A Brief History of Simony

No comprehensive history of simony exists.¹In 1952, Hans Meier-Welcker observed “the absence of a ‘history of simony,’ indeed of any monographic historical investigation comprehensively treating its nature and its significance in society and the Church.” Meier-Welcker, Die Simonie im frühen Mittelalter, 61. While this is a dated assessment, it still rings true in the twenty-first century. Published historical investigations on the topic of simony are typically limited to particular ranges of history and often focus on political controversies and sociological implications. Such an approach does little to address the development of the doctrine itself or aid in the further development of our own doctrine.

What follows is a brief survey of the history of simony, designed to cover the rough clusters of sources that we will draw from in subsequent chapters. While other treatments may focus on the institutional dimensions of simony, our approach will de-emphasize these in favor of highlighting the most significant theological influences. We may divide these influences historically into four broad streams: the church fathers, the medieval canonists and schoolmen, the Reformers and their precursors, and the English divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Church Fathers

The early patristic era produced many affirmations of the principle that grace must be offered freely, but specific treatments of simony as a discrete problem are harder to come by. The fathers frequently reference the behavior of Simon Magus in Acts 8 when addressing the spiritual dangers of avarice, but before the conciliar legislation of the fifth century, extended discussion of the buying and selling of holy things as such remains limited, though not altogether absent.

Regarding financial transactions in ordinations, several handfuls of examples may be cited. As early as the second century, Tertullian’s description of the Christian assembly includes a pointed remark on the integrity of its leadership that suggests an awareness of such corruption elsewhere: “Proven elders preside, having obtained that honor not by purchase but by testimony; for no thing of God is obtained by price.”²Tertullian, Apologeticum, cap. 39 (pp. 199–200). Basil of Caesarea confronted the problem more directly, rebuking those who took money from candidates for ordination, contending that those who sell the free gift of God will be sold to Satan.³Basil of Caesarea, Letters, 53 (p. 339).

Church councils begin to address simony early on. Even before the trinitarian debates of Nicaea (325), the Synod of Elvira (305) forbade any fee associated with baptism.⁴Migne, ed., Synod of Elvira, can. 48 (PL 84:307B). The second canon of the Council of Chalcedon (451) addresses commerce in ordinations and establishes specific penalties:

If any bishop has performed an ordination for money and has sold a thing which is not acquired except by grace, and for money has ordained a bishop or provincial bishop or presbyter or deacon or any of those who are counted among the clergy, or for money received has appointed a steward or defender or doorkeeper or anyone of this kind for the sake of shameful gain—whoever is proved to have done this shall be in danger of losing his own rank; and he who is ordained shall derive no benefit from the ordination which proceeded through a commercial transaction, but shall be a stranger to the dignity or office which was entrusted to him for money. And if anyone is seen to have acted as a go-between in such shameful and wicked dealings, he too, if he is a clergyman, shall be degraded; if a layman or monk, let him be anathematized.⁵Schwartz, ed., Canones Concilii Chalcedonensis, can. 2 (ACO II.2.2, 125).

This would become the cornerstone of all later canon law regarding the matter.

However, it is not until Gregory the Great that the theological treatment of simony gathered force. Gregory was the first to apply the term simoniacus to the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices, coining the expression simoniaca haeresis (“simoniacal heresy”) that would dominate subsequent discourse.⁶Rosé, Simon le Magicien hérésiarque?, 204–5. He first used the term on March 11, 591, in a homily on the Gospels,⁷Ibid., 205; cf. Gregory I, Homiliae in Evangelia, 17.13 (p. 109). but the moral consequences of this sin are particularly developed in a letter to the bishops of Gaul in 599.⁸Rosé, Simon le Magicien hérésiarque?, 213; see Gregory I, Registrum Epistolarum, IX.218. For Gregory, simony is a corruption and heresy “condemned in its very origin by apostolic detestation.”⁹Ibid., IX.218.

Gregory’s influence on theology as a whole is difficult to overstate. Without it, in the words of one biographer, “the evolution of the form of mediaeval Christianity would be almost inexplicable.”¹⁰Dudden, Gregory the Great, 1.vi. Nor is his authority confined to the medieval period. Though frequently styled “Pope Gregory,” the Reformers generally respected him as the last of the legitimate bishops of Rome.¹¹E.g., Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis, 4.17.49. John Calvin cited him extensively—and favorably—throughout his Institutio, more than any other save Augustine.¹²Little, Calvin’s Appreciation of Gregory, 146. Yet for all the breadth of his influence, in hardly any area was Gregory’s legacy more pronounced than in that of simony, where the vocabulary and conceptual framework he established would dominate the discourse for over a millennium.

The Medievals

After the time of Gregory the Great, Christianity increasingly spread outward from the cities into the countryside. Whereas churches near urban centers were typically founded directly by the diocese and supported from its own resources, the rural churches that now multiplied across the West owed their existence to nobles who built them upon their estates.¹³Wood, The Proprietary Church, 10–11. This often entailed a measure of proprietorship attended by a certain level of control over ecclesiastical functions, especially the selection of church officers, whether by direct appointment or privileged recommendation. Such recommendations would come to be known as presentations, and the broader authority bound up with direct ownership and associated endowments would become known as the right of patronage. By the eighth century, the vast majority of parish churches across Western Europe had come to be treated as the private property of the wealthy on whose estates they stood.¹⁴Ibid., 437. Wood’s account revises the classic thesis of Stutz, Die Eigenkirche, which framed the Eigenkirche as a distinctively Germanic legal institution that displaced Roman ecclesiastical norms; cf. Wood, The Proprietary Church, 1–2. It was also in the eighth century that the seventh ecumenical council—the Second Council of Nicaea (787)—felt the need to decree its own penalties on simony before quoting Chalcedon’s canon 2 in full.¹⁵Mansi, ed., Concilium Nicaenum II, can. 5 (Mansi 13:421E).

