Order conferred by degrees, and the cleric’s propertyless life

to the leaves than to the fruits, is believed to make our sacraments grow cheap in the eyes of God. For so it was at the time when the legal preceptslegalia: the legal precepts were ceasing, ritesritus: rite having been devised by men in many ways; and the way is clear to resolving the difficulty in which it is asked whether, when a deacon receives from the bishop the power of absolving and not of consecrating, or the reverse, through the death or infirmity of the bishop or some other cause, whether he is fully a priestsacerdos / presbiter: priest / presbyter.¹ For it is commonly said that the charactercarecter, caracter (sensibilis): (perceptible) character of priesthood is not imprinted before the completion of the sacramental words,

but the truth is that we are ignorant ofignorare: to be ignorant of when and how God imprints the priestly character;

nor have the evidencesevidencia: evidence drawn from the laws of the churchecclesia: church and from scripture more than barely the rind of colourcolor (non est color): colour (a plausible ground) (as is clear elsewhere). From these, thirdly, it can be shown conclusively how an interrupted celebration of the sacrament of order can be done either well or badly. For in the primitive church Christ immediately made his apostles priests, that is, bishops; and after the ascension,²

in the time of the apostles, they appointed deacons; nor have I read that those pillars of the church celebrated other orders of the clergy conferred separately.³ And God knows whether that rite would today be more solemn, easier and more useful to the church of Christ. For all the things that clerics of a lower order do, clerics can perform by force of the priestly power, and probably more effectually and more humbly than they are done now. For Christ, the high priest, exercised all these offices (as I have explained elsewhere). Therefore it might seem that it would be for the relief of the church not to have so many sacramental rites and so many laws about clerics ordained per saltum, with this besides, that the church would be ministered to more effectually and more briefly. But on the other side it could happen that the bishops, setting aside pride in the excellence of their order and the greed of gain from their pre-eminence and from their necessity for ruling the 516church, would consider with a pure and simple eye that the church would be more sincerely ministered to by clerics ordained by degrees. For so the examination would be more discerning, the appropriationappropriare; appropriacio: to appropriate; appropriation of the one examined, from his manner of lifeconversacio: manner of life tried by experience, more secure, and altogether the expulsion of an unqualifiedinhabilis: unqualified (to hold office) person and the acceptance of a qualifiedhabilis / habilitas: qualified / qualification person would be easier, to the benefit of the church.⁴ And this power of ordaining the higher superiorsprepositi: superiors have from the saying of the apostle, Romans 14:19: "let us keep the things that are of edification, one towards another." Now in these matters the discretion of superiors ought to be supposed, and consequently their ordinationordinacio; ordinancia: ordinance; of the sacrament, ordination accepted, unless there should be a strong suspicion to the contrary.⁵

Fourthly, from what has been said it can be gathered how the name of cleric adds to the character of order a propertylessexproprietarii / exproprietarie: the propertyless / without property manner of life.⁶ For those holding the lower orders who are married and live in a secular manner are laymen, although by the favour of our realm they have the privilegeprivilegium / privilegiare / privilegiacio: privilege / to privilege / privileging of the clerical stateclericatus: clerical state; and consequently they are not at the same time clerics as well, since those states are distinguished as opposites (as Hugh teaches, On the Sacraments, book 2, part 7).⁷ And it can be confirmed from the decree of blessed Jerome placed at C. 12 q. 1 Clericus, and further on, and C. 1 q. 2 Si quis and Sacerdos, with many laws like them. And to the same purpose avails the testimony of blessed Bernard in the book to Pope Eugenius, and the testimonies of the saints allegedallegare / allegacio: allege / allegation elsewhere quite often. But most effectual of all, it seems to me, is the fourfold testimony about the clerics of the old testament alleged in the thirteenth chapter of this book.⁸ Nor does it avail to pretend that the laws of the old testament do not bind us in the new; first, because he who came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it, whose deed is the best interpreter of how the old testament ought to be understood and kept, taught 517how he himself, his apostles and their vicars ought to live a poor life without propertyexproprietarii / exproprietarie: the propertyless / without property; which lasted for three hundred years and more, up to the venomous caesarean endowmentdotacio: endowment, in proportion to whose increase the possessionedpossessionatus (adj.): possessioned church decreased in virtue.⁹ Secondly, it is confirmed from this, that all the moral elements of the judicial or ceremonial precepts of the old law are to be observed in the time of the law of gracelex gracie: the law of grace; since, then, a poor and propertyless manner of life is moral, it seems that after the poor Christ it ought to be observed by his clerics; for as mother church is older, so she ought to be, especially in her clergy, more religious, and consequently, by forsaking the world, nearer to the bridegroomsponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom.¹⁰ Thirdly, it is confirmed by [an argument] leading to an absurdityinconveniencia; inconveniens: CONTEXTUAL: an absurdity (in argument) · troubles, ill consequences (in affairs), or by the topic from likenesslocus a simili: the topic from likeness; for we take tithesdecime; pars decima: tithes; the tenth part and the things that make for gain to clerics on the express authority not of the new law but of the old; since, then, we embrace what is less religious in the old law, it seems to follow that what is more religious is to be kept by us in its entirety, or else that the less religious is on the same ground reasonably to be taken away. For it is not lawful for us, in a pagan manner, to strain out for ourselves what pleases us from each testament and to cast away what has seemed hard to us, through which, as by a key, the religion of Christ would be kept, and most of all when the world is imperilled by the venom of avarice. For so the abominable sectreligio privata; secta: private religion; sect of Mahomet was introduced on the counsel of Sergius the monk.¹¹