sell­ing and buy­ing as two sides of one coin. Re­fer­ring to them as “ge­hazia” (gesia) for sell­ing and “si­mon” (si­mo­nia) for buy­ing,⁷See Chap­ter 10, pp. 165–67 for more on this la­bel for sell­ing. he re­fused to grant pri­macy to ei­ther: “And these two poi­sons, the new and the old, fol­low one an­other as cor­rel­a­tives, and each em­braces the name of the other.”⁸Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 1 (2:11–13). The twelfth-cen­tury mas­ter Hugh of St. Vic­tor spoke sim­i­larly when he re­marked, “the fol­low­ers of these, as they are not di­verse in er­ror, are not dis­tin­guished in dam­na­tion.”⁹Hugh of St. Vic­tor, De sac­ra­men­tis, II, p. 10, c. 2 (PL 176:477D).

Fur­ther, Wyc­liffe took is­sue with this def­i­ni­tion of si­mony since it speaks of “buy­ing and sell­ing” rather than “buy­ing or sell­ing.” Wyc­liffe ac­knowl­edged that the art of Latin def­i­ni­tions is not to speak dis­junc­tively; that is, they tend to use “and” (et) in list­ing mat­ters rather than “or” (vel). As such, one might tech­ni­cally be cleared of charges be­cause he has only bought or only sold. Wyc­liffe’s so­lu­tion was to sim­ply use the word “ex­change” (com­mu­ta­cio) to re­move am­bi­gu­ity.¹⁰Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 1 (3:2–8). Note that be­cause the Eng­lish lan­guage does not suf­fer from the same id­iomatic ex­pec­ta­tion, we have taken the lib­erty to ren­der Aqui­nas’s def­i­ni­tion dis­junc­tively as “buy­ing or sell­ing.”

On one hand, these state­ments af­firm­ing a sym­me­try of ac­tion are un­ob­jec­tion­able; no si­mo­ni­a­cal trans­ac­tion can oc­cur with­out both seller and buyer. How­ever, if they are to be taken as state­ments of grav­ity, as though each mode of trans­ac­tion is equally hei­nous, there are rea­sons to re­gard the sale of spir­i­tual things as worse than the pur­chase of spir­i­tual things. In the words of Bo­na­ven­ture, “A bishop 89who sells sins more gravely than a sub­ject who buys.”¹¹Bo­na­ven­ture, In Sent. IV, d. 25, dub. 3 (p. 657). Re­turn­ing to Greg­ory’s in­flu­en­tial fourth hom­ily on the gos­pels, he ob­served that Si­mon sought “to more wrongly sell what he had wrongly bought.”¹²Greg­ory I, Ho­mil­iae in evan­ge­lia, 4.4 (p. 25). Sim­i­larly, Basil of Cae­sa­rea wrote in his fifty-third epis­tle, “He who through ig­no­rance wants to buy is less guilty than he who sells the gift of God.”¹³Basil of Cae­sa­rea, Ep. 53 (p. 339). While the fo­cus of this state­ment is on the cul­pa­bil­ity as­so­ci­ated with one’s un­der­stand­ing, it like­wise dem­on­strates an as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween cul­pa­bil­ity and sale. The seller of a spir­i­tual thing is far more likely to be aware that the sale is il­licit than the pur­chaser. Fur­ther, as the school­men ar­gued, the seller gives what he does not own, and what he has been com­manded to give freely (Matt. 10:8Matthew 10:8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give.; 1 Cor. 4:11 Corinthians 4:1Let a man so account of us as of servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.).¹⁴See Chap­ter 11, p. 184. The pur­chaser does not la­bor un­der the same oblig­a­tions as the min­is­ter.

Licit Pur­chases§

While the buyer may be less guilty than the seller, he may also be com­pletely in­no­cent. This oc­curs par­tic­u­larly in the case of a spir­i­tual good that is be­ing wrongly with­held from a pur­chaser. In such a case, the pur­chaser es­sen­tially pays a ran­som. In typ­i­cal scho­las­tic writ­ings, such a pur­chaser is said to “re­deem vex­a­tion” (red­i­mere vex­a­tionem), or per­haps more id­iomat­i­cally in Eng­lish we might say that he buys off the ha­rass­ment.

A num­ber of dis­cus­sions on this no­tion point back to In­no­cent IV’s Com­men­ta­ria on the dec­re­tals.¹⁵See, e.g., the later dis­cus­sion in Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.24 (fol. 75ra). Ad­mit­ting that the seller is guilty in a si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change, he en­ter­tained the ques­tion of whether the buyer must be:

How­ever, to a lay­man whom it is clear has no ju­ris­dic­tion—if he de­spoils him of a church, or would cause him to be shunned de facto as though ex­com­mu­ni­cated—or even to a cleric who does not claim he acted by right, but by force, it is per­mit­ted to give [a pay­off]. Be­cause he gives noth­ing for a spir­i­tual thing, but only for vex­a­tion, which it is per­mit­ted to re­deem.¹⁶In­no­cent IV, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.24 (fol. 500r).

The pre­ced­ing text had dealt with a sit­u­a­tion where the op­pres­sor was a su­pe­rior, but here the op­pres­sor is one with­out real church au­thor­ity but has some mech­a­nism of de­fraud­ing a bishop. In­no­cent used this case be­cause it is clear that noth­ing spir­i­tual is be­ing bought, since the lay per­son has noth­ing spir­i­tual to sell. The one who pays him is only buy­ing off the ha­rass­ment.

Aqui­nas de­scribed a sim­i­lar dy­namic. Be­fore one ac­quires a right to a bish­opric, “it would be si­mo­ni­a­cal to buy off the op­po­si­tion of ad­ver­saries with money.”¹⁷Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 2, ad 5. How­ever, if he has al­ready ac­quired the right, “it is law­ful to re­move un­just im­ped­i­ments by means of money.”¹⁸Ibid., II‑II, q. 100, a. 2, ad 5; cf. Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 1, ad 7. In sum­mary, it would be wrong for some­one un­qual­i­fied for a spir­i­tual of­fice to pur­chase that of­fice. How­ever, for some­one who is qual­i­fied for that of­fice and un­justly kept from it, it is not nec­es­sar­ily wrong to re­move that in­jus­tice by means of pay­ment. We might make an anal­ogy in terms of hu­man traf­fick­ing. While it would be wrong to buy hu­mans as chat­tel, no one would fault a man for ran­som­ing a kid­napped fam­ily mem­ber. The kid­nap­per is guilty in the sale, but the ran­somer is in­no­cent.

In his gloss on Mat­thew 10:8Matthew 10:8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give., John Ma­jor ar­gued that this prin­ci­ple can be ap­plied not only when the pur­chaser him­self is be­ing kept from some­thing he has a right to, but any time it would keep the seller from some evil ac­tion: “It is licit to give money to a man so that he aban­dons his vice or ac­com­mo­dates him­self to vir­tue.”¹⁹Ma­jor, In Mat­thaeum ad Lit­eram Ex­po­si­tio, 10:8 (fol. 41rb). If it may be per­mis­si­ble to pay an elec­tor to elect an un­suit­able bishop, then it may be per­mis­si­ble to pay him to elect a suit­able one.²⁰“There­fore I can lic­itly give money to some­one so that he does not elect an un­suit­able per­son, [since] I have an ac­quired right to this. And then, speak­ing con­se­quently, it seems it must be con­ceded that I can give money to an elec­tor so that he elects a suit­able per­son. And of two dem­on­strated [can­di­dates], namely a more suit­able and a less suit­able, I can give money not to elect the less suit­able, hold­ing that he sins by elect­ing the less suit­able, be­cause I can re­move this man from sin. And where one alone would be suit­able, I can give money to elect this suit­able one, be­cause if the ben­e­fice is given to an­other, the col­la­tor or elec­tor sins, and by giv­ing it to this max­i­mally suit­able one he does not sin: there­fore I can buy him the ben­e­fice.” Ibid., 10:8 (fol. 41rb). Re­deem­ing the vex­a­tion dis­tin­guishes it­self from bib­ery in that it uses money to turn the wicked away from in­jus­tice.

This ex­emp­tion for “re­deem­ing vex­a­tion” con­tin­ued with Prot­es­tant au­thors. To in­clude a Pu­ri­tan ex­am­ple, Ames con­curred, “Nei­ther [is it prop­erly si­mony] if any thing is given by him, which hath a cer­tain and un­doubted right to the spir­i­tual func­tion, for the avoid­ing of un­just trou­bles.”²¹Ames, Con­science, 5.230. Lu­ther him­self de­fended the con­cept,²²“Now if I wanted to bar­gain with the Pope thus: ‘I will give you so many thou­sand gold pieces yearly, and you let me freely and sin­cerely preach the Gospel.’ Would that be si­mony? No. For I am not buy­ing what I al­ready have, namely the le­git­i­mate use of the sac­ra­ments, the sin­cere doc­trine of the Gospel, of faith, of hope, of the ex­pec­ta­tion of the life to come, all of which have been granted to me even against the Pope’s will and with­out his au­thor­ity. I only seek, by of­fer­ing a thou­sand gold pieces, to re­deem that vex­a­tion.” Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 25:31–34 (WA 43, 425:12–19). go­ing so far as to en­cour­age rul­ing Prot­es­tant au­thor­i­ties to give to the pope a yearly sums of thou­sands of crowns “that the shed­ding of blood and other scan­dals might cease, and the Gospel could be spread in peace.”²³Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 425:21–24). He added, “This is no si­mony but the re­demp­tion of vex­a­tion.”²⁴Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 425:24).

Two ex­am­ples are re­peat­edly of­fered as case stud­ies for this dy­namic: Ja­cob’s birth­right and bap­tisms un­justly with­held. Fol­low­ing the ex­emp­tion through both, we will also ex­am­ine how pru­dence must gov­ern its use.

Ja­cob’s Birth­right§

In Gen­e­sis 25:29–34Genesis 25:29–34²⁹And Jacob boiled pottage. And Esau came in from the field, and he was faint.³⁰And Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with that same red [pottage]. For I am faint.” Therefore his name was called Edom.³¹And Jacob said, “Sell me first your birthright.”³²And Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die. And what profit will the birthright do to me?”³³And Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” And he swore to him. And he sold his birthright to Jacob.³⁴And Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils. And he ate and drank, and rose up, and went his way. So Esau despised his birthright., Esau sells his birth­right to Ja­cob. While the birth­right it­self may be com­posed of phys­i­cal in­her­i­tances, there is a spir­i­tual qual­ity as­so­ci­ated with pri­mo­gen­i­ture, the right of the first­born, the first­born serv­ing as priests un­til the days of Aaron (Exod. 13:2Exodus 13:2“Sanctify to me all the firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast; it is mine.”; Num. 3:11–13Numbers 3:11–13¹¹And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying,¹²“And I, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the firstborn that opens the womb among the children of Israel; and the Levites will be mine,¹³for all the firstborn are mine; on the day that I struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I consecrated to myself all the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast; mine they will be: I am Jehovah.”).²⁵This is most com­monly dis­cussed among the me­dievals, but for a Pu­ri­tan ex­am­ple that ad­dresses Ja­cob and Esau, see Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 57. Be­cause of this, it seems that there may be noth­ing wrong in sell­ing or buy­ing spir­i­tual things.

The com­mon re­sponse at this point was that Ja­cob was free to pur­chase the birth­right be­cause it was owed to him.²⁶E.g., “The right of the first­born was due to Ja­cob by di­vine elec­tion, ac­cord­ing to that of Mal­a­chi 1Malachi 1¹The oracle of the word of Jehovah to Israel by Malachi.²“I have loved you,” says Jehovah. “Yet you say, ‘How have you loved us?’” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother,” declares Jehovah, “yet I loved Jacob;³but Esau I hated, and I made his mountains a desolation and [gave] his inheritance to the jackals of the wilderness.”⁴Though Edom says, “We are beaten down, but we will return and build the ruins,” thus says Jehovah of hosts, “They will build, but I will throw down. And men will call them ‘The border of wickedness,’ and ‘The people against whom Jehovah is indignant forever.’”[…][:2], ‘Ja­cob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.’ And there­fore, Esau sinned by sell­ing the birth­right; Ja­cob, how­ever, did not sin by buy­ing, be­cause it is un­der­stood that he [merely] re­deemed his own vex­a­tion.” [Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4; cf. Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 3.] Some ar­gued that Ja­cob should be un­der­stood as dis­in­clined to pur­chase the birth­right, only speak­ing of it this way to per­suade his wicked brother to com­ply.^[E.g., “Al­though he said to his brother, ‘Sell me your birth­right,” he un­der­stood it as ‘Give me the birth­right, which in your judg­ment is through a sale.’” Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 147rb).]

Lu­ther took is­sue with these dis­cus­sions, de­scrib­ing the idea of si­mony in Gen­e­sis 25Genesis 25¹And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah.²And she bore him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah.³And Jokshan fathered Sheba, and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim.⁴And the sons of Midian: Ephah, and Epher, and Hanoch, and Abida, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah.[…] as the “fan­tasies” of “soph­ists,”²⁷“That the soph­ists say this sale is si­mony, we do not care. They say Ja­cob did not sin, but Esau did be­cause he sold spir­i­tual goods; but these are fan­tasies.” Lu­ther, Pre­dig­ten über das er­ste Buch Mose, 45 (WA 14, 330:1–3). but his so­lu­tion dif­fered lit­tle. Where the me­dievals spoke of Ja­cob be­ing due the birth­right by di­vine elec­tion, Lu­ther con­tended that it was for­feit on ac­count of Esau’s con­tempt.²⁸“Esau would have sinned even if he had given it away for free, he who rather ought to have ex­pended his life for the dig­nity of the pri­mo­gen­i­ture given by God. There­fore, the de­spiser is de­spised; tri­fling with the gift of God, he loses it. Rightly, what the brother de­spises, Ja­cob claims for him­self—whether by am­bush, by price, or for free.” Ibid., 45 (WA 14, 330:25–28). Lec­tur­ing on the same pas­sage years later, he added that there was no trans­ac­tion of a spir­i­tual thing at all, the birth­right be­ing on this ac­count al­ready trans­ferred into Ja­cob’s hands.²⁹“It is not a real trans­ac­tion, be­cause the birth­right is al­ready be­fore­hand in Ja­cob’s hands, and Esau has been stripped of it. With Ja­cob is the pos­ses­sion, but with­out the name. With Esau is the name with­out the pos­ses­sion.” Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 25:31–34 (WA 43, 425:25–28). Though dis­miss­ing the la­bel of “si­mony,” Lu­ther still spoke of Ja­cob’s stew as a “re­demp­tion of vex­a­tion.”³⁰Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 420:13–16). In de­scrib­ing a hy­po­thet­i­cal bar­gain with the pope, he claimed, “I am not buy­ing; I am merely throw­ing a morsel and red len­tils at my ad­ver­sary.”³¹Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 425:19–20). Shortly there­after, he de­scribed Ja­cob giv­ing the stew as “throw­ing Cer­berus a sop” ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 425:30–31).

Bap­tisms Held to Ran­som§

Though it does not ap­pear di­rectly in Lom­bard’s Sen­tences, the school­men ad­dressed this ques­tion on the fifth dis­tinc­tion of book four. In the con­text of hav­ing as­serted that her­e­tics are in­deed able to ad­min­is­ter le­git­i­mate bap­tisms, the ques­tion arises for si­mo­ni­acs. If the wicked ad­min­is­tra­tor of the sac­ra­ment is not just any kind of her­e­tic but a si­mo­niac, would one be able to le­git­i­mately re­ceive bap­tism? If the re­cip­i­ent of bap­tism were to pay the ad­min­is­tra­tor, he may po­ten­tially en­gage in si­mony him­self, in­val­i­dat­ing the work since wicked men can­not re­ceive a le­git­i­mate bap­tism.

Of­ten, the same an­swer is given at this point, al­beit with ad­di­tional ca­veats. One who pays to be rid of the priest’s ha­rass­ment does not en­gage in si­mony, even though the seller does.³²See Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 5, a. 1, ad quaest. 2 (p. 106a); Wil­liam de Vau­rouil­lon, In Sent. IV, d. 5 (fol. 228r). The ad­di­tional ca­veats arise from the afore­men­tioned con­clu­sions about the ex opere op­er­ato ef­fi­cacy of the work. If bap­tism can be ad­min­is­tered by so many, it should be easy enough to find some­one else to do the work. In the case of a par­ent for a child, even the par­ent could per­form the bap­tism him­self.

Oth­ers in­sisted that be­cause si­mony is so great a sin, the bap­tism of the Spirit—or a bap­tism of true de­sire—suf­fices in such a con­di­tion, and no one should pay a si­mo­niac for bap­tism.³³See Biel, Col­lec­to­rium, IV, d. 5, q. 1 (sig. g2va); Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 3, q. 1, ad 8 (p. 385b). How­ever, it also ap­pears that works com­ing to this con­clu­sion do not con­sider the cat­e­gory of a pay­ment de­signed to re­deem from un­just op­po­si­tion. John Duns Sco­tus had per­haps the most thor­ough dis­cus­sion of this prob­lem, con­sid­er­ing both sides, but ul­ti­mately de­cid­ing such a bap­tism could not be pur­chased.³⁴Sco­tus, In Sent. IV, d. 5, q. 2 (16, p. 518). One com­men­ta­tor noted that he did not speak in “the mode of the an­cients” by em­ploy­ing the phrase “re­deem­ing from vex­a­tion,” sus­pect­ing that this jus­ti­fi­ca­tion does not ap­ply in this case of par­tic­u­lar dif­fi­culty.³⁵Ibid., IV, d. 5, q. 2 (16, p. 518).