The problem intensified in the ninth century with the dissolution of the Carolingian dynasty. As the protection of property devolved upon local magnates, even bishoprics and abbeys ceded the eminent domain of their estates to lay protectors in exchange for security. Though debated in modern scholarship, this has traditionally been described as the rise of “feudalism.”¹⁶Saltet, Les Réordinations, 173–74. Regardless, the general regime of lay ownership over churches grew steadily and, along with it, financial negotiations in ecclesiastical positions. By the end of the tenth century, simony was endemic. Offices were routinely bought and sold like any other asset, and those who acquired them recouped the outlay by charging for blessings, ordinations, and sacraments.¹⁷See ibid., 174–76.

In the early eleventh century, there arose a number of concerted movements against simony.¹⁸See Cushing, Reform and the Papacy, 97–98. As concerns grew, they reached the highest levels of imperial power, capturing the attention of Henry III. At the Council of Pavia in October 1046, en route to the synod of Sutri and his coronation in Rome, Henry summoned the archbishops and bishops of his realm and addressed them:

I begin to speak to you in mourning, you who have been set in the place of Christ in his Church, which he himself espoused to himself and redeemed by the price of his own blood. For just as he, by his free goodness, deigned to come from the bosom of God the Father through the Virgin to redeem us, so he commanded his own, sending them into the whole world, and said: Freely you have received, freely give. But you, corrupted by avarice and cupidity, who ought to confer these things by the Lord’s blessing, are cursed by the most sacred canon for this kind of transgression in giving and receiving. For my own father, too, for the peril of whose soul I greatly fear, exercised this same damnable avarice excessively in his lifetime. Therefore, whoever among you knows himself contaminated by this stain ought, according to canonical disposition, to be barred from sacred ministry. It is therefore most manifestly clear that, on account of this offense, various calamities have come upon the sons of men, namely famine and pestilence, and also the sword. For indeed every ecclesiastical order, from the highest pontiff down to the doorkeeper, is weighed down by the price of its own damnation; and, according to the Lord’s own word, in all things spiritual robbery is rampant.¹⁹Raoul Glaber, Historiarum Libri Quinque, 5.5.25 (pp. 133–34).

This speech would set the trajectory of the church for centuries. In the near term, the threat of widespread calamity on humanity itself would furnish the imperial government with theological cover for intervention in ecclesiastical affairs. Beyond this, theologians, canonists, and church authorities would continue to engage the matter with a focus unparalleled by any other time in history.

The Simoniacal Orders Controversy (1046–1060)

By the autumn of 1046 the papacy itself was in disarray, with three rival claimants—Benedict IX, Sylvester III, and Gregory VI. In December Henry presided alongside Gregory VI at the Synod of Sutri, and on the twentieth of that month, Sylvester was charged with simony and deposed. Henry expected Gregory to formally ascend, but it emerged that Gregory had purchased the pontificate from Benedict, so the synod deposed him as well. With all three guilty of simony—though Benedict was not formally charged—the see was vacant. On 24 December 1046, Suidger of Bamberg, who had accompanied Henry from Germany, was elected Pope Clement II. The following day, Christmas, he was consecrated and crowned Henry as emperor.

The following month, the new pope convened a Lateran synod with Henry in attendance—a natural continuation of the reform program inaugurated at Sutri. There, a question was raised: though innocent of simony themselves, what was to be done with the clergy that a simoniac had ordained? Clement concluded that those who had knowingly received orders from a simoniac were to perform forty days of penance and thereafter continue in the office they had received.²⁰Peter Damian, Liber Gratissimus, (p. 499). The importance of this judgment would not become apparent until later, but Clement would die in October of that year.

In February 1049, Leo IX was elected pope. Generally regarded as laying the groundwork for the Gregorian reform, he immediately took up the question of those ordained by simoniacs at the Lateran synod of April 1049.{empty} Leo first declared all such ordinations null, but the priests of Rome and many bishops protested that simony was so prevalent that this would leave the basilicas devoid of ministry. After long debate, Clement’s earlier judgment was recounted, at which point, Leo relented and withdrew his sentence.²¹Ibid., (p. 499).

Yet Leo did not let the matter rest. The question came up again in the next Lateran synod (1050).²²Ibid., (p. 390). Cf. ibid., (pp. 390–92n9). After this, at the Synod of Vercelli (1050), the pope went as far as to re-ordain such priests, implying that their former ordination was invalid. Being rebuked afterward, he asked forgiveness, but then fell back into the same practice.²³Berengar of Tours, De sacra coena, 40–41. Cf. Peter Damian, De privilegio Romanae ecclesiae, (p. 237); Michel, Die folgenschweren Ideen des Kardinals Humbert, 80n73. At the Lateran synod of 1051 he begged the assembly to pray for divine guidance on the matter.²⁴Peter Damian, Liber Gratissimus, (p. 392).

This appeal led Peter Damian the following year (1052) to publish the letter known as Liber Gratissimus, arguing for the validity of orders for those ordained gratis by simoniacs. Five years later, Humbert of Silva Candida wrote against this view with Libri Tres adversus Simoniacos (1057) arguing against any legitimacy to the spiritual activities of simoniacs, requiring that any ordained by them be deposed or ordained anew.²⁵See Whitney, Peter Damiani and Humbert for an overview of literary debate.

Although this question grew acute in the eleventh century, it was not entirely new. For one, Gregory the Great had already concluded that such ordinations were legitimate.²⁶See, for example, Gregory I, Registrum Epistolarum, II.45 (p. 145). More famously, this debate was, in substance, a replay of the Donatist controversy of the fourth century. The Donatists had insisted that sacraments administered by traditores—clergy who had succumbed under threat of persecution—were void, and that those baptized or ordained by such men must receive the rites anew. This rigorist position may be labeled “Cyprianic,” after Cyprian of Carthage, to whose writings the Donatists appealed. Augustine, whose view ultimately prevailed, argued the contrary, locating the efficacy of the sacraments in the work rather than the worker (ex opere operato vs. ex opere operantis, in the terminology of later schoolmen).

