The Need for Retrieval

One might suppose that if the church has managed without a particular doctrine for centuries, perhaps it was never essential to begin with, but this line of reasoning confuses neglect with obsolescence. The doctrine of simony is a case in point. From the time of Gregory the Great through the scholastic era, it was one of the most discussed sins of the Christian tradition. It occupied entire sections of the great legal compilations and was treated at length by most major scholastic theologians. For over a millennium, the doctrine of simony was a standard feature of Christian moral theology.

The Reformers inherited the doctrine and applied it vigorously against Roman corruption. The Second Helvetic Confession condemns the pope’s “simony and his simoniacal indulgences,” employing Peter’s malediction, “Thy money perish with thee.”¹Bullinger, Second Helvetic Confession, 14. The Church Order of Dort names it among the principal offenses warranting suspension or deposition from office.²{Synod of Dort}, Church Order, art. 80. The Westminster Larger Catechism lists simony among the sins forbidden by the second commandment.³{Westminster Assembly}, The Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 109. The doctrine of simony was, in short, important enough to be codified into the confessional standards of the Reformed tradition.

Today it has passed out of memory. It receives the occasional historical or sociological treatment but little doctrinal consideration. It is studied as one might study the dodo—with academic curiosity about how it lived, but no practical expectation of encounter. John T. Noonan, Ninth Circuit judge and legal historian, observed that “neither bribery nor its subspecies simony have today the consistency, the stability, the exigency of a true moral concept.”⁴Noonan, Bribes, 690. This is not because all the problems have been resolved. It is because the framework for discerning them has lapsed. Now is the time to retrieve the doctrine of simony.

Yet several questions naturally arise before such an undertaking. What confidence can we have in our sources? How do we approach a retrieval of such breadth? And what does the doctrine, once retrieved, have to offer the present age?

The Value of Retrieval

Some object that works of retrieval prioritize the words of men over the word of God by exalting historical theology over systematic theology, doctrine drawn from Scripture itself. Yet such concerns are typically misguided. To listen to the words of men is not to prioritize them, and the two disciplines cannot be neatly ranked since each feeds into and refines the other.

Two works from which we will draw serve as examples for us: Henry Burton’s A Censure of Simonie (1624)⁵Burton, A Censure of Simonie. and The Anatomy of Simon Magus (1700), an anonymous treatise.⁶The Anatomy of Simon Magus. Respectively authored by a Puritan and a conformist, the former is an attempt at direct application of the doctrine of simony from ancient sources, while the latter—written at a later time when the doctrine had fallen into further decline—goes about it by way of a more thorough reconstruction. Both are exercises in retrieval in their own right and demonstrate a willingness to dig deeply into neglected patristic and medieval sources to make application in their own time.

Embracing Wisdom

Many suppose that the words of men necessarily corrupt what would otherwise be a pure reception of Scripture. We are no tabula rasa; we come to Scripture already shaped by traditions and assumptions, whether we recognize them or not. God has intended that we be people who are shaped not only by the word directly, but also by elders—both in office and age—those who have blazed the trail a little further and are able to share what they have seen (Heb. 13:7). For example, who would advise that those who have not read the Bible for themselves should absent themselves from the preaching of the word? The Bereans are rightly praised for testing what they heard against Scripture, but they heard Paul first, then searched the Scriptures to verify (Acts 17:11).

Scripture itself commends the practice of looking backward. Moses instructs Israel: “Remember the days of old; consider the generations past. Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will inform you” (Deut. 32:7). Bildad repeats the charge: “Please inquire of past generations and consider the discoveries of their fathers. For we were born yesterday and know nothing; our days on earth are but a shadow. Will they not teach you and tell you, and speak from their understanding?” (Job 8:8–10).

John Owen captured this conviction in an ordination sermon when he offered the following exhortation: “Let us take heed in ourselves of any inclination to novel opinions, especially in, or about, or against such points of faith as those wherein they who are gone before us and are fallen asleep found life, comfort, and power.”⁷Owen, The Duty of a Pastor, 459. From there, he proceeded to explain that its particular danger is not merely error but “indifferency,”⁸“Who would have thought that we should have come to an indifferency as to the doctrine of justification, and quarrel and dispute about the interest of works in justification; about general redemption, which takes off the efficacy of the redeeming work of Christ; and about the perseverance of the saints; when these were the soul and life of them who are gone before us, who found the power and comfort of them? We shall not maintain these truths, unless we find the same comfort in them as they did.” Ibid., 459–60. a loss of zeal and watchfulness. Indeed, when we encounter questions to which we do not know the answer, our first instinct should be to ask whether those who came before us have already answered them. But perhaps more importantly, when we find saints of old addressing questions we have not thought to ask, we should consider why they thought them worth asking rather than immediately dismissing them as dated concerns.