The same prin­ci­ple of re­mov­ing im­ped­i­ments was ex­tended from the case of one’s own bap­tism to the case of an­other’s com­ing to the faith at all. The canon­ist Pan­or­mi­tanus per­haps gave the full­est sum­mary, ac­knowl­edg­ing that au­thor­i­ties had di­vided, but he ul­ti­mately con­cluded that one may fi­nan­cially as­sist in the process if the po­ten­tial con­vert al­ready has suf­fi­cient mo­ti­va­tion to con­vert. He il­lus­trated it with the ob­ser­va­tion that “many Jews have amassed great wealth through the de­prav­ity of usury and fear com­ing to the faith be­cause they would have to re­store all that was wrong­fully taken.” One may lic­itly help such a con­vert make res­ti­tu­tion since the pay­ment clears an ob­sta­cle to em­brac­ing the faith rather than mak­ing a si­mo­ni­a­cal ap­peal to cu­pid­ity.³⁶Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.9 (fol. 70vb).

The Rule of Pru­dence§

The cat­e­gory for re­deem­ing vex­a­tion is gen­u­ine, but as we have seen with bap­tism, it is nar­rower than it may at first ap­pear. It is not a blan­ket li­cense, but re­quires pru­den­tial judg­ment to weigh the good the pay­ment se­cures against the harm it en­tails: com­plic­ity in an­other’s sin, per­pet­u­a­tion of an evil cus­tom, and scan­dal on the church. Thus, we ob­served that Sco­tus de­clined to speak “in the mode of the an­cients.”

Per­haps it is for this rea­son that Wyc­liffe spoke of buy­ing and sell­ing as so cer­tainly sym­met­ric. Hus fol­lowed af­ter him. Both were con­cerned not so much with how to live in spite of cor­rup­tion as with how to con­front it di­rectly. Sur­vey­ing the land­scape of his own day, Hus judged that one who qual­i­fied to hold of­fice should never pay a fee to en­ter, and con­tin­ued pro­lep­ti­cally:

But im­me­di­ately you will ob­ject to this: “If this is how it ought to be, then no one should give money, and the of­fi­cials will not al­low it; if every­one did this, no one would be a parish priest.” To this I say that if every­one did so, the of­fi­cials would have to ad­mit them whether they liked it or not.

But you say again: “If I do not give money, an­other will.” To this I say that if you wish to ex­cuse your­self by that ar­gu­ment, then even the ex­e­cu­tioner, the bai­liff, and the har­lot will ex­cuse them­selves; for each of them says: “If I am not the ex­e­cu­tioner or the bai­liff, an­other will be; if I am not a har­lot, an­other will be.”

You may yet say: “But oth­ers com­monly give money.” And I an­swer that oth­ers com­monly sin, yet that does not mean you should sin.

You may yet say: “But it is an an­cient cus­tom.” And I say that an evil cus­tom, the longer it en­dures, the greater pun­ish­ment it in­curs from God, as I shall dem­on­strate later. And I mar­vel why we do not keep the older and good cus­tom of the holy apos­tles, which they re­ceived from Christ, when he said to them: “Freely you have re­ceived, freely give.” And why do they not fear the bless­ing of St. Pe­ter, which he gave to Si­mon, say­ing: “Your money per­ish with you, be­cause you thought you could ob­tain the gift of God with money.”³⁷Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 7.B.

On one hand, Hus’s rhet­o­ric is stark, paint­ing in black and white. He called the pur­chase a sin with­out paus­ing to qual­ify, and no­where did he af­firm the cat­e­gory of re­deem­ing vex­a­tion. Yet nei­ther should we pre­sume he meant to deny it al­to­gether. Each an­swer to each ob­jec­tion is, in ef­fect, a step in this ex­er­cise of pru­dence. That Lu­ther, a self-de­clared Hus­site,³⁸Writ­ing to Georg Spa­la­tin in 1520, Lu­ther con­fessed, “we are all Hus­sites with­out know­ing it.” Lu­ther, Brief­wech­sel, no. 254 (WA Br 2, 42:22–25). later com­mended such pur­chases need not im­ply a theo­log­i­cal di­ver­gence from his fore­run­ner. Rather, life on dif­fer­ent sides of the Ref­or­ma­tion re­quired dif­fer­ent strat­e­gies for faith­ful­ness.

With­hold­ing Spir­i­tual Things§

Be­yond the strict cat­e­gories of buy­ing and sell­ing where some­thing spir­i­tual is ex­changed, what about those times when a spir­i­tual thing is with­held? If a min­is­ter re­fuses to give freely what he has freely re­ceived (Matt. 10:8Matthew 10:8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give.), he vi­o­lates this com­mand no less than if he had sold it. The with­hold­ing of spir­i­tual things for ma­te­rial gain is there­fore it­self a spe­cies of si­mony.

No pres­sure should be brought to bear on those un­will­ing to give “through the with­hold­ing of spir­i­tual things that are owed, for that would have a cer­tain ap­pear­ance of sell­ing.”³⁹Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 3. Or more di­rectly, “If a min­is­ter or pas­tor of the Church were un­will­ing to teach you about the for­give­ness of sins and the ben­e­fits of the Gospel, and re­fused you ab­so­lu­tion un­less you re­deemed it from him for a hun­dred gold pieces—that would be si­mo­ni­a­cal.”⁴⁰Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 281:27–29). This is true even in ex­treme con­di­tions. Wil­liam Vo­ri­long pre­sented the ques­tion: “If a cu­rate has noth­ing in the parish to live on, can he with­hold di­vine ser­vices?”⁴¹Wil­liam de Vau­rouil­lon, In Sent. III, d. 3, q. 2 (fol. 164r). Ap­peal­ing to canon law, he an­swered, “It is said that he can­not; oth­er­wise he would be con­sid­ered a si­mo­niac.”⁴²Ibid., III, d. 3, q. 2 (fol. 164r).

First, we will dem­on­strate this pro­hi­bi­tion by way of the par­tic­u­lar ex­am­ple of false teach­ing. Af­ter­ward, we will qual­ify the na­ture of the oblig­a­tion to give rather than with­hold, which does not ap­ply equally to all out­side the of­fice of min­is­ter.

The Ex­am­ple of False Teach­ing§

A clear case in point for this is the na­ture of false teach­ing. Sell­ing false spir­i­tual things is rec­og­nized as si­mony as surely as sell­ing true ones. Prot­es­tants and me­dievals alike ad­mit­ted this, al­though of­ten in­di­rectly. For ex­am­ple, Prot­es­tants, though iden­ti­fy­ing in­dul­gences as false, typ­i­cally re­gard their sale as si­mony.⁴³See Chap­ter 1, pp. 28–31. Among the me­dievals, the fre­quent ap­peal to the si­mo­ni­a­cally dis­trib­uted false priest­hood of Jer­oboam dem­on­strates the same.⁴⁴See Chap­ter 10, pp. 174–75. Hus used 2 Pe­ter 2:32 Peter 2:3And in covetousness will they with false words make merchandise of you: whose sentence now from of old does not linger, and their destruction does not slumber. (“in their greed they will ex­ploit you with false words”) in his de­scrip­tion of a dis­tinct class of si­mo­ni­acs who are liars.⁴⁵Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 3.B. Fur­ther­more, 2 Co­rin­thi­ans 2:172 Corinthians 2:17For we are not as the many, corrupting the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ. (“ped­dle the word of God”) is fre­quently ap­plied to this ef­fect.

How­ever, The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus puts it pre­cisely, di­vid­ing si­mony into two cat­e­gories. While the lat­ter is set­ting to sale what is true, mak­ing it vend­i­ble, the for­mer is that si­mo­ni­acs speak lies: “ei­ther for their ad­van­tage and gain, they ob­trude false­hood and er­ror for truth, and min­is­ter to peo­ple cor­rupt, in­stead of whole­some food; so sell­ing for up­right, what is but so­phis­ti­cate and coun­ter­feit.”⁴⁶The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 76. Such men are “bribed […] to smother the truth and coun­sel of God.”⁴⁷Ibid., 77.

The min­is­ter who “ob­trudes” false­hood nec­es­sar­ily with­holds truth. The one who “smoth­ers” it does like­wise. Though he has re­ceived the truth freely and ought to give it freely, he nec­es­sar­ily hides it when he dis­penses lies.

The Qual­i­fi­ca­tion of Oblig­a­tion§

Of course, not every act of with­hold­ing a spir­i­tual good is si­mo­ni­a­cal; for one to be guilty on this front, there must be the oblig­a­tion to “freely give,” which is typ­i­cally es­tab­lished through spir­i­tual of­fice. In the words of John Ma­jor, “It is a gen­eral rule, and from nat­ural law, that a man does not ac­quire own­er­ship of money through an act he is bound to per­form freely.”⁴⁸Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 5 (fol. 187va). Fre­quently, this is the rea­son given for why one must not with­hold the word or sac­ra­ments.

Typ­i­cally, the ex­am­ple of a judge is given to dem­on­strate this,⁴⁹E.g., Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 319b). es­pe­cially go­ing back to the words of Au­gus­tine: “a judge ought not to sell a true judg­ment, nor a wit­ness true tes­ti­mony; but an ad­vo­cate may sell his just ad­vo­cacy, and a ju­rist his true coun­sel.”⁵⁰Au­gus­tine, Ep. 153.6.23 (CSEL 44, 423:5–7). This con­clu­sion was deemed sound be­cause the judge and wit­ness must per­form their roles, but the ad­vo­cate and ju­rist are not so bound.⁵¹E.g., “A judge is bound by his of­fice to ren­der judg­ment; like­wise any­one who is sub­ject to a court is bound to give true tes­ti­mony. But an ad­vo­cate is not bound to lend his ad­vo­cacy to a case, nor a ju­rist to give coun­sel.” Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2, ad 9. Ac­cord­ingly, in mat­ters of spir­i­tual judg­ment, as in the ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal courts, such a sale of judg­ment is si­mony.⁵²E.g., “For the ad­vo­cate sell­ing just ad­vo­cacy does not sell jus­tice, which is spir­i­tual, but his own act; and the same must be said of the coun­sel of a ju­rist. But a judge sell­ing a true judg­ment com­mits si­mony, if he is a spir­i­tual judge; oth­er­wise he does not com­mit si­mony, but sins gravely.” Ibid., IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2, ad 9. Out­side of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal courts, such judg­ments are not truly spir­i­tual in the sense of be­ing de­riv­a­tive of di­vine rev­e­la­tion, so can­not strictly be called si­mony.⁵³See Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain, In Sent. (red. C), IV, d. 25, q. 3 (fol. 315r).

The ap­pli­ca­tion to the pas­toral of­fice is not that some­one out­side of it would be per­mit­ted to charge for the same ac­tiv­i­ties a min­is­ter might per­form, but that those out­side are cer­tainly not ob­lig­ated to give freely in the sense of pos­i­tively giv­ing. The lit­er­a­ture also dis­cusses whether a judge could charge for travel ex­penses to ar­rive. Some an­swered “yes”⁵⁴E.g., ibid., IV, d. 25, q. 3 (fol. 315r). and oth­ers “no.”⁵⁵E.g., Pe­ter the Chanter, Noo­nan, Bribes, 176. These ques­tions, of course, seem to have a bear­ing on the pas­tor’s of­fice as well.

In­di­rect Par­tic­i­pa­tion§

The tra­di­tion of moral theol­ogy rec­og­nized that one could be guilty not only as the prin­ci­pal agent of any sin but also as an ac­ces­sory. The school­men enu­mer­ated nine ways of be­ing com­plicit in an­other’s sin, sum­ma­rized in a widely known mne­monic cou­plet:

Ius­sio, con­sil­ium, con­sen­sus, palpo, re­cur­sus, Par­tic­i­pans, mu­tus, non ob­stans, non man­i­fes­tans.⁵⁶E.g., Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 62, a. 7; Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 15, q. 26 (fol. 96ra).

That is: com­mand, coun­sel, con­sent, flat­tery, har­bor­ing, par­tak­ing, si­lence, not hin­der­ing, and not dis­clos­ing. These were un­der­stood to ap­ply to any sin what­ever. Eng­lish au­thors like­wise treated them as a gen­eral frame­work.⁵⁷E.g., Ad­ams, Com­men­tary on 2 Pe­ter, 437–40; Ames, Mar­row of Sa­cred Di­vin­ity, 305. “Men may be ac­ces­sory many ways, by com­mand­ment, by coun­sel, by con­sent, by part­ner­ship, by re­ceiv­ing, by si­lence when a man ought to speak […].” Per­kins, Ga­la­tians, 99.

There­fore, while the prin­ci­pal agents of any si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change are the buyer and the seller, any me­di­a­tor is like­wise im­pli­cated.⁵⁸See Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.8 (fol. 70rb). No au­thor ap­plied all nine modes of in­di­rect par­tic­i­pa­tion sys­tem­at­i­cally to si­mony, but two ab­bre­vi­ated cat­a­logs are worth con­sid­er­ing. One is pro­vided by Wyc­liffe and Hus, and the other is found in the anon­y­mous Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus.

Wyc­liffe and Hus’s Six Ways§

While he in­tro­duced these cat­e­gories more gen­er­ally else­where,⁵⁹Wyc­liffe, De of­fi­cio re­gis, cap. 4 (pp. 68ff.). Wyc­liffe ap­plied six modes of con­sent to the sin of si­mony, pre­sent­ing them in a cou­plet sim­i­lar to the one above.

Con­sen­tit op­er­ans, de­fend­ens, con­sil­ium dans Ac auc­to­risans, non iu­vans nec rep­re­hen­dens.⁶⁰Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 8 (98:19–20).

That is: one con­sents by aid­ing, de­fend­ing, coun­sel­ing, au­tho­riz­ing, not help­ing, and not re­prov­ing. He went on to give some de­scrip­tion of these in the sub­se­quent par­a­graph.⁶¹Ibid., cap. 8 (98:21–99:8).

Hus took this ap­pli­ca­tion of the frame­work and ex­panded it in the ninth chap­ter of his own trea­tise. While crit­i­cal edi­tions do not type­set it ac­cord­ingly, he seemed to have in­tended a sim­i­lar cou­plet in Czech:

po­mocí, obranú, radú, potvrzením, nepo­mocí a ne­tresk­táním⁶²Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 9.A.

“So that peo­ple may guard against si­mony on every side,” Hus wrote, “we must fur­ther know that every­one who con­sents to si­mony sins thereby and shares in si­mony.”⁶³Ibid., 9.A. He then con­sid­ered each of the six in turn.

By aid: One is guilty of si­mony “by in­ter­ced­ing, bro­ker­ing among si­mo­ni­acs, or oth­er­wise pro­vid­ing oc­ca­sion, whether by let­ters, by mes­sages, by lend­ing money, by hold­ing their case in court, or by other means.”⁶⁴Ibid., 9.A.

By de­fense: Many in­cur the guilt of si­mony by de­fend­ing it, ei­ther ex­cus­ing all who have not been con­demned by hu­man courts or at other times ob­fus­cat­ing the na­ture of the pay­ment, claim­ing that it is made for la­bor rather than any spir­i­tual thing. How­ever, such de­fenses are typ­i­cally not ab­sent di­rect par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sin since they are of­ten of­fered “be­cause they them­selves run the same course.”⁶⁵Ibid., 9.A. From there, Hus gave a run­ning com­men­tary on Mat­thew 23:2–8Matthew 23:2–8²saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses seat:³all things therefore whatever they tell you, [these] do and observe; but do not you according to their works, for they say, and do not.⁴Yes, they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.⁵But all their works they do to be seen of men; for they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders [of their garments],⁶and love the chief place at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,⁷and the greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men “Rabbi”.⁸But do not be called Rabbi; for one is your teacher, and all you are brothers. along with other com­ments on pas­sages in the gos­pels, de­scrib­ing the pride, hy­poc­risy, and love of honor among the mas­ters of his day, ex­tend­ing his ex­po­si­tion of this mode of par­tic­i­pa­tion longer than the other five com­bined.⁶⁶Ibid., 9.A–D.

By coun­sel: One par­takes of si­mony by de­vis­ing ways for the buyer or seller to ac­com­plish a si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change. Hus de­scribed a great com­pany of such ad­vi­sors at the pa­pal court, “who de­vise […] all man­ner of won­drous tricks, and all so that the pope and they may gather more money and the buy­ers may give more,” though hop­ing that many were not like this.⁶⁷Ibid., 9.E. He added that “to de­scribe all these de­vices, even just those I know of, would take far too long.”⁶⁸Ibid., 9.E.

By con­fir­ma­tion: All are par­tak­ers who as­sent to si­mony. Hus placed par­tic­u­lar blame on “the pow­er­ful kings, princes, and lords, bish­ops and other dig­ni­taries, who ought to sup­press it.”⁶⁹Ibid., 9.F. He re­jected the ex­cuse of one in a po­si­tion of power who would claim dis­in­ter­est in the af­fairs of clergy. A prince who was slan­dered, robbed, or cuck­olded would take ven­geance at once, yet si­mony is a far greater of­fense since it is against the Holy Spirit him­self.⁷⁰Ibid., 9.F.

By not help­ing: Fol­low­ing the pre­ced­ing con­cerns, one who has power to pre­vent his neigh­bor from sink­ing in sin to­ward dam­na­tion should act to pre­vent it. Hus il­lus­trated the point with an anal­ogy: “any­one who sees a per­son drown­ing in wa­ter and, be­ing able to help, does not help, would be guilty of that per­son’s death.”⁷¹Ibid., 9.G.

