Parachurch Problems in the Thirteenth Century

A fi­nal in­di­ca­tor of si­mo­ni­a­cal mo­ti­va­tion is the ab­sence of a proper call. If a min­is­ter’s right to main­te­nance flows from his or­di­na­tion and of­fice rather than from a com­mer­cial trans­ac­tion, then one who claims main­te­nance with­out or­di­na­tion has no right to it at all. His re­ceipt of it is, at best, ir­reg­u­lar and, at worst, ev­i­dence that gain rather than ser­vice is his ob­ject.

But in or­der to un­der­stand this, we need to first go back to the fifth cen­tury

How did the Monks Come About?§

What Was Au­gus­tine’s Re­sponse?§

In De opere mo­na­cho­rum (On the work of monks), Au­gus­tine dis­tin­guished be­tween phys­i­cal la­bor and spir­i­tual la­bor, speak­ing of the nat­ural ex­change of the for­mer for phys­i­cal food, but re­serv­ing to “evan­ge­lists and min­is­ters of the word of God” the au­thor­ity “to live by the gospel, per­form­ing only spir­i­tual works.”¹Au­gus­tine, De opere mo­na­cho­rum, 7.8 (p. 543). Paul re­fused funds at Thes­sa­lo­nica, Au­gus­tine ex­plained, so that by his ex­am­ple “those might be re­strained who, though not so or­dained in the church, deemed the like to be due to them­selves.”²Ibid., 3.4 (p. 537); cf. 2 Thess. 3:6–122 Thessalonians 3:6–12⁶Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother that walks idly, and not according to the tradition which they received from us.⁷For yourselves know how you should imitate us, for we did not behave ourselves idly among you;⁸nor did we eat bread free of charge at any man’s hand, but in labor and hardship, working night and day, that we might not burden any of you:⁹not because we do not have the right, but to make ourselves an example to you, that you should imitate us.¹⁰For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, “If any will not work, nor let him eat.”¹¹For we hear of some that walk among you idly, that are not busy, but are busybodies.¹²Now those who are such we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.. He re­turned to the point later, ob­ject­ing to monks who claimed the au­thor­ity to live by the gospel with­out hold­ing any or­dained of­fice. These breth­ren claim more than their right, he wrote, “for if they are evan­ge­lists, I con­fess, they have it; if min­is­ters of the al­tar, dis­pensers of the sac­ra­ments, they rightly do not ar­ro­gate this au­thor­ity to them­selves, but plainly claim it as their due.”³Ibid., 21.24 (pp. 569–70). Au­gus­tine’s “evan­ge­lists” (eu­an­ge­lis­tae) de­notes the com­mis­sioned role of Ephe­sians 4:11Ephesians 4:11And he gave some [to be] apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; (cf. Acts 21:8Acts 21:8And the next day we departed, and came to Caesarea; and entering into the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, we stayed with him.), not merely one who evan­ge­lizes.

How Did the Fri­ars Come About?§

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.⁴For a larger over­view of the fri­ars, see Law­rence, The Fri­ars.

These were sim­i­lar to the monas­tic or­ders that pre­ceded them, but dif­fered on ac­count of their men­di­cancy. Not merely swear­ing off per­sonal prop­erty, they aban­doned com­mu­nal prop­erty as well. The pov­erty of these new or­ders could not 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.⁵Szittya, 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.”⁶Rash­dall, 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.⁷Bauer­schmidt, Thomas Aqui­nas, 20. The Fran­cis­cans fol­lowed, more grad­u­ally, in the years there­after.⁸Law­rence, 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.⁹Ibid., 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.¹⁰See 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 1254, the sec­u­lar mas­ters at Paris would hold only three of the fif­teen chairs in the fac­ulty of theol­ogy.¹¹Cob­ban, 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.¹²Law­rence, 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.¹³Janin, The Uni­ver­sity in Me­dieval Life, 82. In 1252, the sec­u­lar mas­ters at Paris at­tempted a stat­ute cap­ping the num­ber of men­di­cant chairs,¹⁴Law­rence, 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.¹⁵Ibid., 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.¹⁶Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 15–16. The Pa­ri­sian con­flict was re­pro­duced, on a smaller scale, at Ox­ford and Cam­bridge.¹⁷Cob­ban, The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties, 93.