Burton and the Anatomist exemplified this disposition. The Anatomist diagnosed the loss of the doctrine itself as a symptom of cooled affection: “when that primitive fervor began to decay, and the spirit of the world to take hold of the lukewarm clergy, then began Simon Magus again to set up the head.”⁹The Anatomy of Simon Magus, 7. Burton made the same diagnosis: too many “have chosen the place of the ministry, but not the zeal.”¹⁰Burton, A Censure of Simonie, 76, quoting Bernard of Clairvaux; cf. ibid., 79. Decay in doctrine is mutually linked to a decay in disposition; to recover the one is to recover the other.

Rejecting Error

A book that draws so heavily on medieval sources will naturally raise questions for Protestant readers. If the doctrine of simony was developed primarily by theologians operating within the Roman system that Protestants reject, what confidence can we have in their conclusions? The concern is understandable but overstated. An examination of the proto-Reformers demonstrates that their theology on the topic was nearly identical; their main difference was that they were willing to apply it to the Roman institution. Likewise, we will see that inasmuch as the Puritans address the topic, they echo scholastic distinctions.

The Reformers themselves did not regard medieval theology as uniformly corrupt. Likening it to Christ’s acceptance of Jewish theology in the midst of Pharisaical corruption, Luther conceded, “under the papacy there is much that is Christian and good—indeed, that all Christian good exists there and has come down to us from there.”¹¹Luther, Von der Wiedertaufe, (WA 26, 147:13–15). Calvin rejected accusations of novelty, claiming that Reformed doctrine is ancient, belonging to Christians by a “right of recovery” (postliminii iure).¹²Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis, *Praefatio*. Turretin defended the same principle when he distinguished “the substance of the faith from the corrupting accidents.”¹³Turretin, Institutio, 18.10.10. William Perkins popularized the notion of being a Reformed Catholic, one who “holds the same necessary heads of religion with the Roman Church, yet so, as he pares off and rejects all errors in doctrine.”¹⁴Perkins, A Reformed Catholike, ¶3v.

The purpose of retrieval is not to accept every ancient conclusion uncritically or to permit the cultural pressures of their own time to set our agenda today. Some points of general consensus among ancient writers are in error; the defenses of indulgences as anything other than simony are a conspicuous example. But even where the answers fail, the lines of inquiry remain valuable. Those who have gone before identified problems, drew distinctions, and worked out implications that we have simply ceased to consider. We should be more concerned that we might remain ignorant of the questions they were asking than that we might be misled by their answers.

It is also important to distinguish what we are retrieving from medieval sources. We are not after the premises of their deliberations, their assumptions about the nature of sacraments and orders, etc. We are interested in the application of their doctrine of simony to those premises. For example, that they restricted the sale of consecrated vessels is informative to us not because we should conclude that plates and cups can be made holy but because granting that premise for the sake of argument reveals principles about commerce in things that truly are.

Our chosen exemplars embodied this discriminating posture. Burton determined to give his definition from “the testimony of the whole Church from the primitive age thereof till this present.”¹⁵Burton, A Censure of Simonie, 2. The Anatomist similarly sought to demonstrate the heinousness of the crime of simony “by the judgment of the Catholic Church, and joint suffrages of many fathers together.”¹⁶The Anatomy of Simon Magus, 114. Neither author approached these sources uncritically, but they repeatedly appealed to canonists, schoolmen, and papal pronouncements. Burton explained this disposition: “the Church of Rome itself (though now the mother and nurse of abominations) hath cried out against this sin. For we must put a great difference between the now Church of Rome and that which it hath been formerly, and that even within these three or four hundred years.”¹⁷Burton, A Censure of Simonie, 48. The pre-Reformation tradition is a heritage to be sifted, not quarantined.

This same principle holds further afield. Medievalists and other historians have produced valuable work on simony as a matter of historical curiosity, or even with Romish sympathies, yet their labors prove serviceable to ends they did not envision. As Solomon observed, God has given the sinner the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases him (Eccles. 2:26). Egypt lies open to plunder.¹⁸See Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, 2.40.60. Augustine’s accounting for the use of pagan philosophy applies at least equally to secular history.

