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.

Sunnyvale, Cal­i­for­nia
Sep­tem­ber 2026

Sigla§

2LBCF. Sec­ond Lon­don Bap­tist Con­fes­sion of Faith, cited by chap­ter and sec­tion.

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.

Clem. Clementi­nae, cited by book, ti­tle, and chap­ter. Text in Fried­berg, vol. 2.

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.

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

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

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

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

SHC. Sec­ond Hel­vetic Con­fes­sion, cited by chap­ter.

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.

WCF. West­min­ster Con­fes­sion of Faith, cited by chap­ter and sec­tion.

WLC. West­min­ster Larger Cat­e­chism, cited by ques­tion.

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

Lo­ca­tors§

a. 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.

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

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

d., D. Dis­tinc­tio.

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

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.

Mand. Man­da­tum, a man­date of the Shep­herd of Her­mas.

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.

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. 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.

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

serm. Sermo, a num­bered ser­mon.

sess. Ses­sio, the ses­sion of a coun­cil.

sig., sigs. The printer’s sig­na­ture, by which a book with no fo­li­a­tion is cited. E.g., sig. q5vb.

sign. Signum, a num­bered “Sign” of false apos­tles in Wil­liam of Saint-Amour’s De per­i­culis and 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 com­posed over three and a quar­ter cen­turies ago. Si­mony once num­bered 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 pre­sup­pose that it ex­ists.” Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 1 (2:1–4). How­ever, our start­ing as­sump­tion is 2not 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 is Thomas Aqui­nas’s,⁵Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 1. though the def­i­ni­tion, in nearly these words, had been well es­tab­lished by his time.⁶E.g., Ray­mond of Pe­ña­fort, Summa de poe­ni­ten­tia, 1.1.1 (p. 2). Al­bert the Great, un­der whom Aqui­nas stud­ied, had al­ready re­corded the ju­rists’ com­mon def­i­ni­tion in much the same terms. 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, granted that its sense must be de­fended.⁷Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 1 (2:13–16, 3:2–13); cap. 2 (14:13–15, 23–28). 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. Post-Ref­or­ma­tion Eng­lish trea­tises ren­der 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. 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. 3Ac­cord­ingly, 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 con­ge­nial 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 an 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 need for it to re­main so. More­over, we have every rea­son to ex­pect 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 are lim­ited to par­tic­u­lar pe­ri­ods and of­ten fo­cus on po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies and so­ci­o­log­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions. Such an ap­proach does lit­tle to trace how the doc­trine it­self took shape or to aid in our own theo­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

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.

The Church Fa­thers§

The early pa­tris­tic era pro­duced many af­fir­ma­tions of the prin­ci­ple that grace must be of­fered freely, but fewer treat­ments of si­mony as 8a dis­crete prob­lem. 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.⁵And Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.⁶And the multitudes gave heed with one accord to the things that were spoken by Philip, when they heard and saw the signs which he did.⁷For [from] many of those who had unclean spirits, they came out, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed, and that were lame, were healed.⁸And there was much joy in that city.⁹But 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.”²⁵Therefore, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.²⁶But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise, and go toward the south to the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert [road].)²⁷And he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to Jerusalem to worship;²⁸and he was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah.²⁹And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and join yourself to this chariot.”³⁰And Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, “Do you understand what you read?”³¹And he said, “How can I, except someone will guide me?” And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him.³²Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he does not open his mouth:³³In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: his generation who will declare? For his life is taken from the earth.”³⁴And the eunuch answered Philip and said, “Please, of whom speaks the prophet this? Of himself, or of some other?”³⁵And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, preached to him Jesus.³⁶And as they went on the way, they came to a certain water. And the eunuch says, “Behold, [here is] water. What hinders me to be baptized?”³⁷[And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”]³⁸And he commanded the chariot to stand still; and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.³⁹And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing.⁴⁰But Philip was found at Azotus; and passing through he preached the gospel to all the cities, until he came to Caesarea. 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, a few 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 (p. 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 (ca. 305), can. 48 (PL 84:307B). The sec­ond canon of the Coun­cil of Chal­cedon (451) ad­dressed com­merce in or­di­na­tions and es­tab­lished 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 his 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. 9And 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.⁵Coun­cil of Chal­cedon (451), can. 2 (ACO II.2.2, 125).

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

How­ever, it is with 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 (pp. 109–10). but he de­vel­oped the moral con­se­quences of this sin in a let­ter to the bish­ops of Gaul in 599.⁸Rosé, “Si­mon le Ma­gi­cien hé­ré­siar­que?” 213; see Greg­ory I, Ep. 9.218. For Greg­ory, si­mony is a cor­rup­tion and her­esy “con­demned in its very ori­gin by apos­tolic de­tes­ta­tion.”⁹Ibid., 9.218 (2, 206).

With­out Greg­ory’s in­flu­ence on theol­ogy, 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. The Re­form­ers gen­er­ally re­garded Greg­ory 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 area was Greg­ory’s leg­acy more pro­nounced than in that of si­mony, where the vo­cab­u­lary and con­cep­tual frame­work he es­tab­lished would gov­ern the dis­cus­sion for over a mil­len­nium.

10The 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 pro­pri­etor­ship at­tended by a mea­sured 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. The broader au­thor­ity bound up with di­rect own­er­ship and as­so­ci­ated en­dow­ments would be called 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), de­creed its own pen­al­ties on si­mony be­fore quot­ing Chal­cedon’s canon 2 in full.¹⁵Sec­ond Coun­cil of Ni­caea (787), can. 5 (Mansi 13:421E).

The prob­lem in­ten­si­fied in the ninth cen­tury with the dis­so­lu­tion of the Car­o­lin­gian em­pire. As the pro­tec­tion of prop­erty de­volved upon lo­cal mag­nates, even bish­oprics and ab­beys ceded the lord­ship 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 ne­go­ti­a­tions in ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal po­si­tions. By the end of the tenth cen­tury, si­mony was en­demic. Of­fices were rou­tinely bought and sold like any other as­set, 11and 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,¹⁹See ibid., 62–63; Meier-Wel­cker, “Die Si­monie im frü­hen Mit­te­lal­ter,” 84. That the ad­dress was de­liv­ered at Pa­via is Meier-Wel­cker’s in­fer­ence. 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 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 gave charge to his own, send­ing them into the whole world, and said: Freely you have re­ceived, freely give. For you, cor­rupted by av­a­rice and cu­pid­ity, who ought to con­fer these things by the Lord’s bless­ing, are cursed, ac­cord­ing to 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, by the pro­vi­sion of the canons, to be barred from sa­cred min­is­try. It is there­fore per­fectly 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 12own dam­na­tion; and, ac­cord­ing to the Lord’s own word, in all things spir­i­tual rob­bery is ram­pant.²⁰Raoul 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 III pre­sided at the Synod of Sutri, and on the twen­ti­eth of that month, Syl­ves­ter was con­demned as an in­truder into the Holy See and de­posed. Greg­ory, the only one of the three to ap­pear, was pro­nounced guilty of si­mony and de­posed when it emerged that he had pur­chased the pon­tif­i­cate from Ben­e­dict. A Ro­man synod three days later de­clared Ben­e­dict de­posed in turn, leav­ing the see va­cant. On De­cem­ber 24, 1046, Suid­ger of Bam­berg, who had ac­com­pa­nied Henry from Ger­many, was elected Pope Clem­ent II. The fol­low­ing day, Christ­mas, he was con­se­crated, and he crowned Henry em­peror.²¹For the synod and the ac­ces­sion of Clem­ent II, see Cush­ing, Re­form and the Pa­pacy, 62–63.

The fol­low­ing month, Jan­u­ary 1047, 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: what was to be done with the clergy whom a si­mo­niac had or­dained, though they were in­no­cent of si­mony them­selves? 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.²²Pe­ter Da­mian, Liber gra­tis­si­mus, p. 499. Clem­ent died in Oc­to­ber of that year, but the im­por­tance of his judg­ment would be­come ap­par­ent soon af­ter.

13In Feb­ru­ary 1049, Leo IX was elected pope. Gen­er­ally re­garded as lay­ing the ground­work for the Gre­go­rian re­form, he im­me­di­ately took up, at the Lat­eran synod of April 1049, the ques­tion of those whom si­mo­ni­acs had or­dained. 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.²³Ibid., p. 499.

Yet Leo did not let the mat­ter rest. The ques­tion came up again in the next Lat­eran synod (1050).²⁴Ibid., p. 390. Cf. ibid., pp. 390–92n9. Af­ter this, at the Synod of Ver­celli (1050), the pope went so far as to re-or­dain such priests, im­ply­ing that their for­mer or­di­na­tion was in­valid. Be­ing re­buked there, he asked for­give­ness, but then be­ing re­proached at Rome for yield­ing, he fell back into the same prac­tice.²⁵Ber­en­gar 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.²⁶Pe­ter Da­mian, Liber gra­tis­si­mus, p. 392.

This ap­peal led Pe­ter Da­mian to pub­lish the let­ter known as Liber gra­tis­si­mus (1052), 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), deny­ing any le­git­i­macy to the spir­i­tual acts of si­mo­ni­acs and re­quir­ing that any or­dained by them be de­posed or or­dained anew.²⁷See 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 thing, Greg­ory the Great had al­ready con­cluded that such or­di­na­tions were le­git­i­mate.²⁸E.g., “just as one who has been bap­tized once ought not to be bap­tized again, so one who has been con­se­crated once in the same or­der can­not be con­se­crated again.” Greg­ory I, Ep. 2.45 (1, 145). More fa­mously, the de­bate was, in sub­stance, a re­play of the Don­a­tist con­tro­versy of the fourth and early fifth cen­turies. Un­der per­se­cu­tion, some clergy had handed over their Scrip­tures, an act sig­ni­fy­ing the re­nun­ci­a­tion of 14the faith, and the Don­a­tists in­sisted that sac­ra­ments ad­min­is­tered by these tra­di­tores were void, and that those bap­tized or or­dained by such men must re­ceive 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.²⁹“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.” Lat­eran Coun­cil (1060), can. 2 (p. 550). This mea­sure was granted as a tem­po­rary dis­pen­sa­tion, and the canon for­bade any suc­ces­sor to make a rule of it,³⁰“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 its sub­stance, re­stated in the synod’s fifth canon, would be pre­served by the pri­mary au­thor­i­ta­tive com­pi­la­tion on si­mony writ­ten in the twelfth cen­tury.³¹C. 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 15his con­clu­sions.³²Gil­christ, “‘Si­mo­ni­aca haere­sis,’” 234. More­over, the ev­i­dence for a rig­or­ist move­ment pre­ced­ing Sutri has been sub­stan­tially dis­cred­ited by more re­cent schol­ar­ship.³³The 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.³⁴Greg­ory 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.³⁵Gil­christ, “Canon Law As­pects,” 21. Like­wise, the third book of Hum­bert’s Ad­ver­sus si­mo­ni­a­cos 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; and the man on whom the civil ruler con­fers them by the power of the sword in­vades the clergy by vi­o­lence.³⁶Hum­bert 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 the pa­tri­arch 16Mi­chael Ce­ru­lar­ius, trig­ger­ing the Great Schism of 1054.³⁷Gil­christ, “Canon Law As­pects,” 27–28. Whether his theol­ogy lay di­rectly be­hind Greg­ory’s cam­paign re­mains un­proven,³⁸Blu­men­thal, 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.³⁹Gil­christ, “Canon Law As­pects,” 38.

Jan­u­ary 24, 1076, marks the for­mal be­gin­ning of the in­ves­ti­ture con­tro­versy.⁴⁰Some 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. See Cush­ing, Re­form and the Pa­pacy, 106–7; Blu­men­thal, The In­ves­ti­ture Con­tro­versy, 120–21. 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.

Greg­ory re­sponded at his own Lenten synod the fol­low­ing month, held be­tween Feb­ru­ary 14 and 20. There he ex­com­mu­ni­cated Henry through a prayer to St. Pe­ter, de­pos­ing him from the king­ship of Ger­many and Italy and re­leas­ing all his sub­jects from any past or fu­ture oath of fi­del­ity sworn to him. It was at this same synod that the word “si­mony” (si­mo­nia) it­self may have made its first ap­pear­ance, in the ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion of one Her­mann, bishop of Vi­enne.⁴¹Rosé, “Si­mon le Ma­gi­cien hé­ré­siar­que?” 203n9; cf. Greg­ory VII, Reg. 3.10a (p. 269), though the ap­pa­ra­tus re­ports it as a cor­rec­tion from the ad­jec­tive si­mo­ni­aca. Henry re­sponded in kind on March 27, send­ing an ex­panded ver­sion of his let­ter that greeted its re­cip­i­ent as “now not pope but false monk” and con­cluded, “de­scend, de­scend, to be damned through the ages.”⁴²Henry IV, Hein­rici IV. epis­tola, no. 62 (pp. 110–11).

Yet 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.⁴³Blu­men­thal, The In­ves­ti­ture Con­tro­versy, 123–24. With the po­lit­i­cal ground se­cured, Greg­ory is­sued ad­di­tional de­crees in 1078 and 1080 for­bid­ding any cleric to re­ceive in­ves­ti­ture from a lay­man and any lay­man to con­fer it.⁴⁴Cush­ing, 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 durable 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 the 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, so did si­mony through lay in­flu­ence, along with its many other forms. 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 the clas­si­cal pe­riod of canon law.

The be­gin­ning of this pe­riod is marked by the com­ple­tion of Gra­tian’s De­cre­tum, con­ven­tion­ally dated to ca. 1140.⁴⁵More 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 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 guilds of its own and a reg­u­lated prac­tice with ed­u­ca­tional re­quire­ments and oaths of ad­mis­sion.⁴⁶Brun­dage, “The Prac­tice of Canon Law”; Brun­dage, Me­dieval Ori­gins of the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion, 283–343. This pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion brought wider rec­og­ni­tion of si­mony and stronger mea­sures against it. Re­li­gious so­ci­eties, which had pre­vi­ously been lax on the mat­ter, be­gan to en­force rules against pay­ments for en­try.⁴⁷Lynch, Si­mo­ni­a­cal En­try, 147–69. In the thir­teenth cen­tury, even hos­pi­tals—them­selves or­ga­nized as re­li­gious so­ci­eties—some­times re­quired of en­trants an oath that they had not ob­tained their place by si­mony.⁴⁸Ibid., 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,⁴⁹X 5.3. but it at­tracted a sub­stan­tial body of com­men­tary, 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. None of these, how­ever, treated si­mony with sim­i­lar depth, and more im­por­tantly, none had com­pa­ra­ble im­pact on the study of the topic.

19The Rise of the Uni­ver­si­ties (1150–1215)§

The schools that emerged in the Mid­dle Ages were so di­verse that the no­tion of the me­dieval uni­ver­sity re­sists def­i­ni­tion.⁵⁰Verger, “Pat­terns,” 45. Un­der suf­fi­ciently broad pa­ra­me­ters, there were doz­ens,⁵¹Ibid., 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, of stu­dents, or of both.⁵²Cob­ban, 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.⁵³Cob­ban, 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.⁵⁴Ibid., 23–24. From the late thir­teenth cen­tury, pa­pal or im­pe­rial en­dorse­ment was re­quired to achieve this sta­tus.⁵⁵Ibid., 32.

The cur­ric­u­lum of me­dieval uni­ver­si­ties be­gan with the seven lib­eral arts: the triv­ium (gram­mar, logic, and rhet­o­ric) and the quad­riv­ium (arith­me­tic, geom­e­try, mu­sic, and as­tron­omy). Upon mas­ter­ing this pre­par­a­tory foun­da­tion, stu­dents could ad­vance to one of the three higher fac­ul­ties: med­i­cine, law (both canon and civil), or theol­ogy. Our 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. At these cen­ters in par­tic­u­lar scho­las­ti­cism thrived, and there flour­ished the great­est of the minds that would give si­mony its doc­tri­nal ar­tic­u­la­tion, such as Thomas Aqui­nas (Paris) and John Wyc­liffe (Ox­ford).

20It was like­wise at Paris that Pe­ter Lom­bard com­pleted his Sen­ten­tiae (ca. 1155–57),⁵⁶The Sen­ten­tiae are var­i­ously dated. The range here fol­lows the re­con­struc­tion in Rose­mann, Pe­ter Lom­bard, 55. 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 ap­prox­i­mately 1,400 known com­men­tar­ies,⁵⁷Ghellinck, “Re­view of Steg­mül­ler’s Rep­er­to­rium,” 888; cf. Steg­mül­ler, Rep­er­to­rium. it stands as the most fre­quently an­a­lyzed work of Chris­tian lit­er­a­ture out­side the Bible it­self.⁵⁸Rose­mann, The Story of a Great Me­dieval Book, 14. This con­cen­tra­tion came at the ex­pense of di­rect en­gage­ment with Scrip­ture, draw­ing crit­i­cism early on⁵⁹Janin, 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 found his way into the Bible, he would with­out doubt have been the great­est.”⁶⁰Lu­ther, 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 forty-five ex­plicit ci­ta­tions of Lom­bard in Cal­vin and thirty-four im­plicit—sev­enty-five and fifty-nine if each com­po­nent of a mul­ti­ple ci­ta­tion is counted sep­a­rately, 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 ad­dress it in turn.

