Wyclif’s Latin works

De ecclesia, chapter 5, part 3

Squaring the circle; the body of the devil

Loserth pp. 100.13–104.17

¶1100.13–102.6

100Dicitur tercio quod nisi christianus sciverit quadrare circulum, non est de membris ecclesie. Quadratura quidem circuli est scibilis, ut patet in Predicamentis, sed fuit in tempore Aristotelis nondum scita. Constat quidem quod figura tripunctalis ad instar trinitatis habet tria puncta supposita quorum nullum excedit reliquum sicut nec latera vel anguli, sed habent figuram et angulos utrobique. Correspondenter mistice tota trinitas personarum est parilis et nocio personarum ut latera nec non et proprietates earum ut anguli, et communem habent essenciam ubique plenariam ut figuram. Et sicut omnes illi tres anguli valent duos rectos, sic omnes tres persone divine valent ydemptice commune principium et commune principiatum. Si ergo in medio trium punctorum sit punctus positus, gerens similitudinem essencie que secundum racionem communicabilitatis distinguitur a personis, tunc figurat illud simul existens quadratum et circulus Deum nostrum qui secundum unum de viginti quatuor prophetis est circulus intelligibilis cuius centrum est ubique et circumferencia 101nusquam; iste autem simul circulus intelligibilis et quadratum secundum multiplicem racionem miserendi ecclesie constituit quadratum sensibile, quando in plenitudine temporis compaginavit quatuor elementa in quattuor humores ac quattuor complexiones et assumpsit plenum hominem quem sic fecit. Tunc enim sensibile quadratum humanitatis et circulus intelligibilis divinitatis factum est utrumque natura idem suppositum verbi Dei. Et istam sentenciam inculcat sanctus et devotus doctor magister Johannes de Howdan, alloquens amorem qui incarnavit filium in hec verba: Artem nosti, quadrantem circulum quem quadrasti, carnis quadrangulum spere Dei dans per miraculum sauciatum sanando seculum. Isti circulo oportet hominem inniti et secundum quadraturam quatuor virtutum cardinalium incorporari, si debeat esse membrum ecclesie dicente veritate Johannis XV° 4: Sicut palmes non potest ferre fructum nisi manserit in vite, sic nec vos nisi in me manseritis. Oportet enim christianum esse Deo insorptum per amorem, sic quod tota terrestritas instar ferri vel carbonis candentis pro zelo honoris Dei, honore seculi postposito, sit ignita; in cuius signum apostoli ex doctrina Christi Luce XXII° vocarunt se in suarum epistolarum iniciis servos Dei et domini Jesu Christi, ut per hoc reprimatur in eis fastus vel dignitatis apparencia, sed in dominum suum convertatur tota dignitatis tendencia. Sed hodie prepostere de dignitate, primatu et reverencia servi fit tota intencio, de honore vero Christi vel suo contemptu 102qui stat in legis suo observancia vel despectu non fit scrutinium; quod est signum evidentissimum quod tales superbi prepositi sunt extra Christum et suam ecclesiam, membra regis superbie que suam quadraturam ostentant in figura mundi, figuram autem substancie divine postponendo occultant.