Our Approach

Many historical works pursue curiosity without a definite end. They fall short of being exhaustive yet are beyond exhausting. A work of retrieval requires more discipline. To that end, we must decide where to focus our attention and acknowledge the constraints on our scope, whether self-imposed or imposed by circumstance.

Areas of Emphasis

The topic of simony is vast, branching into a great number of subtopics, each with its own tangle of distinctions and disputed cases. To treat each of these with equal care would either swell the work into monstrous volumes or, kept to a readable length, neglect the concerns that matter most. Therefore, we cannot let the historical literature itself dictate where the weight of our study falls. The subjects that drew the most ink are not necessarily the ones that most require our present attention. Our aim is to be comprehensive in scope but not proportional in attention. Several priorities will govern what we draw out and what we leave behind.

First, our priorities will be informed by Reformed and Protestant convictions. While engaging the medieval sources critically, we will take our cue from the Reformers and proto-Reformers when they differ from others on substantial matters. We will not waste time entertaining positions that run counter to our own tradition, such as the legitimacy of indulgences or mendicancy. Those who object to retrievalist programs on the grounds that they take their marching orders from thinkers laboring within a corrupted system will find no reason to object here.

Second, our priorities will be informed by present circumstances within the Reformed tradition. Luther voiced frustration that the question of the legitimacy of a simoniac’s ordinations had amassed “wagonloads—indeed, seas of books,” while weightier simoniacal abuses drew no comparable scrutiny.¹⁹Luther, Vorlesungen über 1. Mose, 23:3–4 (WA 43, 280:22–24). The same instinct must guide us. Some simoniacal practices of the past have no living counterpart in the Reformed tradition: the indulgence trade, the sale of the pallium, or the purchase of masses for the dead. Others appear extinct yet persist by modern analogy; payments for entry into religious societies and monastic approaches to sustenance relate to the associations and parachurches of our day. Others persist in near-identical form, even growing in weight, especially that which relates directly to payments for instruction in the word of God. Our aim, then, is to render the doctrine of simony in the shape best suited to present use, not to reproduce its premodern contours.

Sources

Many efforts in theological retrieval focus on a single historical theologian—recovering the thought of a single thinker on a single topic. The task before us is different. The doctrine of simony has received so little attention that we do not have the luxury of drilling down into any one author; we must first establish a baseline by drawing on many voices. To proceed with such a broad scope carries the danger of selective bias, but it has the corresponding advantage of seeing past any misleading, idiosyncratic perspectives. Where a broad consensus emerges across diverse sources, we can have greater confidence in our conclusions. Yet, as with areas of emphasis, the quantity of sources requires a prioritization.

First, we will take a particular interest in the church fathers. As the closest witnesses to the apostolic age and a shared inheritance frequently drawn upon by the Reformers themselves, they carry distinctive weight. The vocabulary of simony came into common use after their time, but to require explicit use of the term would be to silence the very sources from which the doctrine was later distilled. We will therefore apply a lower bar for inclusion to patristic sources than to those who came afterward, expecting from later writers more explicit engagement with the doctrine.

Second, among the medieval sources, we will prioritize the schoolmen over the canonists. While the distinction has been described as arbitrary,²⁰So Gilchrist, `Simoniaca haeresis', 210. the canonists were chiefly concerned with what could be adjudicated. As is evident in some of the consternations expressed by the schoolmen, people often care only about what may be penalized for in human courts, ignoring the divine.²¹E.g., Aquinas, Scriptum super Libros Sententiarum, IV, d. 25, q. 3, a. 3, ad 1; {Alexander of Hales}, Summa Halensis, III, P. 2, Inq. 3, T. 2, S. 1, Q. 2, T. 7, C. 5, A. 4, n. 1 (p. 569). Since this is a work of theological retrieval and not of historical sociology, our ultimate concern is with what constitutes simony before God rather than established church order. We will bring in the canonists where their conclusions are frequently taken up by the theologians, but the theological tradition, not the legal, will govern our discourse.

Third, we will prioritize proto-Reformers over other medieval sources. Though less dialectical in nature, Wycliffe and Hus produced some of the longest treatments of simony ever written, and we will engage them accordingly. Because much of Hus’s treatise is simply a direct translation of Wycliffe into Czech, we will be especially interested where he departed from his English predecessor. The identity of William of Saint-Amour as a proto-Reformer is debated, but we will prioritize his contributions on the topic as well.

