4 - Charity: the ground of anticlericalism

Summary

CHARITY AND CLERICAL DOMINION

‘What is holy churche, chere frende?’ quod y. ‘Charite,’ he saide …

(C xvii 125)

In the new anticlericalism, clerical dominion was defined in terms of charity. Charity was the key to political action for the anticlericals. For if the delinquency of the clergy was manifest in their departure from evangelical poverty, nevertheless poverty alone could not provide the authority for a remedy. Opposition was an assertion of dominion not authorised by poverty. But charity opened the way to political assertion against the clergy. For charity provided an understanding of the disposition of dominion within the church, an account of the role both of those who were clergy and those who were not. Charity at once divested the clergy of civil dominion, and invested the anticlericals with the authority and powers to bring them to that state of poverty. And charity provided authority for this assertion of power not merely because it authorised a disposition of dominion within the church, but also because it gave the temporal assertion of political power a place in salvation history. It brought into relation as valid anticlerical acts the assertion of political dominion against the clergy, and the final overthrowing of Antichrist's church; the reduction of the clergy to poverty, and the restoration to grace won by the passion. Charity, therefore, not poverty, was the full remedy for illicit clerical dominion; it was both the authority for correction, and the end of correction; a pristine, and final, state. Thus anticlericalism was grounded in charity.