Though the debate did not subside immediately afterward, we may mark the Lateran synod of 1060 under Nicholas II as granting its ultimate resolution with its second canon, which permitted those ordained gratis by simoniacs to remain in the orders they had received.²⁷“But concerning those who were ordained by simoniacs not for money but gratis: since the question has long been debated at length, we loose every knot of doubt, so that we may allow no one to be in any further uncertainty on this head. Since, then, this poisoned plague has so far taken root by now that scarcely any church can be found which is not corrupted by the disease in some part, those who up to now have been consecrated gratis by simoniacs we permit to remain in the orders they have received, not so much by the strictness of justice as out of regard for mercy, unless perhaps some other fault arising from their life stands against them contrary to the canons.” Weiland, ed., Concilium Lateranense posterius, can. 2 (p. 550). This measure was granted as a temporary dispensation,²⁸“For so great is the multitude of such men that, since we cannot maintain the rigor of canonical force over them, it is necessary that for the present we incline our minds, by way of dispensation, toward the pursuit of a merciful accommodation. Yet by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul we forbid altogether that any of our successors should ever take or set up for himself or for anyone else a rule out of this our permission, since it was not the authority of the ancient fathers that promulgated this by way of command or concession, but the overwhelming necessity of the time that extorted it from us by way of permission.” Ibid., can. 2 (p. 550). but would be preserved by the primary authoritative compilation on simony written in the twelfth century.²⁹Gratian, Decretum, C. 1, q. 1, c. 107, § 2.

It is possible to overstate the level of controversy on this matter. While there was certainly debate over the practical handling of those ordained by simoniacs, evidence of thoroughgoing rigorism outside of Humbert is scant. No other canonist followed him explicitly in his conclusions.³⁰Gilchrist, `Simoniaca haeresis', 234. Moreover, evidences for a rigorist movement preceding Sutri have been substantially discredited by more recent scholarship.³¹The Epistola Widonis—conventionally dated to around 1031—has often been adduced as evidence that anxiety over simoniacal ordinations ran deep, well before Sutri. It appears to have entered circulation only in 1074–1076 (Gilchrist, The Epistola Widonis, 58), and the letter itself may only date to around 1060 (West, The Simony Crisis, 252).

The Investiture Controversy (1076–1122)

Eventually, attention turned upstream, from simony itself to the lay influence at the root of its spread. The focal point became lay investiture—the authority of a civil ruler to appoint clergy, symbolized by his bestowal of the ring and staff that marked the conferral of office. The matter reached its crisis point under Gregory VII, who sought to reverse this claim to authority. Cataloguing the principles of what would come to be known as the Gregorian reform in his Dictatus papae (1075), he claimed that the pope alone held universal authority, with the power to depose not only bishops but even emperors.³²Gregory VII, Das Register Gregors VII., 2.55a.

Concern over lay investiture had already surfaced before Gregory, even among several of the aforementioned parties. When Leo IX—then Bruno of Toul—was selected as pope by Henry III in 1048, he accepted only on the condition that his election be confirmed by the clergy and people of Rome.³³Gilchrist, Canon Law Aspects, 21. Likewise, the third book of Humbert’s Libri Tres argued that lay investiture not only encouraged simony but was itself inherently simoniacal. To bestow the ring and the staff presupposes possession of the pastoral authority they symbolize; in conferring them, the civil ruler invades the order of the clergy by robbery.³⁴Humbert of Silva Candida, Libri Tres adversus Simoniacos, 3.6; cf. Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, 89–92. Like Gregory, Humbert saw the true nature of authority reversed, and it was ultimately contention over papal supremacy that led him to excommunicate Cerularius, triggering the Great Schism of 1054.³⁵Gilchrist, Canon Law Aspects, 27–28. Whether his theology lay directly behind Gregory’s campaign remains only a theory,³⁶Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, 92. but the two were associates before Gregory’s papacy, and the parallels between the Dictatus papae and Humbert’s work are pronounced.³⁷Gilchrist, Canon Law Aspects, 38.

January 24, 1076, marks the formal beginning of the investiture controversy. On that date, Henry IV convened a synod at Worms, at which a majority of the German episcopate renounced their obedience to the pope. From this assembly, Henry dispatched a letter to Rome calling on Gregory to resign. Soon after, on March 27, an expanded version of the same letter greeted him as “now not pope but false monk” and concluded, “descend, descend, to be damned through the ages.”³⁸Henry IV, Heinrici IV. epistola, no. 62 (pp. 110–11). Some have concluded that Gregory instigated the controversy by a decree against lay investiture in 1075, but the evidence that investiture was addressed there is limited.³⁹Cushing, Reform and the Papacy, 106–7; Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, 120–21.

Gregory responded at his own Lenten synod the following month. On February 22, he excommunicated Henry through a prayer to St. Peter, deposing him from the kingship and releasing all Germans and Italians from any past or future oath of fidelity sworn to him. It was at this same synod, a few days earlier—sometime between February 14 and 20—that the word “simony” (simonia) itself may have made its first appearance, in the excommunication of one Hermann, bishop of Vienne.⁴⁰Rosé, Simon le Magicien hérésiarque?, 203n9; cf. Gregory VII, Das Register Gregors VII., III.10a (p. 269), though the apparatus reports it as a correction from the adjective simoniaca.

Gregory’s offensive proved decisive. With German princes already moving to elect a successor in his place, Henry had little choice but to seek reconciliation. He secretly crossed the Alps—avoiding hostile German dukes who wanted to prevent his reinstatement—and, in late January 1077, presented himself as a penitent before Gregory at the castle of Canossa, where after three days he was absolved. The king who had set out to depose the pope now submitted to him and became, in effect, a servant of the church.⁴¹Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy, 123–24. With the political ground secured, Gregory issued additional decrees in 1078 and 1080 forbidding any cleric from receiving symbols of authority and clergy from a layman.⁴²Cushing, Reform and the Papacy, 107.