By not re­prov­ing: When one is si­lent re­gard­ing si­mony, he par­tic­i­pates in the sin of si­mony. On this point, Hus ap­pealed to Ro­mans 1:32Romans 1:32who, knowing the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with those who practice them. (“not only those who do such things are wor­thy of death, but also those who con­sent to those who do them”) and Is­i­dore as cited by Gra­tian: “Who­ever con­sents to those who sin and de­fends an­other who is sin­ning shall be ac­cursed both be­fore God and be­fore men, and shall be pun­ished with the most cruel pun­ish­ment.”⁷²Ibid., 9.H; cf. C. 11, q. 3, c. 100. See Fried­berg, ed., Cor­pus Iu­ris Canon­ici, 1:671n1050 for par­al­lel trans­mis­sions.

Hus con­cluded his treat­ment with an adap­ta­tion of a par­a­ble orig­i­nat­ing from Wyc­liffe’s in­tro­duc­tion of these six cat­e­gories in De Of­fi­cio Re­gis.⁷³Wyc­liffe, De of­fi­cio re­gis, cap. 4 (67:28–68:2). Sub­stan­tially elab­o­rat­ing on Wyc­liffe’s anal­ogy, Hus de­scribed a city that a cer­tain king had es­tab­lished and re­cap­tured from en­e­mies at the cost of his own life. If some­one then handed that city over for money against the king’s will, the guilt would ex­tend not only to the one who sur­ren­dered it and the one who re­ceived it, but also to the bro­ker, the scribes of both par­ties, the mes­sen­gers, the sure­ties, the ne­go­tia­tors, the money lender, the one who sup­plied the pa­per for the doc­u­ments, the com­mu­nity that sub­mit­ted will­ingly, and the watch­man who did not cry out—in short, every­one who could have helped pre­vent it. “So it is with si­mony” be­cause the city that falls vic­tim is that peo­ple “whom the Sav­ior him­self cre­ated and, fight­ing at the cost of his own life unto death on the cross, lib­er­ated from the devil.”⁷⁴Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 9.H.

The Anat­o­mist’s Four Ways§

As­sert­ing that one may be ei­ther a prin­ci­pal agent or an abet­tor,⁷⁵The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 38. the Anat­o­mist pro­vided four cat­e­gories of in­di­rect par­tic­i­pa­tion: ad­vice, ap­pro­ba­tion, con­niv­ance, and pa­tron­iza­tion.⁷⁶See ibid., 64–72.

By ad­vice: One in­curs the guilt of si­mony “by pro­mot­ing of a si­mo­ni­a­cal de­sign, in be­com­ing a me­di­a­tor, or se­cret agent; ei­ther by ad­vice and coun­sel, or by trans­act­ing be­twixt the par­ties, or in be­half of ei­ther of them, in any con­di­tion, com­pact, or pay­ment of money; or by us­ing any sin­is­ter de­vices for that ef­fect.”⁷⁷Ibid., 64. On this count, Eze­kiel is in­structed to proph­esy against those who de­vise mis­chief and give wicked coun­sel (Ezek. 11:2–4Ezekiel 11:2–4²And he said to me, “Son of man, these are the men who devise iniquity and who give wicked counsel in this city,³who say, ‘[The time] is not near to build houses. This [city] is the cauldron, and we are the meat.’⁴Therefore prophesy against them, prophesy, son of man.”).⁷⁸See ibid., 65. Like­wise, Jez­e­bel’s se­cret trans­ac­tions to de­liver Na­both’s vine­yard to Ahab brought down the same judg­ment upon her as upon Ahab him­self (1 Kings 21:231 Kings 21:23And Jehovah also spoke of Jezebel, saying, ‘The dogs will eat Jezebel by the rampart of Jezreel.’).⁷⁹See ibid., 65. It is on this ground that Chal­cedon de­creed so se­verely against me­di­a­tors in si­mo­ni­a­cal bar­gains⁸⁰Ibid., 66; cf. Ca­nones con­cilii Chal­ce­do­nen­sis, can. 2 (ACO II.2.2, 125). and canon law voided a si­mo­ni­a­cal elec­tion even when the one elected was ig­no­rant of the pay­ments made on his be­half.⁸¹The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 66–67; cf. X 5.3.27.

By ap­pro­ba­tion: “Con­sent or ap­pro­ba­tion ren­ders a man guilty of the sin to which he con­sents.”⁸²The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 67. On this point, the Anat­o­mist ap­pealed to Psalm 50:18Psalms 50:18When you saw a thief, you consented with him, and your portion is with adulterers. (“When thou saw­est a thief, then thou con­sent­edst with him.”)⁸³Ibid., 67. and Paul’s own con­fes­sion in Acts 22:20Acts 22:20And when the blood of Stephen your witness was shed, I was also standing by, and consenting, and keeping the garments of those who killed him.’, that “he was con­sent­ing to the shed­ding of the blood of that proto-mar­tyr Ste­phen.”⁸⁴Ibid., 67–68. “And, is not he then guilty be­fore God,” asked the Anat­o­mist, “who, see­ing one as a thief and a rob­ber, climb­ing up into the sheep­fold of Christ by si­mo­ni­a­cal means, yields his con­sent thereto?”⁸⁵Ibid., 68.

By con­niv­ance: One in­curs the guilt of si­mony “when be­ing privy thereto, he winks thereat, or for­bear­eth, ac­cord­ing to his place and call­ing, ei­ther to op­pose him­self thereto or to cen­sure the same.”⁸⁶See ibid., 68–69. As God threat­ens those who hide their eyes from child sac­ri­fice (Lev. 20:4Leviticus 20:4And if the people at the land do at all hide their eyes from that man, when he gives of his seed to Molech, and do not put him to death;), pun­ished Eli for con­niv­ing at his sons’ wicked­ness (1 Sam. 21 Samuel 2¹And Hannah prayed and said, “My heart exults in Jehovah; my horn is exalted in Jehovah; my mouth is enlarged over my enemies; because I rejoice in your salvation.²There is none holy as Jehovah, for there is none besides you, nor is there any rock like our God.³Talk proudly no longer; do not let arrogance come out of your mouth, for Jehovah is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.⁴The bows of the mighty men are broken; and those who stumbled are girded with strength.[…]; 3:13–14), and re­buked Thy­a­tira for suf­fer­ing Jez­e­bel (Rev. 2:20Revelation 2:20But I have [this] against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess; and she teaches and leads my servants astray to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols.), so he does to those who wink at si­mony.⁸⁷See ibid., 69. As Sol­o­mon said, “Whoso is part­ner with a thief hat­eth his own soul” (Prov. 29:24Proverbs 29:24Whoever is partner with a thief hates his own soul; he hears the adjuration and utters nothing.).⁸⁸Ibid., 70.

By pa­tron­iz­ing: Pa­tron­iz­ing oc­curs when one “takes part with si­mo­ni­a­cal per­sons, and bears them out, ei­ther by coun­te­nanc­ing them in their sin, or by plead­ing for them, or by set­ting him­self out to jus­tify and de­fend them therein.”⁸⁹Ibid., 71. One who does so, the Anat­o­mist said, es­pouses the in­ter­est of Sa­tan as well as of Si­mon and “stands upon his side against God.”⁹⁰Ibid., 71. In dem­on­stra­tion, he brought to bear a num­ber of Scrip­ture proofs: adapt­ing the words of Jerub­baal’s fa­ther to the men of his city (Judg. 6:31Judges 6:31And Joash said to all that stood against him, “Will you contend for Baal? Or will you save him? He who will contend for him, let him be put to death while [it is yet] morning: if he is a god, let him contend for himself, because one has broken down his altar.”), the Anat­o­mist asked: “Will ye plead for Si­mon Ma­gus? Will ye de­fend him?”⁹¹Ibid., 71. Such a thing is also like help­ing Ahab (2 Chron. 19:22 Chronicles 19:2And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked, and love those who hate Jehovah? For this thing wrath is on you from before Jehovah.)⁹²Ibid., 71–72. or sid­ing with the poor for an evil cause (Exod. 23:3Exodus 23:3neither shall you favor a poor man in his cause.).⁹³Ibid., 72. One should ex­pect se­vere wrath if he strength­ens the hands of evil­do­ers (Jer. 23:14–15Jeremiah 23:14–15¹⁴In the prophets of Jerusalem I have also seen a horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies; and they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that none return from his wickedness; they have all become to me as Sodom, and its inhabitants as Gomorrah.¹⁵Therefore thus says Jehovah of hosts concerning the prophets: ‘Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall, for from the prophets of Jerusalem is ungodliness gone forth into all the land.’”).⁹⁴Ibid., 72.

Con­clu­sion§

The sin of si­mony does not at­tach to one side of the trans­ac­tion alone. Both buyer and seller stand con­demned, though not equally. The seller—who has re­ceived freely and is com­manded to give freely—typ­i­cally bears the greater guilt. The buyer—who may act from ig­no­rance or even from gen­u­ine need—may bear less guilt, or in some cases, none at all. When he merely “re­deems vex­a­tion,” he does not tech­ni­cally buy a spir­i­tual thing, but a tem­po­ral thing.

Yet the sym­me­try of the sin should not be lost in these qual­i­fi­ca­tions. The trans­ac­tion re­quires two par­ties, and each will­ingly shares in its cor­rup­tion. Hus’s in­sis­tence that the of­fice-seeker should al­ways de­cline to pay un­der­scores how nar­row the ex­emp­tion for re­deem­ing vex­a­tion truly is. Even when re­deem­ing vex­a­tion to ob­tain what is right­fully his, the buyer may be­come com­plicit in per­pet­u­at­ing an in­jus­tice. Some­times, pru­dence re­quires re­fus­ing to par­tic­i­pate at all.

The case of with­hold­ing ex­tends the logic still fur­ther. By vir­tue of his of­fice, the min­is­ter is ob­lig­ated to give freely. When he is called to of­fer truth, he may nei­ther be si­lent nor of­fer lies. When other spir­i­tual ser­vice is called of him, he must give.

Nor does the cir­cle of guilt end with the prin­ci­pal par­ties. The tra­di­tion rec­og­nized that one could be com­plicit in si­mony through in­di­rect par­tic­i­pa­tion: by coun­sel­ing, de­fend­ing, bro­ker­ing, con­niv­ing at, or sim­ply fail­ing to op­pose a si­mo­ni­a­cal trans­ac­tion. Both Hus and the Anat­o­mist cat­a­loged these modes of com­plic­ity at length, and both ar­rived at the same con­clu­sion: si­lence and in­ac­tion in the face of si­mony are them­selves forms of con­sent. The sin ra­di­ates out­ward from buyer and seller to im­pli­cate all who had power to pre­vent it and did not.

Si­mony is an “ear­nest de­sire” (stu­diosa vol­un­tas) to com­mer­cial­ize spir­i­tual things, but the Eng­lish ren­der­ing of this phrase var­ies across sources. Some have ren­dered it as a “de­lib­er­ate will” or “ex­press will.” Thomas Aqui­nas ex­plained that vol­un­tas in­di­cates that si­mony is a mat­ter of the will rather than a mat­ter of the in­tel­lect, and that stu­diosa in­di­cates choice (elec­tio).¹Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 1, ad 2. That is, there must be a will­ful de­sire for the ex­change, not just a ra­tio­nal ap­pe­tite for spir­i­tual things ex­ceed­ing that of tem­po­ral things. For this rea­son, the me­dieval works on si­mony rou­tinely re­sponded to Dan­iel 4:27Daniel 4:27Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you, and break off your sins by righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, in case there may be a lengthening of your prosperity.’²Vul­gate, Dan. 4:24Daniel 4:24This is the interpretation, O king, and it is the decree of the Most High, which has come on my lord the king:. (“re­deem your sins with alms”) as a stock ob­jec­tion.³E.g., Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain, In Sent. (red. C), IV, d. 25, q. 3, ad 1 (fol. 315r); Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 1, arg. 1; Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 146rb). Greg­ory the Great’s gloss on Mat­thew 4:18–22Matthew 4:18–22¹⁸And walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.¹⁹And he says to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”²⁰And they immediately left the nets and followed him.²¹And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the [son] of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.²²And they immediately left the boat and their father and followed him. (“Im­me­di­ately they left their nets and fol­lowed him”) that “the king­dom of God is worth as much as you have”⁴Greg­ory I, Ho­mil­iae in evan­ge­lia, 5.2 (p. 28). of­ten at­tends this con­sid­er­a­tion as well.⁵All three works just cited quote it along­side the Dan­iel text. It is also quoted apart from that text, as at Bo­na­ven­ture, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 1, q. 4, arg. 5 (pp. 647–48) and Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 1, arg. 3. An­swer­ing that “buy­ing” is a met­a­phor for merit and does not au­tho­rize com­merce in spir­i­tual things, they con­ceded that these two au­thor­i­ties dem­on­strate the pro­pri­ety of rec­og­niz­ing the sur­pass­ing 108value of spir­i­tual things, and, in that sense, de­sir­ing to make such an ex­change.⁶E.g., ibid., II‑II, q. 100, a. 1, ad 3; Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 2 (14:31–15:4, 15:11–12).

In other words, the qual­i­fier of “ear­nest” (stu­diosa) in­di­cates that in or­der for this “de­sire” (vol­un­tas) to be sin­ful, it must pro­ceed from the will as a choice. There is no sin in rec­og­niz­ing that the things of God are to be val­ued more than money and that such an ex­change, if it were law­ful, would be to one’s ben­e­fit (Prov. 23:23Proverbs 23:23Buy the truth, and do not sell it; [Yes], wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.). The sin is in a de­sire that dis­counts those mat­ters which un­der­mine its law­ful­ness. By way of il­lus­tra­tion, we might ob­serve that “lust” is not in rec­og­niz­ing fe­male beauty or even in the de­sire for sex­ual in­ter­course upon law­ful con­di­tions, but in the ear­nest de­sire (ἐπιθυμῆσαι) that does not fully ap­pre­ci­ate such qual­i­fi­ca­tions (Matt. 5:28Matthew 5:28But I say to you that everyone who looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.).

On both of these counts, Wyc­liffe pre­ferred the phrase “in­or­di­nate will­ing” (in­or­di­nata vo­li­cio).⁷Ibid., cap. 1 (2:13–16). First, “in­or­di­nate” (in­or­di­nata) in­di­cates that it is a dis­or­dered will, rather than a rightly or­dered will that makes licit ex­changes for spir­i­tual things. He gave sev­eral ex­am­ples: we are to “buy with­out money” (Isa. 55:1Isaiah 55:1“Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money; come, buy, and eat; yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.), teach­ers are to re­ceive a tem­po­ral sti­pend in the con­text of their in­struc­tion (1 Cor. 9:111 Corinthians 9:11If we sowed to you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we will reap your carnal things?), the giv­ing of tithes, of­fer­ings, etc.⁸Ibid., cap. 1 (2:16–30). Sec­ond, “will­ing” (vo­li­cio) in­di­cates that there must be an act of the will but does not re­quire any ex­trin­sic act (ac­tus ex­trin­se­cus). While he ac­knowl­edged that this is all al­most cer­tainly in­tended by stu­diosa vol­un­tas, he be­lieved that in­or­di­nata vo­li­cio dis­am­big­u­ated the mat­ter.⁹Ibid., cap. 1, 2 (2:36–3:2, 14:31–32).

At least Wyc­liffe’s sec­ond con­cern—if not his first—is jus­ti­fied in light of some al­ter­na­tive def­i­ni­tions that have been of­fered. Some me­dievals pro­posed that stu­diosa vol­un­tas be taken to mean “a de­sire car­ried through to ef­fect.”¹⁰Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 2, q. 1, ad 1 (p. 382b); cf. Pel­bar­tus, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 1, ad 1; Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 1, ad 2 (foll. 150r–v). How­ever, such pro­pos­als seem to be­long more to canon­i­cal ju­ris­pru­dence than moral theol­ogy. For ex­am­ple, Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton of­fered this def­i­ni­tion be­cause al­though the de­sire to buy or sell spir­i­tual things is it­self a sin, “it nev­er­the­less does not oblige one to re­nounce or re­store the thing ac­quired.”¹¹Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 2, q. 1, ad 1 (p. 383a); cf. Pel­bar­tus, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 1, ad 1. This read­ing is typ­i­cally of­fered along with the al­ter­na­tive of a de­sire that is “not one that comes over him un­awares [sub­rep­to­ria], but one he chooses [eli­gens].”¹²Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 2, q. 1, ad 1 (p. 383a); cf. Pel­bar­tus, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 1, ad 1.

How­ever, this is not the most com­mon un­der­stand­ing of the phrase, nor does it seem to be Aqui­nas’s. In re­spond­ing to the ob­jec­tion that his def­i­ni­tion is un­en­force­able on ac­count of it be­ing based on an in­ter­nal move­ment of the heart, he wrote, “It must be said that as re­gards God, the will alone makes a si­mo­niac; but as re­gards the ex­ter­nal ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal pen­alty, he is not pun­ished […] but must re­pent.”¹³Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 6, ad 6.

Our own Eng­lish ren­der­ing of stu­diosa vol­un­tas as “ear­nest de­sire” has been cho­sen on two counts. First, it re­flects Wyc­liffe’s con­cern to choose words that de­scribe an ac­tiv­ity of the will with­out re­quir­ing an ex­trin­sic ac­tiv­ity. To the mod­ern Eng­lish reader, “de­lib­er­ate” may ex­clude the first mo­tions of sin­ful de­sires, and “ex­press” may go even fur­ther in al­to­gether ex­clud­ing that which is in­ward (ac­tus in­te­rior). The sin with which we con­cern our­selves is not one that is only com­mit­ted when it has been “ex­pressed” in some out­ward deed. One who ear­nestly de­sires to buy or sell spir­i­tual things is one who truly would pre­fer to make such an ex­change over and against con­sid­er­a­tions to the con­trary. Sec­ond, this ren­der­ing is the one cho­sen by both Bur­ton¹⁴Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 2. and the Anat­o­mist,¹⁵The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 25, 39. whose model for re­trieval we have fol­lowed thus far. Apart from any rea­son to the con­trary, it seems right to con­tinue in their pat­tern.

