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The Use of St. John Chrysostom in Sixteenth-Century Controversy: Christopher St. German and Sir Thomas More in 1533

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

R. J. Schoeck
R. J. Schoeck
Affiliation:
University Of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana
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Extract

In the important controversy between Sir Thomas More and Christopher St. German during the year 1533 — a controversy whose importance reaches into theological domains and involves also the vexatious conflict between the common law and the Roman canon law in England — we find a citation of St. John Chrysostom used first by St. German and then accepted and repeated by More. The apparent source is Chrysostom's famous commentary on St. Matthew, and this work (translated by Burgundio of Pisa in the later twelfth century) is, as Miss Smalley reminds us, the book “which St. Thomas Aquinas preferred to the whole town of Paris….” Further involved, of course, is the larger problem of the influence of St. John Chrysostom before and during the sixteenth century, as well as the technical question of methods of using commentaries on Scripture and thus the weight of auctoritas among the early Tudor controversialists. While it is only the modest story of one maxim that I wish to call attention to in this brief paper, I think that we shall in addition learn something of the English fortunes of one of the most widely used medieval compendia of commentaries, the Catena Aurea of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 1961 , pp. 21 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1961

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References

1 The controversy between Christopher St. German and Sir Thomas More was begun in 1532 with St. German's treatise, Dyuers articles whiche haue bene a speciall cause of the diuision that is betwyxte the spiritualtie and the temporaltie in this realme — usually referred to as the Diuision between the spiritualtie and the temporaltie — to which More replied in The Apologye of Syr Thomas More, Knyght, early in 1533. St. German quickly answered with his dialogue-like Salem and Bizance, and More responded with The Debellacion of Salem and Bizance, in the same year.

This controversy will be dealt with more fully in the editions of More's Apology and of his Debellation of Salem and Bizance now in preparation by J. B. Trapp and the present writer for the Yale edition of More.

2 Smalley, Beryl, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2d ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), p. 337Google Scholar. Chrysostom's rôle in the still unwritten story of the influence of Greek patristic writings in the later middle ages and early renaissance was of course very great. It is worth noting that Nicholas of Lyre, whose apparatus indeed outlasted the middle ages — we know that Thomas More, e.g., habitually read from Nicholas — made great use of Chrysostom's commentaries and homilies. See Smalley, ibid., and Père Spicq (who is much more detailed with citations of Chrysostom in the middle ages), Esquisse d'une Histoire de l'exégèse Latine au Moyen Age (Paris, 1944), pp. 11, 17, 228–231, & passimGoogle Scholar. The Postilla de Lyra is in the list of books which Gerson (whom we shall encounter later) recommended to the Dauphin of France: Connolly, James L., John Gerson (Louvain, 1928), p. 193.Google Scholar

On the translation of Burgundio, see Tropia, L., La Tradizione di Burgunio Pisano delle Omilie di S. Giovanni Crisostomo sopra Matteo, in Aevum, xxvi (1952), 113–130Google Scholar; Chenu, M.-D., La Théologie au douzième Siècle (Paris, 1957), p. 281Google Scholar — see generally Chenu on “L'Entrée de la Théologie Grecque,” pp. 274 ff.

3 While the sixteenth-century influence of St. John Chrysostom was not of course so great as that of St. Augustine, nonetheless nearly all the reformers and controversialists from Luther on made ample use of Chrysostom, and of his sermons especially. One must observe that the question of text becomes crucial with citations of Chrysostom, for as Hessels first noted as early as 1567, one's reading of Chrysostom on such a question as the sacraments depends upon which text is used; basing his conclusions upon Hessel's Confutatio, Polman points to the Paris editions of 1542 and 1556, and the Basle of 1546, as presenting quite divergent redactions: Polman, P., L'Élément Historique dans la Controverse religieuse du XVIe Siècle (Gembloux, 1932), pp. 342–343Google Scholar, & passim. Attention will be called below to Erasmus' rôle in the edition of 1530, and here it is to be noted that Bishop John Fisher too was involved in the editing of Chrysostom: “Les fameuses liturgies qui portent le nom de saint Jean Chrysostome et de saint Basile et qui dèslors furent considérées comme des témoignages du IVe siècle, furent éditées en grec à Rome, déjà en 1526; deux ans plus tard celle de saint Jean Chrysostome parut en latin à Venise; à la demande du bienheureux Jean Fisher, Érasme en composa une nouvelle traduction latine qui parut à Paris en 1537” (Polman, ibid., p. 431; cf. 434, 456).

4 The attribution of St. German's books, the diuision between the spiritualtie and the temporaltie, and Salem and Bizance, goes back to the authority of Bale's Catalogus, and it is amply supported by internal evidence of authorship: both of these works and the better-known Doctor and Student are convincingly alike with respect to the kinds of problems raised and discussed, the authorities cited, and the style generally — these have been discussed by Arthur I. Taft in his edition of The Apologye of Syr Thomas More, Knyght (E.E.T.S., O.S.180, 1930), pp. 259–260 — afterwards cited as Taft — and will be further discussed by Trapp in his forthcoming edition.

5 Salem and Bizance, sig. B.iiv.

6 Debellation, sig. D.i.r.

7 W. W. Skeat, ed. Piers Plowman (Oxford, 1891), II, 217.

8 Ibid. Skeat was checking the poet's memory against the Opus Imperfectum.

9 For Gerson, Opera Omnia, II, 314 ff. (q. Taft, pp. 290–291). For St. German, Taft, pp. 210–213.

10 Taft, p. 211.

11 More's use of the Catena Aurea calls for some comment. Only once, apparently, does he mention it, and then only rather incidentally: in the Confutation (Works, 666D), “And holy saynt Thomas alledgeth in hys boke called Cathena aurea….” Sister M. Thecla has convincingly argued that in his Treatise vpon the passion More made extensive use of the Catena, but her further statement that “his long polemical and devotional treatises manifestly draw upon the full originals of classical and patristic authority” requires much qualification and modification — see her “S. Thomas More and the Catena Aurea,” Modern Language Notes, lxi (1946), 523–529Google Scholar.

12 Chrysostom (Basle ed., 1530), III, 473.

13 But we must add the following statement by More (which I have just come upon elsewhere in the 1557 folio): “… For it is wel perceiued and knowen that the worke which is called Opus imperfectum, the imperfait worke upon the ghospel of saynt Mathew, which was fyrst by ye errour and ouersight of some writers intiteled unto saiṉt Chrisostome, and ye same title so suffred since to stand, was neuer hys worke in dede, nor neuer translated out of ye greke, but made by some latteṉ maṉ, as frere Barns hath already had sufficient warning bi mo than one, that caṉ a little better skill therof then I and he both, and I verely belieue that agaynst his own conscience he ascribeth that woorke to saynt Chrisostome …” So More wrote in 1532 in the Confutacion of Tyndale's Aunswere (Works, 1557, sig. D. iiijr & v).