Church treasure for the kingdom’s need; the seventh argument: lordship held by a community

also the chalices and the precious things of tombs and the ornaments of the churchecclesia: church: as for instance if the kingdomregnum: kingdom is not able, from elsewhere or more opportunely, to redeem captives who have 377lawfully served as soldiers in the defence of the kingdom, and are necessary for its renewed defence.¹ Second, if the kingdom has not, from elsewhere or more fittingly, the means for its necessary defence with which to minister wages to those serving as soldiers for the defence of the kingdom. And third, if the common people have been reduced to excessive poverty by taxes necessary for the government of the kingdom. The reason of blessed Ambrose stands in this: it is better that the kingdom be defended religiously with its own [goods] than that, in punishment of its sin, it be plundered by a sacrilegious foreign people of the things which it kept back uselessly and avariciously.² For so Nabugodonosor, by reason of the sin of the priests, had the temple in Jerusalem despoiled (as is clear from Kings 20 and Daniel 5); but why, through pride, by which we fear more that enemies should know our need than to offend God by our arrogance, and why, through sophistical evidencesevidencia: evidence and the side which the clergyclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric takes with the powerful, have the poor been lamentably plundered?³ And this is believed to be one reason why the treasure of the church and of the clergy of France was carried by our men into England; but "Happy is he whom others’ dangers make wary."⁴

And it is clear that the said college ought to give the said poor knight almselemosina: alms from the goods of the poor given for this, but not in order to acquire secular lordshipdominium: lordship hereditarily; because so the clergy could acquire all the kingdoms of the world, since (as they say) they can acquire without limit, but alienate or lose nothing; and so it would seem that such an acquisition of all the kingdoms of the world would be an abominable monster of Antichrist, of which Daniel 9:27: "There shall be in the temple the abomination of desolation"; to which saying Christ alludes, Matthew 24:15: "When," he says, "you shall see the abomination of desolation, which 378was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place", as it is said in Mark 13:14, "standing where it ought not": "he that readeth," he says, "let him understand." But I believe that the desolation will not come to this degree.⁵

Seventh, principally, it is argued thus: temporal lordstemporales domini: temporal lords freely transfer the rightius: right / law which they have to the things they hold in lordship, now to a certain community and now to one person, because the transfer of a temporal right belongs to the freedom of a creature unwilling to use, or to be partaker of, another such right; now they transfer their lordships to a certain person without sin; therefore by the same token they can without sin transfer such rights to a community. Now when the right has been transferred to a community for its perpetuity, so lasting an exercise of lordshipdominacio: exercise of lordship follows; therefore it is consistent that a community should have such lordship in perpetuity.⁶

To this I say, first, that the conclusionconclusio: conclusion deduced is to be granted of a civil community which is capable of civil lordship, as is clear of many communities of citizens which lawfully exercise civil lordshipdominus; dominari: lord; to exercise lordship / to lord it. But this is far from inferring that it is lawful for a clericclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric (as such) to exercise civil lordship; and it would be much more dangerous for a community of clergy to exercise civil lordship, since that error would scarcely be extinguishable, but would creep like a cancer and advance by spreading, until it infected a great part of the kingdoms. It is enough for us, therefore, to have a moderate use of temporal goodstemporalia: temporal goods for our own necessities and for relieving those of other poor people, their civil exercise of lordship being either extinguished or left in the hands of the chief lordcapitalis dominus; tenere de: chief lord; to hold of, as Hugh notes in the second book On the Sacraments, part two, chapters 3 and 7.⁷ "Laymen," he says, "because they handle earthly things and the necessaries of earthly life, are the left part of the body of Christ. But clerics, 379since they dispense the things which pertain to the spiritual life, are as it were the right part of the body of Christ." And afterwards, interpreting each term, he infers thus: "A cleric ought to have nothing but God and the things that belong to God, he for whom it is appointed to be sustained by the tithesdecime; pars decima: tithes; the tenth part and offerings which are offered to God. But to lay christian faithful it is granted to possess earthly things, whereas to clerics spiritual things are committed, as it was in the old testament." And in chapter 7 he declares how certain things are granted to the churches of Christ by the devotion of the faithful, saving the right of the earthly power, lest there be confusion, since God can approve nothing disordered. Hence earthly princes sometimes grant the church the bare use, and sometimes the use and the power of exercising justice, which a cleric cannot exercise through ecclesiastical persons or clerical individuals. He can, however, have lay persons as ministers for that office; yet so, he says, "that he acknowledge that he has that very power which he has from the earthly prince, and understand that those possessions can never be so removed from the royal power that, if reason or necessity should demand, those possessions do not owe service in necessity; because, as the royal power ought not to alienate the patronage which it owes to another, so that possession, even when obtained by ecclesiastical persons, cannot by right deny the service which is owed to the royal power for its patronage."⁸ This profound doctor would not admit that a cleric should have civil standingcivilitas: civil standing in himself, nor that either pope or anyone else should buy or take into himself supreme secular lordship; but [one] ruling laymen and their exercises of lordship spiritually could receive, by titletitulus: title of alms, the fruit of a possession or of earthly power, yet so that secular lordship 380remains with the secular lord.⁹ Further, as the doctor grants that it belongs to the freedom of secular lords that they can transfer right and possessions to others, so he would grant this more evidently of the clergy, since secular possession is more akin to a layman.

Again, there is no doubt that the having of earthly things can harm the clergy; if, then, it were not lawful for it to relinquish them, it would be diabolically coupled to them against the law of God; for Christ commanded his apostles to relinquish worldly things. Paul, although he could have had the necessaries of life from the Corinthians, did not use that power; and Augustine also asked his citizens to take back the possessions which they had given him. Why then could not the popepapa: pope, and every other endowed captaincapitaneus: captain of the clergy, have done the same? For they provided more usefully for the later generations of the clergy than Silvester.¹⁰

Again, it is not by the caesarean endowmentdotacio: endowment that a new order of clergy is constituted, which without such endowment would not have existed; every order of clergy, therefore, could have existed without such endowment, with as great religiousness of the order as now. From which it followssequitur: it follows that any such endowment whatever is not pertinent to the order of the clergy; for otherwise, in the despoiling of religious houses and in conquests of lands, the orders of the possessionerspossessionati: the possessioners would be destroyed proportionally, and so those orders would vary proportionally as the endowment varies, which it is madness to say. As, therefore, at his first endowment a religiousreligiosi: the religious could relinquish the possessions offered, so [he can] now after possession; and if this were done generally and voluntarily, the same order would remain more perfect than it is now.¹¹