The frame­works in which theo­lo­gians have un­der­stood “ear­nest de­sire” are var­ied. How­ever, as we have seen with Wyc­liffe and Aqui­nas, this di­ver­sity ex­isted pri­mar­ily in ter­mi­nol­ogy rather than sub­stance; there tended to be more align­ment in frame­works over time. As such, while we will at­tempt to pro­vide a mean­ing­ful sur­vey that in­cludes ear­lier sources, we will largely rely on later sources in par­tic­u­lar to de­velop our un­der­stand­ing of the ear­nest de­sire of si­mony in its var­i­ous de­grees of ex­pres­sion and in­volve­ment. We will also con­sider sev­eral jus­ti­fi­ca­tions from mo­tive that have been of­fered in de­fense of si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­changes and the an­swers given by the school­men and canon­ists. Fi­nally, we will con­sider the ear­nest de­sire in hat­ing si­mony that must stand against the ear­nest de­sire of si­mony it­self.

Tax­onomies of Ex­pres­sion§

This no­tion of an ear­nest de­sire may be con­sid­ered from var­i­ous van­tage points. Pri­mar­ily, one may view it from the as­pect of its de­gree of ex­pres­sion in sev­eral stages or its char­ac­ter in sev­eral modes.

On this front, two tax­onomies de­vel­oped. These tax­onomies over­lap con­sid­er­ably, but their dis­tinc­tion lies in their em­pha­sis. The first asks how far the de­sire has been car­ried out—from in­ter­nal de­sire through at­tempt to com­pleted deed. The sec­ond asks what form the trans­ac­tion has taken—whether it re­mains hid­den, takes shape in an agree­ment, or ac­tu­ally re­sults in an ex­change.

A Tax­on­omy of Stages§

Si­mo­ni­a­cal de­sire is ex­pressed in sev­eral stages. Some­times, these are enu­mer­ated rel­a­tive to the in­di­vid­ual him­self, as he ex­presses his si­mo­ni­a­cal will. While not spe­cific to the topic of si­mony, this fea­ture of hu­man be­hav­ior is of­ten dis­cussed by the pair­ing of “af­fec­tion” (in af­fectu) and “ef­fect” (in ef­fectu). For ex­am­ple, John Ma­jor con­cluded his orig­i­nal treat­ment of si­mony with the ob­ser­va­tion that “si­mony re­sides in the af­fec­tion [in af­fectu] and in the ef­fect [in ef­fectu].”¹⁶Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 149ra).

One need not be ca­pa­ble of ex­e­cut­ing the deed for his de­sire to be si­mo­ni­a­cal. Ma­jor also spoke of a “con­di­tional si­mony” (si­mo­nia con­di­tion­alis) where one would like to com­mit si­mony upon cer­tain con­di­tions (hav­ing enough money, etc.).¹⁷Ibid., d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 145vb). Fur­ther­more, it need not be a pos­i­tive de­sire to sell, but could be a neg­a­tive de­sire not to give freely. In other words, it may be a mat­ter of no­li­tion (no­li­tio) rather than vo­li­tion (vo­li­tio).¹⁸“There is some si­mony that is not a vo­li­tion nor a habit of it. This is ev­i­dent: if some­one were to have this res­o­lu­tion, ‘I do not wish to give a ben­e­fice with­out money,’ such si­mony is a no­li­tion, but it is equiv­a­lent to a vo­li­tion.” Ibid., d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 145vb).

The Anat­o­mist added a mid­dle stage of en­deavor (in co­natu). While the no­tion of an ef­fect would tech­ni­cally in­clude all such out­ward ac­tions, the three­fold di­vi­sion makes ex­plicit that guilt at­taches not only to de­sire and com­pleted deed but also to the at­tempt it­self, even an un­suc­cess­ful one. Si­mon Ma­gus’s of­fer was re­jected by Pe­ter, yet he was con­demned for it. One may there­fore be guilty of si­mony in af­fectu, in co­natu, or in ef­fectu.¹⁹See The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 38.

Af­ter ex­plain­ing each cat­e­gory, the Anat­o­mist went on to de­scribe the var­i­ous mech­a­nisms by which si­mony may come to full fru­ition.²⁰Ibid., 45ff. We will take this up in Chap­ter 7.

A Tax­on­omy of Modes§

How­ever, more fre­quently, si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­pres­sion is sub­di­vided ac­cord­ing to the char­ac­ter of the at­tempted or com­pleted ex­change. These modes of si­mony are si­mo­nia men­talis, si­mo­nia con­ven­tion­alis, and si­mo­nia re­alis.

This three­fold tax­on­omy was a rel­a­tively late for­mu­la­tion. Pan­or­mi­tanus, writ­ing in the first half of the fif­teenth cen­tury, was among the ear­li­est to set it out in his com­men­tary on the dec­re­tals. He stated “si­mony is three­fold,” then con­tin­ued to de­fine men­tal and con­ven­tional si­mony, leav­ing the third with­out any ex­plicit men­tion.²¹Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.14 (fol. 72rb); cf. Suá­rez, De Re­li­gione, cap. 41, n. 2 (p. 565). These cat­e­gories were not more fully de­vel­oped un­til later by Counter-Ref­or­ma­tion theo­lo­gians.²²See ibid., cap. 41 (p. 565). Re­gard­less, later Prot­es­tant au­thors adopted their ter­mi­nol­ogy.²³E.g., Ames, Con­science, 5.230; Anon­y­mous, An Es­say Against Si­mony, 23.

Ad­di­tion­ally, ear­lier au­thors tended to use these terms as ei­ther mu­tu­ally com­pat­i­ble or even cu­mu­la­tive. When used in the lat­ter sense, they func­tioned sim­i­larly to the afore­men­tioned cat­e­gories of in af­fectu/in ef­fectu. That is, si­mony be­gins as si­mo­nia men­talis and con­tin­ues by pos­si­bly be­ing at­tached to a pact or com­ing to fru­ition in a suc­cess­fully ex­e­cuted ex­change. For ex­am­ple, John Ma­jor af­firmed that “all si­mony is men­tal.”²⁴Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 145va). In the broad­est, mu­tu­ally com­pat­i­ble sense, some­thing la­beled “si­mony” could be any com­bi­na­tion of these. Men­tal si­mony is any­thing that is not done in ig­no­rance but car­ries a si­mo­ni­a­cal in­tent, con­ven­tional si­mony could be any si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change in­volv­ing a pact,²⁵E.g., Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.14 (fol. 72rb). and real si­mony is sim­ply any si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change that comes to full fru­ition.

But later us­age of the ter­mi­nol­ogy con­verged on a mu­tu­ally ex­clu­sive sense.²⁶E.g., Ames, Con­science, 5.230; Anon­y­mous, An Es­say Against Si­mony, 23; Still­ing­fleet, Bonds of Res­ig­na­tion, 29. Fran­cisco Suá­rez gave some ac­count of the evo­lu­tion here. Suá­rez, De Re­li­gione, cap. 41, nn. 2–4 (pp. 565–66). Men­tal si­mony re­ferred specif­i­cally to those com­pleted ex­changes which were out­wardly licit and could not be cer­tainly dis­cerned as si­mo­ni­a­cal by ex­ter­nal ac­tions.²⁷Ibid., cap. 41, n. 3 (pp. 565–66). Con­ven­tional si­mony re­ferred to si­mo­ni­a­cal pacts that had not been com­pleted. Real si­mony re­ferred to out­wardly si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­changes that had been com­pleted.

Of course, the point of these cat­e­gories was pri­mar­ily to dem­on­strate guilt be­yond out­wardly si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­changes. There­fore, the cat­e­gory of “real” si­mony was em­ployed the least²⁸As al­ready seen with Pan­or­mi­tanus. and “men­tal” the most. Those ac­tions of men­tal si­mony are si­mo­ni­a­cal only by in­tent (in foro in­te­ri­ori). So it is said, “in­ten­tion makes a man a si­mo­niac.”²⁹In­ten­tio fa­cit ho­mi­nem si­mo­ni­acum; Glossa or­di­na­ria ad X 5.3.34 (p. 1159). The Anat­o­mist at­trib­uted this quote to Ber­nar­dus Com­pos­tel­lanus. The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 39. For ex­am­ple, one who pur­chases a prop­erty with an at­tached right of pa­tron­age may or may not do so for the sake of the ad­vow­son, but the one who does is guilty be­fore God.

“Con­ven­tional” si­mony fell be­tween the two in fre­quency of use. Such agree­ments need not be ver­bal; they may be es­tab­lished by mu­tual un­der­stand­ing alone.³⁰See Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 146ra). Nor does the at­tempt need to re­sult in an ex­change; Si­mon Ma­gus failed to make any agree­ment with Pe­ter, yet was con­demned for it.³¹See ibid., d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 145vb). As the Fourth Coun­cil of To­ledo (633) de­clared, even those who so much as en­deavor (mo­li­un­tur) to se­cure an ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal of­fice with money are un­fit for the priest­hood.³²Fourth Coun­cil of To­ledo (633), c. 19 (pp. 278–79).

Be­yond mere in­struc­tion and ex­hor­ta­tion, this tax­on­omy was em­ployed to dis­tin­guish cor­re­spond­ing pen­al­ties. Men­tal si­mony re­quires pen­ance alone since the ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal fo­rum can­not judge hid­den in­ten­tions.³³See Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (foll. 145va, 149ra); Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.20, 29, 34, 38 (foll. 73v, 74r, 76r, 79v, 80r, 80v, 81r). Con­ven­tional si­mony and real si­mony could re­sult in de­po­si­tion,³⁴See “a si­mo­niac is to be de­posed […] si­mony […] ren­ders him un­fit for the ex­e­cu­tion of his of­fice.” Ibid., ad X 5.3.6 (fol. 69vb). and any com­pleted si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change re­quired res­ti­tu­tion.³⁵E.g., “in con­ven­tional si­mony a man is bound to re­store such spir­i­tual or tem­po­ral things un­law­fully re­ceived.” Ibid., ad X 5.3.34, no. 5 (fol. 80ra).

In­suf­fi­cient Mo­ti­va­tions§

Since si­mony re­sides fun­da­men­tally in the will, it would seem to fol­low that one may be able to ex­cuse a si­mo­ni­a­cal trans­ac­tion so long as the un­der­ly­ing mo­ti­va­tion is in­no­cent. Me­dieval theo­lo­gians there­fore found it nec­es­sary to counter a num­ber of jus­ti­fi­ca­tions in which one pointed to pure mo­ti­va­tions that con­tained no mal­ice. How­ever, one need not have ma­li­cious in­tent for his de­sire to be si­mo­ni­a­cal. An ear­nest de­sire to buy or sell spir­i­tual things is si­mo­ni­a­cal even if it forms out of ig­no­rance or weak­ness.³⁶See Pel­bar­tus, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 1; cf. Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 2, q. 1, ad 1 (p. 383a). Ob­jec­tions to the con­trary re­duce to a form of prag­ma­tism re­jected by the school­men and canon­ists.

To Raise Suf­fi­cient Re­sources§

While many ex­changes of spir­i­tual things were for pri­vate gain, some had the pur­pose of main­tain­ing a spir­i­tual work. In par­tic­u­lar, monas­ter­ies and col­le­giate churches of­ten had lim­ited re­sources, and the ad­mis­sion of new mem­bers placed real fi­nan­cial bur­dens on the com­mu­nity. Many there­fore jus­ti­fied charg­ing for en­trance into the so­ci­ety, claim­ing that if fi­nan­cial im­par­tial­ity in ad­mis­sions were main­tained, “then all re­li­gious houses would per­ish, be­cause so many would be placed there that their goods would not suf­fice; and this seems un­fit­ting.”³⁷Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, quaest., s.c. 1 (p. 92b). Such prac­tices were com­mon. In part, their ex­tent may be gauged from Thomas of Stras­bourg’s ob­ser­va­tion that “cer­tain nuns of Ger­many” very ex­plic­itly de­manded tem­po­ral goods from those who would en­ter their com­mu­nity.³⁸Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 2 (fol. 150v). See also Groote, De si­mo­nia ad be­gut­tas, 16–18; Lynch, Si­mo­ni­a­cal En­try, 220–21. Wyc­liffe com­plained of a re­lated prac­tice among the fri­ars, who sold lay­men let­ters of con­fra­ter­nity, os­ten­si­bly grant­ing a share in the mer­its of the or­der’s masses and prayers for an an­nual fee. He ar­gued that it went hand in hand with their preach­ing for money, both be­ing si­mony.³⁹Wyc­liffe, De apos­ta­sia, cap. 2 (36:22–30).

The canon law­yers and school­men gave the same an­swer at this point: no com­mu­nity may ex­act a fee for en­trance into re­li­gious life, but if funds are truly lack­ing, it may de­cline to re­ceive those it can­not sus­tain.⁴⁰For rel­e­vant canon law, see C. 1, q. 2; X 5.3.8, 19, 30. How­ever, if non-con­trac­tual, it may re­ceive some gift in or­der to ex­pand its ca­pac­ity and ad­mit a new mem­ber.⁴¹E.g., “When the pos­ses­sions of a re­li­gious house do not suf­fice to sus­tain more per­sons, then some­thing may be re­quired of one who wishes to serve God in that place—not as a price of re­li­gion, but so that the mon­as­tery may have the means to pro­vide for him; and there­fore si­mony is not com­mit­ted. But if he can be re­ceived with­out bur­den to the church, it is si­mo­ni­a­cal to re­quire any­thing for his re­cep­tion.” Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2, ad 7; cf. Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 4; Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 2 (fol. 150v).

In the lit­er­a­ture, there is some dis­cus­sion around the de­gree to which it is ac­cept­able to present the fi­nan­cial need in a way that would not be ma­nip­u­la­tive or co­er­cive. In gen­eral, it is ac­cept­able to state the re­quire­ment in cases of need, but apart from this it is not con­sid­ered right to ask any­thing.⁴²E.g., Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 3, q. 2, ad 6 (p. 386b). John Ma­jor rec­om­mended per­mis­si­ble com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a set form of words: “Brother, we can­not com­fort­ably feed more than we have; if it please you to en­ter this com­mu­nity, bring a por­tion from which you may be sus­tained.”⁴³Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 148ra). In all of these ac­counts, ne­ces­sity (ne­ces­si­tas) may ac­count for re­quir­ing money, but a con­trac­tual ar­range­ment (pac­tum) that charges for ad­mis­sion and gives it in re­turn may not.⁴⁴E.g., “To re­ceive [some­one] un­der an agree­ment (sub pacto), es­pe­cially where the house has no need, is openly si­mony. To the ar­gu­ment [that the money is the cause] it must be said that [the pay­ment] is not the cause of grant­ing [ad­mis­sion]; rather, ne­ces­sity ex­torts [pay­ment], for they would gladly grant [ad­mis­sion] freely, and so that [need] is why they have an eye to [money] in con­fer­ring it.” Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, ad quaest. (p. 94b).

While re­li­gious so­ci­eties pro­vided a com­mon case study, the prin­ci­ple was not con­fined to them. An ac­tual lack of fi­nan­cial ca­pac­ity could jus­tify with­hold­ing some spir­i­tual ben­e­fit un­til the need was met, but a com­mer­cial ex­change was not per­mit­ted, re­gard­less of how much it may seem ad­van­ta­geous to the work be­ing done. Wyc­liffe of­fered the so­lu­tion to any who con­sider some no­ble work fi­nan­cially im­pos­si­ble apart from mak­ing com­merce out of it: “But first, be­fore men com­mit si­mony, they should la­bor with their hands, or go to an­other peo­ple, or sooner starve in the body.”⁴⁵Wyc­liffe, Ser­mons, serm. LXXXIII (1, p. 284).

To Prac­tice Char­ity§

An­other at­tempted jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of mo­tive is to prac­tice char­ity (alms­giv­ing). That is, some have pos­ited that it may be ac­cept­able to sell spir­i­tual things in or­der to give the pro­ceeds to the poor. Gra­tian iden­ti­fied the er­ror with this line of rea­son­ing: it is ob­jected that “sin­is­ter be­gin­nings of­ten reach happy out­comes.”⁴⁶C. 1, q. 1, d.p.c. 24, § 1. Ja­cob reached the bless­ing through sup­plant­ing, a crop that is sown by a lep­rous hand is nev­er­the­less har­vested clean, a beau­ti­ful off­spring is born from an adul­ter­ous union, and so too money that is ac­quired through si­mony has a happy out­come when it is dis­trib­uted to ben­e­fit the poor, “but none of these things de­fends the si­mo­ni­acs.”⁴⁷C. 1, q. 1, d.p.c. 24, § 1. And em­ploy­ing the words of Greg­ory, he sum­ma­rized: “Com­mit­ting the sins of the si­mo­ni­a­cal her­esy un­der the pre­text of alms­giv­ing must be strictly avoided. For it is one thing to give alms on ac­count of sins and quite an­other to com­mit sins on ac­count of alms­giv­ing.”⁴⁸C. 1, q. 1, c. 27, § 2; cf. Greg­ory I, Ep. IX.218 (2, 207:24–27).