Fourth, we will disproportionately feature Reformation and post-Reformation authors as we have opportunity. The reason for this is obvious: we should value our own tradition. That said, because they were not confronting the same institutional abuses that had prompted the medieval treatments, Puritans and other Protestant divines wrote comparatively little on simony. Where such voices can be found, we will foreground them.

This prioritization of our own tradition extends to the exclusion of Counter-Reformation sources. Not that they diverge from other sources we will be examining—on the contrary, the Council of Trent and the works of Leonardus Lessius, Francisco Suárez, and the like only further corroborate our findings. But our goal is to recover a doctrine from within our own theological stream. Post-Reformation authors occasionally appealed to Counter-Reformation sources on the topic, but these instances are limited and most often function as syncrisis, suggesting the rhetorical question “if even Rome understands these things, why don’t we?”

Within this Protestant emphasis, we will give particular attention to English sources. In both language and digital availability, these are the most accessible resources to us today. But more importantly, the English-speaking Reformed tradition is the immediate lineage to which we are most directly accountable.

Limitations

Even with these priorities in place, an account of the sources requires acknowledging several limitations. The body of writing on simony has reached us unevenly, shaped by both the vicissitudes of history and the realities of our own time.

Genre shaped how much was written on simony and how it has reached us. The confessors’ manuals (summae confessorum) and kindred penitential handbooks gathered the doctrine into compact treatments. Medieval theology was conducted largely through commentary, which accounts both for the wealth of writing on simony in some forms and its scarcity in others. That is, many of these writings are preserved in commentaries on standard texts: the Decretum, the Liber extra, and the Sentences. The doctrine therefore comes down to us not as it might have been organized in a freestanding treatise but as it was distributed across the questions those compilations happened to raise. When the loci communes model later supplanted the Sentences tradition, simony had no place among the standard heads of doctrine. The shape of our evidence is thus partly an accident of pedagogical convention.

Furthermore, not everyone who championed the doctrine of simony did so in a capacity that has survived well in print. Reputations of zealous reformers reach us through chroniclers and biographers even when their own words do not. Those whose writings survive are not necessarily those who were most eager to address institutional corruption.

Even where the works survive, accessibility varies. Some works have not been scanned or reprinted. Some manuscripts have been scanned and published, but never transcribed out of medieval shorthand or put into print. This is the case for many of the writings of the early masters of Paris. While we will consult these in some measure, we will lean on secondary source reports of their contents for fuller use. More is available each year, but several important witnesses still survive primarily in manuscript.

Similarly, copyright restricts access to materials that would otherwise be prime for retrieval. Much of the Lollard corpus, for example, has been well edited in modern critical editions but remains too recently published to be freely available in a digital form that would permit broad consultation. We will draw upon Wycliffe and Hus, whose major works were published in their surviving editions many years ago, but the broader proto-Reformer tradition of vernacular preaching and polemics against simony will likely prove a fruitful area of research at a later time.

Taking note of these constraints appropriately tempers whatever the emerging patterns seem to suggest. The absence of treatment on a given question may say more about the medium of transmission than its historical relevance. We will draw our conclusions from what is available, while remembering that much remains in the archives.

Application for Today

Many who read Acts 8 suppose that Simon’s sin is one few others—if any others at all—will ever commit. Both Burton²²“For in the opinion of many, simony hath lost its being, in rerum natura, as being long ago antiquated, and out of date, dead and buried with Simon himself. And if (as Chrysostom saith) the gift of giving the Holy Ghost was peculiar to the apostles, so that not even Philip baptizing gave the Holy Ghost withal; for this gift was proper only to the twelve: and if simony be surnamed of Simon the sire, and Simon’s sin was about the buying of the Holy Ghost: then that gift ceasing, and Simon being deceased, where is there left so much as the name of simony, to lend a title to our intended treatise?” Burton, A Censure of Simonie, 1. and the Anatomist²³“Many who have read these words [of Acts 8], think it an easy matter to wipe off the guilt of simony from themselves, supposing that there is no simony, but the offering to buy the extraordinary gift of the Holy Ghost, which they deem to have been the peculiar fact of Simon Magus, which none, or few else, can ever stumble upon. But how superficially they pass over the text, and that they either do not, or are not willing to understand the same, may easily appear to any who looks more narrowly into, and more seriously considereth the matter contained therein.” The Anatomy of Simon Magus, 11–12. begin their works with the observation that those nominally aware of the historic doctrine frequently regard themselves as free of such dangers. This may be especially true in our own times, when the corruption that exists takes subtler forms than in former days. Many evangelicals consider themselves protected from temptation to the sin since they operate in an environment relatively clear of institutional bribery. However, the corruption known as “simony” reaches further than these shallow notions, and where sin is poorly understood, it will be poorly avoided. As the Anglican divine Jeremy Taylor observed, “Most men choose the sin, if it be once disputable whether it be a sin or no.”²⁴Taylor, The Flesh and the Spirit, fol. 136.