What Was Wil­liam of Saint-Amour’s Re­sponse?§

The an­ti­fra­ter­nal move­ment swiftly took on an apoc­a­lyp­tic fram­ing. This owed partly to the con­tem­po­rary an­tic­i­pa­tion of the year 1260,¹⁸See 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.¹⁹Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion, 26–28; Law­rence, The Fri­ars, 154. In 1256, Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, a lead­ing sec­u­lar mas­ter of theol­ogy at Paris, gave the an­ti­fra­ter­nal cause its found­ing text in De per­i­culis no­vis­si­mo­rum tem­po­rum (“Con­cern­ing the Per­ils of the Last Days”). Its fi­nal and most in­flu­en­tial chap­ter enu­mer­ated forty-one signs of false apos­tles,²⁰The 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.²¹Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, De per­i­culis, cap. 14, sign. 20 (pp. 64–65). The men­di­cants had ap­pealed to the bib­li­cal prin­ci­ple that those who preach the gospel should live of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:141 Corinthians 9:14Even so did the Lord ordain that those who proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel.).²²See, 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.²³Aqui­nas, 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.²⁴See 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.²⁵See 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.²⁶For the ex­tent of such lit­er­a­ture, see Szittya, The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion. John Foxe would later re­pro­duce Wil­liam’s signs of false apos­tles in his Acts and Mon­u­ments.²⁷Foxe, 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.²⁸For a cat­a­log of the var­i­ous in­ci­dents, see Gelt­ner, The Mak­ing of Me­dieval An­ti­fra­ter­nal­ism, 48–50, 140–53.

Wil­liam of Saint-Amour and the Fri­ars§

In the thir­teenth cen­tury, Wil­liam of Saint-Amour ex­tended Au­gus­tine’s ar­gu­ment to the new men­di­cant or­ders, the fri­ars.²⁹Wil­liam ac­knowl­edged the cen­tral­ity of De opere mo­na­cho­rum to his project in the pro­logue of the Col­lec­tiones, Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, Col­lec­tiones, prol. (p. 125). Gloss­ing Au­gus­tine’s re­marks, he wrote:

The false [preach­ers], even though they are not so or­dained in the Church that they can live from the Gospel […] nev­er­the­less wish to live from the Gospel, re­ceiv­ing their sus­te­nance from those to whom they preach, as if they were their evan­ge­lists or min­is­ters of their al­tar. […] If they do not hold these of­fices in the churches of those from whom they re­ceive, they do not have the au­thor­ity to take sus­te­nance from them ei­ther. For it is cer­tain that sus­te­nance from the Gospel is owed only to those who pre­side or­di­nar­ily in gov­er­nance and teach­ing by the dig­nity of their of­fice, and who are bound to the care of souls by the duty of their of­fice.³⁰Ibid., D. 4, sign. 41 (pp. 457–58).

He went on to read the phrases of 1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:121 Thessalonians 5:12But we beg you, brothers, to recognize those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; as marks of pas­toral of­fice rather than de­scrip­tions of mere la­bor,³¹“We be­seech you, broth­ers, that you know (that is, that you show your­selves to know, namely by the fur­nish­ing of sus­te­nance) those who la­bor among you. Gloss: In your gov­er­nance and teach­ing. And who are set over you. Gloss: By dig­nity. And this, in the Lord. That is, by the or­di­na­tion of the Lord. And who ad­mon­ish you. Gloss: By the duty of their of­fice.” Ibid., D. 4, sign. 41 (p. 458). then con­cluded, “There­fore those who do not have the dig­nity or the proper of­fice of gov­ern­ing souls can­not claim sus­te­nance as owed to them.”³²Ibid., D. 4, sign. 41 (p. 458). He ob­jected to their re­ceiv­ing food from their hear­ers even when it was of­fered, and the more to their de­mand­ing it as owed: the false preach­ers “not only re­ceive food from those to whom they preach if it is of­fered to them, but also some­times im­por­tu­nately de­mand it, al­though it is not owed.”³³Ibid., D. 4, sign. 41 (p. 458). Such preach­ers, if they reg­u­larly ask for such gifts be­fore or af­ter their preach­ing, hop­ing to ob­tain them the more eas­ily on its ac­count, “seem to com­mit si­mony.”³⁴Ibid., D. 4, sign. 40 (p. 456).