The or­ganic de­vel­op­ment of the uni­ver­si­ties com­pli­cates at­tempts to date their ori­gins,⁶¹Rüegg, “Themes,” 6–7; Verger, “Pat­terns,” 45ff. but for any given in­sti­tu­tion, one can trace 21a se­ries of for­mal bench­marks. For ex­am­ple, the Uni­ver­sity of Paris re­ceived its first royal char­ter from Philip Au­gus­tus in 1200, and its pa­pal char­ter 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,⁶²Bald­win, 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.⁶³See 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 an 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.⁶⁴Cob­ban, 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.⁶⁵Ibid., 66–67. The school at Paris, by con­trast, evolved a mag­is­te­rial gov­er­nance be­cause fi­nan­cial lev­er­age cen­tered on in­cep­tion, that cer­e­mony by which a newly li­censed teacher was for­mally in­cor­po­rated into the guild of mas­ters.⁶⁶Rash­dall, 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 re­lied on a va­ri­ety of sources of rev­enue.⁶⁷See Gieysz­tor, “Man­age­ment and Re­sources,” 133–36 for a de­tailed over­view.

The sale of teach­ing li­censes was a pri­mary point of con­ten­tion. The li­cen­tia do­cendi cer­ti­fied an ac­a­demic pro­fi­ciency that per­mit­ted one to in­struct oth­ers in the schools. Though con­tem­po­raries did 22not broadly la­bel the sale of teach­ing li­censes “si­mony,”⁶⁸So As­te­sanus, cit­ing Gof­fre­dus and Hos­ti­en­sis: “I an­swer that it may not; yet there is no si­mony there […] rather there is the crime of ex­tor­tion.” As­te­sanus of Asti, Summa de ca­si­bus, VI, tit. 55, q. 8 (fol. 170r). some have termed it scho­las­tic si­mony on ac­count of the sim­i­lar­ity to si­mony in or­di­na­tions.⁶⁹Post, “Alex­an­der III, the Li­cen­tia Do­cendi,” pas­sim. The shared ap­peal to Mat­thew 10:8Matthew 10:8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons: freely you received, freely give. is also no­table.⁷⁰E.g., “what is ac­quired by the gift of heav­enly grace ought not to be put up for sale, but ought to be made avail­able freely to all, that what is writ­ten may be ful­filled: ‘Freely you have re­ceived, freely give.’” Alex­an­der III, Ep. JL 12096 (PL 200:840C). Alex­an­der III re­peat­edly pro­hib­ited the sale of teach­ing li­censes, most com­pre­hen­sively in the Third Lat­eran Coun­cil (1179), canon 18.⁷¹Third Lat­eran Coun­cil (1179), can. 18 (Mansi 22:228A–B). 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 1167,⁷²Alex­an­der III, Ep. JL 11329 (PL 200:440D); for the date and its iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as Alex­an­der’s first such let­ter, see Post, “Alex­an­der III, the Li­cen­tia Do­cendi,” 258n15. and al­most three dec­ades ear­lier, canon 17 of the Coun­cil of West­min­ster (1138) had con­demned the sim­i­lar prac­tice of a mas­ter’s let­ting out his school for an­other to teach in.⁷³Coun­cil of West­min­ster (1138), can. 17 (Mansi 21:514A).

Alex­an­der con­nected the sale of teach­ing li­censes to a broader prin­ci­ple that knowl­edge it­self should not be sold.⁷⁴E.g., “Suit­able and let­tered men who wish to teach must be per­mit­ted to gov­ern schools with­out any mo­lesta­tion or ex­ac­tion what­so­ever, lest knowl­edge should here­after seem to be set out for a price, that knowl­edge which ought to be be­stowed upon each man freely.” De­nifle and Chate­lain, eds., Char­tu­lar­ium Uni­ver­si­tatis Pa­ri­si­en­sis, pars in­tro., no. 4; cf. X 5.5.3. His rule made fit­ness, not pay­ment, the con­di­tion of the li­cense. In the afore­men­tioned canon 18 of Third Lat­eran, Alex­an­der also re­quired that cathe­dral schools staff a ben­e­ficed mas­ter in or­der that he might pro­vide free ed­u­ca­tion to the clergy and the poor.⁷⁵Third Lat­eran Coun­cil (1179), can. 18 (Mansi 22:228A). The con­vic­tion be­hind this de­mand was al­ready cur­rent and would soon harden into a com­mon dic­tum: “Knowl­edge is a gift of God, there­fore it can­not be sold” (sci­en­tia do­num Dei est, unde vendi non po­test).⁷⁶See Post et al., “The Me­dieval Her­itage” for an ex­ten­sive sur­vey of the tra­di­tion. Even in the early twelfth cen­tury, Pe­ter Abe­lard, ashamed to beg, took up teach­ing again and lived on what his stu­dents sup­plied of their own ac­cord. Abe­lard, Hist. calam. 26–27. By Alex­an­der’s de­cree, 23schools such as the one at Paris—then the cathe­dral school of Notre-Dame—were, at least os­ten­si­bly, free of charge.⁷⁷Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 81; Verger, “Teach­ers,” 151.

Alex­an­der’s man­date, how­ever well pro­vided for else­where, came up against the lim­its of avail­able re­sources in Paris. Alex­an­der was forced to make a spe­cial ex­cep­tion 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 1213.⁷⁸Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 1.122–23; cf. Bald­win, Paris, 1200, 183. Ac­cord­ingly, the ques­tion fell to the Pa­ri­sian schol­ars, who weighed not only which ac­a­demic fees were morally un­be­com­ing but, more point­edly, which crossed the line into si­mony. The most pro­nounced de­lib­er­a­tions is­sued from Pe­ter the Chanter and his cir­cle, cul­mi­nat­ing in Rob­ert of Cour­son.⁷⁹See Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 1.124; cf. Bald­win, Paris, 1200, 184. Rob­ert, as we have al­ready seen, 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.⁸⁰See 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.⁸¹See Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 1.124–27; cf. Bald­win, Paris, 1200, 184. Though schol­ars of the civil law at Bo­lo­gna showed 24lit­tle cor­re­spond­ing in­ter­est in theol­ogy,⁸²Post et al., “The Me­dieval Her­itage,” 207. they reached com­pa­ra­ble con­clu­sions for their own dis­ci­pline.⁸³Ibid., 206, 206n32. They main­tained that law was it­self a di­vine sci­ence, no less sa­cred than theol­ogy.⁸⁴Ibid., 209n43.

Canon 11 of the Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil (1215) re­corded that Alex­an­der’s de­cree had been but lit­tle ob­served, and ac­cord­ingly re­it­er­ated and ex­tended it.⁸⁵Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil (1215), can. 11 (Mansi 22:999B–C). Even with this re­newed in­sis­tence, the pro­vi­sion of ben­e­fices for free in­struc­tion con­tin­ued to go un­en­forced well into the thir­teenth cen­tury and be­yond.⁸⁶Post, “Mas­ters’ Sal­aries and Stu­dent-Fees,” 196–98. The fate of the de­cree, how­ever, need not de­tain us. This ep­i­sode con­cerns us be­cause it ac­counts for what ap­pears in the writ­ings on si­mony of 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 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 as 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.⁸⁷For 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 25off per­sonal prop­erty, they aban­doned com­mu­nal prop­erty as well. The pov­erty of these new or­ders could not square with the vow of sta­bil­ity in the Rule of Ben­e­dict of Nur­sia. Rather than keep­ing to them­selves in a mon­as­tery, the fri­ars took to the cities both on ac­count of their mis­sion to preach and their need to beg.⁸⁸Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 7–8. The fri­ars re­ceived 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 on how this for­mal­ized men­di­cancy had nor­mal­ized the prac­tice of beg­ging, one nine­teenth-cen­tury scholar wrote, “Many a man who would have been ashamed to dig was not ashamed to beg.”⁸⁹Rash­dall, The Uni­ver­si­ties of Eu­rope, 3.407.

The fri­ars quickly made their way into the uni­ver­si­ties. On Au­gust 15, 1217, Dom­i­nic sent seven of his fol­low­ers to Paris, at least two of them to study.⁹⁰Bauer­schmidt, Thomas Aqui­nas, 20. The Fran­cis­cans fol­lowed, more grad­u­ally, in the years there­after.⁹¹Law­rence, 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 by the four­teenth cen­tury wealthy fam­i­lies had grown re­luc­tant to send their sons to the schools at all, lest they be lost to the men­di­cant or­ders.⁹²Ibid., 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.⁹³See 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, and the like, they of­ten even had their own churches that com­peted with the parish churches. Their gains in the uni­ver­sity were so great that by 261254, the sec­u­lar mas­ters at Paris would hold only three of the fif­teen chairs in the fac­ulty of theol­ogy.⁹⁴Cob­ban, 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.⁹⁵Law­rence, 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.⁹⁶Janin, The Uni­ver­sity in Me­dieval Life, 82. In 1252, the sec­u­lar mas­ters at Paris at­tempted a stat­ute cap­ping the num­ber of men­di­cant chairs,⁹⁷Law­rence, The Fri­ars, 154. but mat­ters 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.⁹⁸Ibid., 154; Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 11, 14; Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 92. The dis­pute was car­ried to Rome in 1254, where In­no­cent IV sharply re­stricted the men­di­cants’ pas­toral priv­i­leges. How­ever, he died six­teen days later, and his suc­ces­sor, Alex­an­der IV, re­versed this judg­ment within a fort­night of his elec­tion and de­cided the uni­ver­sity dis­pute in the fri­ars’ fa­vor the fol­low­ing April.⁹⁹Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 15–16. The Pa­ri­sian con­flict was re­pro­duced, on a smaller scale, at Ox­ford and Cam­bridge.¹⁰⁰Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 93.

The an­ti­fra­ter­nal move­ment swiftly took on an apoc­a­lyp­tic fram­ing. This owed partly to the con­tem­po­rary an­tic­i­pa­tion of the year 1260,¹⁰¹See Rev. 11:3Revelation 11:3And I will give to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”; 12:6Revelation 12:6And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that there they may nourish her 1,260 days.. 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.¹⁰²Szittya, 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 27no­vis­si­mo­rum tem­po­rum (“Con­cern­ing the Per­ils of the Last Days”). Its fi­nal and most in­flu­en­tial chap­ter enu­mer­ated forty-one signs of false apos­tles,¹⁰³The pre­cise count var­ies across edi­tions; the num­ber­ing fol­lowed here is that of the 1632 Op­era om­nia. and the twen­ti­eth joined his two pri­mary con­ten­tions with the fri­ars: their men­di­cancy and want of a proper of­fice. He held beg­ging from those to whom one preaches to be in­dica­tive of si­mony; a pas­tor may re­ceive from his flock with au­thor­ity, but the fri­ars have no such claim.¹⁰⁴Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, De per­i­culis, cap. 14, sign. 20 (pp. 64–65). See Chap­ter 9, pp. 156–58. 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.).¹⁰⁵See, e.g., Bo­na­ven­ture, Apo­lo­gia pau­pe­rum con­tra ca­lum­ni­a­to­rem, 7.39 (p. 285). Yet for Wil­liam, the per­for­mance of la­bor did not by it­self make a worker wor­thy; with­out for­mal stand­ing none was 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 con­sid­er­able re­sis­tance. Aqui­nas re­sponded that same year with Con­tra im­pug­nantes Dei cul­tum et re­li­gionem (“Against Those Who At­tack the Wor­ship of God and Re­li­gion”), de­vot­ing a whole chap­ter to de­fend­ing the fri­ars’ re­cep­tion of alms.¹⁰⁶Aqui­nas, Con­tra im­pug­nantes, 2.39 (pp. 56b–58a). Alex­an­der IV con­demned De per­i­culis in Oc­to­ber, and be­cause Wil­liam posed an ob­sta­cle to the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of the war­ring par­ties at the uni­ver­sity, he was for­bid­den in Au­gust of the next year to re­turn to Paris.¹⁰⁷See Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 17.

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.¹⁰⁸See ibid., 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, this rhet­o­ric also worked its way into cel­e­brated lit­er­a­ture, such as Chau­cer’s Can­ter­bury Tales and Dante’s Di­vine Com­edy.¹⁰⁹For the ex­tent of such lit­er­a­ture, see Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion. John Foxe would later re­pro­duce Wil­liam’s 28signs of false apos­tles in his Acts and Mon­u­ments.¹¹⁰Foxe, 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.¹¹¹For 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 reg­u­lated the fri­ars’ preach­ing, con­fes­sion, and bur­ial: it pre­served free preach­ing in their own churches and pub­lic squares but re­quired parish priests’ con­sent in parish churches and men­di­cant con­fes­sors to be pre­sented to lo­cal bish­ops for ap­proval.¹¹²Clem. 3.7.2 (cols. 1161–64).

But Wil­liam’s cause out­lived the le­gal com­pro­mise. Late in the next cen­tury, it found a 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.”¹¹³Bale, 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.¹¹⁴Specif­i­cally, 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).¹¹⁵Shir­ley, ed., Fas­ci­culi zi­za­ni­o­rum, 272–73, 283–85. He con­tin­ued writ­ing against them un­til his peace­ful death on the eve of 1385,¹¹⁶How­ard, The Life and Reign of King Rich­ard, 43. and his fol­low­ers, the Lol­lards, car­ried on his cam­paign against the si­mony of the fri­ars.

The Sale of In­dul­gences (1184–1517)§

29The ori­gins of in­dul­gences are ob­scure, and sev­eral the­o­ries have been pro­posed.¹¹⁷For a rep­re­sen­ta­tive if dated over­view, see Lea, A His­tory of Au­ric­u­lar Con­fes­sion, 3–9. What seems clear­est is that in­dul­gences grew out of the bishop’s dis­cre­tionary power to com­mute canon­i­cal pen­ance, sub­sti­tut­ing an­other pi­ous work for what­ever con­fes­sion pre­scribed. The Coun­cil of Cler­mont (1095) granted what is reck­oned the first ple­nary in­dul­gence, in which Ur­ban II de­creed that ser­vice in the First Cru­sade would be reck­oned “in lieu of all pen­ance.”¹¹⁸Coun­cil 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,¹¹⁹Rates 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 granted an in­dul­gence to those who paid.¹²⁰For the text of the or­di­nance, see Lunt, “The Text of the Or­di­nance,” 240–42. For a gen­eral over­view, see Cazel, “The Tax of 1185”, who ar­gues that the or­di­nance be­longs to 1185.

At the Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil (1215) the prac­tice was both cen­tral­ized and for­mal­ized. Canon 60 barred ab­bots from is­su­ing let­ters of in­dul­gence, canon 62 lim­ited what prel­ates might re­mit, and canon 71 gave money pay­ments a rec­og­nized place in the sys­tem, ad­mit­ting to a share in the cru­sade re­mis­sion all who would con­trib­ute “suit­ably” from their goods.¹²¹Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil (1215), can. 60 (Mansi 22:1047); can. 62 (Mansi 22:1049–51); can. 71 (Mansi 22:1067C–D). By the mid­dle of the thir­teenth cen­tury, in­dul­gences had be­come al­most ex­clu­sively fi­nan­cial.¹²²Lea, 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 30wind­fall 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, spread­ing the sale of in­dul­gences across Eu­rope.¹²³Ibid., 65, 199.

Sev­eral theo­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ments re­in­forced the growth of this prac­tice. By this time, the no­tion of pur­ga­tory had shifted from a pu­ri­fi­ca­tion that takes place in this life to a dis­tinct lo­ca­tion in the next,¹²⁴For one com­monly ref­er­enced ac­count­ing, see Le Goff, The Birth of Pur­ga­tory, 168, 173, 237, which places its emer­gence be­tween 1170 and 1200. feed­ing de­mand for such a re­mis­sion. Ad­di­tion­ally, pa­pal grants be­gan omit­ting the con­di­tion of con­tri­tion,¹²⁵For 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. im­plic­itly re­duc­ing the trans­ac­tion to a sim­ple sale.¹²⁶See 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), lend­ing le­git­i­macy to the ef­fec­tively lim­it­less sup­ply of in­dul­gences.¹²⁷Ex­travag. comm. 5.9.2 (cols. 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.¹²⁸Six­tus IV, Sal­va­tor nos­ter, fol. 3v; cf. Lea, A His­tory of Au­ric­u­lar Con­fes­sion, 345–46.

The school­men gen­er­ally de­fended this prac­tice, em­ploy­ing a num­ber of ar­gu­ments for its va­lid­ity and ab­solv­ing it from charges of si­mony.¹²⁹See 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. Their chief ex­pla­na­tion dis­tin­guished the sense in which the money given by a pa­rish­ioner was the cause of the grant­ing of the in­dul­gence. In­dul­gences, they held, were not granted in ex­change for the money con­sid­ered as a gift, but on ac­count of the giver’s good will.¹³⁰E.g., Os­wald of Laskó, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. In­dul­gen­tia, 5. On this rea­son­ing, the money counted not as pay­ment but as alms. Of course, these jus­ti­fi­ca­tions did not im­press every­one at the 31time. For ex­am­ple, Wyc­liffe and Jan Hus fre­quently iden­ti­fied the sale of in­dul­gences as si­mony.¹³¹E.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 1510,¹³²Lea, A His­tory of Au­ric­u­lar Con­fes­sion, 379–80. 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 Jo­hann Tet­zel as his com­mis­sioner. Tet­zel op­er­ated with a no­to­ri­ously bald mer­can­til­ism, and his cam­paign was later sum­ma­rized in a rhyme: “As soon as the coin in the cof­fer rings, / The soul from pur­ga­tory springs.”¹³³Bain­ton, Here I Stand, 78; cf. Lu­ther, Ninety-Five The­ses, th. 27 (WA 1, 234). In short or­der, this preach­ing would pro­voke the Prot­es­tant Ref­or­ma­tion.¹³⁴For 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, en­clos­ing his ninety-five the­ses. 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.