Pu­ri­tan writ­ers con­curred. Henry Bur­ton re­corded that peo­ple made sim­i­lar ob­jec­tions in his own time, claim­ing to use for a char­i­ta­ble pur­pose money re­ceived for pre­fer­ment.⁴⁹“An­other ob­jec­tion doth here cross my way on the pa­tron’s be­half, Sir, you need not be so rigid against giv­ing and re­ceiv­ing for a spir­i­tual pre­fer­ment: for, for my part, I have a good in­tent to con­vert such money to some char­i­ta­ble use, as to be­stow it in alms, etc.” Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 65. To an­swer this ob­jec­tion, he ap­pealed to Gra­tian, as cited above,⁵⁰Ibid., 65–66. and fur­ther de­scribed such char­ity as no dif­fer­ent from the pur­chase of the field of blood with Ju­das’s blood money.⁵¹“Like the high priests’ char­ity, who with Ju­das trea­son-money, by some called si­mony, bought, for­sooth, a field to bury strang­ers in. But for all this char­i­ta­ble work, by di­vine or­di­na­tion (as Lyra saith) the field got such a name, as could never be washed off. For it is called, the field of blood to this day. Matt. 27:8Matthew 27:8Therefore that field was called the field of blood to this day..” Ibid., 66. John Dow­name was no less se­vere, de­scrib­ing those who give alms out of money got­ten by si­mony as “much more abom­i­na­ble” than those who give out of money got­ten by op­pres­sion.⁵²“But much more abom­i­na­ble are their alms, who spoil the Church by si­mony and sac­ri­lege, and tak­ing into their pos­ses­sion the por­tion of Levi, which is con­se­crated unto God, think to please the Lord, and as it were, sat­isfy for their sin, by giv­ing some small alms to the poor, or keep­ing good hos­pi­tal­ity of the spoils of the Church. And that not only for the time past, but with a res­o­lu­tion to con­tinue still in their sin, pay­ing these pit­tances to the poor, as the price or pen­alty of their sac­ri­le­gious wicked­ness: but unto these may be well fit­ted the say­ing of the Holy Ghost. Prov. 21:27Proverbs 21:27The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination; how much more, when he brings it with a wicked mind!. The sac­ri­fice of the wicked is an abom­i­na­tion: How much more when he bring­eth it with a wicked mind?” Dow­name, The Plea of the Poore, 67. As with the wages of a pros­ti­tute (Deut. 23:18Deuteronomy 23:18You shall not bring the wages of a prostitute, or the wages of a dog, into the house of Jehovah your God for any vow; for even both these are an abomination to Jehovah your God.), the ill-got­ten gain of si­mony may not be of­fered to the Lord.⁵³“If the hire of an har­lot, or price of a dog, might not be con­se­crated unto God, be­cause they were an abom­i­na­tion unto him, then nei­ther may we of­fer that which we have got­ten by stealth and rob­bery […] Whereby it ap­peareth that men can­not law­fully give alms out of those goods which they have got­ten by theft and rap­ine, brib­ery and ex­tor­tion, si­mony and usury, dic­ing and un­law­ful gam­ing.” Ibid., 64–65.

To En­cour­age Char­ity§

A less com­mon but re­lated jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is that of en­cour­ag­ing char­ity. Rather than laun­der­ing si­mo­ni­a­cal pro­ceeds through alms­giv­ing, this ar­gu­ment holds that the sale of spir­i­tual things en­cour­ages good works, since it in­duces the pur­chaser to give.

Al­bert the Great pre­sented this ob­jec­tion for charg­ing for en­try to a re­li­gious so­ci­ety: “Fur­ther, it is not evil to in­duce men to give alms; there­fore if they in­duce [them] to be­stow an alms by re­ceiv­ing a man whom they oth­er­wise would not re­ceive, 118it is not evil; there­fore it is not si­mony.”⁵⁴Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, quaest., s.c. 2 (p. 92b). Al­bert did not an­swer this ob­jec­tion di­rectly, but ef­fec­tively dis­missed it on the ground that the sale of spir­i­tual things is wrong re­gard­less of mo­tive. A house may count the de­vo­tion a man’s gen­eros­ity shows to­ward it among his qual­i­fi­ca­tions for en­try, but his re­cep­tion on ac­count of his gift may never take place by way of agree­ment.⁵⁵Ibid., IV, d. 25, a. 5, ad quaest. (p. 94b); Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 4.

The ob­jec­tion there­fore fails on its own terms: a pay­ment made in ex­change for some spir­i­tual ben­e­fit is not char­ity but com­merce. True alms­giv­ing should be mo­ti­vated by good will, but an ex­change by agree­ment cor­rupts the na­ture of the good works by at­tach­ing a con­trac­tual re­ward. On this point, one canon rea­soned, “For we have never read that the Lord’s dis­ci­ples, or those con­verted by their min­is­try, en­ticed any­one to the wor­ship of God by the in­ter­ven­tion of any pay­ment.”⁵⁶C. 1, q. 2, c. 2. Gen­eros­ity may and should be mo­ti­vated by di­vine re­ward (Prov. 19:17Proverbs 19:17He who has pity on the poor lends to Jehovah, and his good deed will he pay him again.; Heb. 11:6Hebrews 11:6And without faith it is impossible to please [God], for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of those who seek him.), but this is granted in in­de­ter­mi­nate tim­ing and apart from hu­man con­tract (Matt. 6:3–4Matthew 6:3–4³But when you do alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does:⁴that your alms may be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.).

Si­mony in the sale of in­dul­gences and prayers pro­vides a clear ex­am­ple of how such pur­chases are con­trary to char­ity. The one who pur­chases an in­dul­gence un­der the pre­tense of alms­giv­ing of­fers no real sac­ri­fice since he seeks to se­cure a ben­e­fit from man. While many of the school­men did not see in­con­sis­tency in de­fend­ing these prac­tices,⁵⁷For in­dul­gences, see Bo­na­ven­ture, In Sent. IV, d. 20, p. 2, a. un., q. 4, ad 1 (pp. 536–37); for prayers, see Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 2. Prot­es­tants and proto-Re­form­ers high­lighted the hy­poc­risy. As Pe­ter Mar­tyr Ver­migli re­marked of the re­li­gion of Rome, “With their in­dul­gences they cor­rupt good works: for they take away from alms their proper end, the glory of God. They say they are given so that pun­ish­ments may be taken away.”⁵⁸Ver­migli, Loci Com­munes, 3.8.37 (p. 612).

To Up­hold Cus­tom§

An­other at­tempted jus­ti­fi­ca­tion was cus­tom (con­sue­tudo), which in canon law can carry le­gal force. One may rea­son that a long­stand­ing prac­tice can­not be si­mo­ni­a­cal, for if it were, it would have been cor­rected long ago. Fur­ther­more, to up­hold the cus­toms of the church would ap­pear to be a wor­thy ob­jec­tive that war­rants par­tic­i­pa­tion in the trans­ac­tions they re­quire. Liber ex­tra dis­abused its reader of this no­tion in many chap­ters,⁵⁹X 5.3.8, 9, 16, 19, 21, 36, 39. John Ma­jor like­wise ad­dressed this is­sue at length, Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 4 (foll. 186ra–187rb). which we will now here con­sider.

The Coun­cil of Tours (1163) ex­plained the ba­sic prin­ci­ple: “The pas­sage of time does not di­min­ish a sin, but ag­gra­vates it.”⁶⁰Coun­cil of Tours (1163), 6 (Mansi 21:1178); cf. X 5.3.8. The Third Lat­eran Coun­cil (1179) ad­dressed those who pleaded long cus­tom for charg­ing to en­throne bish­ops and ab­bots, in­stall priests, bury the dead, bless those mar­ry­ing, or con­fer other sac­ra­ments. It called them “blinded by greed” and warned that any­one who per­sisted would “have his por­tion with Ge­hazi.”⁶¹“Many think that this is per­mit­ted to them, be­cause they con­sider that long-stand­ing cus­tom has given it the force of law, not suf­fi­ciently pay­ing at­ten­tion—since they are blinded by greed—to the fact that crimes are all the graver for how long they have held the un­happy soul bound. […] If any­one shall pre­sume to act against this, let him know that he will have his por­tion with Ge­hazi, whose deed he im­i­tates by ex­act­ing a shame­ful re­ward.” Third Lat­eran Coun­cil, 7 (Mansi 22:221–22); cf. X 5.3.9.

In a let­ter to the Arch­bishop of Can­ter­bury, In­no­cent III ad­dressed a par­tic­u­larly cre­ative eva­sion. Cer­tain suf­fra­gans had been ex­act­ing pay­ment for chrism. Hop­ing to elude the arch­bishop’s cor­rec­tion, they did not cease but merely moved for­ward the tim­ing of the pay­ment and re­named it: first “chris­mals,” then “pas­chals,” and fi­nally “mid-Lenten cus­toms.” In­no­cent re­sponded that re­nam­ing the pay­ment does not ab­solve from guilt. Such de­cep­tion is to “cloak si­mony un­der an hon­est name,” but “God is not mocked.”⁶²“Gap­ing af­ter shame­ful gain and say­ing in their hearts, ‘There is no God,’ they cloak si­mony un­der an hon­est name, as though by chang­ing the name the guilt and the pen­alty would be trans­ferred. But God is not mocked, ac­cord­ing to the apos­tle, nor will such fol­low­ers of Si­mon—even if they per­haps evade tem­po­ral [pun­ish­ment] in the present—es­cape eter­nal pun­ish­ment in the fu­ture, since nei­ther will the re­spect­a­bil­ity of a name cloak the mal­ice of the crime, nor will a word be able to abol­ish guilt.” In­no­cent III, Reg. II.96 (208:4–9); cf. X 5.3.36.

The Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil (1215) was es­pe­cially di­rect. It iden­ti­fied the prac­tice of de­fend­ing si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­ac­tions by ap­peal to cus­tom and gave the de­fin­i­tive re­join­der: “We ut­terly re­ject this cus­tom, which ought rather to be called a cor­rup­tion.”⁶³“Some en­deavor to de­fend this base­ness and de­prav­ity by a cus­tom long ob­served. Wish­ing there­fore to abol­ish so great an abuse, we ut­terly re­ject this cus­tom [con­sue­tu­di­nem], which ought rather to be called a cor­rup­tion [cor­rup­tela], firmly de­cree­ing that for these things—whether to be con­ferred or al­ready con­ferred—no one pre­sume un­der any pre­text what­so­ever to ex­act or ex­tort any­thing. Oth­er­wise both the one who re­ceives and the one who gives such a wholly con­demned price shall be con­demned along with Ge­hazi and Si­mon.” Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil, 63 (Mansi 22:1051C); cf. X 5.3.39. While a cus­tom may have the force of law, cor­rup­tion can­not.⁶⁴A cor­rup­tela does not bind. Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 4 (fol. 186vb). This same coun­cil or­dered that lay­peo­ple who un­der­mined pi­ous cus­toms of giv­ing out of “the leaven of he­ret­i­cal de­prav­ity” should be re­strained.⁶⁵Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil, 66 (Mansi 22:1054); cf. X 5.3.42. Yet the same canon pro­hib­ited cler­i­cal ex­ac­tions.

Right­eous In­dig­na­tion§

It is not suf­fi­cient merely to ab­stain from the ear­nest de­sire to buy or sell spir­i­tual things; one must ac­tively hate si­mony. As Greg­ory the Great ad­mon­ished, “who­ever does not burn ve­he­mently to amend this crime out of re­gard for his of­fice, let him not doubt that he will have his por­tion with him from whom this de­fil­ing out­rage first arose.”⁶⁶Greg­ory I, Ep. XII.9 (2, 357:3–5). This is most fre­quently cited in the form that car­ried into canon law: “Who­ever, there­fore, does not burn ve­he­mently against the si­mo­ni­a­cal and neo­phyte her­esy [the pro­mo­tion of those who are not qual­i­fied (1 Tim. 3:61 Timothy 3:6not a novice, so that he does not, having been puffed up, fall into the condemnation of the devil.)] ac­cord­ing to the sta­tion of his of­fice, let him not doubt that he will have his por­tion with him who first com­mit­ted this de­fil­ing out­rage.” C. 1, q. 1, c. 5; cf. Wido, Wido­nis mo­nachi epis­tola, 5:10–13. In bind­ing the duty to the of­fice one holds, Greg­ory in­di­cated that those in greater po­si­tions must ex­hibit a greater pas­sion against the sin. Yet that is not to sug­gest that those who hold no par­tic­u­lar of­fice have no re­spon­si­bil­ity to burn against si­mony. The duty is mea­sured by ca­pac­ity: inas­much as one has a voice against this sin, he must pro­por­tion­ally have the heart to use it in ear­nest.

While many works on si­mony quote this re­mark from Greg­ory, the Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus stands out as one that not only does so,⁶⁷The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 70. but re­turns to em­pha­size this same point re­peat­edly. For ex­am­ple, the Anat­o­mist wrote, “If the heinous­ness and im­pi­ety of this sin of si­mony were se­ri­ously con­sid­ered, it could not but beget a per­fect de­tes­ta­tion and ab­hor­rency thereof, in the heart of any true Chris­tian.”⁶⁸Ibid., 98. A lack of dis­gust pro­ceeds from too lit­tle med­i­ta­tion on the sin, or from no con­ver­sion at all. Again, he ex­horted the reader, “Where­fore I be­seech you, if ever any man shall hence­forth come to tempt you to such a si­mo­ni­a­cal bar­gain, by the of­fer of money, or any bribe, let your in­dig­na­tion ev­i­dence your ab­hor­rency of such a sin, and your de­tes­ta­tion of such a per­son; and say to him as Si­mon Pe­ter said to Si­mon Ma­gus, ‘Thy money per­ish with thee.’ And I’m sure the re­ward of such hon­est zeal shall meet you in heaven.”⁶⁹Ibid., 188–89.

Con­clu­sion§

Si­mony not only ex­ists in a com­pleted trans­ac­tion, but in var­i­ous stages as it ex­tends from an in­ter­nal ear­nest de­sire to out­ward ex­pres­sion and ex­e­cu­tion, from men­tal to con­ven­tional to real. Canon law may pe­nal­ize only what is out­ward and ad­ju­di­ca­ble, but be­fore God the will alone suf­fices to make a si­mo­niac.

Nor can an in­no­cent mo­tive ex­cuse the ear­nest de­sire to buy or sell spir­i­tual things. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tions ex­am­ined above—sus­tain­ing a re­li­gious com­mu­nity, sup­ply­ing alms, en­cour­ag­ing char­ity, up­hold­ing cus­tom—were each an­swered by the school­men and canon­ists. A pi­ous end does not al­ter the na­ture of a si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change. Gen­u­ine ne­ces­sity may limit whether a com­mu­nity can take on the bur­den of more mem­bers, and vol­un­tary giv­ing is per­mit­ted if it is not sug­ges­tive of an ex­change, but no good­ness of in­ten­tion con­verts the sale of spir­i­tual things into some­thing law­ful.

Fi­nally, be­cause the sin con­sists in a de­sire, the rem­edy also lies in the heart. It is not enough to re­fuse si­mo­ni­a­cal bar­gains; one must hate them, each ac­cord­ing to his ca­pac­ity.

Ex­chang­ing any­thing for a spir­i­tual thing makes one guilty of si­mony, what­ever the thing ex­changed. It might be ob­jected that Si­mon of­fered money (Acts 8:18Acts 8:18Now when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money,), not other things. How­ever, many things can be mea­sured in money, so ex­chang­ing spir­i­tual things for these counts as si­mony.¹See Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain, In Sent. (red. C), IV, d. 25, q. 4 (fol. 315r).

The mat­ter is plain enough, but this has not kept many from sup­pos­ing that cer­tain things may be of­fered in ex­change for spir­i­tual things re­gard­less. In a rel­a­tively ex­treme ex­am­ple, Blaise Pas­cal con­tended with the Je­suit ca­su­istry that would per­mit sell­ing spir­i­tual things so long as money was of­fered as a “mo­tive” rather than a “price.”²Pas­cal, Les Pro­vin­ciales, 174, 187. That is, so long as the amount ex­changed is not truly pro­por­tional to the spir­i­tual thing, it is per­mis­si­ble. Since spir­i­tual things are by def­i­ni­tion price­less, this would mean that any ex­change for a ma­te­rial thing is per­mit­ted. In this frame­work, Si­mon him­self is cleared of si­mony.

How si­mony is com­mit­ted there­fore de­pends on what is ex­changed for the spir­i­tual thing and may be dis­cerned by the qual­ity or cir­cum­stances of the gift.

The Gre­go­rian Triad§

Al­most all dis­cus­sions on this mat­ter go back to Greg­ory the Great, who clas­si­fied gifts into three kinds. In com­ment­ing on Mat­thew 10:8Matthew 10:8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give., he quoted the Latin text of Isa­iah 33:15Isaiah 33:15He who walks righteously, and speaks uprightly; he who despises the gain of oppressions, that shakes his hands from taking a bribe, that stops his ears from hearing of blood, and shuts his eyes from looking on evil; (“He who shakes his hands free from every gift”) to ob­serve that it speaks of “every gift” (omni mu­nere) rather than merely “a gift.” At this point, he ex­horted the hearer to re­ject three classes of gifts in di­vine mat­ters:³Greg­ory I, Ho­mil­iae in evan­ge­lia, 4.4 (p. 25). This triad is un­re­lated to the later de­vel­op­ment of the mu­nus tri­plex, the three­fold of­fice of Christ.