In De va­lido men­di­cante (The able-bod­ied men­di­cant), Wil­liam as­serted that noth­ing should be given to those who beg be­fore or af­ter their preach­ing.³⁵Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, De va­lido men­di­cante, 85. Only a teacher who holds the apos­tolic au­thor­ity—a bishop or one he has sent—is owed a share by those he teaches,³⁶Ibid., 87. and what such a man asks he asks by that au­thor­ity and not as a beg­gar.³⁷Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, Col­lec­tiones, D. 1 (p. 156).

Wil­liam there­fore tied proper fi­nan­cial sup­port to mis­sion.³⁸“They must take their ex­penses in dif­fer­ent ways, ac­cord­ing to the dif­fer­ent mis­sions.” Ibid., D. 1 (p. 154). Sus­te­nance is owed by “the peo­ple to whom they preach as their own charges,”³⁹Ibid., D. 1 (p. 153). that is, “those whom he feeds as a flock, or whom he cul­ti­vates as a vine­yard.”⁴⁰Ibid., D. 1 (p. 156). To gather sup­port be­yond that bound­ary is to “make prey of con­gre­ga­tions not their own.”⁴¹Ibid., D. 4 (p. 466). Re­gard­ing those preach­ers who visit a con­gre­ga­tion, Wil­liam made the proper source of their sup­port de­pend on who had com­mis­sioned them. If a bishop or lesser prel­ate sent a preacher to visit, he should also fund him.⁴²“Those send­ing them must fur­nish ne­ces­si­ties to those they send, or as­sign them preb­ends from which they may be com­pe­tently sus­tained in the of­fice com­mit­ted to them.” Ibid., D. 1 (p. 153). “Those bish­ops them­selves—not the priests nor the lay faith­ful—ought to fur­nish them with the ne­ces­si­ties of life.” Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, De per­i­culis, cap. 2 (p. 26). He al­lowed an ex­cep­tion where such a visit met a spe­cific need, and then only on ju­di­cial in­quiry or at the parish priest’s own re­quest.⁴³Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, Col­lec­tiones, D. 1 (p. 154). He re­garded the con­trary rule as un­ten­able, since “if an un­lim­ited num­ber of per­sons were to have the au­thor­ity of preach­ing in any given church, every church would owe un­lim­ited proc­u­ra­tions, which is ab­surd to say.”⁴⁴Wil­liam of Saint-Amour, De per­i­culis, cap. 2 (p. 26).

The Prot­es­tant Re­cep­tion§

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.⁴⁵Clem. 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.”⁴⁶Bale, 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.⁴⁷Specif­i­cally, 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).⁴⁸Shir­ley, ed., Fas­ci­culi zi­za­ni­o­rum, 272–73, 283–85. He con­tin­ued writ­ing against them un­til his peace­ful death on the eve of 1385,⁴⁹How­ard, The Life and Reign of King Rich­ard, 43. and his fol­low­ers, the Lol­lards, car­ried on his cam­paign against the si­mony of the fri­ars.

As noted above, Wil­liam’s po­si­tions were con­demned by the pa­pacy and an­swered by Aqui­nas, but they found pur­chase among proto-Re­form­ers and those Re­form­ers who still faced the men­di­cants. Ad­dress­ing the monas­tic or­ders that held the rev­enues of parish churches while leav­ing the cure to vic­ars, John Wyc­liffe ob­served that “a ben­e­fice and its cor­re­spond­ing of­fice in­sep­a­ra­bly fol­low each other.”⁵⁰Wyc­liffe, De si­mo­nia, cap. 8 (107:20–21). Else­where, he judged the fri­ars’ of­fice coun­ter­feit and their col­lec­tion of funds through it si­mony.⁵¹“The sixth abuse of the fri­ars is the si­mo­ni­a­cal col­lec­tion of tem­po­ral goods through the of­fice of preach­ing car­ried on in this coun­ter­feit way.” Wyc­liffe, Tri­a­lo­gus cum sup­ple­mento Tri­a­logi, 4.34 (p. 368). Wil­liam Tyn­dale adopted these ar­gu­ments in The Obe­di­ence of a Chris­tian Man, speak­ing of those who would ask money for la­bor in the word out­side the of­fice of a preacher as rob­bers of wid­ows.⁵²“Like­wise doeth a Chris­tian man give to his breth­ren and rob­beth them not as fri­ars and monks do. […] They preach (say­est thou) and la­bor in the word. First I say they are not called and there­fore ought not for it is the cu­rate’s of­fice.” Tyn­dale, Obe­di­ence of a Chris­tian Man, fol. 126v. John Cal­vin con­tended sim­i­larly, lament­ing that the col­la­tion of ben­e­fices, for­merly joined with or­di­na­tion, had be­come wholly sep­a­rate,⁵³Cal­vin, In­sti­tu­tio, 4.5.6. and that those who have no work or in­come but the sale of masses have no le­git­i­mate of­fice to per­form.⁵⁴Ibid., 4.5.9.

