The oldest privilege is poverty; ignorance does not excuse the endowers; the fifth objection

To this the answer is that the first part is false, but the second is, to my mind, true in a case; for since every privilegeprivilegium / privilegiare / privilegiacio: privilege / to privilege / privileging is for the benefit of the one privileged, it is clear that many temporal lordstemporales domini: temporal lords and others have earthly privileges for the exercise of virtue.¹ And this happens more commonly to laymen than to clerics, because the office of dispensing temporal goodstemporalia: temporal goods and of coercingcoactivus; cohercere, cohersitivus: coactive; coerce, coercive subjects as a lord does belongs more fittingly to them, and clerics who decline to the world commonly sin more gravely. Yet it is granted that the ministering of temporal goods, lest the clergyclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric be scattered to begmendicacio; mendicare; mendicitas: begging; to beg; beggary by dishonest means, would in a case be to the clergy as a privilege, as happened, 1 Kings 17, when Elijah was fed by privilege through the raven.² And in brief, the ministering of temporal goods is not to the clergy as a privilege except in so far as it promotes [it] to follow Christ in manners and to obtain the privilege 191of his love; which happened when Christ accepted almselemosina: alms from laymen and holy women. And under this condition the churchecclesia: church was endowed: not so as to slow it or draw it back from its first perfection. Hence they sin most excommunicably, whether clerics or laymen, who knowingly take away or diminish this ancient privilege of the church; and hence, C. 25 q. 2 [c. 2], Popepapa: pope Leo speaks thus: "The privileges of churches and monasteries, instituted by the authority of the holy fathers, can be torn up by no wickedness, changed by no novelty. In which work, to be faithfully carried out with Christ’s help, the pontiffs of the Roman see must show persevering service. For the dispensation has been entrusted to us, and it tends to our guilt if the rules of the fathers’ sanctions are violated with our consent or through our neglect."³ Many decrees are such: that it is not lawful to derogate from older privileges by newer ones following after. Since, then, the most ancient and most valid privileges, instituted by Christ, stood in the highest poverty, it follows that it is not lawful for anyone to withdraw that privilege. Since, then, that privilege stands in having all things in common, without propertyexproprietarii / exproprietarie: the propertyless / without property, so that civil exercise of lordshipdominacio: exercise of lordship and secular manner of lifeconversacio: manner of life are repugnant to it, it seems that this could not lawfully be introduced into the clergy without grave peril. Hence, C. 25 q. 1 [c. 3], the canon speaks thus: "Things that have been ordained generally for perpetual utility are to be varied by no exchangecommutacio; commutare: exchange; to exchange, nor are things fixed for the common good to be drawn to private advantage."⁴ From these it is gathered: since a secular lord neither ought nor was able to give the clergy, as a privilege, secular 192exercise of lordship while that order stands, nor was it lawful for the clergy to accept it, it is clear that the error, if it proceeded into this from ignorance, ought to be quickly amended on both sides.⁵ The first part is clear from this, that it is not lawful to make one’s neighbour worse by taking from him a privilege given by God for perfecting so great a state within its chief limitslimitare; limites: to assign (an office); limits; now there would necessarily be a making worse, because to have an exercise of lordship of this kind is a casting down of the state of the clergy to the laity. Therefore it was not lawful for a secularecclesia laycalis / secularis: the lay church / the secular church to do this.⁶ Hence in the third [book] of the Decretals, Ne clerici vel monachi, chapter Relatum, the pope commands that incorrigible monks, living secularly and corrupting others, be expelled, others who live religiously being brought in; where it is supposed as self-evident that the secular manner of life is inferior to the clerical. Nor is there doubt that it is repugnant to the state and perfection of the clergy that it be thus degraded through affection for and occupation with temporal goods; therefore, because of the repugnance, such an endowmentdotacio: endowment cannot be made while the order stands. For it is not a privilege to make worse.