The answer is, thirdly, that unless a Christian knows how to square the circle, he is not of the members of the churchecclesia: church. The squaring of the circle is indeed knowable, as is clear in the Categories, but in the time of Aristotle it was not yet known.1 It is evident indeed that a figure of three points, after the likeness of the Trinity, has three points set under it, of which none exceeds the rest, as neither do the sides or the angles; but they have the figure and the angles alike on each side. Correspondingly, in a mystical sense, the whole trinity of persons is equal, and the notion of the persons [is] as the sides, and their properties too as the angles; and they have a common essence, everywhere full, as the figure. And just as all those three angles are equal to two right angles, so all three divine persons are, identically, equal to a common principle and a common [term that is] from a principle.2 If, then, a point is set in the middle of the three points, bearing the likeness of the essence, which by the account of communicability is distinguished from the persons, then that [figure], existing at once as square and circle, figures our God, who according to one of the twenty-four prophets is an intelligible circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference 101nowhere.3 And he, at once intelligible circle and square, according to the manifold reason of having mercy on the church, constituted a perceptiblesensibilis: perceptible square when, in the fulness of time, he joined the four elements into the four humours and the four complexions, and assumed a full man, whom he thus made. For then the perceptible square of the humanity and the intelligible circle of the divinitydeitas / divinitas: the Godhead / divinity became, each [being] a nature, the same suppositum of the Word of God.4 And this teachingsentencia: CONTEXTUAL: teaching / sentence the holy and devout doctor, master John of Howden, drives home, addressing the love that incarnated the Son, in these words: "You know the art, the squaring circle which you have squared, giving by a miracle the quadrangle of flesh to the sphere of God, healing the wounded world."5 On this circle a man must lean, and be incorporated according to the squaring of the four cardinal virtues, if he is to be a member of the church, as the Truth says in John 15:4: "As the branch cannot bear fruit, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me."6 For a Christian must be absorbed into God by love, so that his whole earthiness, like iron or a glowing coal, be set on fire for zeal for the honour of God, the honour of the world being put after; in sign of which the apostles, from the doctrinedoctrina: doctrine of Christ in Luke 22, called themselves at the beginnings of their epistles servants of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that by this pride or the show of dignity might be repressed in them, but the whole tendency of dignity be turned towards their lord.7 But today, preposterously, the whole concern is with the dignity, primacy and reverence of the servant, while into the honour of Christ, or the contempt of him, 102which consists in the observance or the despising of his law, no inquiry is made; which is a most evident sign that such proud superiorsprepositi: superiors are outside Christ and his church, members of the king of pride, who display their squareness in the figure of the world, but hide the figure of the divine substance by putting it after.8

¶2102.7–102.12

102Tercio arguitur contra dicta de corpore ecclesie per hoc quod pari evidencia qua illa foret unum corpus, et congregacio prescitorum constitueret unum corpus, consequens falsum, quia nec corpus naturale nec misticum, eo quod non foret forma uniens, nisi foret peccatum, illud autem non continuat sed seiungit.

Thirdly, it is argued, by appeal toarguitur per: it is argued by appeal to this, against what has been said about the body of the church: that by the same evidenceevidencia: evidence by which it would be one body, the congregation of the foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown too would constitute one body; the consequentconsequens / antecedens: consequent / antecedent is false, since [it would be] neither a natural nor a mystical body, because there would be no uniting form unless it were sin; now that does not join but separates.9

