No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Dubius in fide fidelis est? Doubt and Assurance in Late Medieval Catholicism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 June 2016
Abstract
The canon law dictum that ‘dubius in fide infidelis est’ offers a seemingly definitive statement on the place of doubt and uncertainty in medieval Catholicism. Yet where Catholic teaching was open to question, doubt was inseparable from faith, not merely as its obverse but as part of the process of achieving faithfulness – the trajectory outlined by Abelard in the twelfth century. The challenge for the Church was not that doubters lacked faith, but that having tested their doubts they might end up with the wrong faith: doubt preceded assurance, one way or the other. That problem is addressed in this essay by a broad examination of the ties between faith and doubt across the late Middle Ages (from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries), arguing that uncertainty and doubt were almost unavoidable in medieval Catholicism. As the starting points in a process which could lead to heresy and despair, they also had a positive role in developing and securing orthodox faith.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 52: DOUBTING CHRISTIANITY: THE CHURCH AND DOUBT , June 2016 , pp. 186 - 202
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2016
References
1 CICan. 2: 778.
2 Pegg, Mark G., A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (Oxford, 2008), 77Google Scholar.
3 Pegg, Mark G., The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245–1246 (Princeton, NJ, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘On Cathars, Albigenses, and Good Men of Languedoc’, JMedH 27 (2001), 181–95; idem, ‘“Catharism” and the Study of Medieval Heresy’, New Medieval Literatures 6 (2003), 249–69; Moore, Robert I., The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar; idem, The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe (London, 2012).
4 John 20: 24–9. The medieval tradition of St Thomas is obscure, and seemingly little studied. In Most, Glenn W., Doubting Thomas (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, the survey of exegetical analysis ‘from the church fathers to the Counter-Reformation’ leaps from c.1000 to the Reformation without comment: ibid. 122–54, at 145.
5 See, in this volume, Frances Andrews, ‘Doubting John?’, 17–49.
6 Madigan, Kevin, ‘Ancient and High-Medieval Interpretations of Jesus in Gethsemane: Some Reflections on Tradition and Continuity in Christian Thought’, HThR 88 (1995), 158–71Google Scholar; see also Covington, Sarah, ‘The Garden of Anguish: Gethsemane in Early Modern England’, JEH 65 (2014), 280–308Google Scholar.
7 Swanson, Robert N., ‘“Lollardy”, “Orthodoxy”, and “Resistance” in Pre-Reformation England’, Usuteaduslik Ajakiri 64 (2013), 12–26Google Scholar; Reynolds, Susan, ‘Social Mentalities and the Case of Medieval Scepticism’, TRHS 6th ser. 1 (1991), 21–41Google Scholar; Arnold, John H., Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe (London, 2005)Google Scholar.
8 Swanson, Robert N., Religion and Devotion in Europe c.1215–c.1515 (Cambridge, 1995), 364, 333–6Google Scholar. Against medievalists’ concern with scepticism, see Weltecke, Dorothea, ‘The Medieval Period’, in Bullivant, Stephen and Ruse, Michael, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (Oxford, 2013), 164–78Google Scholar, at 169. Eadem, ‘Doubts and the Absence of Faith’, in Arnold, John H., ed., The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity (Oxford, 2014), 357–74Google Scholar, addresses the issues from a different angle to the present essay, but complements it at several points.
9 Weltecke, ‘Medieval Period', 169.
10 Hugh of Saint Victor on the Sacraments of the Christian Faith, transl. Roy J. Deferrari (Cambridge, MA, 1951), 168; for the Latin original, see PL 176, col. 330. There the third group are opinantes, perhaps making the third stage ‘opinion’ or ‘inclination’ rather than the ‘conjecture’ of the translation.
11 van Nieuwenhout, Rik, An Introduction to Medieval Theology (Cambridge, 2012), 192CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 For reference c.1395 to their agreement on the basic interpretation of dubius in fide, see Swanson, Robert N., ‘A Survey of Views on the Great Schism, c.1395’, Archivum historiae pontificiae 21 (1983), 79–103, at 102Google Scholar.
13 Lyndwood, William, Provinciale, seu constitutiones Angliae . . . cui adjiciuntur Constitutiones Legatinae D. Othonis, et D. Othoboni . . . cum profundissimis annotationibus Johannis de Athona . . . (Oxford, 1679), 323Google Scholar (‘Delicto notorio’); hereafter: ‘Lyndwood' or ‘Athona’, depending on the part cited, as they are separately paginated; cf. Athona, 78 (‘Ignorantia’).
14 See, for instance, de Bromyard, Johannes, Summa predicantium (Nuremburg, 1518)Google Scholar, fols 21v–22v [A.19], 26rb [A.21.27], 381r–382r [V.3].
