The art of mockery, Hostiensis on the keys, and the fifth lie

And correspondingly it can be said to the doctor of the lie, with all his accomplices, that he should search the testimonies of all the scriptures, so that the light of knowledge and the fervour of charitycaritas: charity may come down like fire to illuminate this teachingsentencia: CONTEXTUAL: teaching / sentence of the lie; and I am certain that, although they cut themselves with knives and lancets however sharpened on the whetstone, till they are covered with blood, as is said there of the priests of Baal, they will not find a fitting testimony to give colour tocolorare: give colour to their lie, save only insofar as one testimony is brought from Psalm 5:7: "Thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie."¹ And because that testimony is not fitting, therefore Augustine is allegedallegare / allegacio: allege / allegation in guile on "promise" (as I have expounded at length elsewhere).² So also our Jesus reproaches the scribes and Pharisees with an eightfold Woe, in harsh and mocking words, as is clear in Matthew 22, from whose doctrinedoctrina: doctrine the apostle took the lesson for saying to the chief of the priests: "God shall strike thee, thou whited wall", Acts 23:3; whence it would be useful to introduce and teach 521the art of mocking and reproaching, since in it a man can now exceed, now fall short, and now keep the virtuous mean; but not so in the art of lying.³ And when someone out of charity, to avenge the injury done to God and to shut errors out of holy churchecclesia: church, breaks out into reproachful and mocking words, the zeal of revenge and of his own praise being withdrawn, a praiseworthy work is done; and if I should feel this wholly in myself, I would say ironically with the apostle, 2 Corinthians 12:13: "Pardon me this injury."⁴ As to the reproach of Huguccio, it is clear that he was ignorant of logic, philosophy and the truth of the faith; therefore it is no wonder if he brought insults upon a professor of catholic truth.⁵ Hence Hostiensis replies to his foolish objectioninstancia; objectum: objection: "Those," he says, "who are in purgatory can be called good and bad in different relationsrespectus; respectivus: relation; relational: good indeed, in that they will be saved; bad, in that they suffer evils." Nor is it doubtful to a theologian that the same thing in number is at once good with the goodness of nature and bad with the badness of guilt. Indeed, the same person is good with the goodness of purgation or justice, and with this bad with the badness of punishment.⁶ Hence Augustine, Enchiridion 14, 17: "Wherefore in these contraries which are called good and evil that rule of the dialecticians fails, by which they say that two contraries are present to no thing at once. For although," he says, "no one doubts that goods and evils are contraries, not only can they be at once, but evils can by no means be without goods, nor except in goods, though conversely good can be without evil." It is evident indeed to philosophers that good and evil are said now analogically, now equivocallyequivoce: equivocally and now contrarily, privatively or positively. Hence those of the sect of Manichaeus of whom Augustine speaks were ignorant dialecticians.⁷ For one can 522take good and evil in a special way, so that they are contraries incompossible with each other, as the prophet speaks, Isaiah 5:20: "Woe to them that call good evil, and evil good." For those who say that in deed moral goodness is vicious badness are under that prophetic curse.⁸ Again, Hostiensis below, On Remissions, in the chapter Quibus prosunt, speaking of the indulgencesindulgencie: indulgences of bishops, says that to the dead in purgatory, continued by charity with the body of Christ, the merits of the church militantecclesia militans / triumphans / dormiens: the church militant / triumphant / sleeping profit by way of suffragessuffragia: suffrages, but not by way of absolving.⁹ "The power of the keys," he says, "has no place there; nor does it stand in the way that the church binds and looses after death (C. 24 q. 2 Sane)." For there absolution is done for the consolation of the living faithful and the confusion of unbelieversinfidelis: unbeliever; with a dative, faithless (to), and so that the church may pray for the dead man absolved; and thus the dead man too is absolved equivocally, that is, he is shown to have been absolved by contrition before he died; and so as regards the dead it now effects nothing. For 'where I find thee, there will I judge thee', and 'whether the tree fall to the south or to the north, there it shall be'; but the church militant often deceives and is deceived, as the decretal says, On the Sentence of Excommunication, A nobis. For the power of the keys binds not the dead but the living, since only they are subject to the church militant.¹⁰ And at the end of the title follows the doctor’s definitiondiffinicio: definition: in hell, however, these indulgences effect nothing, because there is no redemption there. For there is there no good as to punishment, but all evil. For there the punishment is not meritorious nor purgatorial nor transitory, but only punitive and eternal. Huguccio, however, says that there is there an alleviation of punishment;

in paradise, however, they effect nothing, since the souls existing there do not need our suffrages, but the reverse.¹¹ The fifth and last lie is the taking of Augustine’s testimony on the refreshment of the damned; and first through that text, Enchiridion 110, where he says that suffrages profit the moderately bad who are damned; and the gloss expounds this fourfold division thus: that one is not to pray for the very good nor for the very bad; not for the very good, because they fly off at once, and (as is said in book 3, On the Celebrations of Masses, Cum Marthe) he does injury to a martyr who prays for a martyr; nor for the very bad, because they did not merit to be so helped. To the moderately good, however, they profit, that they may be freed more quickly from the fire of purgatory, and to the moderately bad they profit, that they may be punished more mildly; yet they will never be freed.¹² From which it is clear that one is to pray specially for those who died in mortal sin, provided they are not very bad or supremely bad. But it was said above, in the fourth fabricationcommentum (mendacii): fabrication of the lie, how the doctors, theologians as well as those of canon law, expound each member, of the moderately good and of the moderately bad, of the predestinatepredestinatus, -i: the predestinate (sg. "a predestinate [person]") awaiting penance in purgatory. For although all of them are both good and bad, and condemned to temporal punishment, yet one is the ground on which they are good and another the ground on which they are bad, just as one is the ground on which they are freed without qualificationsimpliciter / secundum quid: without qualification / in a certain respect and another that on which they are punished more mildly. Nor does the said logic of the common gloss avail, since nothing is supremely bad except sin, or perhaps the first apostate with all his membersmembrum: member; and if one is not to pray for these, one is not to pray for one foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown;¹³ and the same appears in the same question, chapter Pro obeuntibus, where the decree, under the authority of blessed Gregory, speaks thus: "It is fitting that the priest make remembrance of the catholic dead and 524intercede for them; yet it will not be lawful to do any such thing for the impious (although they were Christians)." On which the same gloss says: "If it is evident that someone has died in mortal sin, as when someone hangs himself or throws himself down or kills himself in some other way, one is not to pray for him, as C. 23 q. 5 Placuit, and q. 8 Quicunque clericus. It is otherwise if it is doubtful: hence one does not pray for one slain in drunkenness (as Extra, On Relics, Audivimus)."¹⁴ How, I ask, would so many laws be ordained against praying for one dead in mortal sin on a fallible suspicion, if we ought specially to pray for him whom we know to be damned forever? Or how would the church specify its prayer for the dead in the mass, saying: "Remember, O Lord, thy servants who have gone before us with the sign of faith and sleep in the sleep of peace", if one is generally to pray for those with whom peace is incompossible because of the perpetuity of the worm of conscience?¹⁵