¶3102.13–104.17

102Hic dicitur ex fide scripture quod omnes presciti constituunt unum corpus. Christus enim dicit Joh. VIII° 44, Judeis et principaliter sacerdotibus et phariseis qui dicebantur esse capitales ecclesie: Vos ex patre diabolo estis et desideria patris vestri vultis facere. Ex quo patet quod oportet esse unam generacionem que fuit mala in vulgaribus, peior in secularibus prepositis, sed pessima in prelatis, sicut generacio iustorum secundum tres gradus oppositos eis proporcionaliter correspondet. Si ergo sit una generacio perversorum, oportet quod sit unus iniquus homo habens partes que sunt membra diaboli, et cum non potest esse membrum vel caput nisi in comparacione ad totum corpus integrum, manifestum est quod est unum corpus diaboli, sicut est unum corpus Christi. Ubi autem corpus Christi vocatur corpus misticum propter misterium celestis coniugii inter Christum et ecclesiam Christi, corpus diaboli non est sic misticum sed obscurum, cum sic coniungi diabolo 103non sonat directe in misterium sed flagellum, et sic corpus diaboli habet esse naturale, cum secundum Augustinum in libro De Natura Boni... omne malum oportet fundari in bono: ergo omne malum moris fundatur in bono nature. Nec est inconveniens sed consonum modo loquendi sanctorum et vulgi vocare quamcunque creatam substanciam ex partibus quantitativis sive materialibus sive formalibus compositam verum corpus, sic enim vocatur aggregatum ex spiritualibus et indivisibilibus legibus corpus iuris. Tale ergo esse naturale habet quecunque aggregata substancia, unita in suo communi ut specie vel genere, et preter esse naturale habet racionalis creatura esse beatitudinis, virtutis vel vicii, ut est de membris Christi atque diaboli. Et loquendo de tali unione vel esse corporis negat Augustinus III°, De Doctrina Christiana, XXXII° cap., quod ex membris Christi atque diaboli sit unum corpus compositum. Et ulterius quando tangitur de forma uniente corpus diaboli, dicitur quod est dare formam extrinsecam et deformitatem intrinsecam. Forma autem extrinseca est presciencia Dei eterna qua scit et ordinat omnes tales constringi ad penam perpetuam, deformitas autem intrinseca est finalis inobediencia vel superbia, contumacia quam sancti vocant culpam finalis impenitencie vel peccatum in spiritum sanctum. Et sic idem peccatum continuat et seiungit. Continuat enim membra diaboli, constringens eos in tartaris in sua malicia, et segregat eos a consorcio beatorum, sicut calor dissolvens mixtum congregat omogena, cum facit quodlibet elementum 104mixti dissoluti petere locum suum, sed segregat ethrogena, cum dissolvit compleccionem armonicam, resolvendo partes mixti in suas naturas simplices separatas. Oportet enim in die iudicii ex contrarietate frigoris corporis diaboli et caloris caritatis corporis Christi secundum legem forme ultime corpus bipartitum dissolvi, quando partes leves advolabunt cum capite suo quod est ignis consumens ad mansiones naturales in superis. Partes autem plumbee affeccione terrestri descendunt ad inferos, et sic duo hec nedum sunt duo corpora, sed due persone (ut tetigi cap. XLIII° tercii libri); de quo satis est adducere unum testimonium beati Gregorii, IV° Moralium, cap. XI°. Sicut, inquit, redemptor noster una persona est cum congregacione bonorum (ipse namque caput est corporis et nos huius capitis corpus), ita antiquus hostis una persona est cum cuncta colleccione reproborum.