Even af­ter the men­di­cant or­ders ceased to be a live con­tro­versy, Prot­es­tant theo­lo­gians con­tin­ued to rec­og­nize that the of­fice, not merely the ac­tual work, le­git­imized min­is­te­rial main­te­nance. Mat­thew Poole, ar­gu­ing against the con­gre­ga­tion­al­ist no­tion of a “gifted man” (i.e., a con­gre­ga­tion­ally ap­proved lay-preacher), built his ar­gu­ment on a shared foun­da­tion: only those who hold the of­fice may be paid for it.⁵⁵He of­fered a syl­lo­gism: “All Scrip­ture-Preach­ers may chal­lenge main­te­nance: But all gifted men (though preach­ing) can­not chal­lenge main­te­nance, There­fore they are no Scrip­ture-Preach­ers.” Poole, Quo War­ranto, 114. He fur­ther con­tended that to fund all those who are gifted and do the work in some mea­sure “would be both ab­surd and im­pos­si­ble.”⁵⁶Ibid., 115. Fail­ing to do the work of the of­fice was it­self read as a sign of si­mony. Min­is­ters who hold a good ben­e­fice and do not preach, Henry Bur­ton wrote, “are by strong pre­sump­tion deep si­mo­nists,” there be­ing no other ac­count of how they came by their pre­fer­ment.⁵⁷Bur­ton, A Cen­sure of Si­monie, 43.

Cat­e­go­riz­ing Men­di­cant Sup­port§

In Chap­ter 9, we traced Wil­liam of Saint-Amour’s in­sis­tence that sus­te­nance from the gospel is owed only to one who holds church of­fice, par­tic­u­larly from those un­der his care.⁵⁸See pp. 156–58. Apart from a spe­cial com­mis­sion­ing, one has no right to such sup­port, and to re­quest it on ac­count of his preach­ing is an act of si­mony. Some read­ers may find it dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine whether Wil­liam’s po­si­tion truly arises from a con­tex­tual un­der­stand­ing of the pas­sages to which he ap­pealed or de­mands more than they will al­low. In ei­ther case, his ar­gu­ments are in sub­stance an ap­peal to the bib­li­cal no­tion of me­di­ated oblig­a­tion. Those who had been prop­erly com­mis­sioned by the church as min­is­ters or evan­ge­lists could re­quire sup­port as an act of co-la­bor, while the men­di­cants could only do so as rec­i­proc­ity.

The si­mony of the men­di­cants may be con­sid­ered by how it col­lapses the two oblig­a­tions of the tri­an­gle. First, it com­mu­ni­cates giv­ing as a re­cip­ro­cal ex­change, such that the hearer gives di­rectly rather than to God. Of course, the fri­ars ex­plic­itly de­nied such a thing, but, as their op­po­nents ob­served, to re­quest money be­fore or af­ter preach­ing is ef­fec­tively to sug­gest an ex­change of tem­po­ral things for spir­i­tual.⁵⁹See Chap­ter 9, pp. 156–58. The call for sup­port sug­gests hear­ers are im­me­di­ately ob­lig­ated to the preacher on ac­count of re­ceiv­ing the mes­sage preached. Sec­ond, the prac­tice of the men­di­cants com­pletely by­passes the sec­ond half of me­di­a­tion, where God gives to his min­is­ter. If God him­self re­ally stands at the apex of this tri­an­gle, me­di­at­ing fi­nan­cial sup­port, we must be able to show that he wills these funds to go to the one who re­ceives them. He com­manded that priests re­ceive from the al­tar and that min­is­ters re­ceive from the peo­ple whom they serve (1 Cor. 9:13–141 Corinthians 9:13–14¹³Do you not know that those who minister about sacred things eat [of] the things of the temple, [and] those who wait on the altar have their portion with the altar?¹⁴Even so did the Lord ordain that those who proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel.) but named no one else to be pro­vided for sim­i­larly. If the New Tes­ta­ment min­is­ter re­ceives af­ter the pat­tern of the Old Tes­ta­ment min­is­ter, then he may not take that of­fice to him­self au­ton­o­mously or by vir­tue of the ap­proval of a dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tion (Heb. 5:4Hebrews 5:4And no man takes the honor to himself, but when he is called by God, even as Aaron was.).