32The charge of si­mony left a last­ing mark on Prot­es­tant con­fes­sional writ­ing as well.¹³⁵E.g., SHC 14; Synod of Dort, Church Or­der, art. 80; WLC Q. 109. Even in the wake of the Ref­or­ma­tion, Rome her­self con­ceded that her prac­tice had grown si­mo­ni­a­cal. Pius V wrote in 1570 that among the other scan­dals of the in­dul­gence trade “there also reeks the wicked­ness of si­mony.”¹³⁶Pius 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 prompted the Ref­or­ma­tion. Though ig­no­rant of the three-way fi­nan­cial ar­range­ment or­ches­trated by Al­bert and the Fug­gers,¹³⁷Lea, A His­tory of Au­ric­u­lar Con­fes­sion, 392. Lu­ther aimed his ob­jec­tion at 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.¹³⁸Lu­ther, 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 no­tion of si­mony can­not be cleanly sep­a­rated from the mat­ter of the gospel. For Lu­ther, si­mony was a de­nial of the gospel, the root from which all false re­li­gion grew. He spelled this out most clearly in his lec­tures on Gen­e­sis:

But one may see how wretched and how dan­ger­ous a thing it is to have fallen away from the chief doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by 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 this si­mony ex­ists in name only, like the si­mony de­scribed in canon law. For they re­deem noth­ing and ob­tain noth­ing by price and by 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 33who would be ap­peased by hu­man works and mer­its, to whom he could protest: “I have done many things; I have fasted much; look upon these things, and sell me sal­va­tion and eter­nal life.” But God nei­ther ac­knowl­edges nor hears such work­ers of in­iq­uity. And he sets forth his will in the apos­tolic doc­trine: “By grace and freely [gra­tia et gra­tis] you have been jus­ti­fied, apart from all works” [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.]. Once that grace is taken away, there is no longer any dis­tinc­tion be­tween the Turk and the Pope, hea­then and Jew; all are si­mo­ni­acs and goat-milk­ers, Bock­melker.¹³⁹Ibid., 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, with­er­ing the ud­der and blind­ing the goat (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 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,¹⁴⁰Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 277:31–283:28); 25:31–34 (WA 43, 419:30–430:18). Lu­ther made pass­ing com­ments about si­mony through­out his works.

Iron­i­cally, 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,¹⁴¹For ex­am­ple, Wil­liam Guild de­voted an en­tire chap­ter to pa­pal “spir­i­tual mer­chan­dise or si­mony,” cat­a­logu­ing the sale of in­dul­gences among the of­fenses. Guild, An­ti­christ, 137, 144. and 34the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of works-right­eous­ness as a form of si­mony was re­peated fre­quently through the sub­se­quent cen­tury.¹⁴²E.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.”¹⁴³Donne, 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.”¹⁴⁴Ibid., 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.”¹⁴⁵Rous, 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.”¹⁴⁶Cooke, 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.”¹⁴⁷Church of Eng­land, Con­sti­tu­tions and Canons Ec­cle­si­as­ti­call, can. 40. But the con­sid­er­a­tions of si­mony among the Eng­lish di­vines rarely ap­proached the depth of the school­men’s. These writ­ers were the heirs of a doc­trine suf­fi­cient for their pur­poses. The ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal con­tro­ver­sies of their own day re­quired more le­gal ap­pli­ca­tion than theo­log­i­cal re­fine­ment.

Si­mony also en­tered Eng­lish dis­course from a dif­fer­ent and less or­tho­dox di­rec­tion. Quak­ers, An­a­bap­tists, and other rad­i­cal dis­sent­ers 35were will­ing to ap­ply the la­bel of si­mony to any reg­u­lar min­is­te­rial sti­pend. 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.¹⁴⁸E.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.¹⁴⁹See 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 1830s, James Begg wrote a trea­tise against pew rents, fees whereby con­gre­gants se­cured their seats in wor­ship.¹⁵⁰Begg, Seat Rents. Though he con­structed ar­gu­ments sim­i­lar to those of writ­ers 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 that grace must be given freely, and 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 36did 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 the four streams sur­veyed above.

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.”¹SHC 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.³WLC 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 in­ter­est in how it lived, but no prac­ti­cal ex­pec­ta­tion of en­counter. The le­gal his­to­rian John T. Noo­nan 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 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) and The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus (1700), an anon­y­mous trea­tise.⁵Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie. The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus. In some re­spects, these works dif­fer sub­stan­tially. The for­mer was writ­ten by a no­table Pu­ri­tan, the lat­ter by an un­known con­form­ist. The for­mer is an at­tempt at di­rect ap­pli­ca­tion of the doc­trine from an­cient sources. The lat­ter, on ac­count of be­ing au­thored at a later time when the doc­trine had fallen into fur­ther de­cline, goes about the task 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. But 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 ahead of us 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 first heard Paul, then searched the Scrip­tures to test what he taught (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 to Job, “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.”⁶Owen, “The Duty of a Pas­tor,” 459. From there, he pro­ceeded to ex­plain that its dan­ger is not merely er­ror but “in­dif­fer­ency,”⁷“Who would have thought that we should have come to an in­dif­fer­ency as to the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion […] when these were the soul and life of them who are gone be­fore us, who found the power and com­fort of them?” Ibid., 459. 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 40to 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.”⁸The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 7. Bur­ton made the same di­ag­no­sis, that too many “have cho­sen the place of the min­is­try, but not the zeal.”⁹Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 76, quot­ing Ber­nard of Clair­vaux; cf. ibid., 79. De­cay in doc­trine is mu­tu­ally linked to a de­cay in de­vo­tion; 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 such read­ers 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, Mar­tin Lu­ther con­ceded, “un­der the pa­pacy there is much that is Chris­tian and good—in­deed, all Chris­tian good ex­ists there and has come down to us from there.”¹⁰Lu­ther, Von der Wie­der­taufe, WA 26, 147:13–15. John Cal­vin re­jected ac­cu­sa­tions of nov­elty, claim­ing that Re­formed doc­trine is an­cient, be­long­ing to Chris­tians by a “right of re­cov­ery” (post­li­mi­nii iure).¹¹Cal­vin, In­sti­tu­tio, Prae­fa­tio. Fran­cis Tur­re­tin de­fended the same prin­ci­ple 41when he dis­tin­guished “the sub­stance of the faith” from “the ac­ci­dents of cor­rup­tion.”¹²Tur­re­tin, 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.”¹³Per­kins, A Re­formed Catho­like, ¶3v.

The pur­pose of re­trieval is not to ac­cept every an­cient con­clu­sion un­crit­i­cally or to per­mit the cul­tural pres­sures of a for­mer age 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.

We must also 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 holy.

Our cho­sen ex­po­nents em­bod­ied this dis­crim­i­nat­ing pos­ture. Bur­ton grounded his def­i­ni­tion in “the tes­ti­mony of the whole church from the prim­i­tive age thereof till this present.”¹⁴Bur­ton, 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.”¹⁵The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 114. Nei­ther au­thor ap­proached these sources un­crit­i­cally, but they re­peat­edly ap­pealed to canon­ists, school­men, and pa­pal pro­nounce­ments. Bur­ton jus­ti­fied his ap­proach: “the church 42of 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.”¹⁶Bur­ton, 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 gives the sin­ner the la­bor of gath­er­ing and heap­ing up, only for it to pass 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.¹⁷See 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 ac­cu­mu­late de­tail 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 of our own choos­ing 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 claimed the most ink are not nec­es­sar­ily the ones that most re­quire our present at­ten­tion. Our aim is to be com­pre­hen­sive in scope but 43not pro­por­tional in em­pha­sis. Sev­eral pri­or­i­ties will gov­ern what we ad­dress and what we leave aside.

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.¹⁸Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 280:22–32). 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. Still 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 as­sem­bling the coun­sel of 44many 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 spe­cial in­ter­est in the church fa­thers. As the clos­est wit­nesses to the apos­tolic age and a shared in­her­i­tance on which the Re­form­ers them­selves re­lied, 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. The dis­tinc­tion has been de­scribed as ar­bi­trary,¹⁹So Gil­christ, “‘Si­mo­ni­aca haere­sis,’” 210. but the canon­ists were chiefly con­cerned with what could be ad­ju­di­cated, whereas our con­cern does not re­volve around hu­man courts. 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 un­der 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 Hus used Wyc­liffe’s trea­tise as a start­ing point for his own, trans­lat­ing por­tions to­tal­ing roughly one-eighth of it into Czech,²⁰Spinka, John Hus: A Bi­og­ra­phy, 172. we will be es­pe­cially in­ter­ested where he de­parted from his Eng­lish pre­de­ces­sor. Whether Wil­liam of 45Saint-Amour counts 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. Out­side them, 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 46are 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 un­seated 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 de­fended 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 at 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 stan­dard 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 our con­fi­dence in the emerg­ing pat­terns. The ab­sence of treat­ment on a given ques­tion may say more about the me­dium of trans­mis­sion than about its his­tor­i­cal rel­e­vance. We will draw our con­clu­sions from what is avail­able, while re­mem­ber­ing that much re­mains in the ar­chives.

47Ap­pli­ca­tion 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.⁵And Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.⁶And the multitudes gave heed with one accord to the things that were spoken by Philip, when they heard and saw the signs which he did.⁷For [from] many of those who had unclean spirits, they came out, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed, and that were lame, were healed.⁸And there was much joy in that city.⁹But 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.”²⁵Therefore, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.²⁶But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise, and go toward the south to the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert [road].)²⁷And he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to Jerusalem to worship;²⁸and he was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah.²⁹And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and join yourself to this chariot.”³⁰And Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, “Do you understand what you read?”³¹And he said, “How can I, except someone will guide me?” And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him.³²Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he does not open his mouth:³³In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: his generation who will declare? For his life is taken from the earth.”³⁴And the eunuch answered Philip and said, “Please, of whom speaks the prophet this? Of himself, or of some other?”³⁵And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, preached to him Jesus.³⁶And as they went on the way, they came to a certain water. And the eunuch says, “Behold, [here is] water. What hinders me to be baptized?”³⁷[And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”]³⁸And he commanded the chariot to stand still; and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.³⁹And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing.⁴⁰But Philip was found at Azotus; and passing through he preached the gospel to all the cities, until he came to Caesarea. sup­pose that Si­mon’s sin is one few oth­ers—if any oth­ers at all—will ever com­mit. Both Bur­ton²¹“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 Anat­o­mist²²“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.⁵And Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.⁶And the multitudes gave heed with one accord to the things that were spoken by Philip, when they heard and saw the signs which he did.⁷For [from] many of those who had unclean spirits, they came out, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed, and that were lame, were healed.⁸And there was much joy in that city.⁹But 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.”²⁵Therefore, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.²⁶But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise, and go toward the south to the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert [road].)²⁷And he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to Jerusalem to worship;²⁸and he was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah.²⁹And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and join yourself to this chariot.”³⁰And Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, “Do you understand what you read?”³¹And he said, “How can I, except someone will guide me?” And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him.³²Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he does not open his mouth:³³In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: his generation who will declare? For his life is taken from the earth.”³⁴And the eunuch answered Philip and said, “Please, of whom speaks the prophet this? Of himself, or of some other?”³⁵And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, preached to him Jesus.³⁶And as they went on the way, they came to a certain water. And the eunuch says, “Behold, [here is] water. What hinders me to be baptized?”³⁷[And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”]³⁸And he commanded the chariot to stand still; and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.³⁹And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing.⁴⁰But Philip was found at Azotus; and passing through he preached the gospel to all the cities, until he came to Caesarea.], 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. be­gan 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 al­low, 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.”²³Tay­lor, “The Flesh and the Spirit,” fol. 136.

There­fore, our study will be­gin with def­i­ni­tion and ex­plo­ra­tion, and only af­ter­ward at­tempt 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 48a his­tor­i­cal doc­trine in its own right be­fore bring­ing it to bear on the present—but the same need was felt by those who han­dled the doc­trine in past gen­er­a­tions. Bur­ton ob­served it with an anal­ogy to civil law: charges do lit­tle to con­vict un­til the of­fense is de­fined.²⁴“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. Like­wise with di­vine law, clar­ity of con­science re­quires clar­ity of def­i­ni­tion.

Mak­ing con­tem­po­rary ap­pli­ca­tion will then 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 Rome’s lim­ited con­cep­tion of the sin and ap­ply the doc­trine to its whole sys­tem of works right­eous­ness.²⁵Lu­ther, 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.²⁶Bur­ton, 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 scarcely any­one in those parts knew it was a sin.²⁷Pe­ter 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.²⁸The 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 in pop­u­lar opin­ion, it was 49pri­mar­ily for his preach­ing against ac­cepted prac­tices that he iden­ti­fied as si­mony.²⁹“Every­where there are en­e­mies in plenty, both Czech and Ger­man, who seek my death: […] For it touches 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. 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. Faith­ful theol­ogy is not 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 item to the list of sins 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.³⁰WCF 19.6; 2LBCF 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.

Many mod­ern read­ers know “si­mony” as a term for the pur­chase of church of­fice and so 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 we may make an ini­tial dem­on­stra­tion 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 def­i­ni­tion of 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.³See Hodge, Out­lines of Theol­ogy, 482–84.

The school­men dis­tin­guished that which is of the Holy Spirit (a spir­itu in­cre­ato) from those things of men and an­gels (a spir­itu cre­ato).⁴See 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 re­garded as sold.⁵Ger­hard, Loci Theo­lo­gici, 23.3.12.150.

Right vs. Fact§

Speak­ing care­fully of the abil­ity to en­gage in com­merce re­quires a dis­tinc­tion be­tween au­thor­ity and power. In say­ing that spir­i­tual 55things “can­not” be sold, theo­lo­gians of­ten in­tended to re­pu­di­ate the moral per­mis­si­bil­ity of buy­ing or sell­ing them. How­ever, they some­times in­tended a de­nial of even the pos­si­bil­ity of the trans­ac­tion. Such a thing can­not be sold by right (de jure) or in fact (de facto).⁶E.g., 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, they can­not be trans­ferred from one per­son to an­other. They are not sub­ject to mech­a­nisms of ma­nip­u­la­tion, phys­i­cal or oth­er­wise, that would en­able such an ex­change. 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.”⁷Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 282:8).

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 (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.), he did not merely re­buke his ac­tiv­ity but de­clared it fu­tile: such an ex­change is im­pos­si­ble.

Es­sence vs. Cause§

Some­thing 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.⁸Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 1, qc. 1, ad 3; Os­wald of Laskó, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 1; Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 318b); cf. Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, sol. (p. 93a). John Ma­jor dis­missed these cat­e­gories in his ear­lier edi­tion but set them out as the com­mon ac­count in his later one. Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (fol. 145va); Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 1 (fol. 183ra).

56For 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. 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, on ac­count of the work it­self, 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 the school­men in af­firm­ing this dis­tinc­tion be­tween es­sence and cause in its ap­pli­ca­tion to si­mony.⁹Ames, Con­science, 5.229.

No si­mo­ni­a­cal pur­chaser buys some­thing that is spir­i­tual in it­self. Rather, he 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. The point is that the pur­chase oc­curs in or­der to re­ceive some grace of the Spirit.

Some might re­gard the sale of things that are spir­i­tual by cause to be ei­ther a lesser form of si­mony or not si­mony at all be­cause cor­po­real signs are not them­selves spir­i­tual but one step re­moved from spir­i­tual things. On the con­trary, be­cause out­ward signs, un­like grace it­self, can ac­tu­ally be sold, it is the worst form of si­mony.¹¹“In­deed this is the worst kind of si­mony.” Au­riol, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. un., a. 2 (p. 166a).

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 or read­ing the Gospel is spir­i­tual as to its prin­ci­ple since it pro­ceeds 57from a spir­i­tual of­fice. How­ever, the teach­ing of the lib­eral arts is spir­i­tual only as to its end in the trans­mis­sion of truth.¹²See Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2; Aqui­nas, Quod­li­bet, VIII, q. 6, a. 1 (p. 175). Aqui­nas, whose dis­tinc­tion this is, held truth it­self to be of the Holy Spirit, who is the au­thor of the na­ture by which any man knows any­thing at all,¹³Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 172, a. 6, arg. 1 & ad 1. but even with­out adopt­ing this po­si­tion, we might rec­og­nize a spir­i­tual end of such teach­ing in the in­crease of vir­tue it may work in the learner.

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 sell the act of teach­ing the lib­eral arts for a price, but it would be si­mony for one hold­ing min­is­te­rial of­fice to sell his ser­vice by charg­ing for the act of read­ing Scrip­ture or ar­rang­ing for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of a sac­ra­ment by con­tract.¹⁴Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 1, ad 4; Aqui­nas, Quod­li­bet, VIII, q. 6, a. 1 (p. 175).