To this the answer is, from the faith of scriptureex fide: as faith teaches; with a genitive, from the faith of [scripture], that all the foreknown constitute one body. For Christ says in John 8:44, to the Jews, and principally to the priestssacerdos / presbiter: priest / presbyter and Pharisees, who were said to be the chiefs of the church: "You are of your father the devil: and the desires of your father you will do." From which it is clear that there must be one generation, which was bad in the common peoplevulgares: the common people, worse in the secular superiors, but worst in the prelatesprelatus: prelate, just as the generation of the just corresponds to them proportionally according to three opposite degrees.10 If, then, there is one generation of the perverse, there must be one wicked man having parts that are members of the devil; and since there cannot be a member or a headcaput: head except in relation to a whole, integral body, it is manifest that there is one body of the devil, just as there is one body of Christ. But whereas the body of Christ is called the mystical bodycorpus Christi misticum: the mystical body of Christ on account of the mystery of the heavenly marriage between Christ and the church of Christ, the body of the devil is not mystical in this way but obscure, since to be so joined to the devil 103does not sound directly of mystery but of the scourge;11 and so the body of the devil has natural beingens / esse / essencia: a being / being (existence) / essence, since according to Augustine in the book On the Nature of the Good … every evil must be founded in a good: therefore every evil of conduct is founded in a good of nature.12 Nor is it an absurdityinconveniencia; inconveniens: CONTEXTUAL: an absurdity (in argument) · troubles, ill consequences (in affairs), but in harmony with the manner of speaking of the saints and of the common folk, to call any created substance composed of quantitative parts, whether material or formal, a true body; for thus the aggregate of spiritual and indivisible laws is called the body of lawius: right / law. Such natural being, therefore, any aggregate substance has that is united in what it has in common, as in a species or genus; and besides natural being the rational creature has the being of blessedness, of virtue or of vice, as is the case with the members of Christ and of the devil.13 And speaking of such union, or being of a body, Augustine denies in On Christian Doctrine III, chapter 32, that one body is composed of the members of Christ and of the devil.14 And further, when the form uniting the body of the devil is touched on, the answer is that there is to be given an extrinsic form and an intrinsic deformity. And the extrinsic form is God’s eternal foreknowledgepresciencia: foreknowledge, by which he knows and ordains that all such are bound to perpetual punishment; and the intrinsic deformity is final disobedience, or pride, a contumacy which the saints call the guilt of final impenitence, or the sin against the Holy Spirit.15 And so the same sin joins and separates. For it joins the members of the devil, binding them in hell in their malice, and segregates them from the fellowship of the blessed; just as heat, dissolving a mixed body, gathers together things of one kind, since it makes each element 104of the dissolved mixture seek its own place, but segregates things of different kinds, since it dissolves the harmonious complexion, resolving the parts of the mixture into their simple, separated natures.16 For on the day of judgement, from the contrariety of the cold of the body of the devil and the heat of charity of the body of Christ, the bipartite body must, according to the law of the final form, be dissolved, when the light parts will fly up with their head, which is a consuming fire, to their natural mansions above. But the leaden parts, by earthly affection, go down to the lower regions; and so these two are not only two bodies, but two persons (as I touched on in chapter 43 of the third book);17 on which it is enough to adduce one testimony of blessed Gregory, Moralia IV, chapter 11: "Just as," he says, "our Redeemer is one person with the congregation of the good (for he is the head of the body, and we the body of this head), so the old enemy is one person with the whole collection of the reprobate."18