One com­mis­sioned by the church, such as an evan­ge­list, re­ceives his funds from those who send him. This fol­lows from both ends of the tri­an­gle once again. To re­ceive from those to whom he is sent would be to sug­gest rec­i­proc­ity, but if those who wish to send him bear his costs, they give to God by pro­vi­sion­ing a ser­vant with whom they co-la­bor. The apos­tle John ob­served the same dy­namic: evan­ge­lists are wor­thy of sup­port when they do not re­ceive from those to whom they are sent, and those who sup­port them be­come fel­low work­ers for the truth (3 John 73 John 7because for the sake of the name they went out, taking nothing of the Gentiles.–8).

The Rise of the Par­a­church§

Par­a­church or­ga­ni­za­tions, de­signed to per­form min­is­try tasks out­side of the gov­ern­ment of any par­tic­u­lar church, have a long his­tory.⁶⁰See Schei­tle, Be­yond the Con­gre­ga­tion, 19–32; White, The Church and the Par­a­church, 35–58; Wuth­now, The Re­struc­tur­ing of Amer­i­can Re­li­gion; Car­pen­ter, Re­vive Us Again. At the turn of the eigh­teenth cen­tury, Thomas Bray founded both the So­ci­ety for Pro­mot­ing Chris­tian Knowl­edge (1699) and the So­ci­ety for the Prop­a­ga­tion of the Gospel in For­eign Parts (1701), as­so­ci­a­tions re­spec­tively de­signed to dis­trib­ute Chris­tian lit­er­a­ture and send, equip, and main­tain mis­sion­ar­ies.⁶¹Schei­tle, Be­yond the Con­gre­ga­tion, 21. Over the fol­low­ing cen­tury, Brit­ain pro­duced sev­eral mis­sion­ary, Bible, and tract so­ci­eties, and Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts were soon mod­eled af­ter them.⁶²Ibid., 22–23. In the 1960s, sev­eral forces com­bined to cre­ate an ex­plo­sion of these in­sti­tu­tions.⁶³Wuth­now, The Re­struc­tur­ing of Amer­i­can Re­li­gion, 115; White, The Church and the Par­a­church, 55–58.

In erect­ing struc­tures of their own that re­main out­side any mean­ing­ful gov­er­nance by the church, these in­sti­tu­tions bear a marked re­sem­blance to the men­di­cant or­ders.⁶⁴See Chap­ter 1, pp. 25–26. This sim­i­lar­ity nat­u­rally ex­tends to their fund­rais­ing. A lo­cal church de­pends on the weekly giv­ing of the saints; the par­a­church or­ga­ni­za­tion, lack­ing any such con­gre­ga­tion, must cul­ti­vate a dis­tinct gen­eros­ity among its sup­port­ers or else re­sort to sales. Such or­ga­ni­za­tions are var­i­ous,⁶⁵For a break­down into sec­tors see Schei­tle, Be­yond the Con­gre­ga­tion, 60–61. and many of them raise no more con­cern than any other char­ity, but those de­signed to per­form the church’s pri­mary func­tions of preach­ing and teach­ing are open to the ob­jec­tions Wil­liam of Saint-Amour and John Wyc­liffe raised against the fri­ars.