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 (ca. 305), clergy were for­mally for­bid­den from 58ac­cept­ing a fee for bap­tism.¹⁵Synod of El­vira (ca. 305), can. 48 (PL 84:307B). In the fifth cen­tury, Ge­la­sius I pro­hib­ited re­quest­ing com­pen­sa­tion for bap­tism or con­fir­ma­tion.¹⁶Ge­la­sius I, Ep. 14.5; cf. C. 1, q. 1, c. 99. The Elev­enth Coun­cil of To­ledo (675) af­firmed this ban and ex­tended its pro­hi­bi­tion against such so­lic­i­ta­tions to or­di­na­tions and the con­fer­ring of chrism.¹⁷Elev­enth Coun­cil of To­ledo (675), c. 8 (PL 84:461D–462B); cf. C. 1, q. 1, c. 101. Chrism fre­quently ap­pears in canon­i­cal lists of things for­bid­den to sell. X 5.3.8; X 5.3.16; X 5.3.21; X 5.3.36; C. 1, q. 1, cc. 101–2; C. 1, q. 1, cc. 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.¹⁸Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 2. The 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.”¹⁹Be­con, 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. This fo­cus should hardly be sur­pris­ing given that 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.

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.”²⁰Ca­nones apos­to­lo­rum, can. 29 (p. 572). Sim­i­larly, the Coun­cil of Chal­cedon (451) stip­u­lated that 59when money changes hands for an or­di­na­tion, the or­dained must for­feit the pur­chased rank and the or­dainer stands to lose his own.²¹Coun­cil of Chal­cedon (451), can. 2 (ACO II.2.2, 125); cf. C. 1, q. 1, c. 113.

Greg­ory the Great per­sis­tently fought against pur­chased or­di­na­tions, and 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.”²²Greg­ory 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, ap­peal­ing pri­mar­ily to Greg­ory the Great’s let­ters and hom­i­lies.²³C. 1, q. 1, cc. 113–20. At the end of that pe­riod, the Liber ex­tra opened its De si­mo­nia with Greg­ory’s syn­od­i­cal pro­hi­bi­tion and re­turned to the ques­tion of or­di­na­tions re­peat­edly through­out its forty-six chap­ters.²⁴X 5.3.1; X 5.3.5; X 5.3.18; X 5.3.20; X 5.3.22; X 5.3.35; X 5.3.37; X 5.3.39; X 5.3.45.

Canon law also ad­dressed the re­li­gious 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.²⁵C. 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,²⁶See X 5.5.3. but in the case of theo­log­i­cal teach­ing li­censes, im­posed fees were ad­di­tion­ally la­beled si­mo­ni­a­cal.²⁷E.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 fur­ther, ap­ply­ing it to li­censes in the lib­eral arts as well on the ground that the arts pre­pare for theol­ogy. Ibid., 1.123; 2.83n51.

These con­cerns ex­tend to the res­ig­na­tion of an of­fice. The me­dieval canon­ists ad­dressed this in some mea­sure, con­clud­ing that those who 60would re­nounce their ti­tle for a sum are guilty of si­mony.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, lament­ing those who would claim that “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.”³⁰Tyn­dale, Obe­di­ence of a Chris­tian Man, fol. 27r. In his es­ti­ma­tion, those who would make such ar­gu­ments were “crafty jug­glers and mock­ers with the word of God.”³¹Ibid., 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.³²See 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?”³³Degge, The Par­son’s Coun­sel­lor, 50.

Mar­riage and Bur­i­als§

Both mar­riage and bur­i­als fre­quently fea­tured in lists of things for which charg­ing would con­sti­tute si­mony.³⁴E.g., X 5.3.8; X 5.3.9; X 5.3.29; X 5.3.42; Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 7.H. 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 61na­ture, then we do not ob­serve any­thing more than we have al­ready with bap­tism and com­mu­nion. How­ever, if they were mo­ti­vated by some­thing more, then the na­ture of spir­i­tual things may be fur­ther elu­ci­dated.

Scho­las­tic theo­lo­gians ac­knowl­edged that mar­riage is es­tab­lished in na­ture it­self, and there­fore re­cip­ro­cal trans­ac­tions made in the for­ma­tion of that union—whether for a dowry, a civil of­fi­ciant’s fee, or the like—may be per­fectly licit.³⁵E.g., “Mar­riage is not only a sac­ra­ment but also an of­fice of na­ture. […] 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.³⁶E.g., “on the side on which it is a sac­ra­ment, […] he com­mits si­mony who ex­acts money for the bless­ing of those mar­ry­ing.” Ibid., IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 1, ad 2. For ex­am­ple, Bo­na­ven­ture, de­fend­ing the prac­tice of a dowry as be­ing non-si­mo­ni­a­cal, ex­plained, “the spir­i­tual char­ac­ter con­sists prin­ci­pally in the priestly bless­ing.”³⁷Bo­na­ven­ture, In Sent. IV, d. 26, a. 2, 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, con­cerns of­ten cen­tered on the sale of the plot rather than the sale of fu­neral pro­ceed­ings,³⁸This will be ad­dressed in the next chap­ter, pp. 75–76. but canon­ists con­sis­tently as­serted that any re­li­gious ser­vice as­so­ci­ated with an in­ter­ment should be per­formed freely.³⁹Among 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. Those re­li­gious bur­ial ser­vices for­bid­den from sale in­clude more than that which might be con­sid­ered sac­ra­men­tal, ex­tend­ing even to ac­tiv­i­ties like read­ing a psal­ter.⁴⁰Hos­ti­en­sis, Summa au­rea, ad X 5.3 (fol. 535ra).

62Those who would re­fuse to per­form bur­ial ser­vices with­out pay­ment, es­sen­tially hold­ing a body hos­tage (fu­nus ar­res­tare), were plainly la­beled si­mo­ni­acs.⁴¹E.g., Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 321a); cf. C. 13, q. 2, c. 12; Greg­ory I, Ep. 8.35. One in­stance of this, re­counted re­peat­edly in later lit­er­a­ture, is the story of Gio­vanni Ma­ria Vis­conti, the fif­teenth-cen­tury Duke of Mi­lan. While rid­ing recre­ation­ally, he over­heard a great weep­ing and lamen­ta­tion in­side the house of a poor woman. Upon in­quiry, he dis­cov­ered that she was a widow and the pri­mary source of her dis­tress was that the corpse of her hus­band still lay be­fore her eyes be­cause the priest had re­fused to per­form the bur­ial ser­vice apart from pay­ment. The duke com­manded that the av­a­ri­cious cler­gy­man dig a deep pit and, upon its com­ple­tion, had him tossed in ahead of the body of the de­ceased, bury­ing the liv­ing along with the dead.⁴²See 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 or sus­pen­sion of that power is there­fore si­mo­ni­a­cal. Ac­tiv­i­ties wrongly ex­changed for a fee may in­clude con­ceal­ing sin, re­stor­ing with­out due pen­ance, or even re­stor­ing with due pen­ance.⁴³X 5.3.14; X 5.3.24. John Wyc­liffe ob­served that im­pos­ing an an­nual fine to pun­ish sin­ners is an es­pe­cially dam­na­ble si­mony.⁴⁴Wyc­liffe, De blas­phe­mia, cap. 10 (153:21–30). Like­wise, it is si­mo­ni­a­cal to pay for an of­fense to be pun­ished less se­verely.⁴⁵E.g., Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 320b).

This pro­hi­bi­tion ex­tends to 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.⁴⁶Ibid., IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 320b); Os­wald of Laskó, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 3.

63Prayer§

Given our es­tab­lished dis­tinc­tions, prayer is spir­i­tual on a num­ber of counts: prin­ci­ple and end,⁴⁷See Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2, ad 2. es­sence and cause.⁴⁸See 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.”⁴⁹Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 320b). Wyc­liffe de­scribed those who trade in prayers as “dull-wit­ted mer­chants trad­ing in their shad­ows, as the sun is sink­ing to­ward eve­ning.”⁵⁰Wyc­liffe, De ora­cione, cap. 3 (347:13–14).

The prac­tice of giv­ing alms to the poor so that they will pray for the giver was com­mon in the Mid­dle Ages. 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 a gra­tu­itous bene­fac­tion in­tended to move them to pray freely out of char­ity.⁵¹E.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 pre­texts as a mock­ery of God.⁵²Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 7 (86:12–28). In his Dec­ades, Hein­rich Bul­lin­ger spoke of the monks and priests who would de­fend tak­ing a fee to pray as “word-jug­glers.”⁵³Bul­lin­ger, Dec­ades, 5.5 (fol. 311v). If one has faith and char­ity, Bul­lin­ger rea­soned, he will pray freely, and if he does not, his prayers are empty.⁵⁴Ibid., 5.5 (foll. 311v–312r). Such men “with a false show de­ceive the stu­pid crowd,” which pays for just prayers and re­ceives un­just ones, and even if the prayers were just, “they were none­the­less nei­ther to be sold nor to be bought.”⁵⁵Ibid., 5.5 (fol. 312r).

64Preach­ing§

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,⁵⁶Di­dache (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.⁵⁷“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 take any­thing for preach­ing.”⁵⁸Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (fol. 148ra). The word he used for “take” (ca­pere) might sug­gest a 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 for­bade all re­cep­tion in ex­change for preach­ing.

The proto-Re­form­ers con­curred on this point.⁵⁹E.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..⁶⁰Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 7.H. At­trib­uted to Wyc­liffe, a ser­mon on the same text reads, “For Christ saith thus: Ye took of God freely, and there­fore give freely your tra­vail to the peo­ple; and then shall it be meed­ful [mer­i­to­ri­ous], and else it is si­mony. And here is beg­ging of preach­ers for­bid­den by God, sith it is a hid sell­ing of preach­ing of God’s word.”⁶¹Wyc­liffe, Ser­mons, serm. 64 (1, p. 200). Else­where, an­other work at­trib­uted to Wyc­liffe speaks 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. 9 (p. 130).

65This 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.”⁶²Lu­ther, 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. (“they sing among the branches”), he re­marked that preach­ers ought to preach with­out charg­ing be­cause “even the lit­tle birds sing for free.”⁶³Lu­ther, 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, “the true si­mony” is “to huck out the gospel, and sell our holy things.”⁶⁴Man­ton, Ser­mons upon the Elev­enth Chap­ter, 13.456. Ralph Cud­worth made a sim­i­lar point in com­plet­ing Wil­liam Per­kins’s com­men­tary on Ga­la­tians. 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.⁵And Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.⁶And the multitudes gave heed with one accord to the things that were spoken by Philip, when they heard and saw the signs which he did.⁷For [from] many of those who had unclean spirits, they came out, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed, and that were lame, were healed.⁸And there was much joy in that city.⁹But 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.”²⁵Therefore, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans.²⁶But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise, and go toward the south to the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert [road].)²⁷And he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to Jerusalem to worship;²⁸and he was returning and sitting in his chariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah.²⁹And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and join yourself to this chariot.”³⁰And Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, “Do you understand what you read?”³¹And he said, “How can I, except someone will guide me?” And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him.³²Now the passage of the Scripture which he was reading was this, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and as a lamb before his shearer is silent, so he does not open his mouth:³³In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: his generation who will declare? For his life is taken from the earth.”³⁴And the eunuch answered Philip and said, “Please, of whom speaks the prophet this? Of himself, or of some other?”³⁵And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, preached to him Jesus.³⁶And as they went on the way, they came to a certain water. And the eunuch says, “Behold, [here is] water. What hinders me to be baptized?”³⁷[And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”]³⁸And he commanded the chariot to stand still; and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him.³⁹And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing.⁴⁰But Philip was found at Azotus; and passing through he preached the gospel to all the cities, until he came to Caesarea. (Pe­ter’s ad­mo­ni­tion of Si­mon Ma­gus), he wrote that the sale of the preach­ing of the word is con­demned by vir­tue of its price­less­ness.⁶⁵“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. Other sev­en­teenth-cen­tury Eng­lish di­vines iden­ti­fied the sale of the word of God as si­mony, of­ten with ex­plicit men­tion of the con­text of preach­ing.⁶⁶E.g., Bax­ter, A Chris­tian Di­rec­tory, 4.19.2.34 (p. 119). Some spoke even of a si­mony that oc­curs when some­one preaches with ex­cep­tional ef­fort for the sake of praise or pre­fer­ment, their spir­i­tual la­bor be­ing ex­changed for hu­man ap­proval.⁶⁷E.g., Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 42; Bos­ton, A So­lil­o­quy on Man-Fish­ing, 48–49.

66Teach­ing§

How far the fore­go­ing pro­scrip­tions reach de­pends on how we in­ter­pret the vo­cab­u­lary of “preach­ing” and “the word of God.” Taken nar­rowly, they gov­ern only the for­mal ac­tiv­ity which takes place in a wor­ship ser­vice or dis­tinctly evan­ge­lis­tic en­coun­ters, but many au­thors seemed to ap­ply these terms to doc­tri­nal in­struc­tion more gen­er­ally. Re­gard­less, some au­thors were ex­plicit in their con­dem­na­tion of the sale of teach­ing.

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.⁶⁸Clem­ent of Alex­an­dria, Stro­mata, 7.7.49.5 (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.⁶⁹“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.⁷⁰A mi­nor­ity, Wil­liam of Aux­erre among them, 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 truth (John 16:13John 16:13Nevertheless, when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak from himself; but whatever things he will hear, [these] will he speak. And he will declare to you the things that are to come.), 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”).⁷¹“It is asked con­cern­ing the mas­ter who teaches for pence, whether he in­curs 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 he does not, if he does not do it out of av­a­rice or vain­glory. But of theo­lo­gians it is said oth­er­wise, since they are pub­lic per­sons [pub­lice per­sone], whose 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 the Lord in Mi­cah [3:11], re­count­ing other sins, says: ‘Their priests taught for hire.’” Ge­of­frey of Poi­tiers, Summa, fol. 39va; cf. Bald­win, Mas­ters, Princes, and Mer­chants, 2.86n69. As was noted in Chap­ter 1,⁷²See p. 23. this was first 67fully ex­pressed by Rob­ert of Cour­son in his Summa.⁷³“As to what Sol­o­mon says, ‘Do not sell wis­dom, doc­trine, 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; and these can­not be sold, as we have said be­fore, by right.” Rob­ert of 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.⁷⁴“Just as there is si­mony in the sale of the manna, which sig­ni­fies sa­cred Scrip­ture, so by the sale of the lit­tle mea­sure of flour car­ried in their cloaks out of the land of Egypt [Exod. 12:34Exodus 12:34And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes on their shoulders.], which sig­ni­fies the moral teach­ings of the phi­los­o­phers, si­mony is com­mit­ted.” Rob­ert of 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.⁷⁵“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 seems to be 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.⁷⁶Au­riol, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. un., a. 2 (p. 166a).

68While 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, for “even the hea­then may law­fully teach such arts.”⁷⁷Aqui­nas, Quod­li­bet, VIII, q. 6, a. 1 (p. 175). In each of these cases, the pro­hi­bi­tion of mer­chan­dis­ing theol­ogy, the queen of the sci­ences, is sim­ply pre­sumed by the ex­plicit per­mis­sion to en­gage in com­merce with her hand­maid­ens.⁷⁸E.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 the de­tail on this topic. As one sev­en­teenth-cen­tury trea­tise sum­ma­rizes, the Liber ex­tra for­bids as si­mony “mas­ters and preach­ers to teach for money.”⁷⁹Rid­ley, A View of the Ci­vile and Ec­cle­si­as­ti­call Law, 76. A num­ber of com­men­ta­tors who took up these ti­tles ad­dressed re­quests for vol­un­tary gifts in the con­text of teach­ing. A mas­ter al­ready pro­vided for by the church could ac­cept a vol­un­tary gift but not re­quest it, es­pe­cially not of the clergy of his own church or the poor; a mas­ter with­out suf­fi­cient sup­port might ask the rich to con­trib­ute, and some ex­tended even that al­low­ance to the mas­ter al­ready pro­vided for.⁸⁰E.g., Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 3, q. 2 (p. 386b); Hos­ti­en­sis, Summa au­rea, ad X 5.5 (fol. 542v); As­te­sanus of Asti, Summa de ca­si­bus, VI, tit. 55, q. 8 (fol. 169v). For the ex­ten­sion and the gloss as Mid­dle­ton and As­te­sanus re­port it, Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 320b). How­ever, even these con­ces­sions were not uni­ver­sally ac­cepted.⁸¹E.g., Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, De va­lido men­di­cante, 85; 87. See Chap­ter 1, pp. 27–28, for the his­tor­i­cal set­ting. The fur­ther qual­i­fi­ca­tions are treated in Chap­ter 9, pp. 156–58.

For Wyc­liffe, not only did proper im­i­ta­tion of Christ re­quire teach­ing freely,⁸²“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.⁸³Ibid., cap. 11 (p. 56). In a ver­nac­u­lar trea­tise on the seven deadly sins that has been at­trib­uted to him, we see this same con­ten­tion:

69But men that should be pro­fes­sors of the sci­ence [knowl­edge] of God sin many ways about this sci­ence. 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.⁸⁴Wyc­liffe, Of the Seven Deadly Sins, cap. 3 (p. 123).

The 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.⁸⁵In 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 bless­ing of mar­riages, 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.

The def­i­ni­tion of si­mony for­bids the buy­ing or sell­ing of any­thing “an­nexed” to a spir­i­tual thing. 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,” a phrase 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 the spir­i­tual thing it­self. Thus, both are re­garded as si­mony.

72Dis­tinc­tions§

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 that 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 the term “spir­i­tual an­nexes” partly be­cause it is sub­sumed un­der the no­tion of a spir­i­tual thing.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, an as­sess­ment that car­ried over into the Ref­or­ma­tion.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, “cer­tain things are spir­i­tual in them­selves, such as the sac­ra­ments and other things of this kind; while cer­tain oth­ers 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.