Notes

  1. 1 The third answer to the second objection (96.20), after "first" (98.23) and "secondly" (99.1). A margin Nota de quadratura circuli, B margin Quadratura circuli (100.13). Aristotle, Categories 7, says that the squaring of the circle, if it is knowable, is not yet known: 7b30–33; Loserth gives no reference here (his note on Predicamentis belongs to 104.27).
  2. 2 Figura tripunctalis: the triangle of three points; utrobique, "on each side", i.e. the figure and the angles belong alike to all three. Nocio personarum: the notions (paternity, filiation and the rest) by which the persons are known apart. Principiatum: what is from a principle; the persons together are one principle and one term from a principle. Loserth’s foot has "17. In codd.: quod figuratur", which we cannot place with certainty; the print is translated (see Latin doubts).
  3. 3 "One of the twenty-four prophets": the Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers, whose second proposition defines God as an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere; prop. II reads Deus est sphaera infinita cuius centrum est ubique, circumferentia nusquam; Wyclif’s circulus intelligibilis is not its wording. Loserth: "This passage is not to be found in the prophets." A A₁ lack cuius — intelligibilis (100.32–101.1), an eye-skip between the two circulus intelligibilis.
  4. 4 A A₁ racionum miserendi ecclesie, "the manifold reasons"; B miterendi; B que sic fecit (101.2–6). In plenitudine temporis: Gal. 4:4, DR "when the fulness of the time was come". The four humours and complexions answer to the four elements: the man assumed is the "perceptible square". Utrumque natura: each, being a nature, became one suppositum (person) of the Word; A utramque (101.8). B margin Circulus quadratus.
  5. 5 Codd. magister J. de Howdan, expanded by Loserth; A margin J. Howdan (101.10). Loserth: John of Howden (d. 1275), chaplain of Eleanor, mother of Edward I. The poem the lines come from is not identified (same row). Quadrantem: we take it with circulum, "the squaring circle"; it can also be read "you know the art, squaring the circle you have squared". Spere Dei: the sphere of God, the divinity as circle.
  6. 6 "The Truth": Christ (John 14:6). Codd. facere fructum; Loserth corrected to ferre from the Vulgate (101.19), and the print is translated. Wyclif lacks the Vulgate’s a semetipso (DR "of itself"). B margin In ecclesia esse etc. (101.17).
  7. 7 Insorptum: absorbed (insorbere); so the print on the plate. B quod nos (101.21), place uncertain. Luke 22:26, DR "he that is the greater among you, let him become as the younger". The epistle openings: e.g. Jas. 1:1, DR "James, the servant of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ".
  8. 8 "The king of pride": Job 41:25, DR "he is king over all the children of pride", alluded to. Figura mundi: cf. 1 Cor. 7:31, DR "the fashion of this world passeth away"; the play is on figura and quadratura above. A figuram figuram (102.5).
  9. 9 A margin (102.7): Malorum congregacio est unum corpus naturale sicut bonorum est unum corpus misticum. A continat (102.12). Continuare: to make continuous, "join", the opposite of seiungere. The foreknown are those God foreknows will be damned (the glossary).
  10. 10 A margin Responsio (102.13); B margin, later hand, Ecclesia malignancium per consequens est unum corpus (102.14; cf. Ps. 25:5); A margin Triplex generacio mala. Capitales: the chief men, echoing caput. A A₁ correspondent (102.22).
  11. 11 B lacks corpus (102.26) and Christi (102.30); B cum coniungi (102.31). The "mystery" of the marriage: Eph. 5:32, DR "This is a great sacrament: but I speak in Christ and in the church" (Vulgate sacramentum, Wyclif misterium).
  12. 12 Loserth: a lacuna in the codd. after boni (103.3), and the sentence is not extant in De natura boni, though there are many like it there. A margin Augustinus.
  13. 13 Inconveniens here in its argumentative sense (glossary: CONTEXTUAL). Corpus iuris: the body of law, the canonists’ corpus iuris; ius as law. B ut supra corpus (103.9), place uncertain. A margin Quid est corpus; B margin, later hand: Ex esse virtutis (vel) vicii unum corpus esse non potest, an early reader’s summary.
  14. 14 Augustine, De doctrina christiana III.32, on the second rule of Tyconius, "on the bipartite body of the Lord", where he objects to calling one body the members of Christ and those who are not his: PL 34:82; the summary is ours. A margin Augustinus (103.16).
  15. 15 A margin Nota de forma uniente malos in corpus unum (103.19). The foreknowledge is the extrinsic form, as predestination is for the body of Christ (cf. 110.9). The sin against the Holy Spirit: Matt. 12:31–32, alluded to. B et sicut (103.26); A margin Conclusio.
  16. 16 B in carceris for in tartaris (103.28); A margin Exemplum. Heat gathers like and separates unlike: Aristotle’s definition of heat (De generatione et corruptione II.2, 329b26–30: heat associates things of the same kind, while cold brings together kinds alike and unlike). Omogena / ethrogena: things of one kind / of different kinds; A ethromogena, A₁ etherogena (104.2).
  17. 17 Caritatis (104.5): the print (plate); the OCR had cantatis. For caloris: A calore, A₁ calce, B calores. "A consuming fire": Heb. 12:29, Deut. 4:24. Lex forme ultime: the law by which each part follows its final form, the light upward and the heavy down. Codd. terrestres (104.10), "the earthly leaden parts"; Loserth terrestri, translated. "Chapter 43 of the third book": the work is to be identified.
  18. 18 Gregory, Moralia IV, chapter 11 (codd. cap. IX; PL 75:647B–C, cap. XI [Vet. XIV]; Loserth: Opp. Greg. I, p. 112): Wyclif lacks isdem and adds inquit; A margin Gregorius (104.13); B est cunta (sic, 104.17). Reproborum: the reprobate, kept apart from the foreknown (the glossary).
How the Latin of this chapter was established
  • Plate readings; page · reading · note):
    • 100: quadrare (3 is a margin enumeration, H alinea letter)
    • 101: nusquam
    • 101: insorptum (print has insorptum) [NW]
    • 103: ∅ (inserted run not in print here: line begins K 142c non sonat)
    • 103: Christi
    • 104: Christi
    • 103: elementum (ele- here, mentum at top of p.104; main token holds whole word)
    • 104: mixti
  • Doubts: 104.5 cantatis (read as caritatis, n. 17); 100.17 Loserth’s quod figuratur unplaced (n. 2).