Much more transpired before the controversy ran its course—Gregory excommunicated Henry a second time in 1080, Henry installed the antipope Clement III and marched on Rome, and Gregory himself died in exile at Salerno in 1085—but the details lie beyond our present concern. The dispute reached a more settled end at the Concordat of Worms (1122), where Henry V renounced investiture with ring and staff. From a Protestant perspective, exchanging civil authority over the church for papal supremacy hardly represents clear progress, yet by stripping nobility of the power to appoint church officers, the end of lay investiture effectively mitigated the most explicit forms of simony.

The Classical Period of Canon Law (1140–1234)

Of course, as rights of patronage continued, simony through lay influence continued as well, as did many other forms of simony. However, these former controversies had whetted an appetite for institutional reform and likewise produced an expanding body of canon law addressing the matter. This ushered in what has come to be known as the classical period of canon law.

The beginning of this period is marked by the completion of Gratian’s Decretum, conventionally dated to c. 1140.⁴³More recent scholarship has shown that the Decretum circulated in at least two recensions, complicating older assumptions about its composition; the conventional date nonetheless remains the standard reference point. See Winroth, The Making of Gratian's Decretum, 3–4. This accomplishment has earned Gratian the accolade “father of canon law” for drawing conciliar legislation and traditional pronouncements into a single, dialectically arranged compendium. The very first causa of the work is a long and dedicated body of judgments on simony, signaling the centrality of the topic.

From this point, canon law as a discipline underwent a formalization, giving rise to dedicated guilds and a profession that entailed education requirements and oaths upon entry into the practice.⁴⁴Brundage, The Practice of Canon Law; Brundage, Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession, 283–343. This growing awareness around canon law led to a growing recognition of simony and measures against it. Religious societies, which had previously been lax on the matter, began to enforce rules against payments for entry.⁴⁵Lynch, Simoniacal Entry, 147–69. In the thirteenth century, even hospitals—themselves organized as religious societies—often required of entrants an oath that they had not obtained their place by simony.⁴⁶Ibid., 168.

Less than a century after the Decretum, Gregory IX commissioned a new compilation, the Decretales, undertaken by Raymond of Peñafort and promulgated in 1234. Designed to be the official compilation of papal decrees, it would remain in force among Roman Catholics until 1918. It came to be known as the Liber extra since its contents functioned as an addition to Gratian’s Decretum. Only the third title of the fifth book is dedicated to simony,⁴⁷Gregory IX, Liber extra, 5.3. but it solicited a substantial body of commentary around it, ensuring its formative influence on the subject.

By many accounts, the Decretum and the Liber extra form the bookends of the classical period of canon law. They became the foundational reference points for virtually all subsequent treatments on the subject of simony, whether scholastic, proto-Reformer, Roman Catholic, or Protestant. Even when citing earlier authorities on the topic—Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, etc.—authors often did not quote them precisely as recorded directly in their works, but as transmitted by these two compendiums. Alternative end dates for the classical period have been proposed to accommodate later developments, as significant works of canon law continued to appear, most notably the Liber sextus, commissioned by Boniface VIII and named as the work following the five books of the Liber extra. None of these, however, treated simony with similar depth, and more importantly, none had similar impact on the study of the topic.

The Rise of the Universities (1150–1215)

The schools that emerged in the Middle Ages featured such a diversity that the notion of the medieval university resists definition.⁴⁸Verger, Patterns, 45. Under sufficiently broad parameters, there were dozens,⁴⁹Ibid., 62–65 provides a list. though only a handful—Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and a few others—dominate the historical literature. We might center the definition on the existence of a guild of masters and/or students.⁵⁰Cobban, The Medieval Universities, 32; Haskins, The Rise of Universities, 5. These exercised political influence over the university and were typically organized into “nations,” subgroups reflecting the region of origin of their members.⁵¹Cobban, The Medieval Universities, 84–90. The term that came closest to our modern concept of a university was studium generale, though it did not become a technical expression until the fourteenth century.⁵²Ibid., 23–24. Beginning in the thirteenth century, papal or imperial endorsement was required for its sense of legitimacy.⁵³Ibid., 32.

Much could be said about the curriculum of medieval universities, but the principal areas of study may be summarized easily enough. The seven liberal arts—the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy)—formed the preparatory curriculum. Upon mastering these, students could advance to one of the three higher faculties: medicine, law (both canon and civil), or theology. Our particular interest lies with theology—the “queen of the sciences”—since this is where the doctrine of simony was most fully developed. This focus entails a geographic distinction as well: while canon law had its seat at Bologna, where both Gratian and Raymond of Peñafort had taught, much of the theological work that concerns us came out of Paris and its English offshoot, Oxford. It is at these centers in particular that scholasticism thrived and where the greatest minds flourished who would give simony its doctrinal articulation, such as Thomas Aquinas (Paris) and John Wycliffe (Oxford).

It was likewise at Paris that Peter Lombard completed his Sententiae (c. 1150), a work consisting principally of categorized pronouncements drawn from church fathers. It functioned as a systematic theology textbook, and through the rest of the Middle Ages, theological training in the universities consisted largely of lectures on the Sentences, with the most accomplished theologians producing their own commentaries on it. With over a thousand known commentaries, it stands as the most frequently analyzed work of Christian literature outside the Bible itself.⁵⁴Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book, 14; cf. Stegmüller, Repertorium. This concentration came at the expense of direct engagement with Scripture, drawing criticism early on⁵⁵Janin, The University in Medieval Life, 53. and more pointedly in the Reformation. Martin Luther, himself having lectured and commented on the Sentences, once affirmed the judgment that Peter Lombard was the greatest theologian, adding that he was likewise a great man and “had he chanced upon the Bible, he would without doubt have been the greatest of all.”⁵⁶Luther, Tischreden, no. 192 (WA TR 1, 85:15–20). Calvin made a similar remark regarding the paradox of Lombard’s wisdom and blindness, Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis, 3.15.7. Anthony N.S. Lane has catalogued seventy-five explicit citations of Lombard in Calvin and fifty-nine implicit, Lane, John Calvin, 159, 165, 175–87. Lane notes that most of these uses are negative, but includes some examples of positive citations as well, ibid., 160, 171. However, for our purposes, such reservations about Lombard’s work are neither here nor there. His value to the development of the doctrine of simony lies less in his method than in the long tradition of commentary on it that he set in motion. By treating the topic in distinction twenty-five of the fourth book of his Sentences, he ensured that generation after generation of schoolmen would be obliged to take up the topic in turn.