De­pen­dent vs. Di­rected§

It may ap­pear that there are many things an­nexed to spir­i­tual things that may be sold with­out charge of si­mony. For ex­am­ple, church 73prop­erty—whether the land, or the build­ing, or fur­ni­ture, etc.—is all con­nected to the wor­ship of God. How­ever, we must dis­tin­guish 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. For ex­am­ple, land in­tended for a church and the phys­i­cal ma­te­rial of sa­cred ves­sels are merely di­rected to spir­i­tual things. They may be bought and sold as tem­po­ral things so long as the sale is not for rea­son of their con­se­cra­tion.⁵See Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 5, q. 3 (pp. 91–92).

Other things are an­nexed as de­pen­dent on a spir­i­tual thing, such as the work of shut­ting 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, mak­ing it for­bid­den to charge for the act of shut­ting them. In sup­port, 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; see Fried­berg, ed., Cor­pus Iu­ris Canon­ici, 1:357n24. The true iden­tity of its au­thor re­mains un­cer­tain; see West, “The Si­mony Cri­sis”. “just as the soul does not sub­sist tem­po­rally with­out the body, who­ever sells one of the two, with­out which the other can­not be had, leaves nei­ther of them un­sold.”⁸Wido, Wido­nis mo­nachi epis­tola, 6:1–6; cf. 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 from an­nex­a­tion by di­rec­tion, 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.⁹Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4, ad 3. A pas­toral sal­ary, on the other 74hand—inas­much as it truly is for the honor of the clergy—pre­sup­poses the spir­i­tual of­fice. It is con­cep­tu­ally de­pen­dent on the of­fice be­cause a ben­e­fice be­longs only to the holder of a cler­i­cal of­fice.¹⁰Ibid., II‑II, q. 100, a. 4.

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.”¹¹Ames, Con­science, 5.229. How­ever, his de­scrip­tion of var­i­able or­der­ing does not un­der­mine this dis­tinc­tion. In speak­ing of things which might go be­fore a spir­i­tual thing, he is best read as re­fer­ring not to an in­de­pen­dent ex­is­tence, but to that which might be re­ceived be­fore the per­for­mance of a spir­i­tual ser­vice.

Ap­pli­ca­tions§

Sev­eral ex­am­ples re­cur in the lit­er­a­ture to il­lus­trate the na­ture and bound­aries of an­nex­a­tion. While some of the as­sumed prem­ises may not be agree­able to a Prot­es­tant au­di­ence, what mat­ters is the ap­pli­ca­tion of the prin­ci­ples of an­nex­a­tion to them rather than their va­lid­ity.

Con­se­crated Things§

Among the most fre­quently dis­cussed ap­pli­ca­tions of an­nex­a­tion was the case of con­se­crated things: ves­sels, build­ings, and land that had been blessed and set apart for sa­cred use. In be­ing di­rected to­ward holy pur­poses, they were an­nexed to spir­i­tual things, con­strain­ing the terms un­der which they could ap­pro­pri­ately be sold.

Church ves­sels that were con­se­crated (for ex­am­ple, chal­ices and trays for the Eu­charist) could not be sold. How­ever, the ma­te­rial that com­posed them could be sold for a proper cause.¹²Aqui­nas, 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 75to guar­an­tee that they were sold as merely ma­te­rial things.¹³Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 1, ad 5 (fol. 150v); Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, sol. (p. 93a). On this point, many ap­pealed to Am­brose, who prac­ticed the same.¹⁴Am­brose, De of­fi­ciis min­is­tro­rum, 2.28.136 (pp. 167–68). He enu­mer­ated sev­eral pur­poses—re­liev­ing the poor, 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.”¹⁵Ibid., 2.28.142 (p. 170); cf. ibid., 2.28.143 (p. 170).

Church build­ings and land func­tioned sim­i­larly to con­se­crated ves­sels. They were di­rected to­ward holy pur­poses such that upon con­se­cra­tion, they could not be sold. How­ever, prop­erly des­e­crated, they could 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.”¹⁶Aqui­nas, 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 came to be framed in terms of sac­ri­lege rather than si­mony.¹⁷E.g., Warner, Church-Lands Not to Be Sold, ch. 5 (pp. 15ff.).

Bur­ial grounds—a cem­e­tery or tomb—were like­wise di­rected to­ward a sa­cred use. If un­con­se­crated land was sold for the pur­pose of be­ing put to holy use, it was per­mit­ted. If the land was sold at a cer­tain value on ac­count of its be­ing holy, it was si­mony.¹⁸See 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.”⁵And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying to him,⁶“Hear us, my lord. You are a prince of God among us. In the choice of our graves bury your dead. None of us will withhold from you his grave for burying your dead.”⁷And Abraham rose up and bowed himself to the people of the land, to the children of Heth.⁸And he spoke with them, saying, “If it is your mind that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me, and entreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar,⁹that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he has, which is in the end of his field. For the full price let him give it to me in your midst as a possession for a burying place.”¹⁰Now Ephron was sitting in the midst of the children of Heth. And Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying,¹¹“No, my lord, hear me. I give you the field, and the cave that is in it, I give it to you. In the presence of the children of my people I give it to you. Bury your dead.”¹²And Abraham bowed himself down before the people of the land.¹³And he spoke to Ephron in the audience of the people of the land, saying, “But if you will, please hear me. I will give the price of the field. Take it of me, and I will bury my dead there.”¹⁴And Ephron answered Abraham, saying to him,¹⁵“My lord, listen to me. A piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver, what is that between me and you? Bury therefore your dead.”¹⁶And Abraham listened to Ephron. And Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver that he had named in the audience of the children of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current [money] with the merchant.¹⁷So the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave that was in it, and all the trees that were in the field, that were within the border around it, were made sure¹⁸to Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city.¹⁹And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre (that is, Hebron), in the land of Canaan.²⁰And the field, and the cave that is in it, were made sure to Abraham as a possession for a burying place by the children of Heth.) pro­vided a com­mon ex­am­ple for con­sid­er­a­tion among the school­men. Be­cause Abra­ham bought the land as an or­di­nary piece of ground, he com­mit­ted no si­mony; Eph­ron, who may have priced the right of bur­ial, was judged less kindly.¹⁹Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4; Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (fol. 147ra); C. 13, q. 2, c. 12–13. The site tem­po­rally pre­cedes its use 76for bur­ial, hav­ing its own value apart from any in­ter­ment. Prot­es­tants who ad­dressed the mat­ter con­curred with this judg­ment.²⁰E.g., “Is Abra­ham on that ac­count to be called a si­mo­niac, since bur­ial is among sa­cred things, and the buy­ing or sell­ing of sa­cred things is called si­mony? But we heard that the field he bought was a sec­u­lar thing, sub­ject to a tem­po­ral lord. And the sale of a field is an en­tirely civil trans­ac­tion. Abra­ham there­fore did not sin when he bought the field and built a tomb there; oth­er­wise every­thing Chris­tians buy for their 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). 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.²¹See Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (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.²²Quot­ing 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.²³See 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,²⁴E.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. Since they are an­nexed by di­rec­tion rather than de­pen­dence, 77it may seem that there would be a way to dis­solve that an­nex­a­tion, but the sources do not ap­pear to en­ter­tain one, per­haps be­cause tithes are not merely ded­i­cated to a par­tic­u­lar use but have ac­tu­ally been given to God.

The au­thors at is­sue here wrote un­der an es­tab­lished church, where the term “tithes” 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.²⁵Mil­ton, Hire­lings, 66–67. Wyc­liffe had sim­i­larly main­tained that tithes ought to be vol­un­tary and with­held from un­wor­thy clergy.²⁶Wyc­liffe, The Seven Werkys of Mercy Bodyly, 175–77; cf. Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 5 (56:1–19). 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.²⁷Hall, 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 land sales were not nec­es­sar­ily si­mony. The right of pa­tron­age was seen as pass­ing in­ci­den­tally with the prop­erty such that one who pur­chased land with­out pay­ing a pre­mium on ac­count of the as­so­ci­ated right should not be con­sid­ered to have bought it.²⁸E.g., Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4; Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 1, ad 4 (fol. 150v); Wil­liam of Aux­erre, Summa au­rea, III, tr. 21 (fol. 230ra–230rb). How­ever, many only ar­rived at that con­clu­sion af­ter sub­stan­tial de­lib­er­a­tion and hes­i­ta­tion.²⁹See esp. Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (fol. 146vb).

78On this point, the proto-Re­form­ers dif­fered. The right of pa­tron­age, they held, is it­self a spir­i­tual power, not to be bought and sold “like oxen.”³⁰Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 3 (36:5–16); Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 8.F. Wyc­liffe went fur­ther, urg­ing that the prim­i­tive church’s prac­tice of elec­tion by the peo­ple be kept to­day. On his pro­posal pa­trons would still gov­ern the en­dow­ments they had given, but men would be ap­pointed to church of­fice by an elec­tion among the la­ity.³¹Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 3 (36:19–30).

Re­gard­less, this prac­tice con­tin­ued into the Eng­lish Ref­or­ma­tion, only to be op­posed by some later Eng­lish writ­ers.³²“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 con­cern was that the com­plex­i­ties of this mech­a­nism per­mit­ted the Pu­ri­tans to ad­vance their in­flu­ence con­sid­er­ably.³³Willis, Si­mony: In Two Parts, 127–46. See also Kirby, “The Lay Fe­of­fees”. At John Pres­ton’s prompt­ing, the Fe­of­fees for Im­pro­pri­a­tions raised funds to pur­chase ad­vow­sons and in­stall Pu­ri­tan lec­tur­ers, min­is­ters who preached out­side the pri­mary ser­vices of the church.³⁴Ibid., 1, 4–5, 8, 10–11. The sale­able ad­vow­son en­tered its sun­set in 1898 as a se­ries of re­stric­tions cur­tailed the trans­fer and use of the right of pa­tron­age.³⁵Ben­e­fices 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 their pro­duc­tion, such as ink, pa­per, or the la­bor in­volved.

79In 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 the doc­u­ments, nor from that which a new pre­tense born of am­bi­tion has de­vised un­der the name of the pastel­lum [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 ought the min­is­ter or the no­tary to sell his voice or his pen in his or­di­na­tion. There­fore, for the or­di­na­tion, or for the pal­lium, or for the doc­u­ments and the pastel­lum, I en­tirely for­bid the man who is to be or­dained, or who has been or­dained, to give any­thing. And if any­one should pre­sume to ex­act or seek any­thing from the afore­said things un­der the name of profit, he shall be li­able to guilt at the strict ex­am­i­na­tion of Al­mighty God.³⁶Greg­ory I, Ep. 5.57a.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.³⁷Its reach was dis­puted: one view al­lowed a no­tary to ac­cept an un­so­licited gift if he had formed no prior in­tent to re­ceive it. See As­te­sanus of Asti, Summa de ca­si­bus, VI, tit. 55, q. 9 (fol. 170v). Many sub­se­quent au­thors who ad­dressed fees as­so­ci­ated with or­di­na­tion made ref­er­ence to this de­cree. This pro­hi­bi­tion was none­the­less widely flouted. Wyc­liffe tal­lied the fees ex­acted at an or­di­na­tion—by the clerk who in­scribes the can­di­date’s name, by the bar­ber “even if he has not shaved the can­di­date,” by the pre­sen­ter of let­ters di­mis­sory—and found that “in the bishop’s an­nual or­di­na­tion there ac­cu­mu­lates a great heap of si­mony amount­ing to many pounds.”³⁸Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 6 (78:10–17). Af­ter ap­peal­ing to the pas­sage from Greg­ory, he ex­plained that “in­fi­nite ex­cuses could 80be feigned,” such as that one does not pur­chase the spir­i­tual thing at all, but that “an ex­change is made con­cern­ing the tem­po­ral thing an­nexed.”³⁹Ibid., cap. 6 (79:19–24).

Books§

Books are like­wise an­nexed to spir­i­tual things. Of­ten, the school­men spoke of them as sim­i­lar to con­se­crated things, sub­ject to the same rules.⁴⁰E.g., Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, sol. (p. 93a). Other times, they were de­scribed as an­nexed merely to things of the hu­man spirit.⁴¹E.g., Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (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 was rep­re­sen­ta­tive in his ap­proach. Books on nat­ural phi­los­o­phy are spir­i­tual an­nexes “by re­la­tion to the hu­man spirit” and may be sold, un­less they were sup­plied by the church for the in­struc­tion of clergy, in which case, they may not be sold.⁴²Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 3, q. 3 (p. 388a). Rich­ard did not ex­pressly cat­e­go­rize books on theol­ogy, but his frame­work nev­er­the­less sug­gests that a book as a ma­te­rial ob­ject could be sold if no price was ex­acted for the spir­i­tual teach­ing it­self, whereas ma­te­rial de­voted by the church for holy pur­poses could not be sold.

Sev­eral of the Eng­lish Re­form­ers com­mented on the sale of books as well, al­beit not fre­quently in the con­text of si­mony.⁴³The his­to­rian Thomas Fuller ex­plic­itly re­jected that sell­ing books con­sti­tuted si­mony, giv­ing ex­am­ples of sev­eral fa­mous theo­lo­gians who prof­ited by the sale of their copies. Fuller, The Church-His­tory of Brit­ain, 8.27 (p. 36). The Pu­ri­tan Jer­e­miah Bur­roughs com­pared man-ap­pointed hol­i­days to Bibles: the hu­man act of ded­i­ca­tion makes nei­ther the day nor the pa­per holy, though there may be ho­li­ness in their use.⁴⁴Bur­roughs, Hosea 4–7, 661. Ben­ja­min Needler, an­other Pu­ri­tan, made a sim­i­lar anal­ogy be­tween Bibles and min­is­ters. The one who puts a Bible to sale does not sell the truth, but only the 81cover, pa­per, and bind­ing. When one sup­ports a min­is­ter, he does not buy the gospel, nor does the min­is­ter sell it.⁴⁵Needler, Gen­e­sis, 136–37.

The fore­go­ing ad­dresses the sale of phys­i­cal books as an­nexed to the doc­trine con­tained therein rather than the sale of their con­tents or of the la­bor in­volved in their au­thor­ship. Such con­cerns over the sale of theo­log­i­cal train­ing it­self 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 ethos of au­thors 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 1514.⁴⁶Stein­berg, Five Hun­dred Years of Print­ing, 145.

Per­haps the most no­table ex­am­ple is Lu­ther him­self. In 1539, the print­ers of Wit­ten­berg of­fered him a sup­ple­men­tal sal­ary that would have tri­pled his own, all merely for the guar­an­tee of first ac­cess to his new works. 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.”⁴⁷Lu­ther, Tis­chre­den, no. 4690 (WA TR 4, 431:27–432:11); cf. Pet­te­gree, Brand Lu­ther, 279.

Price as a Dis­cern­ment Mech­a­nism§

82Fre­quently, the price of a thing was used ei­ther to dis­cern an­nex­a­tion or to re­move doubts about it. 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.”⁴⁸Thomas of Stras­bourg, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 1, ad 5 (fol. 150v); cf. ibid., IV, d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 1, ad 4 (fol. 150v); Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, sol. (p. 93a).

This heuris­tic ap­plies to the cost of con­se­crated ves­sels match­ing the cost of the ma­te­rial that com­poses them,⁴⁹Du­ran­dus 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,⁵⁰Pa­lu­danus, 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,⁵¹Du­ran­dus 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. For ex­am­ple, Wyc­liffe took this ap­proach to dis­cern­ment in op­pos­ing fees os­ten­si­bly for a bishop’s phys­i­cal la­bor as­so­ci­ated with the bless­ing of churches. He judged the ex­or­bi­tant prices to in­di­cate it was in­deed the spir­i­tual bless­ing it­self that was be­ing sold.⁵²“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 a priest’s charge.⁵³“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 [a kopa is sixty groschen], 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§

83The no­tion of pos­i­tive law (ius pos­i­tivum) raises the pos­si­bil­ity of an al­ter­na­tive cat­e­gory of an­nex­a­tion. That is, can tem­po­ral things be an­nexed to spir­i­tual things merely by hu­man reg­u­la­tions?⁵⁴Some 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 in­trin­si­cally wrong (ma­lum in se) and some­thing ex­trin­si­cally wrong (ma­lum pro­hi­bi­tum). How­ever, the typ­i­cal scho­las­tic ap­proach on this topic was to con­trast things pro­hib­ited be­cause they are si­mo­ni­a­cal (pro­hi­bita quia si­mo­ni­aca) with things si­mo­ni­a­cal be­cause they are pro­hib­ited (si­mo­ni­aca quia pro­hi­bita).⁵⁵E.g., Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 3 (fol. 185vb).

The gen­eral con­sen­sus was that the laws of the church do not have the power to make some­thing si­mony. Sev­eral dis­cus­sions of this dis­tinc­tion go back to Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain. Within a larger dis­course on the mat­ter, he ob­served that the law has no power to make a tem­po­ral thing spir­i­tual or a spir­i­tual thing tem­po­ral. There­fore, “where there is no si­mony from the na­ture of the thing, there can­not be si­mony from a pro­hi­bi­tion of law.”⁵⁶Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain, In Sent. (red. C), IV, d. 25, q. 5 (fol. 318r).

