"Francis Mayronis and the Immaculate Conception"

Chapter 8 Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception Christiaan Kappes Francis of Meyronnes, o.f.m. (c. 1288-c. 1328), does not enjoy the name recognition of Medieval and Renaissance confreres such as Bonaventure and Bernardino of Siena.1 The so-called doctor abstractionum nonetheless merits the awe that he once garnered among his fellow Schoolmen.2 At Francis’ zenith, he was named by numerous honorific epithets. Schoolmen even spoke about the via Mayronis and about Francis’ followers as Mayronistae. Francis was born into a family who were members of the Angevin dynasty. Meyronnes, Francis’ birthplace, was a village of Provence (France). Upon coming of age, Francis joined the Franciscans in their convent at Digne where he was first educated. Thereafter, he was sent to the University of Paris and attended lectures of John Duns Scotus, o.f.m. between the years 1304 and 1307.3 Francis subsequently took up posts reading or teaching the Sentences of Peter Lombard in Franciscan provincial studia in France and Italy until 1318.4 Afterwards, he returned to Paris (1320–21) as a bachelor of theology, where he lectured on Lombard’s Sentences.5 He was promoted to magister of theology on 24 May 1323 at the explicit request of John xxii, after solicitation by Robert 1 See Franz Roth, Franz von Mayronis o.f.m.: Sein leben, seine Werke, seine Lehre vom Formalunterschied in Gott, in Franziskanische Forschungen 3 (Werl, 1936), and Heribert Rossmann, Die Hierarchie der Velts: Gestalt und System der Franz von Meyronnes ofm mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Schöpfungslerhe, in Franziskanische Forschungen 23 (Werl, 1972). 2 See also Roberto Lambertini, ‘Francis of Meyronnes’, in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Blackwell Companions to Philosophy, ed. Jorge Gracia and Timothy Noone (Oxford, 2002), 256–57, and William Duba, ‘Francis of Meyronnes’, in Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy between 500 and 1500, ed. Henrik Lagerlund, Springer Reference (Heidelberg, 2011), 364–366. 3 Bert Roest, ‘Freedom and Contingency in the Sentences Commentary of Francis of Meyronnes’, in Franciscan Studies 67 (2009), 323–346 at 324. 4 Hans Möhle, ‘Einleitung’, in Der ‘Tractatus de transcendentibus’ des Franciscus de Mayronis, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévale: Bibliotheca 7 (Leuven, 2004), 70–71. 5 Francis defended Mary at the Sorbonne these years per Stefano Cecchin, ‘Giovanni Duns Scoto Dottore dell’Immacolata Concezione alcune questioni’, in La ‘Scuola Francescana’ e l’Immacolata Concezione, ed. Stefano Cecchin, Collana Studi Mariologici 10 (Vatican, 2005), 219–271 at 222. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:�0.��63/97890044088�4_0�0 0004383789.INDD 196 5/15/2019 1:19:52 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 197 of Anjou, King of Naples. Later that year, acting as a royally appointed confessor to St. Elzear, Baron of Ansouis (Provence) and Count of Ariano (Naples), Francis pronounced the funeral oration for the saint who had died in his arms. Elzear and his wife, Bl. Delphine, were associated with Franciscan Spirituals and Beguines. This put Francis in touch with the leading lay spirituality movements of the day. Accordingly, Francis was intimately involved in Franciscan apologetics regarding absolute poverty, a controversial question during this period. Francis also enjoyed the favor of John xxii, whose hieratic authority Francis advanced in a work dated to 1321, while yet unable to convince Pope John to canonize the popular Elzear, perhaps due to associations with the Franciscan Spirituals.6 In 1323, Francis was elected the provincial minister to Aquitaine, in which capacity he served for about five years. During his final years he was invited (1324) to Avignon to deliver sermons and disputations and even to serve in a diplomatic capacity to Gascony.7 At last, while housed in Piacenza, he died c. 1328. Francis confessed his devotion to the person and theology of Scotus, calling Duns doctor noster and referring to Franciscan enthusiasts of Scotus as schola nostra. In recognition of Francis’ literary production, successive Scotists understandably awarded this intellectual giant with the appellation princeps Scotistarum. Nevertheless, Francis proved a critical reader of Scotus, albeit always respectful of his Magister. Notably, Francis speculated beyond the bounds set by his doctor, throwing Duns’ caution into the wind on the question of the Immaculate Conception. Duns employed language that has been best classified as ‘restrained and prudent’ regarding the controversial opinio theologica.8 Diversely, Francis gained notoriety for extolling this doctrine, arguing forcefully for Mary’s divine ‘privilege’ or exemption from original sin.9 My present investigation means to highlight new discoveries about Meyronnes, who managed to tap into ancient and patristic methods of interpreting the Pauline corpus in favor of his immaculist thesis. Francis innovatively developed Augustine’s 6 Francis composed his libellus supplex of canonization in 1327, as in André Vauchez, La Sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age: D’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 241 (Rome, 1988), 5–771 at 94; 244–245; 299; esp. 418–420. 7 Möhle, ‘Einleitung’, 70–71. 8 Allan Wolter, ‘Introduction’, in John Duns Scotus: Four Questions on Mary (St. Bonaventure NY, 2012), 19. 9 Ioannes Juric, ‘Franciscus de Mayronis Immaculatae Conceptionis eximius vindex’, in Studi francescani 51 (1954), 225–263 at 245–248; Charles Balić, ‘De significatione interventus Ioannis Duns Scoti in historia dogmatis Immaculatae Conceptions’, in vi, 241–272 at 257–260. 0004383789.INDD 197 5/15/2019 1:19:52 PM 198 Kappes synthesis of Roman jurisprudence with the theology of St. Paul. In so doing, Meyronnes managed even to adapt Bonaventure’s earlier synthesis of jurisprudence with theology to fortify contemporary Franciscan arguments on behalf of the Immaculate Conception. 1 Chronology of Meyronnes’ Works Francis’ writings on Mary fit well into the context of the University of Paris, where the Immaculate Conception had recently been favored as an opinio probabilior.10 Following Scotus’ successful disputation on the matter (c. 1303), the pars maior of Parisian Masters eventually endorsed his opinion.11 By 1314, university parameters set for preaching on Mary’s merits and privileges demanded sermonizing only on what was decent (deceat) in regard to Mary. Subsequently, Meyronnes returned to Paris to comment upon the Sentences in 1320–21. Considering Francis’ unusual boldness of language in arguing for the Immaculate Conception, he assuredly delivered his multiple extant sermons on the Immaculate Conception after his second stint in Paris.12 Bachelors and masters were required to give public sermons on feasts, which also reflected Franciscan custom since at least Bonaventure’s time.13 Strictly speaking, festal sermons fall outside the category of ‘academic sermons,’ but such were often designed to turn a universitarian controversy into a wider debate.14 Delivering these kinds of sermons was required of friars in order to advance from bachelor to master.15 Beyond piety, the philosophical anthropology underlying the Immaculate Conception provided Franciscans with a causal explanation to account for 10 11 12 13 14 15 0004383789.INDD 198 Alfonsus Pompei, ‘Sermones duo Parisiensis saeculo xiv De conceptione B.V.M et Scoti influxus in evolutionem sententiae immaculistae Parisiis’, in Miscellanea Francescana 55 (1955), 480–557 at 483–486. Jean de Pouilly witnessed the full outbreak of the controversy by 1308. The date of Scotus’ cause for disputation is cautiously proposed in Allan Wolter, John Duns Scotus: Mary’s Architect (St. Bonaventure NY, 1993), 21–22. These testimonies are scrutinized in Cecchin, ‘Giovanni Duns Scoto’, 228. Juric proposed this dating for Meyronnes’ Absit in Ioannes Juric, ‘De redactione inedita sermonis “Absit” Francisci de Mayronis in festo conceptionis b.m.v.’, in Studi Francescani 53 (1956), 3–54, at 28. Pompei, ‘Sermones duo’, 482–483. Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Leiden, 2000), 293. Meyronnes’ sermons generally are heavily theological tractates, per Robert Karris, ‘Francis of Meyronnes’ Sermon 57 on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32)’, in Franciscan Studies 63 (2005), 131–158, at 132. Roest, A History, 294. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 199 Mary’s incomparable perfections.16 In the highly philosophical and speculative environment of Paris, divine psychology and analyses of logical possibility to account for Mary’s creation proved irresistibly attractive to numerous Schoolmen. While Francis wrote in the fourteenth century, Lombard’s twelfth-century textbook of the Sentences still remained central to studies on Mary’s holiness, original sin, and guilt (culpa) at conception. Lombard’s authorities formed the firm foundation upon which generations of academics built their objections to the Immaculate Conception, even in the fourteenth century.17 Modern scholars have demonstrated that Meyronnes developed a doctrine in dialogue with Franciscan predecessors. For example, Meyronnes’ arguments notably parallel theological arguments of the scotistic immaculist Peter Aureole (scripsit 1314).18 As Balić records, numerous Parisian theologians adopted some variant of Scotus’ arguments, reducible to the Marian axiom: ‘Potuit, decuit, fecit.’ Since the aforementioned were all Parisian theologians, one cannot exclude them from possible influence on Meyronnes.19 Notably, Peter Thomae (scripsit c. 1322–1330) should be considered as a potential source for Meyronnes’ material for Mariology.20 For his part, Thomae has been argued to depend on Aureole for discussions on immaculatism.21 2 Meyronnes’ Sources for Mariology Modern discussions of Meyronnes’ authentic immaculist writings can be reduced to two redactions of his commentary on Lombard’s Sentences and to three festal sermons.22 I have consulted the 1520 edition of redaction ‘A’ and 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 0004383789.INDD 199 See Meyronnes, In festo annunciationis: Sermo primus, in Sermones de sanctis (Basel, 1498), 15, col. 1. Emmanuele Chiettini, ‘La prima sanctificazione di Maria ss.ma nella scuola francescana del sec. xiii’, in vi, 1–39. Mary’s impurity was often argued from Damascene’s ‘purification’ at the Annunciation. Balić, ‘De significatione’, 142–143, underlines Scotus’ and William Ware’s renowned (by 1314–15) passages among Englishmen and Parisians on this question. Balić discovered propositions appealing to decency and piety, defending Mary’s preservation (praeservare) from divine wrath (Eph 2:3) and original sin as prompted by Sent. 3.10.2. Balić, ‘De significatione’, 143–146. Christopher Schabel and Garrett Smith, ‘The Franciscan Studium in Barcelona in the Early Fourteenth Century’, in Philosophy and Theology in the Studia of the Religious Orders and at Papal and Royal Courts, ed. Kent Emery, William Courtney, and Stephen Metzger, Recontres de Philosophie Médiévales 15 (Turnhout, 2012), 359–392, at 381–386. Alfonso Pompeii, ‘L’Immacolata concezione’, 241–272 at 248, 250–252; Ignatius Brady, ‘The Development of the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in the Fourteenth Century after Aureoli’, in Franciscan Studies 15 (1955), 175–202, at 175–177. See Roth, Franz, 216–218; 275–283; 317–326; and Pompei, ‘L’immacolata concezione’, 257. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 200 Kappes the 1665 edition of redaction ‘B’ of Meyronnes’ commentary on book three of Lombard’s Sentences.23 However, Francis’ commitment to immaculatism permeated the entire corpus of his festal sermons. Francis’ breadth of learning within his sermons betrays his mastery over subjects ranging from Scripture to patrology, even to Roman law. While Francis nourished himself on a standard fare of biblical and patristic citations taken from liturgical texts, florilegia (such as Lombard’s Sentences or Gratian’s Decretum), and predecessors’ commentaries on Lombard, his critically edited sermon on Mary (i.e., Absit) stands as a monument to his capacity to synthesize diverse sciences into one interdisciplinary exposition. Absit is extant in two redactions, both of which can be safely attributed to Meyronnes.24 Francis’ second major sermon on the immaculata is entitled Candor est lucis aeternae. Again, it exists in two redactions, but neither exists in a critical edition.25 Additionally a sermoncinal fragment is extant on Mary immaculate that, thus far, proves authentic.26 Francis’ most systematic treatment of Immaculate Conception is his so-called Tractatus de conceptione b. Marie virginis, from which I will cite profusely.27 Additionally, Francis’ other festal sermons include authentic homilies on Mary that are available in incunabulum: In festo purificationis, In festo annunciationis 1–5, In festo assumptionis 1–4, In festo nativitatis 1–3, De nomine/conceptione beate virginis 1–3, De creatione anime virginis, De domina, and Tractatus super Magnificat.28 Finally, Francis had a penchant for inserting large Marian excursus into other sermons as, e.g., In commemoratione omnium defunctorum: Sermo quartus.29 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 0004383789.INDD 200 Two redactions of Meyronnes’ commentary on book three of Lombard’s Sentences exist. Redaction ‘A’ was printed in three editions (1506, 1519, 1520), while his second redaction is available only in a highly imperfect edition (1665). See Juric, Franciscus, 225–230. I have consulted redaction ‘A’ (1520) and ‘B’ (1665). Juric provided corrections for the latter presumably defective manuscript of ‘B’ and discovered the 1520 edition to be nearly exactly that of 1506. Juric, ‘De redactione’, 23–30. Juric, ‘Franciscus’, 232–233. Redaction ‘B’ remains unedited. I utilize redaction ‘A’ of the last two editions from among those of 1493, 1498, and 1665. Juric, ‘Franciscus’, 233–234. Authorship seems likely when comparing this to Meyronnes, De nomine beate virginis, in Sermones de sanctis, 188, col. 2- 189, col. 1. Tractatus, 283, col. 1–316, col. 2. Meyronnes, Sermones de sanctis, 8, col. 1–13, col. 1; 217, col. 1–226, col. 1; 15, col. 2–24 col., 2; 86, col. 1–99, col. 2; 108, col. 2–116, col. 2; 188, col. 2–196, col. 2; 265, col. 1–269, col. 1; 271, col. 1–276, col. 1; 276, col. 1–281, col. 2; 336, col. 2–356, col. 2. Meyronnes, In commemoratione omnium defunctorum: Sermo quartus, in Sermones in sanctis, 260, col. 2–265, col. 1. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 201 Francis’ Christian sources for his Marian sermons reveal a standard cache: Jerome and his Vulgate,30 Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo and Ps.Augustine (Fulgentius of Ruspe and Paschasius Radbertus et al.), Leo the Great, Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory the Great, Venerable Bede, John Damascene, Anselm of Canterbury, Richard of St. Victor, Lombard’s Sentences, John of Naples, Alain de Lille, Bonaventure’s Sentences commentary, Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, and Duns Scotus’ Sentences commentary. Entirely unanticipated legislative authorities include Emperor Justinian I’s Novellae and Gregory ix’s Decretals. In his general homiletica, Meyronnes employed pagan authors as well; namely, Sallustius, Ovidius, and Seneca.31 Yet, in his Marian homilies, I have found only Aristotle and oblique citations of Cicero.32 Meyronnes, like many Schoolmen, employed catenae and florilegia for decontextualized citations in many theological arguments. Though Meyronnes commentated on numerous opera, comparison of his Marian sermons and Sentences commentary to aforementioned immaculatists leads one to suspect that many of his citations are from extracts of recent predecessors. Diversely, Francis produced a complete commentary on Gratian’s Decretum (Cum Martha), traditionally dated to 1319.33 After becoming a Magister, from c. 1322, Francis edited selections from Augustine’s De civitate dei (et al.) and commented on the opera omnia of Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite.34 Francis is attributed authorship of a commentary on the opera of Anselm of Canterbury.35 Upon comparing Meyronnes’ festal sermons to his canonical and patristic studies, the former are obviously fruits of synthetic reflection upon Jerome’s Vulgate through the lens of Augustinian and Justinianic jurisprudence. Because several extant sermons exist for the same Marian feast, Francis’ extant homiletica reflects not only his preaching in Paris, but also at the papal court in Avignon. A critical edition of Meyronnes’ opera omnia is sorely needed. Nevertheless, 30 31 32 33 34 35 0004383789.INDD 201 Jerome is accepted as translator/editor of only the Vulgate Gospels in the New Testament. See H.A.G. Houghton, The Latin New Testament (Oxford, 2006), 31–36. Juric, ‘De redactione’, 12. See Meyronnes, In festo annunciationis: Sermo tertius, in Sermones in sanctis, 217, col. 2. The sermon’s overtones are Bonaventurian and Anselmian, but one anomalous section treats of right reason and ‘iustitia moris’ in juridical and Ciceronian fashion. Furthermore, justice is treated as recta ratio between God and man, a predominant theme in Marcus Tullius Cicero, De legibus, 1.7–8. For Meyronnes’ plausible access to this work, see Andrew Roy Dyck, A Commentary on De legibus (Ann Arbor MI, 2004), 42. Roth, Franz, 84. See Roth, Franz, 161–171. Francis read through numerous authentic and pseudepigraphal works of Augustine, listed in Arnoud Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe 1500–1620 (Oxford, 2011), 23. Roth, Franz, 171–172. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 202 Kappes much of Meyronnes’ theology is accessible from incunabula and sixteenthcentury printings of Francis’ works. 3 Immaculate Conception: Scholastic Methods Francis paid attention to burning issues of the day, which were signaled by disputed questions, as occasioned by Lombard’s Sentences. The discussion of Mary was, by then, becoming very technical. Taking their queue from Scotus, immaculatists divided up the structural moments for production of soul, body, and fetus so as to analyze each instant and to discover the cause able to effect supernatural grace in a human subject. This sort of analysis into instants allowed for a precision of focus and study and for meticulous application of logical and philosophical principles to each moment of Mary’s life and even to divine motivations behind her creation.36 In this, Meyronnes indulged in the Franciscan penchant to apply a strict analogy between human and divine psychology so that theologians might describe the process of intellectual production and volition in the divine essence. Furthermore, Meyronnes and his fellow immaculatists viewed Roman law as an interpretive key for understanding the possibility of the Immaculate Conception. This facet of immaculist studies has been notably neglected. As such, I will highlight juristic readings of St. Paul by Meyronnes. Peter Thomae is catalogued as the first Scholastic to argue the Immaculate Conception systematically from liturgical pericopes and antiphons citing Scripture.37 Similarly, Meyronnes adopted scriptural methods, especially developing biblical typology in reference to Mary. Yet, the systematic application of privilegium in Roman and canon law is key to Meyronnes’ thesis. Francis knew its potential applicability to Mariology from Bonaventure: ‘If God will do something beyond [nature], this privilege is special, not being of common law.’38 Bonaventure meant to assert that ‘privilegium [is] a legal enactment concerning a specific person or case and involving an exemption from common 36 37 38 0004383789.INDD 202 Divvying up of the spermatic and conceptual process in the womb of Ann, as well as the fusion of body and soul and its subsequent operations, appeared as early as Alexander of Hales (d. 1245). See Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: A Thought-Experiment in Medieval Philosophical Theology’, in The Harvard Theological Review 103 (2010), 133–159 at 140–141. Brady, ‘The Development’, 179–180. Bonaventure, Commentaria, 2.23.2.3.6 (vol. 2, 546, col. 1). All Bonaventure’s works are found in Opera Omnia, ed. PP. Collegium Santi Bonaventurae (Quaracchi, 1882–1902). For 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 203 rules.’ Nevertheless, Peter Thomae (possibly under the influence of Aureole) may have been first to exploit one of Bonaventure’s immediate successors who employed his jurisprudence as applicable to Mary, seen in the following statement: ‘Now, [Mary] holds a…privilege; namely of a…nativity…specially born without original sin.’39 Though likely unfamiliar with Aureole’s Mariology, Meyronnes similarly pushed back Bonaventure’s timing for God’s granting of Mary’s privilege to her conception.40 When doing so, Meyronnes often ignored medieval analogies of privilege from canon law, as with those of Thomae. For example, a parish priest is alone due a juridical right to hear confessions of a parishioner, but another might be granted this office by privilege. By analogy, Christ is sinless by right and Mary by concession.41 Nevertheless, convinced of Saints Paul’s and Augustine’s ancient jurisprudence, Francis scrupulously investigated ancient sources of Roman law beyond any of his predecessors. Recent comparisons of Paul’s trial in Acts of the Apostles to Roman processes in the Greek-speaking Roman East show that Luke’s portrayal of Paul describes a citizen who understood Roman institutions and Greco-Roman terminology of a legal nature.42 Paul was a Roman citizen, and Roman law found itself spreading throughout the Greek East. For Schoolmen, Justinian’s Digesta gave them access to numerous excerpts from ancient jurists relevant to Paul’s 39 40 41 42 0004383789.INDD 203 the technical definition, see Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (Philadelphia, 1953), vol. 43.2, 651. Ps.