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Wyclif and Hierarchy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
Nowadays it is widely realized that much discussion concerning the nature of the Church and of government in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was fuelled by the conceptions of hierarchy that are found in the writings of Denis the pseudo-Areopagite. Denis was invoked and quoted in varied and conflicting ways in consideration of questions concerning the structure and the unity of the Church, the relationships between bishops, mendicants and the papacy, the location of the state of perfection within the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the relationship between temporal and spiritual jurisdiction. From the treatises on the Celestial and on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy was derived knowledge of the arrangement of the angelic society in heaven into nine orders. They constituted an exemplar for the corresponding arrangement into nine orders of the Church Militant on earth. So an examination of the hierarchical structure of the contemporary Church seemed to require an understanding and an interpretation of the celestial hierarchy, and that entailed knowledge of the teachings of Denis. The basic propositions were familiar to many before the composition of the Bull Unam Sanctam in which they are enshrined: St. Paul has written that the powers that be are ordained of God, that is, they are arranged or constituted into an ordering, for they are not equal. To Paul’s disciple on the Areopagus in Athens were ascribed the treatises in which this ordering was elaborately explained in the light of the principle that every spirit belongs to an order or grade which forms part of a continuous hierarchy, so that the lower orders are connected to the highest ones, not directly but by the intermediate orders. Denis himself typically wrote of the differences between created beings in terms of the degree to which these unequal beings participate in the divine light which shines progressively less strongly the further it is transmitted down the orders in the hierarchy. Many medieval readers seized upon the implications of this for the exercise of jurisdiction, secular as well as spiritual. Denis’s angelology had been given a political and social extension by writers such as Alan of Lille who died in 1203 and William of Auvergne whose Magisterium divinale was written from about 1223 onwards. The role played by Denis’s writings and ideas in the debates and polemics concerning lay as well as ecclesiastical power continued to be a substantial one in the fourteenth century.
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References
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5 ‘Unde miror quomodo quidam innituntur exemplo de celesti ierarchia, putando quod clerici non debent corrigi a laycis, nam stabilito ordine militanris ierarchie, sicut est in ierarchia celesti, procederei rado a similitudine quod clerici non forent subiecti laicis, sed si deficit eis virtus illuminandi et expurgandi, sic quod sint ceciores et criminosiores quam layci, quomodo starei in illis perturbantibus ordinem ecclesie exemplum ierarchie celestis? Ideo in defecru illorum stat quod pervertitur ordo ecclesiastice ierarchie; ordo dico non simpliciter sed ordo individuus qui foret in illis. Non enim est fas fìdeli credere quod darus clerus servabit ordinem superiorem in ecclesia quantumcunque peccaverit, cum primus angelus cum suis complicibus propter apostasiam ab ordine deiectus est de ecclesia triumphante (ut notatur Is. XIVo). Viator ergo extra ordinem debet habere subsidium a fratre inferions ordinis, cum pes iuvat oculum, eciam utroque servante integritatem corporis. Et ita videtur Lincolniensi quod angelus superioris ordinis illuminarur ab angelo inferioris ordinis, cum omnes beati spiritus sese iuvant reciproce, ymmo (ut alias dixi): Michael et omnes angeli inferioris ordinis confirmati pugnarunt contra draconem Luciferum et contra complices suos apostatantes, quare ergo non debet esse proporcionaliter in ecclesiastica ierarchia?’ pp. 349-50: Cf. also Wyclif in De Civ. Dom. ii. 18-19 ‘Quod si prelati ecclesie monstruose frangant ordinem vocacionis sue, se ipsos plus ceteris negociis secularibus implicantes, lucra temporalia avidius affectantes et legem monarchie Christus plus ceteris dissipantes, indubie non sunt pro tunc nisi forte nuncupative de superiore ordine ecclesiastice yerarchie, cum iste yerarchie fundanrur in virtu turn gradibus, non nature…’
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13 ‘Et patet quod hodie (si phas est dicere) sunt episcopi Anglie quoad Romanam ecclesiam in casu consimili, ut Lincolniensis in sermone suo conqueritur Romano pontifici’. De Civ. Dom. i. 290.
14 De Civ. Dom. i. 384-92.
15 Determinatio contra Kylingham Carmelitani and Alia determinatio contra Kylingham Carmelitam in FZ pp. 454 and 477. Cf. Denis, Divine Names, c. 10, in Dionysiaca. Recueil donnant l’ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys l’Aréopage… 2 vols., (Bruges, 1937) I, pp. 4821-2, 4853-64. On Wyclif’s argument in general see Leff, G., Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Manchester, 1967) 2 pp. 503–16Google Scholar; also Robson, J. A., Wyclif and the Oxford Schools (Cambridge, 1961) pp. 162–70Google Scholar. On this particular point see Smalley, B., ‘The Bible and Eternity: John Wyclifs Dilemma’, JWCI 27 (1964) pp. 73–89.Google Scholar
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