15 ‘Sed credere est medium inter duo extrema, sc[ilicet] inter scire & ignorare: q[uo]d inclinat uni parti cum formidine alterius. . . . Scire vero est indubitanter aliquid noscere’: Athona, 78 (‘Ignorantiae’); cf. ibid. 3 (‘In fide’), locating faith midway between knowledge and uncertainty, ‘inter scientiam et dubitationem’.
16 PL 176, cols 327–9 (On the Sacraments, transl. Deferrari, 166).
17 PL 176, col. 329 (On the Sacraments, transl. Deferrari, 167).
18 PL 176, cols 330–1 (On the Sacraments, transl. Deferrari, 168).
19 See n. 26 below.
20 Anselm Proslogion 1 (L’œuvre de S. Anselme de Cantorbéry, 1: Monologion, Proslogion, ed. Michel Corbin [Paris, 1986], 242; The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm, transl. Benedicta Ward (Harmondsworth, 1973), 244). The statement derives from Augustine, the pronouns changed to make it a first-person declaration: Sancti Aurelii Augustini in Iohannis evangelium tractatus CXXIV (CChr.SL 36, 287).
21 Abelard, ‘Prelude to the Yes and No’, transl. A. Brian Scott, in Minnis, Alastair J., Scott, A. Brian and Wallace, David, eds, Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c.1100–c.1375: The Commentary Tradition (Oxford, 1988), 87–100Google Scholar, at 99. For the Latin, see Peter Abailard, Sic et non: A Critical Edition, ed. Blanche B. Boyet and Richard McKeon (Chicago, IL, and London, 1977), 103.
22 His next sentence in Sic et Non quotes Christ speaking as anthropomorphized Truth: Abailard, Sic et non, ed. Boyet and McKeon, 103–4; Minnis, Scott and Wallace, eds, Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, 100.
23 Abailard, Sic et non, ed. Boyet and McKeon, 115.
24 L’œuvre de S. Anselme de Cantorbéry, 3: Lettre sur l'incarnation du verbe; Pourquoi un dieu-homme, ed. Michel Corbin (Paris, 1988), 300–473, the question posed at 300–3; Anselm of Canterbury, The Major Works, ed. Davies, Brian and Evans, Gillian R. (Oxford, 1998), 260–356Google Scholar, the question posed at 265.
25 Alan of Lille, Alain de Lille, Anticlaudianus, texte critique avec une introduction et des tables, ed. Bossuat, R., Textes philosophiques du Môyen Âge 1 (Paris, 1955)Google Scholar, bk 5, lines 69–543; bk 6, lines 1–197, online at: <http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost12/Alanus>, accessed 14 July 2015 (Alan of Lille, Anticlaudianus, or the Good and Perfect Man, transl. James J. Sheridan [Toronto, ON, 1973], 26, 139–63).
26 PL 176, cols 341–2 (On the Sacraments, transl. Deferrari, 180–1).
27 See comments at PL 176, cols 333–4 (On the Sacraments, transl. Deferrari, 171–2): infidels have faith, but not the right faith.
28 CICan. 2: 1245–6 (Tierney, Brian, ed., The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300 [Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1964], 188Google Scholar).
29 Haseldine, Julian, ‘Friendship and Rivalry: The Role of amicitia in Twelfth-Century Monastic Relations’, JEH 44 (1993), 390–414, at 390–1Google Scholar.
30 Biller, Peter, ‘Goodbye to Waldensianism?’, P&P 192 (2006), 3–33Google Scholar; Hudson, Anne, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Rex, Richard, The Lollards (Basingstoke, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hornbeck II, J. Patrick, What is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Larsen, Andrew E., ‘Are all Lollards Lollards?’, in Somerset, Fiona, Havens, Jill C. and Pitard, Derrick G., eds, Lollards and their Influence in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2003), 59–72Google Scholar.
31 The basic narrative is traceable through Graef, Hilda, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, combined edn (London, 1984)Google Scholar; see contents list and index to Part I, xix–xxi, 363.
32 ActaSS Oct. 1, 698 (for offerings to this miracle's suggested alternative performer, see Hereford, Cathedral Archives, 2412–13, 2437); Vauchez, André, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1997), 492, 547–8Google Scholar.
33 Schmitt, Jean C., The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century, Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture 6 (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; Owen, Dorothy M., ‘Bacon and Eggs: Bishop Buckingham and Superstition in Lincolnshire’, in Cuming, G. J. and Baker, Derek, eds, Popular Belief and Practice, SCH 8 (Cambridge, 1972), 139–42Google Scholar, at 141; Montagnes, Bernard, ‘La Repression des sacralités populaires en Languedoc au xve siècle’, AFP 52 (1982), 155–85Google Scholar; Orme, Nicholas, ‘Bishop Grandisson and Popular Religion’, Devonshire Association Transactions 124 (1992), 107–18Google Scholar.