-Bonaventure, De nativitate b. virginis Mariae: Sermo 6, in Doctoris Seraphici, vol. 9, 719, col. 2. See Peter Aureole, De conceptione immaculatae virginis, in fgg, 35, col. 2: ‘Praeterea: legi generali non detrahitur, nisi per privilegium…’. The work is datable to 1314. For the status quaestionis of Aureole’s Marian opera, see William Duba, ‘The Immaculate Conception in the Works of Peter Auriol’, in Vivarium 83 (2000), 5–34. Meyronnes had no demonstrable access to Aureole’s Liber virginis, 2.5.9, which cites Ps.-Isidore of Toledo’s explicit exemption of Mary from original sin. See Brady, ‘The Development’, 183, for comparisons to Paschasius Radbertus, De partu virginis, 1.156-85. Meyronnes cited only excerpts from Ps.-Augustine or Radbertus’ De assumptione without knowledge of his immaculatism. No immaculist Schoolman would have conceivably bypassed a presumably Isidoran passage defending the Immaculate Conception. Thomae interpreted condemnation to death in Rom 5:12 as a lex communis and Mary’s exemption as a privilegium granted by God. He applied ‘privilege’ to exempt Joachim and Anna from copulating in passion. Unlike Meyronnes, Peter allowed physical passion to infect humans with original sin. Because a princeps may grant a privilege or beneficium for the good of his people, this can serve to explain God granting a privilege to Mary for the sake of giving the world a pure Jesus. See Peter Thomae, Liber de innocentiae virginis Mariae, in mas, 223, col. 2 (1.1.1); 234, col. 1 (2.2.10); 234, col. 2 (2.3.1); 251, col. 1 (2.4.5) 257, col. 1 (2.5.6); 272, col. 2 (3.1.16). E.g., Harry Tajra, The Trial of St. Paul (Eugene OR, 1989). 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 204 Kappes time and setting. Historically, Paul was located in Antioch (before writing his epistles to the Galatians and Romans), conceivably accessing there the official archives of Roman emperors with its Greek constitutions addressed to Jewish diaspora.43 In Antioch, Paul perhaps came across Roman legal texts to cite or imitate within his epistles. Nowadays, Paul’s use of metaphors of Roman wills and adoption practices to illustrate theological points is generally accepted.44 Apropos, Paul’s Roman contemporary, Seneca (d. 65 c.e.) (whose De beneficiis was known by Meyronnes) bemoaned a then current societal craze for making wills.45 Paul, by appealing to adoption and testamentary institutions, provided a verification of Seneca’s observation that citizens were accustomed to obsess over inheritances. Immaculatists, too, assumed that Paul had employed legal concepts familiar to Romans. Additionally, Jerome frequently inserted legal jargon into his Vulgate that was purely Roman.46 Juristically colored translations undergirded Scholastic confidence in Jerome’s claim that Paulus noster (contra the pagan Paulus in Justinian’s Digest) was jurisconsultus of the Christian faith.47 To verify Scholastic suppositions, I explore one impressive example in the Vulgate: 43 44 45 46 47 0004383789.INDD 204 Antioch was a conventus and assize center of its province. Studies on Josephus lead scholars to view this city as a center for Roman legal collections on diaspora Jewry, as cited in Jewish Antiquities. See Georgi Kantor, ‘“Decide their controversies with one another”: Jewish Courts in the Province of Asia’, in Vestnik drevnej istorii 282 (2012), 29–50 at 31–32, 35–40. E.g., the imperial constitution to Sardis is auspicious for comparison with Paul, as it would have been in these archives. Compromissum or arbitration was granted to Jewish communities in Asia Minor. Paul adopted this legal institution as a metaphor. Compare Gal 3:19–20: ‘The law was given through angels and entrusted to an arbiter. However, an arbitrator implies more than one party.’ See Ernest Metzger, ‘Litigation’, in ccr, 272–300 at 283: ‘Most lawsuits requiring a trial would pass to a iudex or arbiter. By the end of the republic the distinction between the two was all but lost.’ Compare my summary of Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2001), 102: ‘A Republican praetor authorized appointments of a iudex datus for two parties, after their consent, due to his jurisdictional imperium. The parties accepted a written formula along with appointment of their iudex. Each was under great pressure to abide by the outcome. In Egypt, under Antoninus Pius, one governor agreed to the nomination of a μεσίτης (arbiter) by two parties, empowering such to judge (κρίνει) their case.’ See, e.g., Bradley Trick, Abrahamic Descent, Testamentary Adoption, and the Law in Galatians (Leiden, 2016). Lucius Annaeus Seneca, De beneficiis, 4.9.11.5-20. Numerous examples are provided in Boaz Cohen, ‘On the Theme of Betrothal in Jewish and Roman Law’, in American Academy for Jewish Research 18 (1948–49), 67–135 at 71–76, 81–82, 116–125. See Jerome, Epistle 77, 38–39. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 205 However, I declare that as long as a child is an heir, he differs in no way from a slave though he is lord of all: But he is under tutors and guardians48 until the predefined time by the father. Yet, in the fullness of time God sent his son, made from woman, made under the law.49 (Gal 4:4) The Roman and Latin origin of Paul’s source becomes very difficult to dismiss after comparison of Paul to Roman jurisprudence:50 Original Source English Translation Roman phrase Cicero (1st b.c.e.): Until the lawful time for usque ad illius iudici tempus his judging nullum testamentum umquam fecerat51 48 49 50 51 0004383789.INDD 205 Compare Ms. Cambridge, Trinity College B.17.1, fol. 72, line 9. The Vulgate and Vetus Latina differ in that the latter employs ‘exactor’ instead of ‘actor.’ Nota Bene, emphasis is my own. A rare and related instance of ‘under the law’ or ‘sub lege’ (= ὑπὸ νόμον) appears in Digesta, 35.2.28 (Lex Falcidia de legatis [40 b.c.e.]): ‘Statuliber heredis non auget familiam…servi in utriusque patrimonio connumerantur…in dominio domini proprietatis connumeratur, pignori dati in debitoris, sub lege commissoria distracti…’. The singular Greek source with such phraseology occurs in (Ps.-)Plato, Definitions, in Platonis opera 5, ed. J. Burnet (Oxford, 1907), 415c3: ‘Πόλις οἴκησις πλήθους ἀνθρώπων κοινοῖς δόγμασιν χρωμένων· πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων ὑπὸ νόμον τὸν αὐτὸν ὄντων.’ Plato knew a definition of δικαιοσύνη as ‘τὰ ὀφειλόμενα ἐκάστῳ ἀποδιδόναι’ (Plato, Republic, 331e3, 335e1). Roman definitions of justice are traceable to Ps.-Plato, per Gregory Vlastos, ‘The Theory of Social Justice in the Polis in Plato’s Republic’, in Interpretations of Plato: A Swarthmore Symposium, ed. Helen North, Mnemosyne: Bibliotheca Classica Batava 50 (Leiden, 1977), 1–40 at 5–6. At the head of Justinian’s Institutes, Ulpian is cited: ‘Iustitia is a constant and perpetual desire to grant to each his right (ius).’ The Roman jurist Ulpian (170–c. 233) propitiously utilized a Platonic definition for his notion of justice (δικαιοσύνη). Similarly, Paul’s Roman legal jargon (Rom 5:16–17) associates δικαιόσυνη (iustitia) to what is likely a Roman sense of δικαίωμα (ius). Phraseology matches the Latinity of Paulus (c. 200) in Digesta, 21.1.12: ‘tutores dati sunt… usque ad tempus pubertatis.’ Compare Scaevola’s (floruit 175) passage in Digesta, 30.4.29: ‘prior enixa filium exposuit: hic sublatus ab alio educatus est nomine patris vocitatus usque ad vitae tempus patris ab eo quam a matri.’ Nota Bene, emphasis is my own. Paul’s text is slightly anomalous since a paterfamilias cannot set the time of maturity in Roman law. For all constitutional uses of προθεσμία, see Vasilis Anastasiadis and George Souris (ed.), An Index to Roman Imperial Constitutions from Greek Inscriptions and Papyri (Berlin, 2000), 152. Paul further alluded to Roman testamentary law in Gal 5:21: ‘They who do such [sins] will not inherit (κληρονομήσουσιν) the kingdom of God.’ See David Johnston, ‘Succession’, in ccr, 199–212 at 202–203: ‘The essential feature of a Roman will was the appointment of an heir or heirs…There was also the formal requirement of disinheriting people.’ Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro A. Cluentio oratio, 15.45. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 206 Kappes Original Source English Translation Roman phrase Flavius Josephus (1st c.e.): Payment in accord with ἀποδώσειν κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν τοῦ the very lawful time of δανείου προθεσμίαν52 the loan Until the lawful time ἄχρι τῆς προθεσμίας Galatians (58/9 c.e.): Sopater (4th c.e.): Until the lawful time μέχρι τῆς προθεσμίας53 Justinian (6th c.e.): In accord with the lawful κατὰ τὴν...προθεσμίαν54 time Paul’s legal and technical terminology precisely agrees with Cicero’s attestation, which is equally found in the context of Roman legal wills. Josephus, who often cited imperial documentation, employed similar phraseology. Greek authors, who were either familiar with Roman legal institutions, or who translated Roman law into Greek, coincided with Paul’s legal opinions and even, at times, his phraseology.55 Significantly, Paul’s precise phrase (preposition + genitive) never appears to be attested in Greek outside the legal description of the Roman-imperial official Sopater.56 The difference between Paul’s choice of the preposition ἄχρι and Sopater’s μέχρι is trivial, for studies on Greco-Roman legalese reveal that: (1) Notable latitude existed in legal vocabulary in Republican and early imperial translations, and (2) some variation of vocabulary was due to the emperor’s curial office (or to local translators), whose skills and membership varied.57 Scholars already concede the likely Roman 52 53 54 55 56 57 0004383789.INDD 206 Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Judiacae, vol. 4, 16.348. Sopater, Διαιρέσεις ζητημάτων, 345. This phrase is ubiquitous in Flavius Justinian, Corpus iuris civilis, 3 vols., ed. Paul Krueger and Theodore Mommsen et al. (Berlin, 1895), vol. 3, 1–795. Dionysios of Halicarnasus, Rom. Ant., 2.57.2, 5.12.4, 6.83.4, 16.5.1. See also Gal 4:1: ‘I declare that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, even while he is the lord of all.’ Compare Rom. Ant., 2.27.1-3: ‘The potestas (ἐξουσία), granted to fathers via the Roman lawgiver…permitted the father even to sell his son without regarding the imputation of cruelty and of severity…harsh and tyrannical…granting…a greater potestas to the father over his son than to the dominus over his slave.’ I have checked all my Greek claims of exclusivity against the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (tlg). Umberto Laffi, In greco per i greci: Ricerche sul lessico greco del processo civile e criminale romano nelle attestatzioni di fonti documenarie romane (Pavia, 2013), 2–5. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 207 reference to tutors and trustees within the same passage.58 This one example, among many (whether in Galatians or in Romans), uncovers Latin and Greek legal jargon proper to a Roman family (familia) and the power (potestas) of its paterfamilias. On this account, a number of Meyronnes’ hermeneutical practices prove their worth when applied to the Pauline corpus, pointing to the enduring value of the Scholastic reading of Paul in light of Roman institutions. 4 Immaculate Conception: St. Paul in Lombard’s Sentences The single most powerful objection to the Immaculate Conception in the history of Christianity must rank as Rom 5:12:59 ‘Just as through one man sin entered into this world, and death through sin, also thusly did it pass into all men, in whom all have sinned.’60 Likewise, Scotus’ greatest obstacle stemmed from this passage, directly addressed by Meyronnes in his sermons. Scotus had been forced to bypass the apparently universal attribution of this judicial sentence to humans; namely, ‘all sinned.’ Scotus had first argued beyond the temporal order, basing himself upon higher-order principles. Duns contended that human natures, as subjects of properties, are modifiable by contrary properties (e.g., justice and injustice), though not synchronously. In logical analysis of human nature’s first instant of existence, it naturally exists as a potential carrier of any supernatural property proportioned to the human soul, albeit dependent upon a supernatural act of causation. Mary was never the subject of putative injustice, for a supernatural agent decreed for her justice or, better, sanctifying grace. Such a grant makes good on a godly claim; namely, Christ is a perfect mediator of the attribute demanded of humans to satisfy the Father’s requirement of justice in every human nature.61 Demonstration of such a mediatory power in act, to the highest possible degree, minimally requires a perfectly mediated justice into a subject. Meyronnes accepted Scotus’ argument that, in the actually existing contingent order, Mary was most deserving of such mediation in virtue of her divine maternity. Normally only baptism 58 59 60 61 0004383789.INDD 207 Compare Johnston, ‘Succession’, 162–163. Granted Papianus (c. 200 c.e.) reflects pristine institutions, Paul’s assertion mirrors Digesta, 26.3.6: ‘Si filio puberi pater tutorem aut impuberi curatorem dederit, citra inquisitionem praetor eos confirmare debebit.’ This originated from Boso’s dialogue with Anselm in Cur Deus Homo, traced in detail by Adams, ‘The Immaculate Conception’, 135–138. Compare Tractatus, 289, col. 2. This biblical objection had to be overcome before John xxii adopted the Marian feast in Avignon in 1325. See Cecchin, ‘Giovanni Duns Scoto’, 222. Scholastics using ‘the perfect mediator’ argument are ipso facto scotistic, per Cecchin, ‘Giovanni Duns Scoto’, 219–221. Compare Tractatus, 290, col. 1. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 208 Kappes conveys grace, since sin is imputed at conception by the absence of natural justice. However, Mary preveniently partook in Christ’s merits prior to his death on the cross.62 Accordingly, Meyronnes built upon the legalistic foundations of Scotus’ interpretation of Augustinian and Anselmian arguments about original sin and justice.63 Anselm described original justice as a quality in the will, so that its contrary cannot be an infection of the flesh, but only a privation of an immaterial attribute. Meyronnes’ own insight was to read Roman Paul according to his intention as a legislator, for Roman jurisprudence demanded discernment of the proper sense behind any decree to give it force; so, too, with divine decrees on sin and salvation.64 Meyronnes prioritized the use of ancient authors in Justinian’s Digesta over and above ecclesiastical canons. Also, Augustinian judicial sententiae and popular commentaries within Gratian’s Decretum influenced Meyronnes’ exegesis, e.g., interpreting baptismal professions of faith as Roman verbal contracts of stipulatio. Meyronnes’ theory on the origin of pre-baptismal contracts still enjoys plausibility.65 He assumed that Scripture should be interpreted as a systematic whole so that Paul’s doctrine of baptism (Rom 6:3) harmonized with legal conventions in other epistles.66 He described Paul’s church as materfamilias ruled by her paterfamilias, Jesus. Parallel to readings in Tertullian, Christians— as slaves of Jesus—are purchased into the patria potestas of the Father by verbal contract of stipulatio.67 Cicero and Augustine (who are referenced in Glossa ordinaria on Gratian’s Decretum) bound a promisor to such contracts of sale and debt in exact circumstances, though such stipulationes were nullified whenever some morally higher law intervened.68 By such a legal principle of a nullifying condition to general contract law, Meyronnes developed a justification for the Immaculate Conception beyond Scotus’ higher order principles. Harmonizing with common Scholastic convictions that Paul compared lex naturalis to Torah in Romans, Meyronnes argued for the Roman pedigree of 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 0004383789.INDD 208 Meyronnes’ logic justified the fact, noting that circumcision owed its efficacy to being a typological sacrament of baptism and, therefore, saved the patriarchs in virtue of Christ’s retroactively applied merits. See Tractatus, 289, col. 2 (Compare Ord. 3.3.1, nos. 19 and 29). Conflatus, 3.3.2.2; 3.3.2.10. Conflatus, 3.3.2.2. Compare Digesta, 1.3.17. Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids MI, 2009), 192–193. Compare 1 Pet 1:21. Meyronnes, In commemoratione omnium defunctorum: Sermo quartus, in Sermones de sanctis, 260, coll. 1–2. Alistair Stewart-Sykes, ‘Manumission and Baptism in Tertullian’s Africa: A Search for the Origin of Confirmation’, in Studia Liturgica 31 (2001), 129–149. Compare Meyronnes, Tractatus, 286, col. 2. James Gordley, The Jurists: A Critical History (Oxford, 2013), 61–62. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 209 Pauline precepts and decrees in Galatians and Romans.69 He applied Paul’s legal principle that imperial institutions bind Christians to Roman law by God’s design (Rom 13:1–6).70 Meyronnes saw Paul’s presentation of slavery to sin and the reign of death in Romans as Adam’s technical poena or legally decreed punishment for not giving God what was owed (thus rupturing divine-human justice).71 Original sin, a divinely imputed debt of Adam for failure to pay what was owed to God (i.e., possessing the attribute of justice), was inherited just as with a legal patrimony in Roman law.72 The law of debt, leading to debt servitude or slavery, was due to sovereign imperial decree. Yet, Roman law never bound an emperor.73 Clearly, Jesus was inheritor of God the Father’s gift of patrimony to Abraham and King David (Rom 1:3).74 Nonetheless, questions arise about the status of the mother of Jesus. In response, though a princeps was not absolutely bound by laws, Meyronnes noted Jesus subjecting himself to law in this world (Gal 4:1–4). Naturally, then, Jesus employed legal remedies for Mary’s legal problems under the reign of sin: ‘The princeps is unbound by laws, while the augusta is not unbound by laws, but principes nonetheless grant her the same privileges.’75 Citing jurisconsultants of late antiquity, Meyronnes managed to build on Bonaventurian foundations of jurisprudence. Bonaventure had previously interpreted Paul’s Romans as if it were a jurisconsultant’s commentary on natural law (lex naturalis).76 On this reading, Paul classified circumcision (not part of natural law) as a remedy for sin ‘ad tempus’ or for a certain time and place. Given Bonaventure’s exposure to Origen’s Commentary on the Romans and Augustine’s adoption of natural law to comment on Rom 5:12, Meyronnes corrrectly supposed that the lex communis or sovereign 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 0004383789.INDD 209 Conflatus, 3.3.2.3. The Vulgate calls authorities principes who hold potestas. Tractatus, 284, col. 1. Meryronnes, In festo annunciationis: Sermo tertius, in Sermones in sanctis, 217, col. 1–217, col. 2. Conflatus, 3.3.2.3. Compare Digesta, 1.3.31. Tractatus, 302, col. 1. Conflatus, 3.3.2.3. Compare Digesta, 1.2.21. Bonaventure, Commentaria, 4.1.2.2.1–3 (vol. 4, 37, col. 1–44, col. 2). Compare, Absit, 40–41. Roman jurisconsultants typically theorized that some Roman laws, which were common to humans at large (ius gentium), hypostasized ‘natural law.’ See Emmanuelle Chevreau, ‘Le ius gentium: entre usages locaux et droit romain’, in L’imperium Romanum en perspective: Les saviors d’empire dans la République romaine et leur heritage dans l’Europe medieval et moderne, ed. Julien Dubouloz, Sylvie Pittia, and Gaetano Sabatini (Besançon, 2014), 305–320. Bonaventure and his followers were clearly taken with this jurisprudence per Justinian’s Corpus iuris civilis. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 210 Kappes decree of original sin could theoretically be harmonized with higher lex naturalis through ‘a legal remedy’ or ‘privilege’ granted to friends of the sovereign.77 Applying this hermeneutic, God the Father (as heavenly emperor) and Jesus (as earthly princeps) granted the grace (gratia) of legal benefits to Mary, exempting her from debt servitude or slavery to sin and death. Meyronnes skillfully found such exemptions or ‘privilegia’ in ancient Roman law, where ‘eximere [means] to exempt, to free, to release a person from liability (obligatione), from special charges…or from penalty (poena, damnatione).’78 Meyronnes applied this jurisprudence, as implied in St. Paul, to the immortals Enoch and Elisha, just as Augustine had done:79 ‘Enoch was translated [to heaven], and Elijah…and they live. Did their iustitia merit this? Might it be a gratia of God and a beneficium of God and a special concession?’80 Meyronnes accurately identified Augustine’s legal analysis of ‘gratia: [which, means] an act of grace by the emperor…’.81 Augustine’s use of ‘indulgentia’ in other passages is merely the application of species of gratia dictated by the circumstance in Scripture, where ‘grace’ is a beneficium or kind of amnesty from crime (crimen). Consequently, Enoch and Elijah obviously contravened Paul’s universal law of sin and death, for they were immortal. Additionally, Meyronnes underlined King David exercising imperial potestas, which Jesus inherited, to exempt soldiers from sacrilege by eating loaves of proposition reserved for priests of the Temple (1 Sam 21:6; Mat 12:4; Luk 6:4). This exemplified an imperial privilege from what was otherwise a transgression against divine law. Thus, Meyronnes was able show quite clearly that common law need not bind absolutely according to either the old dispensation or the new.82 Although every future hypostasization of human nature had been predestined to the pain of loss by divine decree (Rom 5:12, 8:29–30), this normative law was decreed by a sovereign God. Given 77 78 79 80 81 82 0004383789.INDD 210 Comment. in Rom., 3.6 (9–10); Augustine, pecc. mer., 1.10.12. Scholastic theory smacks of Cicero’s, De legibus, not of pure jurisprudence. Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary, 462. Meyronnes, In commemoratione omnium defunctorum: Sermo quartus, in Sermones in sanctis, 262, cols. 1–2. See Absit, 40–41, where Meyronnes developed Augustine, Sermo 299a, 10. Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary, 483. Meyronnes, Candor est lucis aeternae, in mas, folio. 325, cols. 1–2. Rabbinic interpretation of God and Israel’s kings is one of quasi-emperors issuing a species (πρόσταγμα/διάταγμα) of divinely ratified imperial constitutions. See Amram Tropper, ‘Roman Contexts in Jewish Texts: On “Diatagma” and “Prostagma” in Rabbinic Literature’, in The Jewish Quarterly Review 95 (2005), 207–227. Meyronnes cited Moses Maimonides. See, e.g., Meyronnes, De eodem festo conceptionis virginis marie: Sermo secundus, in Sermones de sanctis, 207, col. 1. This passage reproduces a common topos, making it impossible to prove Meyronnes had familiarized himself with Jewish jurisprudence. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 211 St. Paul’s Roman principles of legal interpretation, Meyronnes simply applied putatively Pauline jurisprudence to interpret the Old Testament and to theorize about the status of Mary. He viewed the world as divinely organized into a legal system, where exemptions might be properly awarded in meritorious cases (Scotus’ decuit). As in Scotus, since God was able (potuit) to grant exemptions in harmony with the contingent order, he becomingly privileged Mary without breaking his own rules. 5 Immaculate Conception: Augustine in Lombard’s Sentences Despite aforementioned arguments, Schoolmen had long been encouraged to place Mary under the dominion of sin because of Augustine’s account of the Annunciation. The Sentences obliquely refer to Augustinian comments on the Annunciation: ‘The Word took flesh and soul at the same time…that flesh was first conceived in the Virgin’s womb and afterwards taken on…it was conceived as taken and taken as conceived.’83 This passage reworked Sent. 3.3.1. Therein, Augustine discussed an enigma surrounding the moment when Mary’s flesh must have been cleansed. For Augustine, traducianism or parental begetting of the fetal soul and body ostensibly provided an explanation for how natural conception acted as the carrier of original sin.84 After the Pelagian crisis (411/2), Augustine relied upon Greek Fathers to explain his doctrine of original sin in relation to a ‘purified’ Virgin in his account of the Annunciation: [He is, consequently, the only one who, remaining God after he made himself a man, never had any sin and did not assume ‘flesh of sin,’ even if he took on flesh out of maternal ‘flesh of sin.’]85 [Here begins Lombard:] As for flesh, which he certainly took up from his Mother: [1.] He either actually purified it, needing [it] to be taken up, or [2.] he purified [it] by virtue of taking [it] up. Therefore…She did not conceive through the law of sin (i.e., not through the movement of carnal concupiscence) but she continuously merited a holy seed to be brought about in her through 83 84 85 0004383789.INDD 211 Lombard, The Sentences, vol. 3, 8–9 (Sent. 3.2.3). Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, L’embryon et son âme dans les sources grecques (vie siècle av. J.-C.-ve siècle apr. J.-C.), Collège de France, Centre de Recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance: Monographies 26 (Paris, 2007), 269–270. The translation is mine. Scotus left this phrase unaddressed, but it constituted the second objection of William Ware, Quaestio Gulielmi Guarrae, in fgg, 1, and patristic objection six in Peter Aureole, Tractatus Petri Aureoli, in fgg, 26 (1.2.6). Ware and Aureole cited Augustine’s pecc. mer., 1.29.57. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 212 Kappes pious faith. Therefore, how much more has ‘flesh of sin’ been baptized due to [divine] judgment that must be avoided, if ‘flesh without sin’ [i.e., Jesus] has been baptized serving for imitation’s exemplar?86 Although Lombard’s citation neglected the phrase in brackets, other sections of the Sentences interpreted Augustine to hold that Mary’s flesh was ‘subject to sin’ (Sent. 3.3.1). Surprisingly, Gregory Nazianzen may have inspired Augustine’s notion of purification at the Annunciation. Scholars already catalogue instances of Augustine invoking the authority of Nazianzen, whom he claimed to have read profusely.87 Satisfactory evidence for Augustine’s connection to Nazianzen includes access to Latin translations of Rufinus (scripsit c. 398–99). The Augustinian sources for Mary’s purification, above, were plausibly Nazianzian graecus and latinus. I compare the relevant passage from Nazianzen graecus: ‘He was brought forth from a virgin, herself, too, immaculate (immaculata) in soul and body [omisit: ‘by the Holy Spirit’].’88 With Rufinus, we notice the total lack of literalism when translating ‘immaculata’ from the corresponding Greek term: ‘He was conceived by the Virgin, who was prepurified (προκαθαρθείσης) in both soul and flesh by the Holy Spirit.’89 Rufinus’ translation of προκαθαρθεῖσα is accurate ad sensum, but it managed to convey nothing of Nazianzen’s peculiar terminology (i.e., purification as activity of a holy human nature participating in divine grace). Still, the Latin text perfectly conveyed Nazianzen’s theological point that Mary’s whole flesh and soul were immaculate at the Annunciation. Even if Augustine had theoretically read Rufinus’ Latin version of Oration 38 before composing his aforementioned anti-Pelagian treatise, he still preferred the Greek reading of ‘flesh’ (σᾶρξ) to Rufinus’ ‘body’ (corpus). Augustine’s knowledge of Mary’s purification of flesh at the Annunciation strongly suggests reliance on Nazianzen’s Greek oration. Augustine may have also disagreed with Rufinus’ term, immaculata, for Augustine’s traducian commitments put all humanity under Adam’s ambiguous caro peccati.90 Consequently, a portion of Mary’s flesh assumed by Christ was ‘purified’ at the Annunciation. In tandem with Nazianzen’s motif, Augustine emphasized 86 87 88 89 90 0004383789.INDD 212 Augustine, pecc. mer., 2.24.38. Joseph Leinhard, ‘Augustine of Hippo, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory Nazianzen’, in Orthodox Readings of Augustine, ed. Aristotle Papanikolaou and George Demacopoulos (Crestwood NY, 2008), 81–100 at 83–87. Gregory Nazianzen and Tyrannius Rufinus, De Epiphaniis [Oration 38], vol. 1, sec. 13. Gregory Nazianzen, In Theophania: Oration 38, 46.1 (PG 36, col. 325B 41–42). Dominic Keech, The Anti-Pelagian Christology of Augustine of Hippo 396–430 (Oxford, 2004), 204. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 213 the formulaic ‘caro peccati’ from Origen latinus and applied this to Mary’s natural mode of being conceived.91 Augustine’s potentially confused interpretation of Nazianzen’s meaning of purification at the Annunciation (similar to Nazianzen’s ‘purification’ of Jesus at his baptism) readily explains Augustine’s misread of purity language in relation to Mary’s flesh in spite of Rufinus’ translation. Consequently, Lombard’s Sentences presented Schoolmen with a perplexing problem in Sent. 3.3.2, wherein Augustine wrote (c. 415) in De natura et gratia, 36.42: He confirms by authority that from that time the Virgin was immune from sin. And Augustine, in the book De natura et gratia, clearly shows that the holy Virgin from that time was immune from all sin, saying: ‘With the exception of the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to exclude all question when discussing sin for the honor due to the Lord (for from that time forth we know that more grace was given to her to conquer sin completely because she deserved to conceive and bear the one who most certainly was without sin).’ Harmonizing this passage with Augustine’s De peccatorum meritis is difficult. Mary would have had the capacity to merit at the incarnation by some prevenient grace. The rationale for arguing Mary’s all-holiness might derive from the fact that she had possessed pious faith at the Annunciation before the taking up of her flesh and was not, therefore, a victim of concupiscence.92 Augustine’s view of the all-holiness of Mary, above, seems incompatible with his mechanistic traducianism, whereby sexual lust and the natural production of the human soul axiomatically result in the infection of concupiscence transmitted to offspring in every passionate act of coitus.93 Later, Augustine’s Contra Julianum (scripsit 422) and his Contra Julianum (opus imperfectum) (scripsit 428) claimed Greek sources for his theology of original sin.94 Referencing the 91 92 93 94 0004383789.INDD 213 Augustine’s source, besides Ambrose, is convincingly argued to have been Origen latinus as translated by Jerome. See Keech, The Anti-Pelagian Christology, 83, 102–104, 116–122, 142, 204. Meriting while in original sin or concupiscence is impossible for Augustine in response to the Pelagian position. See Ernesto Buonaiuti and Giorgio La Piana, ‘The Genesis of St. Augustine’s idea of Original Sin’, in The Harvard Theological Review 10 (1917), 159–75 at 168–173. This unresolved tension is noted in Augustine, C. Iul. Imp., vol. 2, 4.122: ‘Non transcribimus diabolo Mariam conditione nascendi; sed ideo, quia ipsa conditione solvitur gratia renascendi.’ Buonaiuti and La Piana, ‘The Genesis’, 170, 174. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 214 Kappes Greco-patristic tradition, Augustine claimed only to assert doctrines of his Greek predecessors.95 Additionally, Augustine’s ideas on original sin shared similarities with Ambrose of Milan (save the use of culpa to include infants).96 Later, Lombard’s selections of Greek and Latin Fathers produced a hodgepodge from which Schoolmen were tempted to embrace the language of culpability and physicalist accounts of original sin. Theological refinements on the locus and nature of original sin developed only gradually. In regard to Augustine, Meyronnes was unaware of the fact that Fulgentius of Ruspe was misidentified as Augustine in several problematic citations. Fulgentius had a non-Augustinian notion of infant ‘guilt’ foreign to Augustine’s language and jurisprudence.97 Thus, Meyronnes inherited relatively exaggerated physicalist vocabulary under the aegis of Augustine, overemphasizing culpa as nearly literal. He countered this Augustinian-Fulgentian mesh of metaphors with a detailed analysis of original sin. Meyronnes began by explaining to his interlocutor that original sin is not like other sins. It is not a ‘positive stain in the soul,’ nor a ‘morbid infection in the flesh.’98 Paul in Romans indisputably 95 96 97 98 0004383789.INDD 214 Leinhard, ‘Augustine of Hippo’, 86. Pier Franco Beatrice, The Transmission of Sin: Augustine and the Pre-Augustinian Sources (Oxford, 2013), 147; Buonaiuti and La Piana, ‘The Genesis’, 160–161; Ambrose of Milan, Exposition on the Gospel according to Luke, ed. G. Tissot, Sources Chrétiennes 45, 2 vols. (Paris, 1956), vol. 1, 4.67. Ambrose cited the Vetus Latina for Rom 5:12. Compare Augustine, C. Iul., 1.3.10, (PL 44, col. 646). Augustine appealed to Ambrose in his doctrine of original sin. Augustine, C. Iul. Imp., vol. 2, 4.121–122. Herein, Augustine avoided Ambrose’s guiltladen language concerning infants. Fulgentius’ vocabulary (culpa) and sense, as applied to infants, were all but rejected by Augustine. For the sole exception (conceding the term per the mouth of his opponent), see Augustine, C. Iul., 3.12.25 (PL 44, col. 715). Meyronnes avoided the term culpa (save repeating citations from the Sentences and its authorities). Meyronnes concentrated on reatus (legally accused) or reus (debtor). Fulgentius, i.e., (Ps.-) Augustine, was commonly pitted against immaculatism. E.g., see Lombard, Sent., 3.3.1.4. Meyronnes countered authentically Augustinian vocabulary. Less legalistic Schoolmen supposed ‘guilt’ or ‘fault’ (culpa) in the transmission of parental liability for Adam’s sin to all children. Beatrice, The Transmission of Sin, 49, 177, 259, admits that ‘culpa’ is lacking in Augustine, calling a child only reatus and reus. Augustine, practicing Roman law, did not analogize the status of a fetus as (impossibly) bound under contractual ‘liability’ (culpa), implying minimal personal and moral negligence (culpa levissima). See William Buckland, The Main Institution of Roman Private Law (New York, 1931), 556–559. Augustine was familiar with this language in property, inheritance, and slavery legislation. Robert Dodaro, ‘Between the Two Cities: Political Action in Augustine of Hippo’, in Augustine and Politics, ed. John Doody, Kevin Hughes, and Kim Paffenroth (New York, 1985), 99–116 at 100–111. Augustine’s legal activity dates from c. 400, exercising episcopalis audientia, as arbiter of his Christian people on questions of property and inheritance. See Caroline Humfress, ‘Patristic Sources’, in ccr, 97–118. Tractatus, 283, col. 2. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 215 links eternal reward with justice and justification before God, especially according to Augustine.99 Such an attribute, as a virtue, must be an immaterial quality in the soul. Secondly, guilt or ‘culpa’ is not in the body as a form, but rather is present in humans as ‘putative liability (reatus) to the pain of loss.’ This divine decree of liability for children of Adam derives from the actual ‘culpa’ of the first parent and is extrinsically attached to people who are propagated by such a parent. So, original sin’s punishment is not due to everyone’s deeds but to a decree, whereby humans under the paterfamilias Adam lost their right to an inheritance (in Roman legal fashion) because of Adam’s debt servitude and his hereditas damnosa.100 ‘Punishment of sense’ is only due to an evil action.101 Through a deductive process, Meyronnes argued a series of disjunctive (either/or) propositions that show original sin to be purely extrinsic to the human person: (1.) Original sin is not in the body, but soul; (2.) it is not in the sensitive power, but in the intellective power because it has to do with ‘merit’; (3.) it is not in the inferior, but in the superior faculty of reason that is deprived of ‘glory’ or, the will. This is necessarily the case since the will (per Anselm) is doubly determined by its intrinsic structure (i.e., to incline toward what is pleasant and to what is just). Next, Meyronnes reminded his reader of the common sentence of Schoolmen contra Augustine that parents do not create souls in the act of copulation.102 Hence, because the soul is created supernaturally, only a supernatural cause can withhold or give an immaterial attribute or the grace of preternatural 99 100 101 102 0004383789.INDD 215 Absit, 31. Ps.-Ambrose (Ambrosiaster) inspired Augustine’s massa damnata, along with ‘origin of being an accused’ (originem reatus). See Keech, The Anti-Pelagian Christology, 107–114. Augustine associated reatus with Adam, who sinned for and in the entirety of posterior humans, whom he begot after quasi-legal transgression of a divine precept. See Buonaiuti and La Piana 1917, 160–161, 168. Ambrosiaster was commenting on Paul’s concept of law in Romans. Augustine likely used Ambrosiaster’s interpretation of Rom 5:12: ‘in quo omnes peccaverunt’ (not to mention indulgentia). Compare Tractatus, 284, col. 2. See Absit, 33, for his theory of original sin as a patrimony based upon analogies from Justinian’s Digesta. A paterfamilias incurred debt, handing on its entirety to his heir. Augustine treated original sin as a ‘damned’ inheritance. See Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary, 485, where ‘a damned inheritance’ (per Gaius) regards heredity, where debt (versus wealth) passes from father to son. Patrilineal offspring named in a will are legally ‘liable’ for debt versus assets. Buckland, The Main, 199, notes, in Byzantium under Justinian, an inheritor was only liable to turn over existing assets of the paternal debtor. Contra, Augustine described debt of liability (too large for humans to pay) as the due of unbaptized infants (reatus) from a damned, ancient inheritance of their paterfamilias (Adam). Meyronnes taught that Augustine had questioned this opinion in his Retractationes and had expressly affirmed that sin can only exist in the soul. See, e.g., Tractatus, 284, col. 2–286, col. 2. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 216 Kappes justice (or sanctifying grace) at conception. With Paul’s and Augustine’s Roman jurisprudence in the background, Meyronnes logically inferred that the imputation of liability from Adam’s debt is a matter of an extrinsic legal decree, parallel to the Roman legitimization of infants (as fruit of a valid marriage or connubium).103 God—like a Roman emperor—may legitimize by decree any child since it is only a juridical condition (not a natural condition of soul or body) that determines a human to be in the state of original sin. In this scenario, Meyronnes summarized the Roman principle: ‘Where privilege is granted, common law (ius commune) holds no sway.’104 Importantly, both Paul and Augustine were generally interpreted among Schoolmen to consider death a decree of punishment for sin. Yet, Meyronnes quoted Augustine’s argument that the sovereign God had decreed ‘exemptions’ or ‘privileges’ (versus Augustine’s gratia) for Enoch (Gen 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11) from the common penalty (lex communis) of death (Rom 5:12). Conspicuously, he often avoided the term ‘original guilt’ in his own vocabulary, even if Schoolmen had been wed to the term for ages. Similar to Augustine’s own jurisprudence in reading Paul, Meyronnes was legally precise so that culpa signified a voluntary act with an evil or negligent intention, while reus and reatus indicated a legal action and judicial sentence, respectively, against a person irrespective of subjective culpa. Consequently, original sin was akin to legal irregularity imputed to those under the jurisdiction of common law, but might be remedied individually by a ‘privilegium legis.’ 6 Augustine’s indulgentia and Meyronnes’ privilegium Augustine’s skills in jurisprudence, along with his reading Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Ambrosiaster, disposed him toward a legalistic interpretation of St. Paul well before any Schoolmen. As with Origen’s use of Ulpian to exegete Romans, even his predecessor Clement of Alexandria had used Roman jurisprudence as a heuristic device for fleshing out St. Paul’s logic in Romans and Galatians.105 Consequently, after Augustine had obtained a copy of Origen’s Comment. in Rom., he not only adopted Origen’s Ulpianic notion 103 104 105 0004383789.INDD 216 Tractatus, 286, col. 2. Compare Digesta, 1.3.22 (Ulpian): ‘Cum lex in praeteritum quid indulget, in futurum vetat.’ Rufinus translated Comment. in Rom., 3.6(9), as citing Ulpian: ‘Indulgentia namque non futurorum, sed praeteritorum criminum datur.’ Augustine read Origenes latinus on this question, as discussed in Keech, The Anti-Pelagian Christology, 106–141. The Alexandrian interpreted Pauline legislation by recourse to an exact quote from Roman law. See, e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, vol. 2, 1.26.167: ‘ὁ νομοθετικὸς δέ ἐστιν 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 217 of indulgentia, but even Origen’s legalistic use of ‘privilegium’ within Rufinus’ translation.106 However, Augustine specially applied this notion of ‘privilege’ to Christ’s holy conception in utero: ‘How was it that Jesus alone was able to be just, since every generation was erring, unless he—born from a virgin of the liable (obnoxiae) generation—was by privilege bound in no way?’107 What is more, for Schoolmen, Jerome’s putative translation of the Pauline corpus brought out Roman legalisms in places where the Greek New Testament did not reflect Greco-Roman imperial constitutions or Roman law (whether in vocabulary or sense). For example, Paul allows marriage, while exhorting celibacy, translated thus: ‘I say this as an indulgence, not as imperium’ (Vulgate; 1 Cor 7:6).108 For Schoolmen, the Vulgate encouraged Augustine’s reading of St. Paul via Roman institutions. For example, in one work available to Meyronnes, Augustine wrote in relation to Adam, sin, death, and baptism: ‘Law (lex) was given by a slave, it made condemned persons (reos). Indulgence was given by the emperor, it freed those condemned.’109 By this, Augustine meant the following: ‘Indulgence (indulgere): An act of grace (by the emperor = indulgentia principis), a benefit granted as a favor (ex indulgentia). The term occurs primarily in imperial constitutions concerned with acts of amnesty in criminal matters.’110 Augustine commonly employed a legalistic use of indulgentia. Understandably, Augustine interpreted Paul’s expressions about God’s gratia and donum as decrees in a divine constitution, exempting the baptized from the effects of inherited sin and debt that had ruined the original patrimony of Adam and his familia. Comparing Paul’s Greek text to Greco-Roman constitutions of Paul’s own time, Augustine’s hermeneutic proves capital. Paul becomes perfectly 106 107 108 109 110 0004383789.INDD 217 ὁ τὸ προσῆκον ἑκάστῳ…καὶ τοῖς τούτων ἔργοις ἀπονέμων.’ Compare Ulpian in Institutes, 1: ‘Iustitia est constans…ius suum cuique tribuens.’ Comment. in Rom., 3.6(10). Augustine, C. Iul. imp., vol. 1, 1.66. The Greek terms are συγγνώμη and ἐπιταγή. Extant Greco-Roman legislation attests no usage of ‘indulgence’ with ‘order/imperium.’ The tlg locates it in only one legal context: Plato, Leges, 925d-e. The Vetus Latina translates this ‘consilium’ and ‘imperium’ in Ms. Cambridge, Trinity College B.17.1, fol. 39v, lines 22–23. The Vulgate translates more propitiously, for Plato alone used indulgentia and imperium together for granting indulgences to unwilling partners in common laws requiring forcible marriage surrounding intestate patrimonies. Elsewhere, the Vulgate employed indulgentia as a beneficium of the savior to captives and Israel (Isa 61:1 and 63:7). Also, the typological angel-Christ buys back (redemit) his ‘sons’ as an act of indulgentia (Isa 63:9), while 1 Mac 10:29 speaks of indulgences from tribute. Augustine, In Io. tr., 3.16. Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary, 500. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 218 Kappes intelligible per vocabulary of Greco-Roman authors and Greek constitutions, as my reworked translation suggests: For through incorrect payment of what was owed (= παραπτώματι [debitum]) many died; much more did grace (τῆς χάριτος [= gratia]) and indulgence (τῆς δωρεᾶς [indulgentia])111 in grace abound unto many, which is of one man Jesus Christ. Now, judgment (κρίμα [iudicium]) from one sinner was unto debt servitude (κατάκριμα [= ergastulum]),112 but an exemption (χάρισμα ([exemptio]) of many unpaid debts unto a right (δικαίωμα [ius singulare]).113 For if death reigned by means of the incorrect payment of what was owed by one man [Adam], how much more will they reign in life, who receive the abundance [for payment] from grace and from indulgence of justice (τῆς δικαιοσύνης [iustitia]), through one man, Jesus Christ. Consequently, just as through one incorrect debt-payment unto debt servitude for all people, so also through one [singular] right unto producing a right (δικαίωσιν) to life for all people (Rom 5:15–19).114 By Paul’s time, κατάκριμα properly referred to capital punishment in Roman jurisprudence.115 This notion of condemnation is uniquely reflected in an imperial constitution at Delphi (c. 100).116 Paul anticipated his apparently Roman notion of ‘condemn’ (κατακρίνω) by forewarning his readers (Rom 3:19– 20) that God judges someone ‘condemned’ (ὑπόδικος) for sin in terms reminiscent of the Roman death penalty.117 As with Gal 4:4, above, Paul’s sense and 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 0004383789.INDD 218 See, An Index, 172, 184, for very similar usages of δορεά and χάρις in relation to debts. Compare Meyronnes, In commemoratione omnium defunctorum: Sermo quartus, 263, col. 2 and Tractatus, 284, col. 2. Meyronnes asserted that Jesus paid the price of the debt that had put Adam and humanity into an ergastulum. For δικαίωμα, see An Index 69: ‘φυλασσεσθαι…τὰ πρότερον δικαιώματα.’ This famous edict of Claudius on the privileges or ‘ethnic rights’ of Jews in the empire was cited verbatim in Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae, vol. 4, 19.285. Compare Ms. Cambridge, Trinity College B.17.1, fols. 10v-11 (Rom. 5:15–19). The third-century translation has ‘delictum’ for παράπτωμα, ‘donum’ for χάρισμα, ‘gratia’ for χάρις, ‘donum/ donatio’ for δωραῖα (versus δωρεά), ‘iudicium’ for κρίμα, ‘condemnatio’ for κατάκριμα, ‘iustificatio’ for δικαίωμα, ‘iustitia’ for δικαιοσύνη, and ‘iustificatio’ for δικαίωσις. Χάρισμα and δικαίωσις cannot be considered proper terms in Roman jurisprudence. An Index, 109: ‘…κεφαλῆς κατάκριτον…γένεσθαι.’ Laffi, In greco, 18: ‘…[κατ]ὰ τοῦτον τὸν νόμον κατάκριτος ἔσται.’ Laffi, In greco, 22–23. A Roman citizen (hypothetically) could be legally executed, or (certainly) exiled from his homeland. Debates surround the legality of the death sentence in Roman law are discussed in Markéta Melounová, ‘Crimen maiestatis and the poena legis during the principate’, in Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 54 (2014), 407–430. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 219 language best parallels Dionysios of Halicarnassos and Roman institutions, as when Dionysios discussed the Roman Appius Claudius and his opposition to creditors who enslaved for life various persons during the fourth-century b.c.e. decemvirate. Paul’s sense of being ‘a condemned person’ was set up in Rom 3:19–20: ‘The law says (λέγει [dicit]), it speaks to those in the bounds of the law, so that every mouth should be silenced and the whole world has become liable/condemned toward God.’118 Here, Paul ostensibly mimicked a Roman constitution similar to that of Vespasian: ‘Whoever [does them violence] shall in Roman law be liable/condemned [to charge of impiety toward] the house of the Augusti.’119 First of all, we notice the uniquely Dionysian terminology where Appius condemned senatorial rejection of people seeking a legal ‘cancellation of debts and forgiveness of debt servitudes’ (χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς καὶ κατακριμάτων ἀφέσεις).120 Dionysios later used this rare lexical term for a case of debt, where a man was forced into a life of debt servitude.121 Paul and Dionysios reflect near-exact vocabulary in a shared cultural context at about the same period. Secondly, Paul associated this ghastly life-long imprisonment for debts with the terminology of capital punishment. Schoolmen learned to read Romans in this very same legalistic and juridical sense from Augustine’s interpretations of St. Paul. Paul can be read, above, as instructing a Roman world in God’s law of condemnation for sinfulness, which led to a corollary, i.e., to death. Augustine often cited an early Latin translation of Rom. 3:19–20 to make this very same point about the status of sinners: ‘So that all the world became a condemned [criminal] (reatus) to God.’122 Romans thought of law as sacred and its violation as sacrilege, and Paul admitted that God willed Christians to obey Roman laws, admitting that a Christian should be punished for their violations. For their part, Schoolmen relied on Augustine to help them in their legalistic read of Rom. 118 119 120 121 122 0004383789.INDD 219 Pauline notions of law are here foreign to vocabulary and sense of the lxx: ‘ὑπόδικος γένηται…τῷ θεῷ’ (Rom. 3:19–20). ‘The law says’ is oral (versus written Torah) as in the Roman system of a herald publicizing law. Vespasian, Vespasian’s Constitution Protecting Physicians, a.d. 74, 119–120: ‘ὅ]που ἂν αἱρῶνται ὡς ἀσύλους· ὃς δ᾽ ἂν [αὐτοὺς ἐκωιάζητα]ι, ὑπόδικος ἔστω δήμωι Ῥωμαίων [ἀσεβείας τῆς εἰς τ]ὸν οἶκον τῶν Σεβαστῶν.’ See Rom. Ant., vol. 3, 6.61.1–2, and vol. 2, 4.12.3 for the use of κρίμα in relation to the concilia plebis and its judgments. Rom. Ant., 13.5.1: ‘ὁ βίος ἦν αὐτῷ τοῦ κατακρίματος, ἀλλ’ ἵν’ ἀπαχθεὶς εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον ὑπὸ τῶν δημάρχων.’ Augustine, Augustine’s Commentary on the Galatians, ed. Eric Plummer (Oxford, 2006), 168: ‘reatus fiat omnis mundus deo.’ 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 220 Kappes 3:19 ff. and Rom. 5:12 ff., for the Vulgate had translated Augustine’s ‘reatus’ by the entirely ambiguous ‘subditus.’123 Meyronnes’ access to excerpts of classical jurisconsultants made him aware of the legal institutions undergirding Pauline and Augustinian arguments. Still, Paul never actually penned ‘privilegium’ or προνομία in Greek, i.e., Meyronnes’ terminus technicus.124 Instead, only Origen, the Vulgate, and Augustine provided the term privilegium for Schoolmen to imitate. Biblically, Meyronnes’ Marian opera completely fail to reference the one instance of ‘privilegium’ occurring in the Vulgate.125 Additionally, he (as well as Aureole and Thomae) avoided using the biblical term ‘indulgence’ for Mary’s conception (in favor of ‘privilege’). Why? In answer, Meyronnes and his Franciscan predecessors and confreres read indulgentia along the lines of a semantic shift among universitary academics. Papal and episcopal indulgences, by this time, had become the primary referent for indulgentia in theology and in canon law, where indulgence was defined as a remission of temporal punishment merited for actual sins (not punishment of original sin).126 Since I have found no reference to the privilegium of Ruth 4:6 (Vulgate) among immaculatists, parsimony leads me to the inference that Roman law satisfactorily provided Meyronnes with a substitute term from the ubiquitous phrase ‘to indulge a privilege’ (privilegium indulgere).127 While technically a privilege and an indulgence were separate kinds of exemptions, an indulgent action supposes a prevenient friendship of the emperor before granting an individual right (ius singulare) or privilege outside the bounds of common law: ‘As if the imperator were to give a friend a privilege so that the son about to be born of a concubine would be born legitimate.’128 In effect, the immaculatists had found a way to remain faithful to an entirely patristic mode of reading Paul through Roman jurisprudence, while yet accommodating newer legalistic and theological senses of ‘indulgence.’ This internally consistent legal system allowed immaculatists to build on Scotus’ 123 124 125 126 127 128 0004383789.INDD 220 Compare Vetus Latina, Ms. Cambridge, Trinity College B.17.1, fol. 7, line 2 and Vulgate (Rom 3:19) translations as ‘subditus.’ An Index, 154. Ruth 4:6 (Vulgate): ‘…debeo…meo utere privilegio…’. Meyronnes’ political discourse applied the notion of ‘privilegium’ to the papacy (in loco imperatoris). See José Antônio de Souza, ‘A hierocracia Na quaesio de subjectione de Frei Francisco de Meyronnes O.M.’, in Lógica e Linguagem na Idade Média, Coleçâo Filosofia 23, ed. Luis De Boni (Porto Alegre, 1995), 163–96, at 178, 187–88. Compare Conflatus, 3.3.2.1. See especially Digesta, 8.17.12. Meyronnes, In commemoratione omnium defunctorum: Sermo quartus, in Sermones in sanctis, 262, col 2. Compare Digesta, 1.4.3, and Novellae, 74.1. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 221 biblical metaphor that the sovereign Jesus ‘opened the door’ to Mary that nobody else can open or close.129 Roman jurisprudence explained how the mother of Jesus could have been easily freed from sin and death without threatening the created order of the law of sin and death. Scotus’ additional argument from divine maternity, as a sufficiently meritorious reason for Christ to produce an exemption from original sin, flowed effortlessly from this argument. 7 Immaculate Conception: Damascene in Lombard’s Sentences The single most important patristic text to prove Mary’s delayed sanctification from sin, according to maculist authorities, is John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa (cited in Lombard’s Sentences by mixing the translations of Burgundio of Pisa and Cerbanus).130 Commenting on the Annunciation (Luk. 1:35), John wrote: ‘And so, after assent of the holy Virgin, the Holy Spirit descended upon her, according to the Word of the Lord which the angel had spoken, purifying (purgans) her and preparing the power to receive and the power to beget the Word of the divinity…’.131 Scotus saw this as a principal objection to his immaculist thesis in his Sentences commentary. Yet, even Duns failed to locate a source to provide a direct retort to maculists. He avoided a direct rebuttal to Damascene’s alleged opposition to Mary’s complete holiness in favor of more philosophical and theological principles supporting his thesis.132 Auspiciously, Damascene’s use of ‘purifying’ (καθαῖρον) and its cognates are all traceable to an equivocal but positive definition of cleansing in Nazianzen graecus, the very same passage that Augustine seemed to misunderstand. Damascene understood well Nazianzen, who was at the root of the Marian terminology that Damascene applied to Mary’s human nature. Damascene best illustrated this in the account of Mary’s baptism, where he reworked Nazianzen’s doctrine of the purification of Jesus at his baptism: The air, the fiery ether, and the sky would have been hallowed through the ascending of her spirit, just as earth was hallowed by the depositing of her body. Even water took its share in the blessing: For [water] 129 130 131 132 0004383789.INDD 221 Ord. 3.3.2, no. 14. Compare Isa. 22:2; Rev. 3:8. Compare Burgundio of Pisa and Cerbanus, De fide orthodoxa, in Saint John Damascene: De fide orthodoxa: Versions of Burgundio and Cerbanus, ed. Eligius Buytaert, Franciscan Institute Publications: Text Series 4 (St. Bonaventure NY, 1955), 171, 391. Peter Lombard, Peter Lombard: The Sentences, 4 vols., trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto, 2010), vol. 3, 10 (Sent. 3.3.1.3). Nota Bene, I have altered the original translation. Scotus, Ord., 3.3.1, nos. 3. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 222 Kappes washes, not so much by pure (καθαρῷ) water cleansing (καθαίροντι) her, but by [water itself] being purified (ἁγνιζομένῳ) [by her] to the highest degree.133 Both human natures underwent actions of cleansing according to Nazianzen, but the entire Greek patristic tradition understood this to mean only that an interior action of grace and exterior action of glorification occurred.134 Latins, lacking access to Greek sources and even to Latin translations of Rufinus, did not know that ‘purification’ (προκαθαρθεῖσα) of Mary at the Annunciation ought to be rendered as ‘immaculate’ (immaculata), just as Rufinus had properly translated the term. While the Greek tradition of purification, culminating in Damascene, always supposed positive graces, Meyronnes did not have access to Damascene’s other Marian works. Instead, he employed a Ps.-Dionysian source that was at his disposal. There, too, Bonaventure and Aquinas admitted the existence of an all-positive definition of purification (contra Lombard) within the Greek tradition. Still, everyone’s lexicon attested to this equivocal notion of purification to signify a purely positive attribute, as Bonaventure testified: ‘Dionysius says that “holiness is pure and sincere goodness from every contagion.” Therefore, to speak thus is to speak of nothing other than sanctification rather than purification… Therefore, the Virgin desired to be purified [but] not because she was unclean.’135 For his part, Meyronnes openly cited the passage from Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae that had also adopted this Dionysian definition, though maintaining a maculist conclusion: Argument 3: Besides, the Damascene says that ‘The Holy Spirit, while it was purifying her (purgans eam), came upon’ the blessed Virgin before the time of the conception of the Son of God. But this cannot be understood as other than a purification from concupiscence, as Augustine says in his work De natura et gratia, for she did not commit sin. Therefore, she was not profusely cleansed from concupiscence through sanctification in utero. (ST 3.27.3, arg. 3) 133 134 135 0004383789.INDD 222 John Damascene, Second Oration on the Dormition, in Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, ed. Bonifatius Kotter (Berlin, 1988), vol. 5, 528 (11.14–16). Manuel Candal, ‘La Virgen Santísima ‘prepurificada’ en su Anunciación’, in Orientalia Christiana Periodica 31 (1965), 241–76. Bonaventure, De purificatione b. virginis Mariae : Sermo 2, 1 (vol. 9, 641, col. 1). 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM Francis of Meyronnes and the Immaculate Conception 223 Response to Argument 3: It must be said that the Holy Spirit produced a double purification on the matter of the Blessed Virgin: [1.] Indeed, it worked one purification, as if it were preparatory for the conception of Christ, whose conception was not out of any sort of impurity of guilt or concupiscence; but the Spirit was recollecting her mind into a greater concentration and withdrawing her from what is common. For, too, the angels are called “purified,” in whom no impurity is found, as Dionysius says in chapter six of De ecclesiasticis hierarchiis. [2.] However, the Holy Spirit worked another purification in her through of the conception of Christ, which was of the Holy Spirit. Also, according to this, it may be said that it purified her entirely from the kindling [of sin]. (ST 3. 27.3, ad 3) For his part, Meyronnes seized the opportunity to lift the relevant Ps.-Dionysian text from his predecessor’s work and to reformulate it into a rebuttal against maculist objectors: Notwithstanding, [Mary] was truly purified (purgata), because Luk. 2:22 says that ‘after the days of her purification were fulfilled.’136… See Dionysius, chaps. 6–8, on De ecclesiastcis hierarchiis, where it is said that the superior angels purify their inferiors, who have nevertheless no stain, from which they need be purified. Therefore, notwithstanding [Luk. 2:22], the Blessed Virgin Mary did not contract original sin, though she was truly purified.137 Meyronnes appears as the first medieval immaculatist to utilize the opportune semantic range of the term ‘purification,’ as defined in the Ps.-Dionysian corpus, on behalf of the Immaculate Conception. Prior, Scotus and others had failed to provide an adequate rejoinder to those objecting from Damascene’s text. While the Greek-Dionysian tradition did not actually rely on Nazianzen’s terminology and definition of purification, it did affirm an exclusively positive attribute that is, an increase in spiritual knowledge. Meyronnes’ skillful rearrangement of patristic loci from popular florilegia exonerated Mary from damaging inferences ordinarily drawn from Scriptural and patristic interpretations of ‘purification’ in the Latin West. 136 137 0004383789.INDD 223 This reading in the singular (versus Greek plural) is attested in the Vetus Latina as well. See J. Hugh Hatch, ‘The Text of Luke 2:22’, in The Harvard Theological Review 14 (1921), 377–381. Conflatus, 3.3.2.6. 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM 224 8 Kappes Conclusions The present study has notably concentrated on two main aspects of Meyronnes’ argumentation for the Immaculate Conception. First, Meyronnes elaborated a profound and powerful argument that St. Paul should be interpreted in light of the Roman law. Nevertheless, Meyronnes’ synthesis proves to be somewhat unoriginal in its approach. As we saw, Origen, Augustine, and Bonaventure had previously pressed Roman institutions into the service of exegeting the Pauline corpus in order to understand the logic of divine law. Meyronnes’ ingenuity lies in better synthesizing Augustinian and Bonaventurian readings of St. Paul in harmony with the jurisconsultants of Roman law germane to Paul’s time and culture. Although limitations of space prevent me from citing each and every appeal of Meyronnes to these pagan authorities, enough of his argument was sampled to affirm the objective value of Scholastic readings of the New Testament with the aid of Roman institutions. Secondly, we saw that Augustine suffered difficulties in understanding the nature of Mary’s ‘cleansing’ at the Annunciation. It is entirely plausible that his confusion came from a misreading of the Annunciation as originally exposited by Gregory Nazianzen. What is more, a very similar Scholastic misread of Damascene’s internally consistent exposition of Mary’s purification at the Annunciation occurred in the Latin West because of inherent problems in translating correctly the unusual definition of purification as uniformly maintained in the Greek tradition. Nevertheless, Meyronnes’ ingenuity and eye to detail capacitated him to find solutions to overcome this problem via the Greek author Ps.-Dionysius, despite the dearth of Greek patristic material then available. Although the Immaculate Conception was a relatively innovative idea with respect to Latin Medieval discussions about the universality of original sin, Meyronnes proved himself a firmly traditional exegete of the New Testament according to the mind of Augustine and Bonaventure, despite the fact that the Seraphic Doctor never applied the notion of a ‘Marian privilege’ to Mary’s conception. In short, Meyronnes impressively balanced tradition and innovation in his bold venture to convince the Latin world that the Immaculate Conception was not merely a ‘more probable opinion,’ but a natural corollary of St. Paul’s jurisprudence and of the patristic tradition according to the intention of a divine legislator, Jesus Christ. Acknowledgement I sincerely thank Drs. Garrett Smith and J. Isaac Goff for their advice and suggestions that led to greatly improving the quality of this article. 0004383789.INDD 224 5/15/2019 1:19:53 PM