Therefore, our study will frontload definition and exploration before attempting to address any modern concern directly. The ultimate goal is to develop practical applications for our own time, but considerable exposure to the doctrine must come first in order to establish the expertise by which any diagnosis can be made. This is, of course, the ordinary way of retrieval studies—to understand a historical doctrine in its own right before bringing it to bear on the present—but it is notable that the same need was felt by those who handled the doctrine in past generations. Burton observed it with an analogy to civil law:²⁵“The Germans have very good laws to punish drunkenness, but they find it very hard to define what drunkenness is. So in England, we have good laws to punish adultery, but we find a great difficulty in convincing any of committing the act of adultery. So it may be said of simony. First therefore let us see what simony is.” Burton, A Censure of Simonie, 1. charges do little to convict apart from terms of the offense. Likewise with divine law, clarity of conscience requires clarity of definition.

Subsequently making contemporary application will necessarily entail following the implications of this doctrine beyond their traditional limits, reaching logical conclusions that have not been previously articulated. This is the task of a truly reformational theology. Wycliffe and Hus were among the first to turn the doctrine of simony against the sale of indulgences. Luther spoke of “true simony” to express dissatisfaction with the limited conception of Rome and apply the doctrine to its whole system of works righteousness.²⁶Luther, Vorlesungen über 1. Mose, 25:31–34 (WA 43, 419:30–430:18). Burton produced a catalog of commonplace ecclesiastical arrangements, labeling them simoniacal though they were not then admitted as such.²⁷Burton, A Censure of Simonie. As each of these expanded the doctrine’s reach in his own day, we intend to do the same in ours.

Such endeavors have a tendency to stir up more than a little resistance. Peter Damian reported that when the eleventh-century monk Romuald introduced this doctrine to those who had been ordained for money, they plotted to kill him because up until that time, no one knew it was a sin.²⁸Peter Damian, Vita Beati Romualdi, cap. 35 (PL 144:986C–D). In 1494, a Carmelite friar was found murdered in his bed with twenty wounds after preaching against simony.²⁹The friar was Adam of Genoa, who had preached at Rome against the simony of Alexander VI. Malipiero, Annali veneti, 318; cf. Burckhardt, Civilisation of the Renaissance, 155. Jan Hus was burned at the stake on a number of charges, but in his own assessment as well as popular opinion, it was primarily for his preaching against accepted practices that he identified as simony.³⁰“Enemies abound everywhere, both Czech and German, seeking my life: […] For it affects both the pope and the cardinals when one preaches against pride, against avarice, and especially against simony.” Hus, Postilla, 114.G; cf. Spinka, John Hus and the Czech Reform, 38–40n62. See also, Spinka, John Hus: A Biography, 87. Before it dissolved, Maurice of Prague warned the Council of Constance that “the common opinion of the people, although false and heretical, cries out that Jan Hus was sentenced by the council as though it had judged him as severely as the Savior judged the simoniacs, against whom he, though condemned, had preached most vehemently.” Maurice of Prague, Consilium de Ecclesiastico Statu, 870. It may seem melodramatic to recount these events as though we do not live in a time of bountiful brotherhood and exceptional liberty, but the point stands: it would be naïve to suppose that a modern application of the doctrine of simony would be met with universal gratitude. But faithful theology has never been measured by its reception. Truth remains truth whether it is welcomed or resented. Magna est veritas et praevalet—truth is great and prevails.

Conclusion

If the foregoing has dwelt on what has been lost, let us close by considering what stands to be gained. The goal here is not to add one more sin to the list to avoid. The law, in its third use, is given to guide the redeemed in grateful obedience. To retrieve a neglected doctrine is to recover a rule of life.³¹{Westminster Assembly}, The Westminster Confession of Faith, 19.6; {Particular Baptist Assembly}, Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, 19.6. A recovered doctrine of simony supplies a framework for thinking clearly about the relationship between money and ministry, commerce and the things of God. Where these distinctions have been lost, confusion reigns; but where they are restored, we are taught and equipped to glorify God in the things he has freely given.