A mi­nor­ity ac­knowl­edged a sec­ond spe­cies of si­mony aris­ing merely from church law.⁵⁷E.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.⁵⁸E.g., John of Frei­burg, Summa con­fes­so­rum, I, tit. 1, q. 5 (fol. 1va).

The most com­pre­hen­sive Eng­lish-lan­guage treat­ment of this ques­tion ap­pears to be a tract writ­ten by John Caw­ley, arch­dea­con of 84Lin­coln, af­ter the Court of Arches gave sen­tence against him 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 wrong only be­cause it was pro­hib­ited (ma­lum pro­hi­bi­tum), not pro­hib­ited be­cause it was wrong (pro­hi­bi­tum quia ma­lum).⁵⁹Caw­ley, Na­ture and Kinds of Si­mony, 3. Fur­ther, he saw his pen­alty as a con­tin­u­ing tyr­anny of Rome that man­aged to work its way into the think­ing of the Eng­lish Church.⁶⁰Ibid., 3.

Lu­ther de­cried the ex­pan­sion of the def­i­ni­tion of si­mony merely on the ba­sis of hu­man law: “And now among the pa­pists ‘spir­i­tual goods’ means rev­enues, rents, es­tates, towns, and ter­ri­to­ries, things that are po­lit­i­cal in the high­est de­gree.”⁶¹Lu­ther, Vor­le­sun­gen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 280:11–12). He warned that “in the canon law there is a most per­verse abuse and a hor­ri­ble blind­ness in the dis­pu­ta­tions about si­mony.”⁶²Ibid., 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 doc­trine frees him from his own books and de­crees, and ab­solves him of the crime of si­mony.”⁶³Ibid., 23:3–4 (WA 43, 280:42–281:2). On this count, Lu­ther of­fered mock con­so­la­tion: “We there­fore ab­solve the pope of this crime ac­cord­ing to the true def­i­ni­tion, the crime in which he has en­tan­gled him­self by his very own law: be­cause he does not sell spir­i­tual things, those which are truly so called (for he does not have them).”⁶⁴Ibid., 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 whose sale nec­es­sar­ily en­tails the sale of a spir­i­tual thing. As we have seen, the two prin­ci­pal and mu­tu­ally ex­clu­sive modes of an­nex­a­tion are de­pen­dence and di­rec­tion, al­though some ar­gued for a third cat­e­gory in pos­i­tive law si­mony. Stan­dard ex­am­ples of spir­i­tual 85an­nexes in­clude con­se­crated things, ben­e­fices, tithes, 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, one might be in­clined to 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, se­ri­ous treat­ments of the mat­ter af­firm that si­mony is com­mit­ted in both sell­ing and buy­ing. On this point, many re­ferred back to the 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 like­wise stated, “all giv­ers and 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 de­ter­mi­na­tion of the fa­thers” as de­cree­ing, “Let the giver and re­ceiver be ac­cursed.”⁴Sec­ond Coun­cil of Braga (572), 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. 88We will then turn to cases where the buyer may be en­tirely in­no­cent even 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 “si­mony” (symo­nia) 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 (2:9–13). Af­ter nam­ing Ge­hazi the mas­ter of sell­ers and Si­mon the au­thor of buy­ers, the twelfth-cen­tury theo­lo­gian Hugh of St. Vic­tor ob­served that their fol­low­ers were “not di­verse in er­ror.” Nei­ther, he con­tin­ued, were they “dis­tin­guished in dam­na­tion.”⁹Hugh of St. Vic­tor, De sac­ra­men­tis, II, pars 10, c. 2 (PL 176:477C–D).

Fur­ther, Wyc­liffe took is­sue with Aqui­nas’s def­i­ni­tion of si­mony since it speaks of “buy­ing and sell­ing” rather than “buy­ing or sell­ing.” Ap­plied too lit­er­ally, a guilty man might be cleared of charges be­cause he had only bought or only sold. As Wyc­liffe ac­knowl­edged, 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).¹⁰Be­cause 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.” His so­lu­tion was sim­ply to use the word “ex­change” (com­mu­ta­cio) to re­move am­bi­gu­ity.¹¹Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 1 (3:2–8).

On the 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 89of grav­ity, as though each mode of trans­ac­tion were equally hei­nous, there are rea­sons to ob­ject. The sale of spir­i­tual things was typ­i­cally re­garded as worse than the pur­chase of spir­i­tual things. Weigh­ing the rank of the per­sons as well as the act, Bo­na­ven­ture al­lowed that “a bishop who sells sins more gravely than a sub­ject who buys.”¹²Bo­na­ven­ture, In Sent. IV, d. 25, dub. 3 (p. 657). In an in­flu­en­tial hom­ily on the gos­pels, Greg­ory the Great ob­served that Si­mon sought to “sell more wickedly what he had wickedly bought.”¹³Greg­ory I, Ho­mil­iae in evan­ge­lia, 4.4 (p. 25). Sim­i­larly, Basil of Cae­sa­rea wrote in an epis­tle, “He who through ig­no­rance wants to buy is less guilty than he who sells the gift of God.”¹⁴Basil 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 more likely to be aware that the sale is il­licit than the pur­chaser. Fur­ther, as the school­men ar­gued, the seller uniquely mis­man­ages a stew­ard­ship, giv­ing 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.).¹⁵See Chap­ter 11, p. 184. The pur­chaser does not la­bor un­der the same oblig­a­tions as the min­is­ter.

Licit Pur­chases§

The buyer may in­cur less guilt than the seller, some­times even none at all. This oc­curs specif­i­cally when a spir­i­tual good is be­ing wrongly with­held from a pur­chaser. In this case, the pur­chaser es­sen­tially pays a ran­som. In scho­las­tic writ­ings, such a pur­chaser is said to “re­deem vex­a­tion” (red­i­mere vex­a­tionem). In more id­iomatic 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.¹⁶See, e.g., the later dis­cus­sion in Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.24 (fol. 75ra). Ad­mit­ting the seller’s guilt in a si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change, he en­ter­tained the ques­tion of whether the buyer must be guilty:

90To a lay­man who plainly has no ju­ris­dic­tion—whether he de­spoils a man of a church or has him shunned in fact as though ex­com­mu­ni­cate—or even to a cleric who does not claim to have acted by right but by force, one may give; for he gives noth­ing for a spir­i­tual thing, but only for vex­a­tion, which one may re­deem.¹⁷In­no­cent IV, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.24 (fol. 500r).

The source text that pre­cedes this quo­ta­tion deals with an op­pres­sor who holds ju­ris­dic­tion, but here, the seller is a lay­man with no ju­ris­dic­tion at all, only the power to de­spoil a man of his church or have him shunned as though ex­com­mu­ni­cate. In­no­cent framed this sce­nario be­cause there it is clear that noth­ing spir­i­tual is be­ing bought, since the cul­prit has noth­ing spir­i­tual to sell. The one who pays him only re­deems his vex­a­tion.

Aqui­nas de­scribed a sim­i­lar dy­namic. Be­fore one ac­quires a right to a bish­opric, “it would be si­mo­ni­a­cal to buy off the ob­sta­cles of ad­ver­saries with money.”¹⁸Aqui­nas, 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.”¹⁹Ibid., 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 with no right to a spir­i­tual of­fice to pur­chase it. How­ever, for some­one who holds a right to that of­fice and is 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, it is no crime to ran­som one who has been kid­napped. 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 to which he has a right, but any time it would keep the seller from some evil ac­tion: “It is licit to give money to a man that he may aban­don his vice or ac­com­mo­date him­self to vir­tue.”²⁰Ma­jor, In Mat­thaeum ad Lit­eram Ex­po­si­tio, 10:8 (fol. 41rb). If it may be per­mis­si­ble to pay an elec­tor not to elect an un­suit­able can­di­date, then it may be per­mis­si­ble to pay him to elect a suit­able 91one.²¹“I may lic­itly give money to Sortes [the elec­tor] so that he does not elect an un­suit­able man; to this I have an ac­quired right. And then, to be con­sis­tent, it seems one must con­cede that I may give money to an elec­tor so that he elects a suit­able man; and given two can­di­dates, one more suit­able and one less, I may give money that he not elect the less suit­able, on the view that he sins in elect­ing the less suit­able, since I can keep him from sin; and where one man alone is suit­able, I may give money that he elect this suit­able man, since as soon as the ben­e­fice goes to an­other the col­la­tor or elec­tor sins, and in giv­ing it to this most suit­able man he does not sin. There­fore I may buy him the ben­e­fice.” Ibid., 10:8 (fol. 41rb). Re­deem­ing vex­a­tion dif­fers from brib­ery in that it uses money to turn the wicked away from in­jus­tice.

This ex­emp­tion for “re­deem­ing vex­a­tion” con­tin­ued with Prot­es­tant au­thors. Wil­liam Ames con­curred that it is not prop­erly si­mony for one to give “for the avoid­ing of un­just trou­bles” if that man “hath a cer­tain and un­doubted right to the spir­i­tual func­tion.”²²Ames, Con­science, 5.230. Lu­ther him­self de­fended the con­cept,²³“Now sup­pose I wished to strike a bar­gain with the pope like this: ‘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. Be­cause I am not buy­ing what I al­ready have […] 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 pay the pope some thou­sands of crowns yearly, “that the shed­ding of blood and the other scan­dals might cease, and the Gospel might be spread abroad in peace.”²⁴Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 425:21–24). He added, “This is not si­mony, but the re­demp­tion of vex­a­tion.”²⁵Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 425:24).

Theo­lo­gians of the past re­peat­edly of­fered two 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 92first­born, which in­cluded priestly ser­vice un­til the days of Aaron.²⁶See 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.”. This is most com­monly dis­cussed among the me­dievals, but for a Pu­ri­tan ex­am­ple that ad­dresses Ja­cob and Esau, see Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 57. If Ja­cob is to be re­garded as in­no­cent in his pur­chase, 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.²⁷E.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.’”⁵And your eyes will see, and you will say, “Jehovah be magnified beyond the border of Israel.”⁶“A son honors his father, and a servant his master: if then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? Says Jehovah of hosts to you, O priests, that despise my name. And you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’⁷You* offer polluted bread on my altar. And you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ In that you say, ‘The table of Jehovah is contemptible.’⁸And when you offer the blind for sacrifice, it is no evil! And when you offer the lame and sick, it is no evil! Present it now to your governor; will he be pleased with you? Or will he show you favor? Says Jehovah of hosts.⁹And now, please entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious to us: this has been by your means; will he accept any of your people?” says Jehovah of hosts.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.¹¹For from the rising of the sun to its going down my name [will be] great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense [will be] offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name [will be] great among the Gentiles,” says Jehovah of hosts.¹²“But you profane it, in that you say, ‘The table of Jehovah is polluted, and its fruit, its food, is contemptible.’¹³You* also say, ‘Behold, what a weariness is it!’ and you have snuffed at it,” says Jehovah of hosts. “And you have brought what was taken by violence, and the lame, and the sick. Thus you bring the offering. Should I accept this at your hand?” says Jehovah.¹⁴“But cursed be the deceiver, who has in his flock a male, and vows, and sacrifices to the Lord a blemished thing, for I am a great King,” says Jehovah of hosts, “and my name is awesome among the Gentiles.”[:2–3], ‘Ja­cob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.’ And there­fore Esau sinned in sell­ing the birth­right; Ja­cob, how­ever, did not sin in buy­ing, be­cause he is un­der­stood to have re­deemed his own vex­a­tion.” Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 4, ad 3; cf. Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 3, ad 5. Some ar­gued that Ja­cob is not to be un­der­stood as pur­chas­ing at all, speak­ing of a sale only be­cause his brother reck­oned it one.²⁸E.g., “Al­though he said to his brother, ‘Sell me your birth­right,’ he un­der­stood: ‘Give me the birth­right, which by your own judg­ment is [con­veyed] through a sale.’” Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (fol. 147rb).

Lu­ther scorned 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.⁵And Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac.⁶But to the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts. And he sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, to the east country.⁷And these are the days of the years of Abraham’s life which he lived, 175 years.⁸And Abraham breathed his last, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full [of years], and was gathered to his people.⁹And Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre.¹⁰The field which Abraham purchased of the children of Heth. There Abraham was buried, and Sarah his wife.¹¹And it came to pass after the death of Abraham, that God blessed Isaac his son. And Isaac dwelt by Beer-lahai-roi.¹²Now these are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s handmaid, bore to Abraham.¹³And these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaioth, and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam,¹⁴and Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa,¹⁵Hadad, and Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah.¹⁶These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their villages, and by their encampments. Twelve princes according to their nations.¹⁷And these are the years of the life of Ishmael, 137 years. And he breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people.¹⁸And they dwelt from Havilah to Shur that is before Egypt, as you go toward Assyria. He settled over against all his brothers.¹⁹And these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son. Abraham fathered Isaac.²⁰And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian, to be his wife.²¹And Isaac entreated Jehovah for his wife, because she was barren. And Jehovah was entreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.²²And the children struggled together within her. And she said, “If it is so, why do I live?” And she went to inquire of Jehovah.²³And Jehovah said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will be separated from your inward parts. And the one people will be stronger than the other people. And the elder will serve the younger.”²⁴And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.²⁵And the first came forth red, all over like a hairy garment. And they called his name Esau.²⁶And afterward his brother came forth, and his hand had hold on Esau’s heel. And his name was called Jacob. And Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.²⁷And the boys grew. And Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field. And Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents.²⁸Now Isaac loved Esau, because he ate of his venison. And Rebekah loved Jacob.²⁹And 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. as the “fan­tasies” of “soph­ists,”²⁹“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.³⁰“Esau would have sinned even if he had given it away for free, who ought rather to have laid down his life for the dig­nity of the birth­right given by God. There­fore the de­spiser is de­spised; tri­fling with the gift of God, he loses it. Rightly does Ja­cob claim for him­self what the brother de­spises, whether by strat­a­gem, 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.³¹“It is not a real trans­ac­tion, be­cause the birth­right is al­ready in Ja­cob’s hands, and Esau has been stripped of it. Ja­cob has the pos­ses­sion with­out the name; Esau has 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 93stew as be­long­ing to “the re­deem­ing of a vex­a­tion.”³²Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 420:13–16). In de­scrib­ing a hy­po­thet­i­cal bar­gain with the pope, he claimed, “I do not buy, but merely throw the ad­ver­sary a sop and a red lentil.”³³Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 425:19–20). Shortly there­after, he added that Ja­cob “throws Cer­berus a sop.” Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 425:30–31).

Bap­tisms Held to Ran­som§

Though Lom­bard does not raise the ques­tion him­self, the school­men of­ten ad­dressed si­mo­ni­a­cal bap­tisms on the fifth dis­tinc­tion of book four of the Sen­tences. In ar­gu­ing that her­e­tics are in­deed able to ad­min­is­ter le­git­i­mate bap­tisms, the school­men then turned to an­swer the same ques­tion for si­mo­ni­acs. If the wicked ad­min­is­tra­tor of the sac­ra­ment is not just any kind of her­e­tic but a si­mo­niac charg­ing for the ser­vice, would one be able to le­git­i­mately re­ceive his bap­tism? It seems that if the re­cip­i­ent of bap­tism were to pay the ad­min­is­tra­tor, he might en­gage in si­mony him­self, in­val­i­dat­ing the work since wicked men can­not re­ceive a le­git­i­mate bap­tism.

Of­ten, au­thors ap­pealed to the re­demp­tion of vex­a­tion: one who pays to be rid of the priest’s ha­rass­ment does not en­gage in si­mony, even though the seller does.³⁴See 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). Ad­di­tional ca­veats arise from the con­clu­sions about the ex opere op­er­ato ef­fi­cacy of the work reached in the si­mo­ni­a­cal or­ders con­tro­versy.³⁵See Chap­ter 1, pp. 13–14. 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.³⁶E.g., ibid., IV, d. 5 (fol. 228r); Biel, Col­lec­to­rium, IV, d. 5, q. un. (sig. g2va).

Oth­ers in­sisted that be­cause si­mony is so great a sin, the bap­tism of the Spirit—or a bap­tism of true de­sire—suf­fices for an adult in such a con­di­tion,³⁷See ibid., IV, d. 5, q. un. (sig. g2va). so that no one should pay a si­mo­niac for bap­tism.³⁸See 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 94not con­sider the cat­e­gory of a pay­ment de­signed to re­deem vex­a­tion. John Duns Sco­tus had per­haps the most thor­ough dis­cus­sion of this prob­lem. His dis­course con­sid­ers both sides but ul­ti­mately de­cides that bap­tism it­self could not be pur­chased.³⁹Sco­tus, In Sent. IV, d. 5, q. 2 (16, p. 517). One early mod­ern com­men­ta­tor noted that Sco­tus did not speak in “the mode of the an­cients” by em­ploy­ing the phrase “re­deem­ing from vex­a­tion,” sus­pect­ing that the cat­e­gory ran into a spe­cial dif­fi­culty in this case.⁴⁰Ibid., 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. He ac­knowl­edged that au­thor­i­ties had di­vided but 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 out of the de­prav­ity of usury, and they fear to come to the faith, be­cause they would have to re­store every­thing 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.⁴¹Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.9, no. 7 (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. Its use 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 to the church. Hence, as we ob­served, Sco­tus de­clined to ap­peal to the cat­e­gory of re­deem­ing vex­a­tion.

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 prac­tice of his own day, 95Hus 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.”⁴²Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 7.B.