Ap­plied to our own day, the an­ti­fra­ter­nal ar­gu­ments yield a sur­pris­ing im­pli­ca­tion. Par­a­church or­ga­ni­za­tions are for­bid­den not only to charge for teach­ing and preach­ing but even to re­ceive gifts vol­un­tar­ily given on ac­count of such ac­tiv­ity. That is, un­less those within these in­sti­tu­tions are ac­tu­ally com­mis­sioned by their own churches, they do not qual­ify as the sort of la­borer that is wor­thy of his wages, au­tho­rized to re­ceive from the Mas­ter. Those who min­is­ter have a right to re­ceive from the al­tar (1 Cor. 9:13–141 Corinthians 9:13–14¹³Do you not know that those who minister about sacred things eat [of] the things of the temple, [and] those who wait on the altar have their portion with the altar?¹⁴Even so did the Lord ordain that those who proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel.), but those whom no church has com­mis­sioned have not been en­trusted with any such stew­ard­ship. And even if such a man does in­deed la­bor un­der a proper call­ing (e.g., a pas­tor teach­ing in a sem­i­nary), he should be sup­ported by his own church—or those that would truly part­ner with that church—rather than so­lic­it­ing funds from those whom he serves.⁶⁶See Chap­ter 9, p. 158.

None of this set­tles the ap­pro­pri­ate shape of a call­ing or com­mis­sion; even within the Re­formed tra­di­tion, that ques­tion has a num­ber of an­swers. Nei­ther does it set­tle what sorts of do­na­tion-sup­ported or­ga­ni­za­tions may rightly as­sist the church in her work. Re­gard­less, who­ever seeks to do jus­tice to the de­mands of me­di­ated oblig­a­tion must wres­tle with the na­ture of these in­sti­tu­tions, es­pe­cially in­so­far as they are de­signed to es­tab­lish those who would be ma­te­ri­ally sus­tained on ac­count of spir­i­tual la­bors. The church is a pil­lar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:151 Timothy 3:15but if I delay long, that you may know how men should behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.), and no other in­sti­tu­tion has been so ap­pointed.

Sim­i­larly, when com­bined with the his­tor­i­cal doc­trine of si­mony, this frame­work helps us to un­der­stand mat­ters of our own time. Par­a­church or­ga­ni­za­tions de­signed to es­tab­lish teach­ers of the word en­cour­age a re­cip­ro­cal fund­rais­ing sim­i­lar to that prac­ticed by the men­di­cant or­ders. Ad­di­tion­ally, the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury in­fla­tion of the term “min­is­try” flat­tens the tri­an­gle of oblig­a­tion and re­moves the cat­e­gories by which the doc­trine of si­mony was able to flour­ish, and by which it may do so once again.