The organic development of the universities complicates attempts to date their origins,⁵⁷Rüegg, Themes, 6–7; Verger, Patterns, 45ff. but for any given institution, one can trace a series of formal benchmarks. For example, the University of Paris received its first royal charter from Philip Augustus in 1200, and its first papal privilege bull from Gregory IX in 1231. Perhaps 1215 gives us the most interesting markers to consider. In that year, Robert of Courson promulgated his statutes for Paris, the first regulations to designate the studium a universitas,⁵⁸Baldwin, Paris, 1200, 211. and the Fourth Lateran Council explicitly sided with Lombard on a trinitarian debate, thereby securing the Sentences as the standard for theological education.⁵⁹See Rosemann, Peter Lombard, 119.

The Regulation of Academic Fees (1179–1215)

Medieval universities shaped the doctrine of simony not only in providing the academic arena for its formation, but also in supplying a particularly illuminating case study in the economy of religion. At the leading schools, different mechanisms of support yielded correspondingly different institutional forms. The school at Bologna was largely student-run because the masters drew their pay directly from the students.⁶⁰Cobban, The Medieval Universities, 65–66. The commune, the corporation of citizens that governed Bologna, eventually took over the burden by salarying the doctors out of civic funds.⁶¹Ibid., 66–67. The school at Paris, by contrast, evolved a magisterial governance because financial leverage centered around inception, that ceremony by which a newly licensed teacher was formally incorporated into the guild of masters.⁶²Rashdall, The Universities of Europe, 1.284–87; cf. Post, Alexander III, the Licentia Docendi, 266. These primary mechanisms, however, hardly exhausted the financial picture. Any medieval university drew on a variety of revenue streams.⁶³See Gieysztor, Management and Resources, 133–36 for a detailed overview.

Of particular note is the sale of teaching licenses. The licentia docendi demonstrated an academic proficiency that permitted one to instruct others in the schools. Though contemporaries did not label all forms of this as “simony,” some have termed it scholastic simony on account of the similarity to simony in ordinations.⁶⁴Post, Alexander III, the Licentia Docendi, passim. The similarity of rhetoric centered around Matthew 10:8 is also notable.⁶⁵E.g., Alexander III, Epistolae et privilegia, JL 12096 (PL 200:840B–C). Alexander III repeatedly prohibited the sale of teaching licenses, but did so most widely in the Third Lateran Council (1179), canon 18. Liber extra, 5.5, De magistris—two titles after 5.3, De simonia—would be dedicated to this topic. Alexander had first taken up the cause on March 16 of 1166 or 1167,⁶⁶Post, Alexander III, the Licentia Docendi, 258n15; cf. Alexander III, Epistolae et privilegia, JL 11329 (PL 200:440D). and the practice had been condemned almost three decades prior at canon 17 of the Council of Westminster (1138).

Alexander connected the problem with selling teaching licenses to a broader principle that knowledge itself should not be sold.⁶⁷E.g., Denifle and Chatelain, ed., Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, pars intro., no. 4; cf. Gregory IX, Liber extra, 5.5.3. In the aforementioned canon 18 of Third Lateran, Alexander also required that cathedral schools staff a beneficed master in order that he may provide free education to the clergy and the poor. This demand for free education was not a novel claim, but represented an existing sentiment that would soon develop as a common dictum: “Knowledge is a gift of God, therefore it cannot be sold” (scientia donum dei est, unde vendi non potest).⁶⁸See Post et al., The Medieval Heritage for an extensive survey of the tradition. Even in the early twelfth century, Peter Abelard reflected on having resorted to living off his students’ voluntary gifts with a degree of embarrassment Abelard, Hist. calam., 26–27. By Alexander’s decree, schools such as the one at Paris—then the cathedral school of Notre-Dame—were, at least ostensibly, free of charge.⁶⁹Cobban, The Medieval Universities, 81; Verger, Teachers, 151.

Alexander’s mandate, however well-funded in other regions, came up against the limits of available resources in Paris. Alexander’s hand was forced to make special exceptions for the Chancellor of Notre-Dame in 1174, and the problem was so persistent that Innocent III was still fighting the issue in 1212 and 1213.⁷⁰Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 1.122–23; cf. Baldwin, Paris, 1200, 183. Accordingly, the Parisian scholars took up the question, weighing not only which academic fees were morally unbecoming but, more pointedly, which crossed the line into simony. The most pronounced deliberations issued from Peter the Chanter and his circle, culminating primarily in Robert of Courson.⁷¹See Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 1.124; cf. Baldwin, Paris, 1200, 184. This is significant, for as we have already seen, Robert would go on to serve as the papal legate who gave the University of Paris its first statutes in 1215.{empty} While not all of his conclusions made their way into those rules of operation, it is reasonable to suspect that they would have been especially respected on this account.⁷²See Kennedy, Robert Courson on Penance, 292.

The Parisians conceded that knowledge itself could not be sold, but contended that the labor of teaching could be. This was further qualified, however, by the subject matter. While the labor of teaching the liberal arts could be sold lawfully, the labor of teaching theology could not, since theology is divine truth, and to sell such a spiritual thing is simony. The same restriction extended to moral philosophy, which they likewise classed as divine truth. In these cases, one who had no income was permitted to receive voluntary donations from his students, but any already beneficed by the church for the sake of instruction committed simony if he accepted any further donation from his students.⁷³See Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 1.124–27; cf. Baldwin, Paris, 1200, 184. Scholars at Bologna reached comparable conclusions for their own discipline of law,⁷⁴Post et al., The Medieval Heritage, 206, 206n32. though they showed little corresponding interest in theology.⁷⁵Ibid., 207. They maintained that law was itself a divine science, no less sacred than theology.⁷⁶Ibid., 209n43.