⁷ And from the same it is clear that it is not lawful for the clergy to fall away from the primitive perfection, as it is not lawful for a layman so to infect the bridesponsa / sponsus: bride / bridegroom of Christ. For if it is not lawful for a layman to take away his alms, which are the most abject goods, much less would it be lawful to take away the alms instituted by God, which are the chief goods and privileges of God. How then would it be lawful for a secular to correct the ordinanceordinacio; ordinancia: ordinance; of the sacrament, ordination of God by infecting it, when, according to the false writersfalsigraphus: false writer, it is not lawful for him to amend his own fault which he committed in ignorance?⁸ Does so affected an ignorance excuse the secular lord? For if, in a secular, to whom mundanitymundialitas / secularitas: mundanity / worldliness is less repugnant, [the ignorance that comes] from such an inclination to the world, notwithstanding that he thinks he does a service to God in this, renders him 193damnable, how much more, when he constrains the person of the cleric, to whom the secular manner of life is more repugnant?⁹ Truly, if such ignorance excuses altogether, by the same token it would excuse any vicious man; for, as is clear in the first [book] of the Ethics, as every man naturally desires to be happy, so he desires the means which he believes lead to that end: as the voluptuary places happiness in delicate foods, the lecher in venereal acts, the avaricious in the riches of the world, the proud in worldly honours, and so of the others in which the ignorant man takes the more delight. But who would say that such ignorance excuses without qualificationsimpliciter / secundum quid: without qualification / in a certain respect?¹⁰ So then, supposing that Caesar out of ignorance believed that he was doing a service to God in giving the clergy of Christ the glory of the world: as he is accusable for a foolish choice and a preposterous love, in desiringaffectare: to desire such things for himself, so he is more accusable for treacherously holding back, and with worldly poison, the chief soldiersmilicia; milites: knighthood; knights of the Christian army.¹¹ For otherwise it would be alms to privilege the clergy, even the religious, so that it be fed most voluptuously, delightfully and splendidly, marrieduxoratus: married, and endowed beforehand with all the glory of the world above all seculars. But what is more insane than such a privilege? Hence [it is] mere contrivance, since it deceives the whole world on the fallacyfallacia: fallacy of equivocation in "privilege". For since a temporal lord could meritoriously grant these privileges, as the clergy [could] accept them, and pride and ignorance could be damnable on both sides, therefore I assert neither part, nor that the successors abuse the privilege; but [I assert] the conditional truth, as in defending the Christian faith, leaving to the superiorsprepositi: superiors the truth as a matter of factde inesse: as a matter of fact, to be judged from works.¹² Fifthly, it is argued by appeal toarguitur per: it is argued by appeal to this: that, according to what has often been said, evangelical poverty and the wholly spiritual insignia which Christ granted to his church stand with the caesarean 194endowment, and from this some good will come to the church (as is clear in the last argument); therefore it is better that the church be so endowed, and consequently Caesar endowed the church above Christ.¹³ The major seems [clear] from this, that blessed Silvester and other holy bishopsepiscopus; dominus episcopus: bishop; the lord bishop and secular lords would not have approved an endowment of this kind if it had been to the worsening of the church; but [then] the Roman curiacuria romana: the Roman curia would long ago have pressed for the ancient privileges of the church, and because of the ease [of it] they would long ago have been restored, since both the endowers and the endowed would at once have assented to the renunciation of propertyexpropriacio: renunciation of property, granted that it were meritorious.¹⁴

To this the answer is by denying the first inferenceconsequencia: inference, unless perhaps the assumptionassumptum: the assumption is impossible.¹⁵ For it seems to many that the aureolelaureola: aureole of martyrdom, with which the more vigorous soldiers of Christ strove in the flowering of the church, converting so great a people so readily, would not have stood together in subject and in time with caesarean endowment; nor so abject a poverty, the world trodden down, the clergy submitted to Christ’s counsel, suffering voluntarily; nor so great an aspiration to the goods of the homelandvia / patria: the way / the homeland, confidence in goods of fortune or goods of nature being despised; and consequently there would not have been so great a security of state in following Christ by the short way of the strait life that leads to heaven. For all these four, with their correlatives, seem to be contrary to earthly endowment.¹⁶