Bib­li­og­ra­phy§

• Aqui­nas, Thomas. Con­tra im­pug­nantes Dei cul­tum et re­li­gionem. In Doc­to­ris an­ge­lici divi Tho­mae Aqui­na­tis op­era om­nia, vol. 29, 1–116. Paris: Lu­do­vi­cus Vivès, 1876. Com­posed 1256.
• Au­gus­tine. De opere mo­na­cho­rum. In Sancti Au­reli Au­gus­tini op­era, edited by Jo­seph Zy­cha, Cor­pus Scrip­to­rum Ec­cle­si­as­ti­co­rum Lati­no­rum, vol. 41, 529–596. Vi­enna: F. Temp­sky, 1900.
• Bale, John. Scrip­to­rum Il­lus­trium Ma­ioris Bry­tan­niae, quam nunc An­gliam et Sco­tiam vo­cant, Cat­a­lo­gus. Basel: Io­an­nes Opor­i­nus, 1557.
• Bauer­schmidt, Fred­er­ick Chris­tian. Thomas Aqui­nas: Faith, Rea­son, and Fol­low­ing Christ. Chris­tian Theol­ogy in Con­text. Ox­ford: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2013.
• Bo­na­ven­ture. Apo­lo­gia pau­pe­rum con­tra ca­lum­ni­a­to­rem. In Op­era om­nia, vol. 8, 233–330. Qua­rac­chi: Col­le­gium S. Bo­na­ven­tu­rae, 1898.
• Bur­ton, Henry. A cen­sure of si­monie, or a most im­por­tant case of con­science con­cern­ing si­monie briefly dis­cussed not al­to­gether per­haps un­par­al­lell for the merid­ian of these times. Lon­don: Wil­liam Stansby for Ed­mund Weaver and John Smeth­wick, 1624.
• Cal­vin, John. In­sti­tu­tio Chris­ti­anae Re­li­gio­nis. Lau­sanne: Fran­cis­cus le Preux, 1576. The 1559 text.
• Car­pen­ter, Joel A. Re­vive Us Again: The Re­awak­en­ing of Amer­i­can Fun­da­men­tal­ism. New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1997.
• Clementi­nae. In Cor­pus iu­ris canon­ici, vol. 2: Dec­re­tal­ium col­lec­tiones, edited by Emil Fried­berg. Leip­zig: Bern­hard Tauch­nitz, 1881.
• Cob­ban, Alan B. The Me­dieval Uni­ver­si­ties: Their De­vel­op­ment and Or­ga­ni­za­tion. Lon­don: Me­thuen, 1975.
• Foxe, John. Actes and Mon­u­ments. Lon­don: John Day, 1583.
• Gelt­ner, Guy. The Mak­ing of Me­dieval An­ti­fra­ter­nal­ism: Po­lemic, Vi­o­lence, De­viance, and Re­mem­brance. Ox­ford: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2012.
• ———. “Wil­liam of St. Amour’s De per­i­culis no­vis­si­mo­rum tem­po­rum: A False Start to Me­dieval An­ti­fra­ter­nal­ism?” In De­fend­ers and Crit­ics of Fran­cis­can Life: Es­says in Honor of John V. Flem­ing, edited by Mi­chael F. Cusato and Guy Gelt­ner, 105–117. Lei­den: Brill, 2009.
• How­ard, Rob­ert. The Life and Reign of King Rich­ard the Sec­ond. Lon­don: M. L. and L. C., sold by Lan­gly Cur­tis, 1681.
• Janin, Hunt. The Uni­ver­sity in Me­dieval Life, 1179–1499. Jef­fer­son, NC: Mc­Far­land, 2008.
• Law­rence, C. H. The Fri­ars: The Im­pact of the Men­di­cant Or­ders on Me­dieval So­ci­ety. Rev. ed. Lon­don: I.B. Tau­ris, 2013.
• Poole, Mat­thew. Quo War­ranto; or, A Mod­er­ate En­quiry into the War­rant­able­ness of the Preach­ing of Gifted and Un­or­dained Per­sons. Lon­don, 1659.
• Rash­dall, Hast­ings. The Uni­ver­si­ties of Eu­rope in the Mid­dle Ages. Edited by F. M. Pow­icke and A. B. Em­den. New ed. Lon­don: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1936.
• Schei­tle, Chris­to­pher P. Be­yond the Con­gre­ga­tion: The World of Chris­tian Non­prof­its. New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2010.
• Shir­ley, Wal­ter Wad­ding­ton, ed. Fas­ci­culi zi­za­ni­o­rum mag­is­tri Io­han­nis Wyc­lif cum tri­tico. Rolls Se­ries. Lon­don: Long­man, Brown, Green, Long­mans, and Rob­erts, 1858.
• Szittya, Penn R. The An­ti­fra­ter­nal Tra­di­tion in Me­dieval Lit­er­a­ture. Prince­ton: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1986.
• Tyn­dale, Wil­liam. The Obe­di­ence of a Chris­tian Man. Ant­werp, 1535. First pub­lished 1528.
• White, Jerry E. The Church and the Par­a­church: An Un­easy Mar­riage. A Crit­i­cal Con­cern Book. Port­land, OR: Mult­no­mah Press, 1983.
• Wil­liam of Saint-Amour. Col­lec­tiones catho­li­cae et canon­i­cae scrip­turae. In Mag­is­tri Guil­lielmi de Sancto Amore op­era om­nia, 111–487. Con­stance [Paris], 1632. Com­posed ca. 1266.
• ———. De per­i­culis no­vis­si­mo­rum tem­po­rum. In Mag­is­tri Guil­lielmi de Sancto Amore op­era om­nia, 16–72. Con­stance [Paris], 1632. Com­posed 1256.
• ———. De va­lido men­di­cante. In Mag­is­tri Guil­lielmi de Sancto Amore op­era om­nia, 80–87. Con­stance [Paris], 1632. Com­posed 1255.
• Wuth­now, Rob­ert. The Re­struc­tur­ing of Amer­i­can Re­li­gion: So­ci­ety and Faith since World War II. Prince­ton: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1988.
• Wyc­liffe, John. Trac­ta­tus de si­mo­nia. Edited by Sig­mund Herz­berg-Frän­kel and Mi­chael Henry Dzie­wicki. Lon­don: Trüb­ner & Co., 1898.
• ———. Tri­a­lo­gus cum sup­ple­mento Tri­a­logi. Edited by Got­thardt Lech­ler. Ox­ford: Clar­en­don Press, 1869.