These dis­tinc­tions were em­braced by many who touched on the sub­ject af­ter­ward, in­clud­ing Gra­tian,⁵C. 1, q. 1, c. 114. Thomas Aqui­nas,⁶Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 78, a. 2; II‑II, q. 100, a. 5. Bo­na­ven­ture,⁷Bo­na­ven­ture, In Sent. IV, d. 25, dub. 6 (pp. 658–59). John Wyc­liffe,⁸Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 1 (3:32–4:8). Pe­ter Mar­tyr Ver­migli,⁹Ver­migli, Loci Com­munes, 2.8.14 (p. 250). and even later di­vines like Wil­liam Ames¹⁰Ames, Con­science, 4.67–68. and James Dur­ham.¹¹Dur­ham, A Prac­ti­cal Ex­po­si­tion of the X. Com­man­de­ments, 409–10. These cat­e­gories ap­pear not only in works on si­mony but also in writ­ings on re­lated eth­i­cal top­ics like brib­ery and usury. Many of the works that fea­ture the triad di­rectly at­trib­ute it to Greg­ory’s hom­ily, re­mark­ing on the rel­e­vance of both Isa­iah 33:15Isaiah 33:15He who walks righteously, and speaks uprightly; he who despises the gain of oppressions, that shakes his hands from taking a bribe, that stops his ears from hearing of blood, and shuts his eyes from looking on evil; and Mat­thew 10:8Matthew 10:8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give..

Writ­ing in 1909, Nich­o­las We­ber re­ported, “Sub­se­quent ages have brought no ad­di­tion to this in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the ma­te­rial price.”¹²We­ber, A His­tory of Si­mony in the Chris­tian Church, 199. More than a cen­tury on, his ver­dict needs no re­vi­sion.

Speech and Ser­vice§

Gifts of the hand, be­ing ma­te­rial things or rights of pe­cu­niary value, need lit­tle def­i­ni­tion, but the other two mem­bers of the triad are not as eas­ily rec­og­nized. We will here ex­am­ine sev­eral ex­am­ples that re­cur through­out the lit­er­a­ture.

For­mal Com­men­da­tions§

There are var­i­ous gifts of the tongue. Some of these are more ob­vi­ously of fi­nan­cial value, such as com­men­da­tions to high po­si­tions. For ex­am­ple, one who com­mends an­other to an ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal po­si­tion gives the gift of the tongue in ex­change for a spir­i­tual honor, even though the honor is be­stowed on an­other.¹³Re­call that si­mony be­came en­trenched through the right of pre­sen­ta­tion. See Chap­ter 1, p. 10. If such an en­treaty is made on be­half of one who is un­wor­thy, it con­sti­tutes si­mony.¹⁴E.g., “And this is to be un­der­stood of the case where that spir­i­tual thing is ob­tained by en­treaties on be­half of an un­wor­thy per­son.” Au­riol, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. un., a. 2 (p. 166a).

How­ever, a com­men­da­tion made on be­half of a wor­thy per­son is not thereby si­mo­ni­a­cal. If words tend to­ward al­leg­ing a man’s fit­ness rather than to­ward se­cur­ing the of­fice for him, then such words are only a sec­ondary cause of the ap­point­ment.¹⁵The same pas­sage con­tin­ues: “For oth­er­wise, if it is ob­tained for a wor­thy per­son, and it is not given prin­ci­pally for the sake of the en­treaties but sec­on­dar­ily, in this way si­mony would not be com­mit­ted. Hence cau­tion should be ap­plied here, so that the en­treaties do not tend di­rectly to­ward ob­tain­ing the thing for the per­son, but to­ward al­leg­ing his suf­fi­ciency [his qual­i­fi­ca­tions], so that they may thus be rather words of al­le­ga­tion and tes­ti­mony than words of beg­ging and be­seech­ing.” Ibid., IV, d. 25, q. un., a. 2 (p. 166a). A truth­ful com­men­da­tion is right to give and right to be de­sired.¹⁶See also Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 147va).

The same is true in the op­po­site di­rec­tion, where spir­i­tual things are given in or­der to se­cure a com­men­da­tion. For ex­am­ple, Henry Bur­ton spoke of “ser­mon si­mony,” in which a man about to pur­chase a ben­e­fice preaches a show­piece ser­mon to win the pa­tron’s com­men­da­tion, which then sat­is­fies his own con­science that he has pre­ferred a wor­thy man.¹⁷Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 41–42. But if he preaches with the de­sire to sin­cerely dem­on­strate his ca­pac­i­ties and so re­ceive a truth­ful com­men­da­tion, and that de­sire is only a sec­ondary cause of his preach­ing, he is in­no­cent.

Praise and Flat­tery§

Some gifts of the tongue are less ob­vi­ously of fi­nan­cial value. For ex­am­ple, can mere praise con­sti­tute a si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change even though it does not re­sult in any fi­nan­cial ad­van­tage? John Chrys­os­tom asked and an­swered, “For what, though you give no money, but in­stead of money em­ploy flat­tery, and con­trive many things, and use much schem­ing? May your sil­ver per­ish with you!”¹⁸Chrys­os­tom, Ho­mil­iae in Acta apos­to­lo­rum, 3.5 (PG 60:41). Au­gus­tine sim­i­larly con­cluded that ex­chang­ing spir­i­tual things for praise was its own sort of com­merce: “those who seek such things are sell­ing.”¹⁹“For what does it profit to ac­quire in this age any tem­po­ral and tran­si­tory thing what­ever, whether it be money, or the plea­sure of the belly and the throat, or honor in hu­man praise? […] My breth­ren, those who seek such things are sell­ing. For even that Si­mon wished to buy the Holy Spirit for this rea­son: be­cause he wished to sell the Holy Spirit.” Au­gus­tine, Trac­ta­tus in evan­ge­lium Io­an­nis, 10.6 (PL 35:1469).

Not only is it wrong to flat­ter one’s way to some spir­i­tual thing or into some ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal of­fice, but it is also wrong to give any spir­i­tual thing in or­der to be flat­tered. This oc­curs when one rightly gives a de­served church po­si­tion, but does so for the sake of praise,²⁰See Fuller, The Holy State, 98. or when a min­is­ter preaches for the sake of ap­proval.²¹See Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, ad 1 (p. 93b). In ei­ther case, he ex­changes a spir­i­tual thing for a tem­po­ral thing. Fur­ther­more, those who do such a thing call at­ten­tion to them­selves rather than Christ. In do­ing so, they do not preach Christ, but them­selves (cf. 2 Cor. 4:52 Corinthians 4:5For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’s sake.).²²See The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 82–83.

Though one ought not per­form spir­i­tual la­bor for tem­po­ral hon­ors, he may do so for a good name in the king­dom of heaven. As Al­bert the Great re­marked, “the fame of the saints rests in spir­i­tual things.”²³“To the next it must be said that pop­u­lar praise has noth­ing spir­i­tual in it; on the con­trary, it is more tem­po­ral even than time it­self, be­cause it is thin­ner, and dis­solves into the air. But the fame of the saints rests in spir­i­tual things, and there­fore it is spir­i­tual.” Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, ad 2 (p. 93b). The un­der­ly­ing con­cern is not that spir­i­tual la­bor should lack all mo­ti­va­tion but that its mo­ti­va­tion must ex­clude what may be re­ceived from man rather than God.

Per­sonal Fa­vor§

Per­sonal fa­vor, a gift of ser­vice, is not to be given for the sake of any spir­i­tual thing. This may sound dif­fi­cult to dis­cern or en­force, but in a num­ber of sit­u­a­tions, per­sonal fa­vor shows it­self plainly. In more ex­treme cases, ex­plicit oaths of fealty might be given in ex­change for spir­i­tual things.²⁴See X 5.3.17.

Harder to dis­cern is the case where some­one might or­dain or give spir­i­tual things out of a pre-ex­ist­ing par­tial­ity. One might ar­gue that noth­ing is ex­changed in this case, but what is “given” by the re­cip­i­ent of the spir­i­tual thing is a con­tin­ued re­spect in the con­text of that re­la­tion­ship. The mo­ti­va­tion for the min­is­ter here is some un­spo­ken oblig­a­tion that dis­counts the de­mands of jus­tice, es­pe­cially in an or­di­na­tion or ben­e­fice. Al­bert the Great ex­plained that “‘Sell­ing’ and ‘buy­ing’ are not taken so strictly in the def­i­ni­tion of si­mony; rather, it is called a sale when­ever any price what­ever causes spir­i­tual things to be given—‘price’ be­ing taken in a broad sense for every tem­po­ral thing that is the whole and sole cause of the giv­ing.”²⁵Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, ad 3 (p. 93b).

The most com­mon con­cern on this front is par­tial­ity that would be shown to­ward fam­ily. The Liber ex­tra counted it si­mo­ni­a­cal for a priest to act “out of re­spect for any per­son, or of con­san­guin­ity, or of fa­mil­iar­ity.”²⁶X 5.3.14. Oc­ca­sion­ally this lan­guage was grounded in James 2:1James 2:1My brothers, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, [the Lord] of glory, with partiality. (“Do not hold the faith of our Lord Je­sus Christ with re­spect of per­sons”),²⁷E.g., Aqui­nas, Quod­li­bet, IV, q. 8, a. 4 (p. 82); Groote, De si­mo­nia ad be­gut­tas, 14–15. es­pe­cially on ac­count of Au­gus­tine’s ap­pli­ca­tion of the pas­sage to ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal hon­ors.²⁸“Nor in­deed, in my judg­ment, is it to be thought a light sin ‘to hold the faith of our Lord Je­sus Christ with re­spect of per­sons,’ if we re­fer that dis­tinc­tion be­tween sit­ting and stand­ing to ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal hon­ors. For who could bear that a rich man be cho­sen for a seat of honor in the Church, while a poorer man, bet­ter in­structed and holier, is de­spised? But if he is speak­ing of every­day as­sem­blies, who does not sin here—if in­deed it is a sin—ex­cept the one who within him­self so judges that the richer the other man, the bet­ter he ap­pears to him? For this is what he seems to have meant by say­ing: ‘Have you not judged within your­selves, and be­come judges of evil thoughts?’” Au­gus­tine, Ep. 167.18 (CSEL 44, 605:10–606:3). John Cal­vin re­marked that within the pa­pacy, not even one in twenty at­tains the priest­hood apart from a si­mony evoked by kin­dred, af­fin­ity, pa­ren­tal in­flu­ence, or ob­se­quious­ness.²⁹Cal­vin, In­sti­tu­tio, 4.5.6. Of­ten, ben­e­fices func­tioned as dow­ries,³⁰Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 42. and Eng­lish sources re­ferred to such pre­sen­ta­tions as “smock si­mony.”³¹E.g., The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 60; Dou­glas, The Di­aries, 184.

Some school­men qual­i­fied their con­cerns on this point. While the canons speak with rigor on kin­ship in con­fer­ral, Aqui­nas dis­tin­guished be­tween the one who gives a spir­i­tual thing seek­ing to ob­lig­ate the re­ceiver and the one who hopes for some vol­un­tary ben­e­fit from the re­ceiver. The for­mer he re­garded as si­mo­ni­a­cal, the lat­ter car­nal but not si­mo­ni­a­cal.³²“For if the prel­ate in­tends to oblige the man to whom he gives the ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal ben­e­fice to make some rec­om­pense to him­self or to his blood-re­la­tions, the in­ten­tion is si­mo­ni­a­cal, for he in­tends a kind of tacit sale. But if he does not in­tend to oblige him, but in­tends that the man should of his own ac­cord make tem­po­ral rec­om­pense to him or to his own, the in­ten­tion is in­deed de­praved and car­nal, but not si­mo­ni­a­cal.” Aqui­nas, Quod­li­bet, V, q. 11, a. 3 (p. 116); cf. Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 5, ad 2. Al­bert the Great spoke sim­i­larly, even per­mit­ting kin­ship as a fac­tor, so long as it was not the pri­mary cause of the giv­ing of any spir­i­tual thing.³³“[For such an ex­change to be prob­lem­atic] kin­ship must be the cause and the rea­son for giv­ing. For if good­ness of life were the cause and kin­ship a con­cur­rent cause, it would not be si­mony, since kin­ship is some­thing bod­ily and de­rived from the flesh.” Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, ad 3 (p. 93b). For ap­point­ment to an of­fice, kin­ship may only be a sec­ondary con­sid­er­a­tion, con­cur­rent along­side gen­u­ine merit.

Qual­i­ties and Cir­cum­stances§

One might sup­pose a gift may be ex­cused on ac­count of its qual­ity or cir­cum­stances. Once again, we will ex­am­ine sev­eral ex­am­ples of these con­sid­er­a­tions that fre­quently ap­pear in the writ­ings of me­dieval theo­lo­gians and canon­ists.

Spir­i­tual Things§

Does si­mony only oc­cur when tem­po­ral things are ex­changed for spir­i­tual things, or is it si­mony when spir­i­tual things are ex­changed for spir­i­tual things? While the lan­guage of theo­lo­gians tends to cen­ter on tem­po­ral things, gifts of ser­vice may in­deed be spir­i­tual ser­vices.

One might ob­ject that si­mony re­quires an un­equal ex­change—a tem­po­ral thing given for a spir­i­tual one—and that ex­chang­ing like for like should be per­mis­si­ble. Oc­ca­sion­ally, this was af­firmed in some mea­sure, such as the case of ex­chang­ing posts with the ap­proval of a su­pe­rior,³⁴E.g., Pe­ter Can­tor, Ver­bum Ab­bre­vi­a­tum, cap. 40 (PL 205:133B); In­no­cent IV, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 3.19.5 (fol. 394v). or agree­ing to pray for one an­other.³⁵E.g., Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 147vb).

How­ever, there is rea­son to re­ject as si­mo­ni­a­cal even the ex­change of spir­i­tual things for spir­i­tual things.³⁶E.g., “com­mu­ta­tion in spir­i­tual mat­ters seems not much un­like buy­ing and sell­ing, and [seems] to con­sti­tute si­mony.” Pe­ter Can­tor, Ver­bum Ab­bre­vi­a­tum, cap. 40 (PL 205:132D). Com­ment­ing on the ex­change of ben­e­fices, Pe­ter Pa­lu­danus re­marked “it is a won­der how an ex­change should be less si­mo­ni­a­cal of it­self than a sale.”³⁷Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 4 (p. 315b). Pel­bar­tus of Te­mes­vár, writ­ing in Hun­gary a gen­er­a­tion be­fore the Ref­or­ma­tion, ex­plained it with the sce­nario of two agree­ing to bap­tize each other. The prices of these bap­tisms could be com­pared, if they were sal­able things, but they are not, and in the mat­ter of spir­i­tual things they can­not be ex­changed by con­tract.³⁸Pel­bar­tus, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 2. It is un­law­ful “both be­cause a thing is bought from one who is not its owner, and be­cause it is con­trary to the na­ture of grace that it be sold for any price what­so­ever.”³⁹Ibid., IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 2.

The pri­mary con­cern be­hind si­mony is the un­der­min­ing of the na­ture of grace as a gift of God, not the de­sire for ma­te­rial things. Even ex­chang­ing spir­i­tual things has that po­ten­tial.

De­layed Things§

Si­mony may be com­mit­ted whether a tem­po­ral thing is given be­fore, dur­ing, or af­ter the con­fer­ral of the spir­i­tual thing. One might sup­pose that of­fer­ing money af­ter an or­di­na­tion is a mere gra­tu­ity rather than a si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change, but this rea­son­ing does not hold.

Basil of Cae­sa­rea wrote to bish­ops un­der his au­thor­ity: “They think that they com­mit no sin, be­cause they re­ceive the money af­ter and not be­fore the or­di­na­tion. But to take is to take, when­ever it hap­pens.”⁴⁰Basil of Cae­sa­rea, Ep. 53 (p. 339). Gra­tian, quot­ing Ta­ra­sius of Con­stan­ti­no­ple, af­firmed that scrip­ture and canon alike con­demn the ex­change re­gard­less of its tim­ing: “For to re­ceive is to re­ceive at what­ever time.”⁴¹C. 1, q. 1, c. 21. Im­me­di­ately be­fore this, Ta­ra­sius wrote, “The twenty-ninth canon of the holy apos­tles, and their Acts, and the third and fourth book of Kings pro­nounce wholly alien from the priest­hood any­one who at any time gave or re­ceived money, whether be­fore the lay­ing on of hands or af­ter the lay­ing on. For to re­ceive is to re­ceive at what­ever time.” This maxim is the Latin equiv­a­lent of Basil’s Greek.⁴²Cf. Migne’s fac­ing Latin in Basil of Cae­sa­rea, Ep. 53 (PG 32:398B).

In­di­rectly Given Things§

In­di­rect ex­changes of tem­po­ral things for spir­i­tual things are like­wise for­bid­den. This is man­i­fest in the ex­am­ple of com­men­da­tions. As John Ma­jor put it, “it is the same thing to give money to the bishop and to give it to some­one else so that he may pe­ti­tion the bishop on one’s be­half.”⁴³Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 146va).

Some re­li­gious so­ci­eties (e.g., monas­ter­ies and col­le­giate churches) would ad­mit new broth­ers only if they brought suf­fi­cient wealth. They struck no bar­gain, but would stall the de­ci­sion in or­der to weigh the cir­cum­stances to see if they might bring much. Al­bert the Great de­scribed this as hap­pen­ing every day.⁴⁴Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, quaest. (p. 92b). Against the scheme of leav­ing the in­quiry to some­one else, he ar­gued that “it makes no dif­fer­ence whether one does it him­self or through an­other where the whole cause of the con­fer­ral of the prebend is the ex­pec­ta­tion of tem­po­ral gain.”⁴⁵Ibid., IV, d. 25, a. 5, quaest. (p. 92b). He con­tin­ued, “be­cause by whom­ever it is done, they ex­pect this in re­turn for the con­fer­ral; there­fore si­mony is com­mit­ted in what­ever way it is done.” Cf. ibid., IV, d. 25, a. 5, sol. (p. 93a).