Hus’s rhet­o­ric ad­mits no de­grees: he called the pur­chase a sin with­out paus­ing to qual­ify, and his trea­tise does not 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 96this ex­er­cise of pru­dence. That Lu­ther, a self-de­clared Hus­site,⁴³Writ­ing 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.⁴⁴“Were he to re­ceive any­thing for the use of his spir­i­tual power, he would not be un­der­stood to be let­ting out his la­bor, which he is bound to ex­pend as a debt of the of­fice he has un­der­taken, but to be sell­ing the very use of spir­i­tual grace.” Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 3. 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 “by the with­hold­ing of spir­i­tual things that ought to be fur­nished, for that would have a cer­tain ap­pear­ance of sell­ing.”⁴⁵Ibid., II‑II, q. 100, a. 3, corp.. Or more di­rectly, “If a min­is­ter or pas­tor of the church were un­will­ing to teach you about the re­mis­sion of sins and the ben­e­fits of the Gospel, and were to deny you ab­so­lu­tion un­less you re­deemed it from him for a hun­dred gold pieces—that would be si­mo­ni­a­cal.”⁴⁶Lu­ther, 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, may he with­hold di­vine [ser­vices]?”⁴⁷Wil­liam 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 reck­oned a si­mo­niac.”⁴⁸Ibid., 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 97oblig­a­tion 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 si­mony as surely as sell­ing true ones. Both early and later theo­lo­gians ad­mit­ted this, al­though of­ten in­di­rectly. For ex­am­ple, Prot­es­tants, while iden­ti­fy­ing in­dul­gences as false, re­garded their sale as si­mony.⁴⁹See Chap­ter 1, pp. 29–31. Among the me­dievals, the fre­quent ap­peal to the si­mo­ni­a­cally dis­trib­uted false priest­hood of Jer­oboam dem­on­strates the same.⁵⁰See 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 cov­etous­ness will they with false words make mer­chan­dise of you”) in his de­scrip­tion of a dis­tinct class of si­mo­ni­acs char­ac­ter­ized by lies.⁵¹Hus, 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. sup­plied a fa­mil­iar im­age for the si­mo­ni­a­cal con­junc­tion of false­hood and gain.⁵²Lu­ther, Die 6. post Mar­garethae, 656; Hall, Com­men­tary on 2 Tim­o­thy, 225; The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 81.

The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus puts it pre­cisely, di­vid­ing si­mony into two kinds. One kind sets to sale what is true, mak­ing the true or­di­nances vend­i­ble. The other is the speak­ing of 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.”⁵³Ibid., 76. Such men are bribed “to smother the truth and coun­sel of God.”⁵⁴Ibid., 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.

98The 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 holds gen­er­ally, and by the law of na­ture, that a man does not ac­quire own­er­ship of money by an act which he is bound to do freely.”⁵⁵Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 5 (fol. 187va). Fre­quently, this was the rea­son given against with­hold­ing the word or sac­ra­ments.

The school­men gave the ex­am­ple of a judge to dem­on­strate this,⁵⁶E.g., Pa­lu­danus, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 5 (p. 319b). fol­low­ing Au­gus­tine, who de­nied “that a judge ought to sell a just judg­ment, or a wit­ness true tes­ti­mony, on the ground that an ad­vo­cate sells his just ad­vo­cacy and a ju­rist his true coun­sel.”⁵⁷Au­gus­tine, Ep. 153.6.23 (CSEL 44, 423:5–7); cf. Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 2, ad 9. This con­clu­sion was deemed sound be­cause the judge and wit­ness must per­form their roles, but the ad­vo­cate and ju­rist are not so bound.⁵⁸E.g., “A judge is bound by his of­fice to ren­der judg­ment; and like­wise any­one is bound, from the fact that he is sub­ject to a court, to ren­der true tes­ti­mony. But an ad­vo­cate is not bound to lend his ad­vo­cacy to a case, nor a ju­rist to give coun­sel.” Ibid., 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.⁵⁹E.g., “For the ad­vo­cate, in sell­ing just ad­vo­cacy, does not sell jus­tice, which is spir­i­tual, but his own act; and the same is to be said of the ju­rist’s coun­sel. But a judge, by 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 spir­i­tual only by at­tri­bu­tion, so the civil judge who sells one com­mits an in­jus­tice rather than si­mony strictly speak­ing.⁶⁰See 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 the ex­penses of trav­el­ing to and from 99the place of judg­ment. Some an­swered “yes”⁶¹E.g., ibid., IV, d. 25, q. 3 (fol. 315r). and oth­ers “no.”⁶²E.g., Pe­ter the Chanter, Noo­nan, Bribes, 176. These ques­tions bear 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:

The nine are 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 this cat­a­log as a gen­eral frame­work.⁶⁴E.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.⁶⁵See Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.8, no. 3 (fol. 70rb). None of the works sur­veyed here ap­plies 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 Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus.

100Wyc­liffe and Hus’s Six Ways§

While Wyc­liffe in­tro­duced these cat­e­gories more gen­er­ally else­where,⁶⁶Wyc­liffe, De of­fi­cio re­gis, cap. 4 (68:2–5). he ap­plied six modes of con­sent to the sin of si­mony, pre­sent­ing them in a cou­plet sim­i­lar to the one above.

That is, one con­sents by co­op­er­at­ing, de­fend­ing, coun­sel­ing, au­tho­riz­ing, not help­ing, and not re­prov­ing. He went on to give some de­scrip­tion of these in the sub­se­quent par­a­graph.⁶⁸Ibid., 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 the crit­i­cal edi­tion does not type­set it ac­cord­ingly, he seems to have in­tended a sim­i­lar cou­plet in Czech:

“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.”⁷⁰Ibid., 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.”⁷¹Ibid., 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 101it is made for la­bor rather than any spir­i­tual thing. How­ever, those who mount such de­fenses typ­i­cally par­tic­i­pate in the sin di­rectly as well, the de­fenses be­ing of­fered “be­cause they them­selves run the same course.”⁷²Ibid., 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.⁷³Ibid., 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.”⁷⁴Ibid., 9.E. He added, “to de­scribe all these de­vices, even just those I know of, would take far too long.”⁷⁵Ibid., 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.”⁷⁶Ibid., 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.⁷⁷Ibid., 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.”⁷⁸Ibid., 9.G.

By not re­prov­ing: When one is si­lent re­gard­ing si­mony, he par­tic­i­pates in the sin. 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. (“those who do such things are wor­thy of death, not only those who com­mit 102sins, but those who con­sent to those who com­mit 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.”⁷⁹Ibid., 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 in Wyc­liffe’s in­tro­duc­tion of these six cat­e­gories in De of­fi­cio re­gis.⁸⁰Wyc­liffe, 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 money­len­der, the one who sup­plied the pa­per for the doc­u­ments, the com­mu­nity that sub­mit­ted will­ingly, and the watch­man who did not raise the alarm—in short, every­one who par­tic­i­pated, by ac­tion or in­ac­tion. “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.”⁸¹Hus, O sva­to­ku­pectví, 9.H.

The Anat­o­mist’s Four Ways§

As­sert­ing that one may com­mit si­mony as a prin­ci­pal agent or an abet­tor,⁸²The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 38. the Anat­o­mist pro­vided four cat­e­gories of in­di­rect par­tic­i­pa­tion: ad­vice, ap­pro­ba­tion, con­niv­ance, and pa­tron­iz­ing.⁸³See 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.”⁸⁴Ibid., 64. On this count, 103Eze­kiel was 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.”).⁸⁵See 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.’).⁸⁶See ibid., 65. It is on this ground that Chal­cedon de­creed so se­verely against me­di­a­tors in si­mo­ni­a­cal bar­gains⁸⁷Ibid., 66; cf. Coun­cil of Chal­cedon (451), can. 2 (ACO II.2.2, 125). and canon law voided a si­mo­ni­a­cal elec­tion even when the one elected was ig­no­rant of the prom­ises of money made on his be­half.⁸⁸The 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.”⁸⁹The 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 you saw a thief, you con­sented with him”)⁹⁰Ibid., 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.”⁹¹Ibid., 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?”⁹²Ibid., 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.”⁹³Ibid., 68–69. As God threat­ened 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.⁵Those who were full have hired out themselves for bread; and those who were hungry have ceased [to hunger]: yes, the barren has borne seven; and she who has many children languishes.⁶Jehovah kills, and makes alive: he brings down to Sheol and brings up.⁷Jehovah makes poor, and makes rich: he brings low, he also lifts up.⁸He raises up the poor out of the dust, he lifts up the needy from the dunghill, to make them sit with princes, and inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are Jehovah’s, and he has set the world on them.⁹He will keep the feet of his holy ones; but the wicked will be put to silence in darkness, for by strength will no man prevail.¹⁰Those who strive with Jehovah will be broken to pieces; against them will he thunder in heaven: Jehovah will judge the ends of the earth; and he will give strength to his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.”¹¹And Elkanah went to Ramah to his house. And the child ministered to Jehovah before Eli the priest.¹²Now the sons of Eli were base men; they did not know Jehovah.¹³And the custom of the priests with the people was, that, when any man offered sacrifice, the priest’s servant came, while the flesh was boiling, with a flesh hook of three teeth in his hand;¹⁴and he thrust it into the pan, or kettle, or cauldron, or pot; all that the flesh hook brought up the priest took for himself. So they did in Shiloh to all the Israelites that came there.¹⁵Yes, before they burnt the fat, the priest’s servant came and said to the man who sacrificed, “Give flesh to roast for the priest, for he will not have boiled flesh of you, but raw.”¹⁶And if the man said to him, “They will surely burn the fat first, and then take as much as your soul desires,” then he would say, “No, but you shall give it to me now; and if not, I will take it by force.”¹⁷And the sin of the young men was very great before Jehovah, for the men despised the offering of Jehovah.¹⁸But Samuel ministered before Jehovah, being a child, girded with a linen ephod.¹⁹Moreover, his mother made him a little robe, and brought it to him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.²⁰And Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife and said, “Jehovah give you seed of this woman for the petition that was asked of Jehovah.” And they went to their own home.²¹And Jehovah visited Hannah, and she conceived, and bore three sons and two daughters. And the child Samuel grew before Jehovah.²²Now Eli was very old; and he heard all that his sons did to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who serviced at the door of the tent of meeting.²³And he said to them, “Why do you such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all this people.²⁴No, my sons, for it is no good report that I hear spreading among Jehovah’s people.²⁵If one man sins against another, God will judge him; but if a man sins against Jehovah, who will entreat for him?” Notwithstanding, they did not listen to the voice of their father, because Jehovah desired to kill them.²⁶And the child Samuel grew on, and increased in favor both with Jehovah, and also with men.²⁷And there came a man of God to Eli and said to him, “Thus says Jehovah, ‘Did I reveal myself to the house of your father, when they were in Egypt [in bondage] to Pharaoh’s house?²⁸and did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? And did I give to the house of your father all the offerings of the children of Israel made by fire?²⁹Why do you kick at my sacrifice and at my offering, which I have commanded in [my] habitation, and honor your sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the offerings of Israel my people?’³⁰Therefore Jehovah, the God of Israel, says, ‘I said indeed that your house, and the house of your father, should walk before me forever,’ but now Jehovah says, ‘Be it far from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me will be lightly esteemed.³¹Behold, the days come, that I will cut off your arm, and the arm of your father’s house, that there will not be an old man in your house.³²And you shall behold the affliction of [my] habitation, in all the wealth which [God] will give Israel; and there will not be an old man in your house forever.³³And the man of yours, [whom] I will not cut off from my altar, [will be] to consume your eyes, and to grieve your heart; and all the increase of your house will die in the flower of their age.³⁴And this will be the sign to you, that will come on your two sons, on Hophni and Phinehas: in one day they will die both of them.³⁵And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, that will do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house, and he will walk before my anointed forever.³⁶And it will come to pass that everyone who is left in your house will come and bow down to him for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread, and will say, “Please put me into one of the priests’ offices, that I may eat a morsel of bread.”’”; 3:13–141 Samuel 3:13–14¹³For I have told him that I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons brought a curse on themselves, and he did not restrain them.¹⁴And therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli’s house will not be expiated with sacrifice or offering forever.”), 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.⁹⁴See 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.).⁹⁵Ibid., 70.

By pa­tron­iz­ing: Pa­tron­iz­ing oc­curs when one “takes part with si­mo­ni­a­cal per­sons, and bears them out, ei­ther by coun­te­nanc­ing 104them in their sin, or by plead­ing for them, or by set­ting him­self out to jus­tify and de­fend them therein.”⁹⁶Ibid., 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.”⁹⁷Ibid., 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?”⁹⁸Ibid., 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.)⁹⁹Ibid., 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.).¹⁰⁰Ibid., 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.’”).¹⁰¹Ibid., 72.

Con­clu­sion§

The sin of si­mony at­taches to both sides of the trans­ac­tion, but not sym­met­ri­cally. Both buyer and seller stand con­demned, though the seller of­ten bears the greater guilt. The buyer—who may act from ig­no­rance or even from gen­u­ine need—may in some cases bear no guilt at all. When he merely “re­deems vex­a­tion,” he does not tech­ni­cally buy a spir­i­tual thing, only 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 of­fer­ing a sum 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 re­quired of him, he must give.

105Nor does the cir­cle of guilt end with the prin­ci­pal par­ties. The tra­di­tion rec­og­nized that one could be com­plicit in si­mony through in­di­rect par­tic­i­pa­tion, whether 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 oth­er­wise.

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.”¹For “de­lib­er­ate will,” see Jone, Moral Theol­ogy, 104; for “ex­press will,” see Prüm­mer, Hand­book of Moral Theol­ogy, 207. Thomas Aqui­nas ex­plained that vol­un­tas in­di­cates si­mony as a mat­ter of the will rather than the in­tel­lect and stu­diosa im­plies choice (elec­tio).²Aqui­nas, 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.’³Vul­gate, 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.⁴E.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. un. (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”⁵Greg­ory I, Ho­mil­iae in evan­ge­lia, 5.2 (p. 28). of­ten at­tends this con­sid­er­a­tion as well.⁶All 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, s.c. 5 (pp. 647–48) and Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 1, arg. 3. These works treated Dan­iel’s “re­deem” and Greg­ory’s val­u­a­tion alike as metaphors for merit, not as au­tho­riza­tion for com­merce in spir­i­tual 108things.⁷E.g., “those ex­pres­sions are metaphor­i­cal, speak­ing of buy­ing by way of a like­ness, and call­ing merit it­self a pur­chase.” Aqui­nas, In Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 2, qc. 1, ad 1; cf. Bo­na­ven­ture, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 1, q. 4, ad 5 (p. 648). Both texts nev­er­the­less show that it is proper to rec­og­nize how far spir­i­tual things sur­pass tem­po­ral ones and, in that sense, to de­sire such an ex­change.⁸E.g., Aqui­nas, ST 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. Lust, like­wise, 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).⁹Ibid., cap. 1 (2:13–16). First, “in­or­di­nate” (in­or­di­nata) in­di­cates a dis­or­dered will in con­trast to a rightly or­dered will that makes licit ex­changes for spir­i­tual things. He gave sev­eral ex­am­ples: we are to “buy with­out sil­ver” (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?), and trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing tithes, of­fer­ings, and other sa­cred things may in some cases be law­ful.¹⁰Ibid., 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.¹¹Ibid., cap. 1, 2 (2:36–3:2, 14:26–32).

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 “an act 109of will car­ried through to ef­fect.”¹²Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 2, q. 1, ad 1 (p. 382b); cf. Os­wald of Laskó, 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 to 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.”¹³Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 2, q. 1, ad 1 (p. 383a); cf. Os­wald of Laskó, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 1, ad 1. He set this read­ing along­side the al­ter­na­tive of a de­sire that is “not one that comes over him un­awares [sub­rep­to­ria], but one he chooses [eli­gens].”¹⁴E.g., Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 2, q. 1, ad 1 (p. 383a); Os­wald of Laskó, Ro­sa­rium, IV, s.v. Si­mo­nia, 1, ad 1.

Yet this is not the most com­mon un­der­stand­ing of the phrase, nor does it seem to be Aqui­nas’s. This may be seen in his re­sponse to the ob­jec­tion that his def­i­ni­tion was un­en­force­able on ac­count of its be­ing based on an in­ter­nal move­ment of the heart. He ac­knowl­edged that a man is not pun­ished as a si­mo­niac in the church’s ex­ter­nal fo­rum, but in­sisted, “as re­gards God, the will alone makes a man a si­mo­niac.”¹⁵Aqui­nas, ST II‑II, q. 100, a. 6, ad 6.

Our own Eng­lish ren­der­ing of stu­diosa vol­un­tas as “ear­nest de­sire” has been adopted 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 Henry Bur­ton¹⁶Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 2. and the Anat­o­mist,¹⁷The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 25, 39. whose model for re­trieval we have 110fol­lowed thus far. Apart from any rea­son to the con­trary, it seems right to con­tinue in their pat­tern.