Canon 11 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) observed that Alexander’s decree had been but little observed and accordingly reiterated and extended it. Even with this renewed insistence, the provision of benefices for free instruction continued to fall short of enforcement well into the thirteenth century and beyond.⁷⁷Post, Masters' Salaries and Student-Fees, 196–98. The fate of the decree, however, need not detain us. This episode in history concerns us because it accounts for what would appear in writings on simony in the centuries that followed, echoes of the doctrinal conclusions forged in the premier theological institution at the turn of the thirteenth century.

The Secular-Mendicant Controversy (1253–1300)

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 a 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 friars—i.e., 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.⁷⁸For 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 abide by the vow of stability that characterized Benedict’s rule. Rather than keeping to themselves, working remotely in a monastery, the friars took to the cities both on account of their mission to preach and their need to beg.⁷⁹Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition, 7–8. The friars sourced 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 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.”⁸⁰Rashdall, The Universities of Europe, 3.407.

The friars quickly made their way into the universities. On August 15, 1217, Dominic dispatched seven of his followers to Paris to establish a priory devoted to study and preaching. The Franciscans followed, more gradually, in the years thereafter.⁸¹Lawrence, 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 wealthy families grew reluctant to send their sons to the schools at all, lest they be lost to the mendicant orders.⁸²Ibid., 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.⁸³See 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, etc., they often even had their own churches that competed with the parish churches. Their advance in the university was so great that by 1254, the secular masters at Paris would hold only three of the fifteen chairs in the faculty of theology.⁸⁴Cobban, 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, they held that immersion in the secular arts was incompatible with their religious calling, and so they trained within their order, circumventing the arts faculty.⁸⁵Lawrence, 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.⁸⁶Janin, The University in Medieval Life, 82. In 1252 the secular masters at Paris attempted a statute capping the number of mendicant chairs,⁸⁷Lawrence, The Friars, 154. but matters particularly 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.⁸⁸Ibid., 154; Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition, 11, 14; Cobban, The Medieval Universities, 92. The dispute was carried to Rome in 1254, where Innocent IV revoked nearly all of the distinct privileges enjoyed by the mendicants. However, he died sixteen days later, and his successor Alexander IV reversed this judgment in April 1255.⁸⁹Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition, 15–16. The Parisian conflict was reproduced, on a smaller scale, at Oxford and Cambridge.⁹⁰Cobban, The Medieval Universities, 93.

The antifraternal movement swiftly took on an apocalyptic framing. This partly had to do with the contemporary anticipation of the year 1260,⁹¹See Rev. 11:3; 12:6. 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.⁹²Szittya, 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,⁹³The precise count varies across editions; the numbering followed here is that of the 1632 Opera omnia. and the twentieth of those signs intersected his two primary contentions with the friars: their mendicancy and want of a proper office. He condemned begging from those to whom one preaches as simony; a pastor may receive from his flock with authority, but the friars have no such claim.⁹⁴{William of Saint-Amour}, De Periculis, cap. 14, sig. 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. 9:14).⁹⁵See, e.g., Bonaventure, Apologia pauperum contra calumniatorem, VII.39 (p. 285). Yet for William, it was not merely the performance of labor that makes a worker worthy; without formal standing none is 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 ample resistance. Thomas Aquinas responded that same year with Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem (“Against Those Who Attack the Worship of God and Religion”), dedicating the sixth chapter in the defense of the friars’ reception of alms. Alexander IV condemned De periculis in October, and because William posed an obstacle to the reconciliation of the warring parties at the university, Louis IX banished him from France on August 9 of the next year. 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.⁹⁶See Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition, 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, antifraternal polemic also worked its way into celebrated literature, such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Dante’s Divine Comedy.⁹⁷For 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.⁹⁸Foxe, 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.⁹⁹For a catalog of the various incidents, see Geltner, The Making of Medieval Antifraternalism, 48–50, 140–53. The institutional dispute itself reached a measured settlement in Boniface VIII’s Super cathedram (1300), which curtailed the friars’ privileges, conditioning them on the approval of local bishops.

But William’s cause outlived the legal compromise. Late in the next century, it found a particular 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.”¹⁰⁰Bale, 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.¹⁰¹Specifically, 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).¹⁰²Shirley, ed., Fasciculi Zizaniorum, 272–73, 283–85. He continued until his peaceful death on the eve of 1385, and his followers, the Lollards, carried on his campaign against the simony of the friars.

The Sale of Indulgences (1184–1517)

The origins of indulgences are obscure, and several theories have been proposed.¹⁰³For a representative if dated overview, see Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 3–9. What seems clearest is that they grew out of the bishop’s discretionary power to commute canonical penance, substituting whatever may be prescribed in confession with another pious work. The first plenary indulgence came at the Council of Clermont (1095), where Urban II decreed that service in the First Crusade would be reckoned “in lieu of all penance.”¹⁰⁴Mansi, ed., Council of Clermont (1095), can. 2 (Mansi 20:816E). If one form of service could substitute for another, a gift of money was no great leap—particularly since funding the crusade became a much desired form of service. In 1184, that substitution took a concrete form. Henry II of England and Philip Augustus of France jointly assessed a graduated tax for the relief of the Holy Land,¹⁰⁵Rates ranged between one part in two hundred forty and one part in one hundred, varying by the kind and amount of one’s wealth and paid over three years, Mitchell, Taxation in Medieval England, 118. and the bishops of Normandy attached an indulgence to those who paid.¹⁰⁶For the text of the ordinance, see Lunt, The Text of the Ordinance, 240–42. For a general overview, see Cazel, The Tax of 1185.