If the ul­ti­mate cause of the ex­change of a spir­i­tual thing is the ex­pec­ta­tion of some re­cip­ro­cal ac­tion, si­mony is com­mit­ted re­gard­less of how many hands the pay­ment passes through and how many par­ties stand be­tween. Each par­tic­i­pant is re­spon­si­ble for his own in­volve­ment, though an ig­no­rant ben­e­fi­ciary would be per­son­ally in­no­cent.⁴⁶See John of Frei­burg, Summa con­fes­so­rum, I, tit. 1, q. 8–9 (foll. 1vb–2ra).

Small Things§

One might as­sume that the sin of si­mony re­quires a sub­stan­tial or prof­it­able ex­change, but even the small­est gift suf­fices. A penny spent to pur­chase a spir­i­tual thing is no less si­mo­ni­a­cal than a for­tune, and the one who ex­changes spir­i­tual things for tem­po­ral is guilty even if he does so at a loss.

While canon law was will­ing to dis­tin­guish be­tween mag­ni­tudes of gifts for the sake of ad­ju­di­ca­tion, no such dis­tinc­tion ex­ists in the fo­rum of con­science.⁴⁷“For al­though, as re­gards the pre­sump­tion of law, a dis­tinc­tion is drawn whether [the gift] be large (which is plau­si­bly likely to move the heart) or small, of which this is not plau­si­ble […] nev­er­the­less, as re­gards con­science, whether it be small or great, if a spir­i­tual thing is bought or given for it, it is si­mony.” Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 321a). Wyc­liffe re­sponded to this jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by ob­serv­ing that God does not “weigh what or how much of his goods his ser­vant has con­sumed, but in what man­ner and by what means he has sought them.”⁴⁸Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 8 (107:9–11). Jan Hus de­scribed it as anal­o­gous to the widow’s mites: “Nor is the si­mony ex­cused by the fact that some­times only a lit­tle is taken; for since the poor widow, as the Sav­ior tes­ti­fies, gave more than all the oth­ers, hav­ing given two cop­per coins, be­cause she gave out of such great de­vo­tion: like­wise a priest or scribe who takes a penny or two out of great de­sire will be struck down by great si­mony.”⁴⁹Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 5.F.

Si­mony is mea­sured by the av­a­rice in the trans­ac­tion, not by the wealth that changes hands. This is not to say that the one who judges him­self free of greed is in­no­cent, be­cause such greed is made man­i­fest through an ex­change, and one who is free of it “shakes his hands free from every gift” (Isa. 33:15Isaiah 33:15He who walks righteously, and speaks uprightly; he who despises the gain of oppressions, that shakes his hands from taking a bribe, that stops his ears from hearing of blood, and shuts his eyes from looking on evil;).⁵⁰See ibid., 2.D. For ex­am­ple, ad­dress­ing whether hos­pi­tal­ity to­ward clergy is nec­es­sar­ily si­mony, John of Frei­burg ex­plained that small mea­sures are ac­cept­able, but any agree­ment or cor­rupt in­ten­tion un­does this.⁵¹John of Frei­burg, Summa con­fes­so­rum, I, tit. 1, q. 11 (fol. 2rb); cf. Hos­ti­en­sis, Summa au­rea, ad X 5.3 (foll. 535vb, 536ra).

While many were will­ing to ac­knowl­edge the harm caused by large amounts chang­ing hands, the oc­ca­sional judg­ment was that small gifts en­tail a greater di­vine of­fense. Writ­ing of or­di­na­tion, Bur­ton ob­served, “Of all other kinds of si­mony, this is the most per­ni­cious and dam­na­ble: yea, the less a man giv­eth or re­ceiv­eth in this re­spect, it is an ar­gu­ment of the less es­teem he makes of so holy and ex­cel­lent a call­ing.”⁵²Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 47.

Vol­un­tary Things§

Theo­lo­gians and canon­ists who ad­dressed the topic of si­mony in de­tail gen­er­ally con­cluded that things of­fered vol­un­tar­ily (vol­un­tarie) or spon­ta­neously (spon­ta­nee) do not count as si­mony.⁵³E.g., C. 1, q. 2, c. 4; Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 320a); Ames, Con­science, 5.230. Be­cause the gift is not the cause of the giv­ing of the spir­i­tual thing, no si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change takes place. The one who gives the spir­i­tual thing does so for self­less rea­sons, and the one who gives some­thing in re­turn like­wise has some hon­est mo­ti­va­tion.⁵⁴See Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, ad quaest. (p. 94b). The ex­change is non-con­trac­tual; noth­ing is given out of oblig­a­tion or de­signed to es­tab­lish any oblig­a­tion.

Many dis­cus­sions on this point go back to two texts of canon law. The first text is the fifth canon of the Coun­cil of Rome (595). Var­i­ous things such as no­tary fees had been an­nexed to or­di­na­tions in or­der to es­cape the ap­pear­ance of si­mony. This led Greg­ory to for­bid all money ex­chang­ing hands in the con­text of an or­di­na­tion, ex­cept if given out of un­prompted grat­i­tude. Re­gard­ing this ex­cep­tion, he wrote, “But if the one who has been or­dained, not by agree­ment, nor un­der com­pul­sion, nor upon re­quest, af­ter re­ceiv­ing his doc­u­ments and pal­lium, wishes to of­fer some­thing to any­one of the clergy solely for the sake of grat­i­tude, we by no means for­bid this to be ac­cepted, be­cause his of­fer­ing brings no stain of guilt, since it did not pro­ceed from the self-seek­ing of the re­cip­i­ent.”⁵⁵Greg­ory I, Ep. V.57a.5 (1, 365:8–11); cf. X 5.3.1; C. 1, q. 2, c. 4.

The sec­ond is the eighth canon of the Elev­enth Coun­cil of To­ledo (675). It ap­plies the same prin­ci­ple be­yond or­di­na­tion—to bap­tiz­ing, con­firm­ing, and chrism—and re­stricts what may be re­ceived ac­cord­ing to the re­ceiver’s mo­tive, so the giver’s will­ing­ness does not set­tle the mat­ter on its own.⁵⁶“What­ever is be­stowed through the con­fer­ring of in­vis­i­ble grace ought in no way to be sold for mon­e­tary profit or for any re­wards what­so­ever, as the Lord says: ‘What you have freely re­ceived, freely give.’ And there­fore, who­ever hence­forth, es­tab­lished in the ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal or­der, re­ceives any re­wards or prices vol­un­tar­ily of­fered out of this kind of am­bi­tion—whether for bap­tiz­ing and con­firm­ing the faith­ful, for con­fer­ring chrism, or for pro­mo­tions of ranks—in­deed, if, with the lo­cal bishop’s knowl­edge, any such thing is per­pe­trated by his sub­jects, that same bishop shall be sub­ject to ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion for two months, be­cause he both con­cealed evils he knew about and failed to ap­ply the nec­es­sary cor­rec­tion. But if, with­out his knowl­edge, any one of his peo­ple should think that he may ac­cept any­thing for the afore­said mat­ters: if he is a pres­byter, he shall be pun­ished by three months’ ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion; if a dea­con, four; while a sub­dea­con or cleric serv­ing these cov­etous de­sires shall be pun­ished both by an ap­pro­pri­ate beat­ing and by the ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion that is due.” Elev­enth Coun­cil of To­ledo, c. 8 (PL 84:461D–462B). Gra­tian trans­mit­ted the clause about gifts as an ex­cep­tion, “un­less vol­un­tar­ily of­fered.” C. 1, q. 1, c. 101.

While these are ar­ti­facts of canon law, de­scrib­ing what may or may not be for­mally pe­nal­ized, they ap­pear af­fir­ma­tively as ex­am­ples in writ­ings of theo­lo­gians whose aim was to de­scribe moral be­hav­ior.⁵⁷This in­cludes even small gra­tu­ities, like tips. Ma­jor spoke of it be­ing ac­cept­able if “one gives a douzain [du­o­dec­i­mum, a small coin] to the door­keeper so that he may gain en­trance to speak with the bishop.” Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 146va). From Greg­ory the Great to the Eng­lish ca­su­ists, those writ­ers al­lowed for some cat­e­gory of grat­i­tude by which one might give to a min­is­ter, even in the con­text of hav­ing re­ceived some spir­i­tual thing. In this light, vol­un­tary gifts are wel­come be­cause they are not con­trac­tual, es­tab­lish­ing no oblig­a­tion be­tween giver and re­ceiver, and so they do not re­duce the spir­i­tual thing to an ar­ti­cle of com­merce.

How­ever, cau­tions are fre­quently given about this be­ing of­fered in any way that would be de­ceit­ful or arouse sus­pi­cion of si­mo­ni­a­cal in­ten­tions. For ex­am­ple, the Glossa or­di­na­ria on the De­cre­tum calls a gift “fraud­u­lent” when the giver says he would have given it any­way.⁵⁸Glossa or­di­na­ria ad C. 1, q. 1, c. 115. Aqui­nas, hav­ing af­firmed vol­un­tary gifts, im­me­di­ately added this ca­veat: “In all these things, how­ever, one must care­fully guard against what­ever has the ap­pear­ance of si­mony or cu­pid­ity, ac­cord­ing to that word of the Apos­tle, 1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans [5:22]: ‘Ab­stain from every ap­pear­ance of evil.’”⁵⁹Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 2, ad 4.

Eng­lish au­thors echoed the same con­cern. Ames wrote, “Nei­ther is it prop­erly si­mony, when some­what is given out of mere grat­i­tude, not by any agree­ment tacit, or ex­pressed, di­rect, or in­di­rect. […] How­so­ever in these we must be­ware of de­ceit, and the very ap­pear­ance of evil is to be avoided.”⁶⁰Ames, Con­science, 5.230. Sim­i­larly, Rich­ard Bax­ter warned, “Nor may you show grat­i­tude by any scan­dalous way, which seem­eth si­mony.”⁶¹Bax­ter, A Chris­tian Di­rec­tory, 4.19.2.33 (p. 119).

Even in the early church, some re­fused gifts of grat­i­tude en­tirely. On this count, Pat­rick re­fused small or­na­ments.⁶²“I have tried in some mea­sure to keep my­self safe, even for the Chris­tian breth­ren, and the vir­gins of Christ, and the de­vout women who used to give me of their own ac­cord lit­tle gifts, and would cast some of their or­na­ments upon the al­tar; and I would give them back to them again. And they were scan­dal­ized at me be­cause I did this. But it was for the hope of eter­nity that I guarded my­self cau­tiously in all things, so that un­be­liev­ers might not catch me, or the min­is­try of my ser­vice, on any pre­text, and that I might not give them oc­ca­sion, even in the small­est mat­ter, to de­fame or dis­par­age me.” Pat­rick, Con­fes­sio, 49 (p. 22). In the next par­a­graph, he in­sisted that he con­ducted bap­tisms and or­di­na­tions with­out the slight­est hope of re­ceiv­ing any­thing. Like­wise, Je­rome re­corded that Hi­lar­ion re­fused any gift af­ter heal­ing a pos­sessed man, as­sert­ing, “If I take these things, I too shall of­fend God, and the le­gion will re­turn to you.”⁶³Je­rome, Vita Hi­lar. 18 (PL 23:37C).

Con­clu­sion§

The scope of gifts that may con­sti­tute a si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change is broader than one might first sup­pose. Greg­ory’s triad—gifts of the hand, gifts of the tongue, and gifts of ser­vice—cap­tures that full range. Not only money, but even praise and fa­vors count as the tem­po­ral price of a spir­i­tual thing. The tim­ing and di­rect­ness of the ex­change are im­ma­te­rial; si­mony is com­mit­ted whether the gift pre­cedes or fol­lows the spir­i­tual thing and whether it passes through one hand or many. The amount mat­ters as lit­tle: a penny is no less si­mo­ni­a­cal than a for­tune. A spir­i­tual thing may it­self stand as the price of an­other. Though canon law and theo­lo­gians alike spoke per­mis­sively of vol­un­tary gifts, they drew that ex­cep­tion nar­rowly, since even vol­un­tary things may have the ap­pear­ance, po­ten­tial, or set­tled in­ten­tion of si­mony.

The fore­go­ing chap­ters have es­tab­lished that si­mony con­sists in buy­ing or sell­ing spir­i­tual things—or things an­nexed to them—for any kind of tem­po­ral gift. This def­i­ni­tion is com­pre­hen­sive, yet Scrip­ture is equally clear that God’s min­is­ters are to be ma­te­ri­ally sup­ported. Christ him­self de­clared that “the la­borer is wor­thy of his wages” (Luke 10:7Luke 10:7And in that same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give; for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house.), a prin­ci­ple which Paul re­peated in 1 Tim­o­thy 5:181 Timothy 5:18For the scripture says, “You shall not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn.” And, “The laborer is worthy of his wages.”. The fund­ing of min­is­try is not merely per­mit­ted—it is com­manded.

A ten­sion there­fore pre­sents it­self. If every ex­change of tem­po­ral things for spir­i­tual things is si­mo­ni­a­cal, how can the church fund its min­is­ters with­out fall­ing un­der that con­dem­na­tion? When a con­gre­ga­tion pays its min­is­ter’s sti­pend, it gives tem­po­ral things to one who ad­min­is­ters spir­i­tual things and on ac­count of such spir­i­tual la­bor. The ex­change would ap­pear, on its face, to have the struc­ture of si­mony.

The res­o­lu­tion of this ap­par­ent dif­fi­culty oc­cu­pied a sub­stan­tial por­tion of the theo­log­i­cal lit­er­a­ture on the topic from the pa­tris­tic pe­riod on­ward. Part of the an­swer lies in dis­tin­guish­ing the mode of pro­vi­sion—the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the tem­po­ral thing given and the spir­i­tual thing re­ceived. Not every flow of money from la­ity to clergy con­sti­tutes a pur­chase, and the theo­lo­gians la­bored to ar­tic­u­late ex­actly why.

What is given to a min­is­ter may be re­garded in four ways: as char­ity (elee­mo­syna), as the price of the prod­uct (pre­tium ope­ris), as the price of the la­bor (pre­tium la­boris), or as the sus­te­nance of the la­borer (sus­ten­ta­tio lab­o­ran­tis).¹For ex­am­ples of how these cat­e­gories were syn­the­sized for later Eng­lish au­di­ences, see The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 92; Ames, Con­science, 5.230. The pri­mary con­sid­er­a­tion dis­tin­guish­ing licit gifts from il­licit pay­ments is whether they are given in ex­change for spir­i­tual things or in sup­port of the one who pro­vides them. We will con­sider each in turn.

As Char­ity§

First, one might give to a min­is­ter of God as an act of alms­giv­ing. This no­tion has been re­jected since the early days of the church. For ex­am­ple, John Chrys­os­tom con­cluded from Mat­thew 10Matthew 10¹And he called to him his twelve disciples, and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease and all manner of sickness.²Now the names of the twelve apostles are these: the first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the [son] of Zebedee, and John his brother;³Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the tax collector; James the [son] of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus;⁴Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.[…] that Christ for­bade his dis­ci­ples to go about as “beg­gars”²Chrys­os­tom, Ho­mil­iae in Mat­thaeum, hom. 33 (PG 57:587). and re­garded oth­ers as their “debt­ors.”³Ibid., hom. 35 (PG 57:608). Au­gus­tine re­marked that a min­is­ter’s pro­vi­sions are “not a mat­ter of men­dic­ity, but of au­thor­ity.”⁴Au­gus­tine, De opere mo­na­cho­rum, 15.16 (p. 558).

Me­dieval theo­lo­gians for­mal­ized this dis­tinc­tion. The min­is­ter’s sti­pend flows from due jus­tice rather than char­ity, though he re­ceives of alms given to the church.⁵Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 187, a. 4. The con­text of this ci­ta­tion is a de­fense of the re­li­gious (here the fri­ars), but for our pur­poses it is suf­fi­cient to note Aqui­nas’s ap­pli­ca­tion of this prin­ci­ple to sec­u­lar clergy. Ga­briel Biel of­fered a re­duc­tio: A gift given not in view of a per­son’s need but on ac­count of an oblig­a­tion to some of­fice or la­bor is not alms, but a sti­pend or a wage. Oth­er­wise every trib­ute given to kings and princes would be alms, and so would every wage a man earns for the sup­port of his own life and sta­tion—and con­se­quently all such la­bor­ers would be beg­gars.⁶Biel, Col­lec­to­rium, IV, d. 16, q. 4 (sig. ff3rb).

Later au­thors con­curred.⁷E.g., Bul­lin­ger, Dec­ades, V.10 (foll. 380r–v); Tur­re­tin, In­sti­tu­tio, 18.28.8–12. Thomas Hall, who ad­dressed the mat­ter at length, spoke starkly: “Our sti­pends, there­fore, are wages, not alms. Woe to those min­is­ters who ex­pect their sup­port from the peo­ple’s good­will alone! Such good­will will be­come ill-will; such nour­ish­ment will be­come stin­gi­ness; this some­thing will soon be­come noth­ing.”⁸Hall, Sal Ter­rae, 101.

This con­vic­tion ex­tended even to those who could com­fort­ably sup­port them­selves and their fam­i­lies from their own pat­ri­mony. They should not be de­nied their sti­pends.⁹E.g., Keach, The Gospel Min­is­ter’s Main­te­nance Vin­di­cated, 89–91. Ralph Cud­worth wrote to the same ef­fect: “Again, hence I gather, that those that la­bour in the word and doc­trine, may law­fully take wages, al­beit they have suf­fi­cient of their own to main­tain them­selves.” Cud­worth, The Sup­ple­ment, 543. Though they may choose to char­i­ta­bly give them away in their own ca­pac­ity, they ought not re­fuse them ei­ther, “lest they ap­pear to seek the glory of some ex­cep­tional sanc­tity or bur­den their poorer col­leagues with re­sent­ment, and lest the peo­ple, en­ticed by this ex­emp­tion, nour­ish their av­a­rice to the great dis­ad­van­tage of suc­ces­sors and the peril of the whole church.”¹⁰Tur­re­tin, In­sti­tu­tio, 18.28.13.