The frame­works in which theo­lo­gians un­der­stood “ear­nest de­sire” were var­ied. How­ever, as we have seen with Wyc­liffe and Aqui­nas, this di­ver­sity lay pri­mar­ily in ter­mi­nol­ogy rather than sub­stance. Later writ­ers in­creas­ingly con­sol­i­dated these dis­tinc­tions into a com­mon frame­work, so while our sur­vey will in­clude ear­lier sources, we will rely largely on later ones to present a uni­fied ac­count of the ear­nest de­sire of si­mony in its var­i­ous de­grees of ex­pres­sion. 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§

Two tax­onomies of the ear­nest de­sire de­vel­oped, and they over­lap con­sid­er­ably. Their dis­tinc­tion lies in their em­pha­sis. The first de­scribes how far the de­sire has been car­ried out—from in­ter­nal de­sire, through at­tempt, to com­pleted deed. The sec­ond de­scribes 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. One tax­on­omy enu­mer­ates these stages rel­a­tive to the in­di­vid­ual him­self, as he ex­presses his si­mo­ni­a­cal will. While not spe­cific to the topic of si­mony, writ­ers of­ten dis­cussed this fea­ture of hu­man be­hav­ior by pair­ing “af­fec­tion” (in af­fectu) with “ef­fect” (in ef­fectu). For ex­am­ple, John Ma­jor con­cluded the first redac­tion of his treat­ment of si­mony with the ob­ser­va­tion that “si­mony stands in the af­fec­tion [in af­fectu] and in the ef­fect [in ef­fectu].”¹⁸Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (fol. 149ra).

111One need not be ca­pa­ble of ex­e­cut­ing the deed for his de­sire to be si­mo­ni­a­cal. Ma­jor also spoke of a “con­di­tional si­mony” (si­mo­nia con­di­tion­alis), in which one would like to com­mit si­mony if cer­tain con­di­tions, such as hav­ing enough money, were met.¹⁹Ibid., d. 25, q. un. (fol. 145vb). Fur­ther­more, a si­mo­ni­a­cal de­sire need not be an ac­tive de­sire to sell; it could in­stead con­sist in re­sis­tance to giv­ing freely. In other words, it may be a mat­ter of no­li­tion (no­li­tio) rather than vo­li­tion (vo­li­tio).²⁰“There is some si­mony that is not a vo­li­tion nor a habit of one. This is clear: 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. un. (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. One may there­fore be guilty of si­mony in af­fectu, in co­natu, or in ef­fectu.²¹See 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.²²Ibid., 45ff. We will take this up in Chap­ter 7.

A Tax­on­omy of Modes§

More of­ten, though, 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.

112This 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 di­vided si­mony into three kinds, de­fin­ing men­tal and con­ven­tional si­mony but leav­ing the third cat­e­gory un­named.²³Pan­or­mi­tanus, 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 the canon­ists and theo­lo­gians of the Counter-Ref­or­ma­tion.²⁴See ibid., cap. 41 (p. 565). Re­gard­less, later Prot­es­tant au­thors adopted this ter­mi­nol­ogy.²⁵E.g., Ames, Con­science, 5.230; An Es­say Against Si­mony, 23.

Ad­di­tion­ally, ear­lier au­thors tended to use these terms as mu­tu­ally com­pat­i­ble or even as 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 end­ing in a suc­cess­fully ex­e­cuted ex­change. For ex­am­ple, John Ma­jor af­firmed of si­mony that “all of it is men­tal.”²⁶Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (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,²⁷E.g., Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.14 (fol. 72rb). and real si­mony is sim­ply any si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change that is ac­tu­ally car­ried out.

But later us­age of the ter­mi­nol­ogy con­verged on a mu­tu­ally ex­clu­sive sense.²⁸E.g., Ames, Con­science, 5.230; 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 113ex­changes which were out­wardly licit and could not be cer­tainly dis­cerned as si­mo­ni­a­cal by ex­ter­nal ac­tions.²⁹Ibid., 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.

The point of these cat­e­gories was pri­mar­ily to dem­on­strate guilt be­yond out­wardly si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­changes, so the cat­e­gory of “real” si­mony was em­ployed the least³⁰As al­ready seen with Pan­or­mi­tanus. and “men­tal” the most. Acts of men­tal si­mony are si­mo­ni­a­cal only in the in­ter­nal fo­rum (in foro in­te­ri­ori), by in­tent. So it is said, “in­ten­tion makes a man a si­mo­niac.”³¹In­ten­tio fa­cit ho­mi­nem si­mo­ni­acum; Glossa or­di­na­ria ad X 5.3.34 (pp. 1159–60). The Anat­o­mist at­trib­uted this quo­ta­tion to Ber­nar­dus Com­pos­tel­lanus, though the or­di­nary gloss is Ber­nard of Parma’s. 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.³²See Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (fol. 146ra). Nor need the pact even be con­cluded; Si­mon Ma­gus failed to make any agree­ment with Pe­ter, yet was con­demned for the at­tempt.³³See ibid., d. 25, q. un. (fol. 145vb). As the Fourth Coun­cil of To­ledo (633) de­clared, even those who so much as en­deavor to se­cure an ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal of­fice with money are un­fit for the priest­hood.³⁴Fourth Coun­cil of To­ledo (633), can. 19 (pp. 278–79).

Be­yond mere in­struc­tion and ex­hor­ta­tion, this tax­on­omy was em­ployed to dis­tin­guish cor­re­spond­ing pen­al­ties. Men­tal si­mony re­quired pen­ance alone, the ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal fo­rum be­ing un­able to judge hid­den in­ten­tions.³⁵See Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (foll. 145va, 149ra); Pan­or­mi­tanus, Com­men­ta­ria, ad X 5.3.20 (fol. 74ra); ad X 5.3.29, no. 2 (fol. 76ra); ad X 5.3.34, no. 5 (fol. 80ra); ad X 5.3.38 (fol. 81ra). Con­ven­tional si­mony and real si­mony could 114re­sult in de­po­si­tion,³⁶“A si­mo­niac is to be de­posed […] si­mony […] ren­ders him un­fit for the ex­e­cu­tion of his of­fice.” Ibid., ad X 5.3.6, no. 1 (fol. 69vb). and any com­pleted si­mo­ni­a­cal ex­change re­quired res­ti­tu­tion.³⁷E.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.³⁸See Os­wald of Laskó, 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 plea of ex­pe­di­ence, which the school­men and canon­ists re­jected.

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, “all re­li­gious houses would per­ish, be­cause so many would be placed there that their goods would not suf­fice; and this seems un­fit­ting.”³⁹Al­bert 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 115their com­mu­nity.⁴⁰Thomas 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 for an an­nual fee sold lay­men let­ters of con­fra­ter­nity, os­ten­si­bly prom­is­ing them a share in the or­der’s spir­i­tual suf­frages. He ar­gued that it went hand in hand with their preach­ing for money, both be­ing si­mony.⁴¹Wyc­liffe, De apos­ta­sia, cap. 2 (36:22–30).

The canon­ists 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.⁴²For rel­e­vant canon law, see C. 1, q. 2; X 5.3.8; X 5.3.19; X 5.3.30. How­ever, it may ac­cept from an en­trant, apart from any pact, the means of his own main­te­nance, and so ad­mit a mem­ber its goods would not oth­er­wise al­low.⁴³E.g., “When the pos­ses­sions of some 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 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 si­mony 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).

Theo­lo­gians in­quired how a house might non-co­er­cively re­quest such pro­vi­sion. In gen­eral, a house might state its needs plainly, but for any­thing not strictly needed, it may not ask at all.⁴⁴E.g., Rich­ard of Mid­dle­ton, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 3, q. 2, ad 6 (p. 386b). As­te­sanus of Asti re­layed from the canon­ists a set form of words that stayed within the rule: “We gladly and freely re­ceive you into our spir­i­tual fel­low­ship; but since our goods do not suf­fice for us and for you, bring with you the means to live.”⁴⁵As­te­sanus of Asti, Summa de ca­si­bus, VI, tit. 55, q. 4 (fol. 165r); cf. Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. A), d. 25, q. un. (fol. 148ra). In all of these ac­counts, ne­ces­sity (ne­ces­si­tas) may war­rant re­quir­ing money, but ad­mis­sion may not be given in re­turn for pay­ment un­der a con­trac­tual ar­range­ment (pac­tum).⁴⁶E.g., “To re­ceive [some­one] un­der an agree­ment [sub pacto], es­pe­cially where the house has no need, is openly si­mony. To the ar­gu­ment it must be said that ad­mis­sion is not granted be­cause of the pay­ment; rather, ne­ces­sity ex­acts it, for they would gladly re­ceive him freely, and that need is why they con­sider money when con­fer­ring the place.” Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, ad quaest. (p. 94b).

116While 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 re­mained im­per­mis­si­ble, how­ever ad­van­ta­geous it might seem to the work be­ing done. Wyc­liffe set the limit even on a min­is­ter’s own sus­te­nance: “But first, ere men do si­mony, they should tra­vail with their hands, or go to an­other peo­ple, or rather starve in their body.”⁴⁷Wyc­liffe, Ser­mons, serm. 83 (1, p. 284).

To Prac­tice Char­ity§

An­other at­tempted jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of mo­tive is to prac­tice char­ity (alms­giv­ing). That is, some con­sid­ered it 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”—Ja­cob reached the bless­ing by sup­plant­ing, a lep­rous hand sows a crop that is har­vested clean, an adul­ter­ous union bears a beau­ti­ful child, “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,” he an­swered, “de­fends the si­mo­ni­acs.”⁴⁸C. 1, q. 1, d.p.c. 24, § 1. And in a canon drawn from Greg­ory, he laid down the rule: “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.”⁴⁹C. 1, q. 1, c. 27, § 2; cf. Greg­ory I, Ep. 9.218 (2, 207:24–27).

Pu­ri­tan writ­ers con­curred. Bur­ton re­corded that peo­ple made sim­i­lar ob­jec­tions in his own time, claim­ing to use for a char­i­ta­ble pur­pose money re­ceived for pre­fer­ment.⁵⁰“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, 117he ap­pealed to Gra­tian, as cited above,⁵¹Ibid., 65–66. and fur­ther de­scribed such char­ity as no dif­fer­ent from the pur­chase of the field of blood with Ju­das’s blood money.⁵²“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.⁵³“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. Just as the Deutero­nomic code for­bade the wages of a har­lot to be of­fered to the Lord (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.), so the ill-got­ten gain of si­mony may not be of­fered.⁵⁴“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. Un­like the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion just con­sid­ered, which gives si­mo­ni­a­cal pro­ceeds away as alms, this ar­gu­ment holds that the sale of spir­i­tual things en­cour­ages good works, since it in­duces the pur­chaser to give.

Al­bert the Great con­sid­ered an ar­gu­ment de­fend­ing charges 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, it is not evil; 118there­fore it is not si­mony.”⁵⁵Al­bert the Great, In Sent. IV, d. 25, a. 5, quaest., s.c. 2 (p. 92b). Al­bert did not an­swer this ar­gu­ment di­rectly, but ef­fec­tively dis­missed it on the ground that re­cep­tion un­der an agree­ment is si­mony what­ever end the pay­ment serves. 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.⁵⁶Ibid., 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 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 hold­ing out any gift.”⁵⁷C. 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 that re­ward comes at a time of God’s choos­ing and apart from any 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,⁵⁸For in­dul­gences, see Bo­na­ven­ture, In Sent. IV, d. 20, pars 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.”⁵⁹Ver­migli, Loci Com­munes, 3.8.37 (p. 612).

119To 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. The Liber ex­tra re­jected this no­tion in many chap­ters,⁶⁰X 5.3.8; X 5.3.9; X 5.3.16; X 5.3.19; X 5.3.21; X 5.3.36; X 5.3.39. John Ma­jor like­wise ad­dressed this is­sue at length, Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 4 (foll. 186ra–187rb). which we will now con­sider.

The Coun­cil of Tours (1163) ex­plained the ba­sic prin­ci­ple: “The pas­sage of time does not di­min­ish a sin, but ag­gra­vates it.”⁶¹Coun­cil of Tours (1163), can. 6 (Mansi 21:1178D); cf. X 5.3.8. The Third Lat­eran Coun­cil (1179) ad­dressed those who in­voked long-stand­ing cus­tom to jus­tify charg­ing fees to en­throne bish­ops and ab­bots, in­stall priests, bury the dead, bless mar­riages, or con­fer other sac­ra­ments. It called them “blinded by greed” and warned that any­one who per­sisted would “have his por­tion with Ge­hazi.”⁶²“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 (1179), can. 7 (Mansi 22:221E–222A); cf. X 5.3.9.

In a let­ter to the Arch­bishop of Can­ter­bury, In­no­cent III ad­dressed an in­ge­nious eva­sion. Cer­tain of the arch­bishop’s suf­fra­gans had been ex­act­ing pay­ment for chrism. Hop­ing to elude his cor­rec­tion, they did not cease but merely col­lected ear­lier in the year and re­named the pay­ment: first “chris­mals,” then “pas­chals,” and fi­nally “mid-Lenten cus­toms.” In­no­cent re­sponded that a new name ab­solves no one of guilt. Such de­cep­tion is to “cloak si­mony un­der an hon­est name,” but “God is not mocked.”⁶³“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. 2.96 (208:4–9); cf. X 5.3.36.

120The 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.”⁶⁴“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 (1215), can. 63 (Mansi 22:1051C); cf. X 5.3.39. While a cus­tom may have the force of law, cor­rup­tion can­not. This same coun­cil or­dered that lay­peo­ple who, out of “the leaven of he­ret­i­cal de­prav­ity,” un­der­mined pi­ous cus­toms of giv­ing should be re­strained.⁶⁵Fourth Lat­eran Coun­cil (1215), can. 66 (Mansi 22:1054D–E); 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. 12.9 (2, 357:3–5). Later writ­ers cite it in the form that car­ried into canon law: “Who­ever, there­fore, does not burn ve­he­mently against the si­mo­ni­a­cal and neo­phyte her­esy [the or­di­na­tion of novices (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 higher 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 121by ca­pac­ity: inas­much as one has a voice against this sin, he must pro­por­tion­ally have the heart to use it in ear­nest.

Like many works on si­mony, The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus quotes this re­mark from Greg­ory,⁶⁷The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 70. but it ad­di­tion­ally re­turns to em­pha­size the 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 ex­ists not only 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, laun­der­ing pro­ceeds through 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 how many mem­bers a com­mu­nity can re­ceive, and vol­un­tary giv­ing is per­mit­ted in the ab­sence 122of a pact, 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 some­thing for a spir­i­tual thing makes one guilty of si­mony, what­ever the thing ex­changed. It might be ob­jected that be­cause Si­mon Ma­gus 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,), a trans­ac­tion must be fi­nan­cial in or­der to con­sti­tute si­mony. How­ever, this line of rea­son­ing quickly evap­o­rates as one ex­am­ines how many things may be ex­changed for money, thereby them­selves be­ing of fi­nan­cial value.¹See Du­ran­dus of Saint-Pour­çain, In Sent. (red. C), IV, d. 25, q. 4 (fol. 315r). In fact, rea­son­ably or oth­er­wise, men sim­i­larly value many things, so ex­chang­ing spir­i­tual things for any of them counts as si­mony.

The mat­ter is plain enough, but many have none­the­less sup­posed that a man may of­fer cer­tain things in ex­change for spir­i­tual things with­out in­cur­ring the guilt of si­mony. In a rel­a­tively ex­treme ex­am­ple, Blaise Pas­cal con­tended against 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 the sin that bears his name.

The kind of thing given there­fore makes no dif­fer­ence to the guilt. In­stead, the ques­tion is whether any gift is given in ex­change for a spir­i­tual thing, and how to dis­cern the mat­ter by the qual­ity or cir­cum­stances of the gift.

126The Gre­go­rian Triad§

Al­most all dis­cus­sions on this mat­ter go back to Greg­ory the Great, who pro­vided the stan­dard clas­si­fi­ca­tion of gifts. Ex­pound­ing 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 kinds 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. They 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..

127Writ­ing 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 more ob­vi­ously func­tion as a price, tend­ing to­ward mat­ters 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 128only 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. un. (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 a com­men­da­tion, which then sat­is­fies the pa­tron’s 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 less ob­vi­ously func­tion as a price, hav­ing no ap­par­ent 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).

129Not 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 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 pri­mary mo­tive must ex­clude tem­po­ral re­ward sought from man.

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 min­is­ter here dis­counts the de­mands of jus­tice un­der some un­spo­ken oblig­a­tion, es­pe­cially in an or­di­na­tion or ben­e­fice. In 130the def­i­ni­tion of si­mony, a tem­po­ral thing counts as a price when­ever it is the pri­mary cause of giv­ing some spir­i­tual thing.²⁵E.g., “‘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.” Al­bert 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.²⁶Af­ter Pe­ter the Chanter spoke of si­mony “on ac­count of blood,” some named it mu­nus a san­guine or mu­nus san­gui­nis. Pe­ter the Chanter, Summa de sac­ra­men­tis, app. V, 7 (III, 2b, p. 708); As­te­sanus of Asti, Summa de ca­si­bus, VI, tit. 55, q. 3 (fol. 162r); Ma­jor, In Sent. (red. B), d. 25, q. 3 (fol. 185va). The Liber ex­tra counted it si­mo­ni­a­cal for a priest to con­ceal an­other’s sin “out of re­spect for any per­son, or of con­san­guin­ity, or of fa­mil­iar­ity.”²⁷X 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”),²⁸E.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.²⁹“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.³⁰Cal­vin, In­sti­tu­tio, 4.5.6. Of­ten, ben­e­fices func­tioned as dow­ries.³¹Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 42. Eng­lish sources re­ferred to such pre­sen­ta­tions as “smock si­mony.”³²E.g., The Anat­omy of Si­mon Ma­gus, 60; Dou­glas, The Di­aries, 184.