34 McGrath, Alister E., The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2004), 17–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 67–115.
35 Macy, Gary, ‘The Dogma of Transubstantiation in the Middle Ages’, JEH 45 (1994), 11–41Google Scholar.
36 Registrum Johannis Trefnant, Episcopi Herefordensis, A.D. MCCCLXXXIX–MCCCCIV, ed. William W. Capes, CYS 20 (London, 1916), 394.
37 See Havens, Jill C., ‘Shading the Grey Area: Determining Heresy in Middle English Texts’, in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, ed. Barr, Helen and Hutchison, Ann M., Medieval Church Studies 4 (Turnhout, 2005), 337–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peikola, Matti, Congregation of the Elect: Patterns of Self-Fashioning in English Lollard Writings, Anglicana Turkuensia 21 (Turku, 2000), 23–37Google Scholar. See also Kelly, Stephen and Perry, Ryan, ‘Devotional Cosmopolitanism in Fifteenth-Century England’, in Gillespie, Vincent and Ghosh, Kantik, eds, After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England(Turnhout, 2011), 363–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 375–9 (note especially 376 n. 40).
38 See Thomson, John A. F., ‘Knightly Piety and the Margins of Lollardy’, in Aston, Margaret and Richmond, Colin, eds, Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages (Stroud and New York, 1997), 95–111Google Scholar; Kelly and Perry, ‘Devotional Cosmopolitanism’, 364–5.
39 Athona, 4 (‘Resistendum’).
40 York, Borthwick Institute for Archives, Reg. 12, fols 39r–v.
41 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sanford B. Meech and Hope E. Allen, EETS os 212 (Oxford, 1940), 33–4, 36–7 (The Book of Margery Kempe, transl. Barry A. Windeatt [Harmondsworth, 1987], 69–70, 72–3).
42 Swanson, Robert N., ‘Pastoral Care, Pastoral Cares, Pastoral Carers: Configuring the Cura pastoralis’, in Clarke, Peter and James, Sarah, eds, Pastoral Care in Medieval England: Interdisciplinary Approaches (forthcoming).Google Scholar
43 For example, Hudson, Anne, ed., Two Wycliffite Texts: The Sermon of William Taylor, 1406; The Testimony of William Thorpe, 1407, EETS os 301 (Oxford, 1993), 24–93Google Scholar.
44 Horstman, Carl, ed., Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and his Followers, 2 vols (London, 1895–6), 2: 409–10, 412–14, 417–20Google Scholar; Swanson, Robert N., ed., Catholic England: Faith, Religion, and Observance before the Reformation (Manchester, 1993), 129–31, 134–7, 142–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 van Engen, John, ‘The Practices of Devotio moderna’, in Rubin, Miri, ed., Medieval Christianity in Practice (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, 2009), 256–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotation at 259; note the caution and uncertainty inherent in ‘sincerely hope’.
46 Mixson, James D., Poverty's Proprietors: Ownership and Mortal Sin at the Origins of the Observant Movement (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2009), 202–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 Athona, 4 (‘Resistendum’, continued from 3); Lyndwood, 1 (‘Sciat’).
48 PL 176, col. 330 (On the Sacraments, transl. Deferrari, 168).
49 D. Durandi a Sancto Porciano . . . in Petri Lombardi Sententias Theologicas commentariorum libri IIII, 2 vols (Venice, 1571), 2: 255va. For context, see Emery, Kent Jr, ‘Cognitive Theory and the Relation between the Scholastic and Mystical Modes of Theology: Why Denys the Carthusian outlawed Durandus of Saint-Pourçain’, in Young, Spencer E., ed., Crossing Boundaries at Medieval Universities (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2011), 145–74, at 168, cf. 157Google Scholar.
50 Emery, ‘Cognitive Theory’, 148; for the dictum's origins, see Emery, Kent Jr, ‘Denys the Carthusian and the Doxology of Scholastic Theology’, in Jordan, Mark D. and Emery, Kent Jr, eds, Ad litteram: Authoritative Texts and their Medieval Readers (Notre Dame, IN, and London, 1992), 327–59Google Scholar, at 334–5, but see 351 n. 39.
51 McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 131–7; MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490–1700 (London, 2003), 99–101Google Scholar.
52 Austin, William, Devotionis Augustinianae Flamma, or, Certaine Devout, Godly, and Learned Meditations Written, by the Excellently-Accomplisht Gentleman, William Austin, of Lincolnes-Inne, Esquire (London, 1635), 178–9Google Scholar (modified).
53 Perkins, William, A Treatise Tending vnto a Declaration Whether a Man be in the Estate of Damnation or in the Estate of Grace (London, 1590), 266Google Scholar.