As the Price of the Prod­uct§

Sec­ond, things might be given as the price of the prod­uct (ut pre­tium ope­ris), the prod­uct be­ing the spir­i­tual thing it­self.¹¹The range of tech­ni­cal vo­cab­u­lary used here is fairly nar­row, but oc­ca­sion­ally, “spir­i­tu­al­ium” (“spir­i­tual thing”) is used in­stead of “ope­ris,” and some­times in­stead of “pre­tium,” “mer­ces” from the term for “hire” in Luke 10:7Luke 10:7And in that same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give; for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house.. Of course, we have al­ready seen this ar­gued ex­ten­sively, but the le­git­i­macy of such pay­ments is fre­quently in­ferred from cer­tain scrip­tural pas­sages that would ap­pear to sug­gest them.

For ex­am­ple, the ar­gu­ment reg­u­larly turns on the apos­tle Paul’s state­ments in 1 Co­rin­thi­ans 9:141 Corinthians 9:14Even so did the Lord ordain that those who proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel. (“those who pro­claim the gospel should get their liv­ing by the gospel”). Thomas Aqui­nas han­dled the ob­jec­tion that this pas­sage jus­ti­fies ac­cept­ing tem­po­ral things in ex­change for spir­i­tual things: “It must be said that sti­pends are due to preach­ers for the sus­te­nance of their live­li­hood, lest they be forced to aban­don the word of God and be­come oc­cu­pied with pro­cur­ing ne­ces­si­ties for them­selves; how­ever, they are not due to them as if they were a price for the preach­ing.”¹²Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2, arg. 5 & ad 5. In his Summa theo­lo­giae, he of­fered both at greater length, and there added this suc­cinct state­ment: “To preach­ers, tem­po­ral things are due for the sup­port of those who preach, not for pur­chas­ing the preached word.”¹³Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 2.

The com­mand to freely give is not ab­ro­gated by the la­borer be­ing wor­thy of his food (Matt. 10:8–10Matthew 10:8–10⁸Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give.⁹Get you no gold, nor silver, nor bronze in your purses;¹⁰no wallet for [your] journey, neither two tunics, nor sandals, nor staff; for the laborer is worthy of his food.); the two are rec­on­ciled by this very dis­tinc­tion. The wages of the worker are not the price of the prod­uct.

As the Price of the La­bor§

Third, things might be given as the price of the la­bor (ut pre­tium la­boris), to pay the la­borer in ex­change for his work. At least at first glance, this ap­pears to be what is re­quired by phrases like “the la­borer is wor­thy of his wages” (Luke 10:7Luke 10:7And in that same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give; for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house.; 1 Tim. 5:181 Timothy 5:18For the scripture says, “You shall not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn.” And, “The laborer is worthy of his wages.”), and in­deed, some spoke of the sell­ing of la­bor as be­ing the proper mode of ex­change.¹⁴E.g., Bo­na­ven­ture, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 1, q. 4 (p. 648); Alex­an­der of Hales, Summa Halen­sis, III, P. 2, Inq. 3, Tract. 2, S. 2, Q. 1, T. 1, D. 5, C. 2 (pp. 644–45); Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 282:38–42). But rarely did any of these weigh an­other mode against it, and those who did typ­i­cally raised dif­fi­culty in set­tling on the sale of la­bor.

La­bor as a Spir­i­tual Thing§

These theo­lo­gians pointed out that the mat­ter at is­sue in Acts 8Acts 8¹And Saul was consenting to his death. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church that was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.²And devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.³But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and dragging men and women committed them to prison.⁴They therefore that were scattered, went about preaching the word.[…] and else­where is not one of mod­er­a­tion. Nor is it one that per­mits a mean­ing­ful dis­tinc­tion be­tween the la­bor and the prod­uct. Si­mon Ma­gus could not ab­solve him­self of charges of the sin which bears his own name by claim­ing he was not look­ing to pur­chase the Spirit, but only Pe­ter’s la­bor of lay­ing on hands. The causes of spir­i­tual things are pre­cisely what a si­mo­niac sets out to buy.¹⁵See Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 1, qc. 3, ad 3. See Chap­ter 3, pp. 55–56. Wil­liam Swin­derby for­bade priests to “sell by bar­gain­ing and cov­e­nant his ghostly tra­vail” (spir­i­tual la­bor), claim­ing that any who does “errs and doth si­mony.”¹⁶Foxe, Actes and Mon­u­ments, 5.468. Spir­i­tual la­bor is it­self a spir­i­tual thing, and there­fore can­not be sold.¹⁷See Au­riol, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. un., a. 2 (p. 166b). “To sell what is spir­i­tual in such acts, or to buy it, is si­mo­ni­a­cal. But to re­ceive or give some­thing for the sus­te­nance of those who min­is­ter spir­i­tual things, in ac­cor­dance with the or­di­nance of the Church and ap­proved cus­tom, is law­ful—pro­vided, how­ever, that the in­ten­tion of buy­ing and sell­ing is ab­sent, and that it is not ex­acted from the un­will­ing through the with­hold­ing of spir­i­tual things that are owed, for that would have a cer­tain ap­pear­ance of sell­ing.” Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 3. “Were he to take any­thing for the use of his spir­i­tual power, this would amount not to let­ting out his la­bor—which he is bound to ren­der as a debt of the of­fice he has un­der­taken—but to sell­ing the very use of spir­i­tual grace.” Ibid., II‑II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 3.

The Ex­cuse of Sell­ing La­bor§

John Wyc­liffe’s lan­guage on the point ad­mits of more than one read­ing,¹⁸In his trea­tise on si­mony, Wyc­liffe ar­gued for “in­or­di­nate will­ing” rather than “ear­nest de­sire,” in part be­cause he be­lieved it seemed right to ex­change the work for a mod­est sti­pend, Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 1 (2:13–28). How­ever, this no­tion of “ex­change” is not spelled out in terms that clearly in­di­cate a sale, and else­where he de­nied that preach­ers may charge for their work. “And here Christ teaches openly that men should not buy this of­fice, nor take any re­ward from the peo­ple for la­bor­ing thus in Christ’s name; for then they would im­pute to Christ that he sold the preach­ing of his word and gave leave to com­mit si­mony—and both these are blas­phe­mies.” Wyc­liffe, Ser­mons, serm. LVIII (1, p. 177). but Jan Hus, work­ing from Wyc­liffe’s trea­tise, gave what is pos­si­bly the most com­plete treat­ment. Against those who would make such a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for charg­ing for their ser­vices, he wrote,

But here they have Si­mon’s lit­tle cap with which they cover them­selves, say­ing com­monly that they sell the bod­ily la­bor, but not the bless­ing or the con­se­cra­tion; and also that they take money for food, but not for con­se­cra­tion. But that ex­cuse is like the greedy ale­wife who serves the food and then charges only for the beer, in that one pay­ment more than cov­er­ing both the meal and the drink. That ex­cuse is also like the tale one writer tells, of a greedy lord who came to the an­nual fair. Then a ser­vant told him that in that town the inn­keep­ers at ta­ble give very fat geese for free, but beef and veal and other dishes they charge more dearly. So the lord com­manded his ser­vants to eat the freely given food, and he him­self would eat the coarser fare to which he was ac­cus­tomed. And when din­ner was over and the ac­count was made, the veal was reck­oned so dear that the free geese proved costly af­ter all! Like­wise the si­mo­ni­acs wish to de­ceive the peo­ple of God with this an­swer, say­ing that they sell the la­bor, but give the bless­ing, con­se­cra­tion, or con­fir­ma­tion for free! There­fore against this cun­ning the holy or­di­nance says: “Those who buy bod­ily things and do not buy spir­i­tual things should by no means be called si­mo­ni­acs.” And im­me­di­ately it con­tin­ues: “But the an­swer is that not only those who take spir­i­tual things for money, but also those who take for money bod­ily things that are an­nexed to spir­i­tual things, are called si­mo­ni­acs.”

So says the or­di­nance, so that you may un­der­stand that the la­bor of preach­ing, cel­e­brat­ing Mass, con­se­crat­ing, anoint­ing, bap­tiz­ing, hear­ing con­fes­sion, and dis­trib­ut­ing the body of the Lord—that la­bor is so joined with the spir­i­tual, that is, with God’s power and of­fice, that it may not, and can­not rightly, be sold for money. Al­though peo­ple ought to sus­tain the priests in that la­bor, the priests ought not to sell that la­bor or set a price on it; for oth­er­wise every case of si­mony could be ex­cused by say­ing: “I am sell­ing the la­bor!” There­fore the Lord God says through the prophet Mal­a­chi: “Who is there among you who would shut the doors and kin­dle my al­tar for noth­ing? I have no plea­sure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not ac­cept an of­fer­ing from your hand.” Here Gra­tian, who com­piled the de­cree [i.e., the De­cre­tum], says that to shut the doors is not the of­fice of the holy sac­ri­fice, but it per­tains to the spir­i­tual of­fice.¹⁹The idea here is that shut­ting the doors of the tem­ple is a bod­ily act, but is an­nexed to spir­i­tual things, since it is only by the door­keeper that one would have ac­cess. See C. 1, q. 3, d.a.c. 1. There­fore the ex­cuse by which they de­fend them­selves, say­ing that they sell the la­bor, is not valid.²⁰Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 5.D; cf. ibid., 9.A.

Giv­ing four ex­am­ples, Hus con­tin­ued to dem­on­strate that those who claim to sell la­bor in spir­i­tual things are sell­ing some­thing more. First, the bishop charges more for the same la­bor than one who does the same work. Sec­ond, the crafts­man who makes the al­tar does greater la­bor than the one who blesses it, but the bishop who blesses it re­quires more than the car­pen­ter or ma­son. Third, the bishop’s en­dow­ment al­ready pro­vides for his la­bor, yet he re­quires a sec­ond pay upon ser­vice. Fourth, the same con­se­cra­tion costs less from a poor bishop than from a rich one.²¹Ibid., 5.D.

Al­most all of this dis­course—from the ex­cuse it­self, to the par­a­ble of the geese, to the ci­ta­tion of Gra­tian, to the four ad­di­tional ar­gu­ments—is trans­lated di­rectly from Wyc­liffe,²²Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 6 (74:3–76:13). with three no­table al­ter­ations. First, Hus did not in­clude Wyc­liffe’s pref­ace to the par­a­ble, which frames the abuse as a mat­ter of de­gree: money “in­or­di­nately” col­lected, “ex­ces­sive” fees, sac­ra­men­tals sold “so dearly.”²³Ibid., cap. 6 (73:12–74:2). Sec­ond, Hus did not trans­late Wyc­liffe’s sar­cas­tic com­pro­mise on the bishop’s bless­ing: “Ei­ther, then, let him give it for noth­ing, or let him sell it justly for a fair price […] a half­penny.”²⁴Ibid., cap. 6 (75:24–29). Third, Hus pulled for­ward Wyc­liffe’s clos­ing clause—that oth­er­wise any si­mony what­ever could be ex­cused—be­tween the par­a­ble of the geese and the Mal­a­chi pas­sage, mak­ing it the ground of a di­rect pro­hi­bi­tion of sell­ing spir­i­tual la­bor for any price.²⁵Ibid., cap. 6 (74:26–27). In other words, Wyc­liffe’s ar­gu­ments showed that con­tem­po­rary bish­ops sold spir­i­tual things and not, as they claimed, mere la­bor, but stopped short of say­ing that the la­bor it­self may not be sold. Hus took the line of rea­son­ing and set down as a rule what Wyc­liffe had left stand­ing as an in­fer­ence: charg­ing any­thing for spir­i­tual la­bor nec­es­sar­ily sells spir­i­tual things.

La­bor In­sep­a­ra­ble from Its Prod­uct§

Some school­men also ob­served that ec­o­nomic re­al­ity does not per­mit us to di­vorce prod­uct and la­bor so cleanly in trans­ac­tions. Pe­ter Pa­lu­danus ex­plained the is­sue:

For who would ever buy the la­bor of a worker, ex­cept for the fruit of the work? No one. And there­fore it is ri­dic­u­lous to say that min­is­ters can sell their la­bor [la­bor], where they can­not law­fully sell their work [opus]: if there­fore an ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal min­is­ter dis­pens­ing sa­cred things re­ceives any­thing, he does not re­ceive it as the price of the work or of the la­bor, but as the sus­te­nance of the min­is­ter.²⁶Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 319a). See also ibid., IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 320a–b); Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain, In Sent. (red. C), IV, d. 25, q. 3 (fol. 315r); con­tra, Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 183rb).

The prob­lem with a model of giv­ing that pos­its a pur­chase of la­bor is that it ne­ces­si­tates an oblig­a­tion be­tween the giver and the re­ceiver. The re­ceiver be­comes ser­vant to the giver, un­der­min­ing the spir­i­tual worker’s duty to the Lord with a con­flict of in­ter­est (Gal. 1:10Galatians 1:10For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ.). Thus, noth­ing should be given to any min­is­ter “by way of oblig­a­tion and con­tract, but only by way of nec­es­sary as­sis­tance.”²⁷Au­riol, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. un., a. 2 (p. 166b). The one who re­ceives is not bound to the giver as though his la­bor had been bought, and the one who gives does not owe the min­is­ter as a pay­ment for what he has re­ceived. Ei­ther would bear the mark of a “con­tract.” In­stead, the giver is bound to ren­der tem­po­ral things by a nat­ural oblig­a­tion of jus­tice to sup­port the min­is­ter in his work.²⁸See ibid., IV, d. 25, q. un., a. 2 (p. 166b).

Re­gard­ing the no­tion of wages in Luke 10:7Luke 10:7And in that same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give; for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house. and 1 Tim­o­thy 5:181 Timothy 5:18For the scripture says, “You shall not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn.” And, “The laborer is worthy of his wages.”, the West­min­ster di­vine An­thony Tuck­ney²⁹Tuck­ney chaired the West­min­ster As­sem­bly com­mit­tee that framed the Larger Cat­e­chism’s ex­po­si­tion of the Ten Com­mand­ments, where ques­tion 108 names “the min­is­try and main­te­nance thereof” among the du­ties re­quired by the sec­ond com­mand­ment. West­min­ster As­sem­bly, The West­min­ster Larger Cat­e­chism, Q. 108. re­marked on the dan­ger of in­ter­pret­ing the term to en­tail a si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change of money for la­bor and pointed to the cor­rec­tive of­fered in the pre­vi­ous verse of Paul’s epis­tle. Ad­dress­ing min­is­ters, he ac­knowl­edged the scrip­tural lan­guage of “hire” or “wages,” but re­jected the idea that this fund­ing func­tions as wages be­tween the peo­ple and the min­is­ter, bind­ing the lat­ter to the will of the for­mer who makes the pay­ment. All such sen­ti­ments are “base si­mo­ni­a­cal chaf­fer­ings.”³⁰Tuck­ney, Ser­mon 38, 645.

As the Sus­te­nance of the La­borer§

Fourth, things might be given for the sus­te­nance of the la­borer (ut sus­ten­ta­tionem lab­o­ran­tis).³¹Once again, there is some var­i­a­tion in the used vo­cab­u­lary. Some­times “sti­pend” (sti­pen­dium) is used in­stead of “sus­te­nance” (sus­ten­ta­tionem), and some­times “min­is­ter” (min­is­tri) in­stead of “la­borer” (lab­o­ran­tis). What is given to the spir­i­tual worker, fi­nan­cial or oth­er­wise, should be given in or­der to sus­tain him.³²See Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 2, ad 2 (fol. 150v); Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 2, ad 2; Wil­liam of Aux­erre, Summa au­rea, III, tr. 21 (fol. 227rb). The peo­ple do not give as clients or em­ploy­ers pur­chas­ing la­bor.

Au­gus­tine ex­plained this dy­namic in a ser­mon on Eze­kiel 34Ezekiel 34¹And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying,²“Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say to them, to the shepherds, ‘Thus says the Lord Jehovah: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel that feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the sheep?³You* eat the fat, and you clothe yourselves with the wool, you kill the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.⁴The diseased you have not strengthened, nor have you healed what was sick, nor have you bound up what was broken, nor have you brought back what was driven away, nor have you sought what was lost; but with force and with rigor have you ruled over them.[…], first spec­u­lat­ing that Paul may be in­di­cated by the inn­keeper of Luke 10:35Luke 10:35And the next day he took out two shillings and gave them to the host and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever you spend more, I, when I come back again, will repay you.’, who is re­paid at the Lord’s re­turn for what­ever he spends be­yond what he was given.³³Au­gus­tine, Ser­mones, 46, cap. 2 (PL 38:272). He con­tin­ued to ex­plain that what a min­is­ter re­ceives is not a price “as though the gospel were for sale,” be­cause then they would “sell a great thing for a tri­fle.”³⁴Ibid., 46, cap. 2 (PL 38:273). In­stead of min­is­ters sell­ing, “let them re­ceive from the peo­ple the sus­te­nance [sus­ten­ta­tionem] their need re­quires, and from the Lord the re­ward of their stew­ard­ship.”³⁵Ibid., 46, cap. 2 (PL 38:273); cf. The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 92ff. The re­ward for their la­bor does not come from the peo­ple; they must “look for their re­ward no­where but where the peo­ple look for their sal­va­tion.”³⁶Au­gus­tine, Ser­mones, 46, cap. 2 (PL 38:273).