At the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) the practice was both centralized and formalized. Canons 60 and 62 reserved the granting of indulgences to papal authority, while canon 71 gave money payments a settled place in the system, offering plenaries to those who would “congruously” contribute to the assistance of the Holy Land. By the middle of the thirteenth century, indulgences had become virtually exclusively financial.¹⁰⁷Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 61, 179 makes this judgment by examining the financial assumptions of the scholastic theologians in their discourses on indulgences. In 1300, Boniface VIII instituted the Jubilee to be celebrated every hundred years, offering a plenary indulgence to pilgrims at Rome. The windfall was so great that successive popes repeatedly shortened the interval and, from 1390, dispatched commissioners to sell the jubilee indulgence at home for the price of the foregone pilgrimage, exploding the sale of indulgences across Europe.

Several theological developments reinforced the growth of this practice. At this time, the notion of purgatory had transitioned from a purification that takes place in this life to a distinct location in the next,¹⁰⁸For one commonly referenced accounting, see Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, 168, 173, 237, who dates the transition to between 1170 and 1220. sharpening demand for such a remission. Additionally, papal grants began omitting the condition of contrition,¹⁰⁹For example, in 1253, Innocent IV offered plenary indulgences to those who contributed to the seventh crusade without expressing any condition of contrition or confession, Innocent IV, Planxit hactenus. Boniface VIII’s jubilee bull of 1300 was promulgated in the same fashion, Friedberg, ed., Extravag. comm., 5.9.1. implicitly reducing the transaction to a simple sale.¹¹⁰See Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 62–63. In 1343, Clement VI gave definitive papal sanction to the doctrine of the treasury of merit (thesaurus meritorum), giving legitimacy to the effectively limitless supply of indulgences.¹¹¹Clement VI, Unigenitus Dei filius, Friedberg, ed., Corpus Iuris Canonici, 2:1304–6. Finally, in 1476, Sixtus IV extended indulgences to the dead for the first time, transforming such purchases into a matter of filial duty.¹¹²Sixtus IV, Salvator noster, (fol. 3v); cf. Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 345–46.

The schoolmen generally defended this practice. While they employed a number of explanations for the validity of this practice and absolved it from charges of simony,¹¹³See ibid., 96–97 for an overview of arguments. He remarks that the potential classification of indulgences as a species of simony “was a point which naturally troubled the pre-Reformation doctors not a little.” Ibid., 97. these typically boiled down to distinguishing the sense in which the money given by a parishioner was the cause of the granting of the indulgence. The indulgence was not given in exchange for such money as a gift, but on account of it “as a fruit […] proceeding from the root of a good will.”¹¹⁴Pelbartus Ladislaus of Temesvár, Aureum Sacrae Theologiae Rosarium, IV, s.v. Indulgentia, 5. In other words, the money counted not as payment, but alms. Of course, these justifications did not impress all of that time. For example, Wycliffe and Jan Hus frequently identified the sale of indulgences as simony.¹¹⁵E.g., Wycliffe, Tractatus de Simonia, cap. 2 (15:24–26); Hus, O svatokupectví, 4.G.

The sale of indulgences reached its height when it was employed to fund the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Julius II issued the bull Liquet omnibus in 1510, which Leo X inherited, ultimately granting its most notable commission: that of Albert of Mainz in North Germany. A 20,000 gulden fee had been imposed for the pallium of Mainz, and Albert secured his unanimous election to the archbishopric in 1514 by promising to pay the fee himself, which he did through borrowing from the Fuggers, the Augsburg banking house. They, in turn, had arranged with the pope to receive half the proceeds of the St. Peter’s indulgence in Albert’s territories. The bargain was concluded in 1515 and executed in 1517, when Albert engaged the Dominican John Tetzel as his commissioner. Tetzel operated with a notoriously bald mercantilism, his campaign later being summarized in the following rhyme: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings / The soul from purgatory springs.”¹¹⁶Bainton, Here I Stand, 78; cf. Luther, Ninety-Five Theses, th. 27 (WA 1, 234). In short order, this preaching would provoke the Protestant Reformation.¹¹⁷For an overview of these events, especially as they relate to the details of indulgences, see Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 387–90.

The Reformers

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, sent his letter of remonstrance to Albert of Mainz, and on the same day, he posted his ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg. While we lack the space to rehearse the oft-repeated details of this momentous event and those that would follow, it suffices to say that Luther’s challenge succeeded. The St. Peter’s campaign collapsed in Germany, and the movement it occasioned would in time sever much of Northern Europe from Roman jurisdiction. The charge of simony left a lasting mark on Protestant confessional writing as well. For example, the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) condemned the pope’s “simony and his simoniacal indulgences” among the marks of his usurped authority.¹¹⁸Bullinger, Second Helvetic Confession, 14. Even in the wake of the Reformation, Rome herself conceded that its practice had grown simoniacal. Pius V wrote in 1570 that the indulgence trade, among its other scandals, “reeks of the wickedness of simony.”¹¹⁹Pius V, Quam plenum, § 1 (p. 801).

Many regard the Reformation as a battle over the nature of the gospel and rightly so. Yet two details tether our present topic to the Reformation as more than an incidental thread of its narrative. The first is that—as we have seen—simony itself prompted the Reformation. Even ignorant of the three-way financial arrangement orchestrated by Albert and the Fuggers,¹²⁰Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 392. Luther objected particularly to the sale of spiritual things, later identifying the sale of indulgences as “simony proper” (simonia propria) in comparison to other forms nominally labeled as simony by canon law.¹²¹Luther, Vorlesungen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 281:37–42); cf. ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 424:5–6). The second is that the matter of simony cannot be cleanly separated from the matter of the gospel. For Luther, simony was not merely an error but a denial of the gospel. Moreover, it was no isolated denial of the gospel but the very root of all false religion. He spelled this out most clearly in his lectures on Genesis:

It is to be seen, however, how miserable and dangerous a thing it is to have fallen away from the chief doctrine of the justification that is of faith apart from works. For once it is obscured and extinguished, the whole world becomes simoniacal. Thus even the Turks strive to appease God with their own works and to buy spiritual things for money and for merits. Therefore, the simony described in canon law is merely nominal, for they neither redeem nor obtain anything by price and merits. But that zeal and will has driven roots into the depth of the human heart by which every man is naturally a simoniac, by which he would wish God to be one who would be appeased by human works and merits, to whom he could object: “I have done many things; I have fasted much; may you look upon these things and sell me salvation and eternal life.” But God neither acknowledges nor hears such workers of iniquity. And he proposes his will in the apostolic doctrine: “By grace and freely [gratia et gratis] you are justified, without any work” [Eph. 2:8–9]. With that grace removed, there is no longer any distinction between the Turk and the Pope, Heathens and Jews; all are simoniacs and nightjars [buck-milkers].¹²²Ibid., 25:31–34 (WA 43, 423:32–424:4). See also, Luther, Operationes in Psalmos, 13 (WA 5, 397:10–39). The pejorative at the end comes from the legend that nightjars—a kind of nocturnal bird—suck milk from the udders of goats, causing the goats to go blind and die (see {Pliny the Elder}, Naturalis Historia, 10.56). While their Latin name (caprimulgi) literally means “goat-milkers,” Luther repeats it with his own German translation (Bockmelker) in order to provide the gendered “buck-milkers.” In other words, the simoniac is quixotically parasitic.

Beyond his dedicated treatments in his lectures on Genesis,¹²³Luther, Vorlesungen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4; 25:31–34 (WA 43, 277:31–283:28; 419:30–430:18). Luther made passing comments about simony frequently throughout his works.

Ironically, however, writings on simony dwindled after the Reformation. The overwhelming victory over the outward, financial practices of simony entailed the decline of its associated doctrine. Theological inquiry rarely survives the abuses that summon it.

The English Divines

All the same, the waning of interest in the doctrine of simony was gradual. Luther’s conclusions carried over into the English Reformation. The sale of indulgences was still regarded as simony,¹²⁴For example, William Guild devoted an entire chapter to papal “spiritual merchandise or simony,” cataloguing the sale of indulgences among the offenses, Guild, Antichrist, 144. and the identification of works-righteousness as a form of simony did not immediately end but was repeated frequently through the subsequent century.¹²⁵E.g., Harsnett, A Cordiall for the Afflicted, 448. Works-righteousness is “the worst simony in the world,” Joseph Caryl wrote, “Better offer literal money for those gifts of the Holy Ghost, than this figurative money for the favor of God in the pardon of sin.” Caryl, Exposition of Job, 7:20 (2, pp. 666–67).

This relation between simony and the gospel was also stated conversely. As many have playfully remarked that we are saved by works—Christ’s works—John Donne preached the same in the language of simony. Christ in our nature “merited the Holy Ghost, purchased the Holy Ghost, bought the Holy Ghost, which is a sanctified simony.”¹²⁶Donne, LXXX Sermons, serm. 28 (p. 280). Elsewhere, meditating on the establishment of the Church, Donne employed the same conceit: Christ “desired a Church, and he purchased a Church; but by a blessed way of simony.”¹²⁷Ibid., serm. 37 (p. 369). Others used the term with reference to ministers who preached at their own expense. Francis Rous wrote of Paul that “he feeds his sheep sometimes at his own costs, and with an holy simony buys the work of his own ministry.”¹²⁸Rous, The Heavenly Academy, 80–81. Thomas Cooke, defending the endowments of bishops, commended the ancient founders who gave their substance to the church, “with a holy kind of simony, to purchase for them the gifts of the Holy Ghost.”¹²⁹Cooke, Episcopacy Asserted, 24.

The sale of spiritual things remained a live concern in England for some time. The fortieth canon of the Church of England (1604) required an oath against simony from every candidate for ecclesiastical office, declaring the buying and selling of spiritual functions “execrable before God.”¹³⁰{Church of England}, Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiasticall, can. 40. But the considerations of simony among the English divines rarely approached the depth of the schoolmen. These writers were the heirs of a largely settled inheritance. The ecclesiastical controversies of their own day typically required legal application more than theological refinement.

Simony also entered English discourse from a different and less orthodox direction. Quakers, Anabaptists, and other radical dissenters were willing to apply the label of simony to any form of regular ministerial stipends. When the more established figures addressed simony, they frequently did so in the course of refuting such radical derision—named or unnamed—rather than by way of a positive presentation.¹³¹E.g., Brown, Quakerisme, 407–8.

The issues themselves evolved substantially over time. With Rome removed, indulgences were no longer a concern, and the old preoccupation with commerce in ordinations gave way to disputes over the buying and selling of rights of patronage.¹³²See Willis, Simony: In Two Parts, 21–24. Later centuries would see the advent of different financial controversies in the church. But by then, the vocabulary of “simony” and its theological categories had largely fallen out of use, even when the underlying concerns remained the same. For example, in the Church of Scotland in the early nineteenth century, James Begg wrote a dedicated treatise against pew rents, imposed fees whereby congregants secured their seats in worship.¹³³Begg, Seat Rents. Though he constructed similar arguments to those who had addressed simony before and appealed to many of the same verses, he completed his work without once employing the term.

Conclusion

The arc is one of rise and fall. The church fathers affirmed the principle that grace must be given freely; the medievals gave that principle its fullest theological and legal elaboration. But after the Reformation, at least among Protestants, the doctrine received progressively less systematic attention. The Reformers wielded it as a weapon against Rome, the English divines applied it to the controversies of their own parishes, and as the most egregious abuses were corrected, the urgency faded. By the time the early modern period came to a close, simony had ceased to be a subject of detailed theological reflection.

Yet the doctrine of simony addresses more than the gross corruptions that occasioned it; the commercialization of spiritual things and the corruption of ministry by money did not disappear with the Reformation but only changed shape—sometimes subtler, sometimes not. The chapters that follow attempt to recover what has been lost, drawing on all four streams.