The risk of anachronism in interpreting such material is great. Kantorowicz has rightly cautioned us against inferring from it the existence of the concept of the “king as a purely private person” in the modern sense of the term. The crucial line of distinction, he believes, should be drawn “between the king alone in his relations to individual subjects, and matters affecting all subjects, the whole polity.”44 And the persona privata considered as a body should not, of course, be confused with the king’s material body; that entity is not specifically covered by the discourse of “the king’s two bodies”—one good reason for not employing that discourse as a crucial analytical paradigm throughout this book.45 Of course, the material body did matter, and could impact on the metaphoric “two bodies” in crucial ways.
With this caveat in mind, we may turn to consider briefly the distinctions between “public” and private,” the “official” and the “individual,” which emerged in medieval valuations of the figure of the pope. Walter Ullmann has investigated how Leo I (who died in 461) used Roman law to clarify the issue of papal power, identifying as a major change “the separation of the (objective) office of the pope” which originated with St. Peter “from the (subjective) personality of the pope.” For governmental purposes, Ullmann continues, “it was the office of the pope, the papacy as such, which mattered”; the issue of whether someone was a “good” or “bad” pope was not crucial. “The pope as office holder was conceived to be an instrument to execute the office, that is, to translate the abstract programme of the papacy.”46 Thus, “subjective standards and personal qualifications were irrelevant as far as the scope and extent of the office were concerned. In other words, within the terms of papal primatial doctrine the validity of a papal act or decree or judgment did not depend upon the morality or sanctity or other subjective-moral standards applicable to the person of the pope, but solely upon whether or not the judgment or decree was legally valid. . . . The office, in a word, absorbed the man.” Here there is, perhaps, a tendency toward a sort of Monophysitism. On the analogy with the heresy which denied human nature in the person of the incarnated Christ, it might be said that this view of the officium papae tends to have the higher, divine element subjugate the lower, human one. However, in the later Middle Ages there were substantial challenges to this tendency. The “intellectual revolution” (as Ullmann terms it) of Aristotle’s teachings, particularly on ethics and politics, contributed to the emergence of “the conception of the individual as a citizen” with specific rights and responsibilities rather than as a mere “subject” who received “doctrine clothed in the law” which had to be obeyed.47 At the end of the thirteenth century a “subjective point of view” regarding the papacy became clearly visible. The distinction “between office and person was now beginning to be reversed”: “What began to matter was the personality of the pope, was whether he was a morally ‘good’ or ‘bad’ pope.”48
The significance of that disassociation is richly problematic—not susceptible of generalization but rather to be sought in specific times, places, people. To take one particularly telling case, Pope Clement VI (1342–52) was adamant that “the personality of an individual office-holder could not change the nature of the office,” as Diana Wood puts it.49 Thus he “strained every nerve to convey a sense of the vast abyss which separated the heavenly office from the earth-bound man.” It is quite true that Clement frequently described himself as unworthy. But such self-abasement may be read as a strategy of self-aggrandizement—behold the frail shoulders on which such a heavy burden of responsibility rests! In other words, “the separation between the person and the office was simply a device to enable the Pope to stress his sovereign status.”50 One among many exercises of that sovereign status was the bull Unigenitus Dei filius, promulgated in good time for the Roman jubilee year of 1350, which lent papal authority to a doctrine of indulgences or “pardons” from the punishment of sin, as developed by the major schoolmen of the thirteenth century. Here Clement consolidated the papal claim to dispense merit to sinners from the vast spiritual treasury which had been filled by the surplus or supererogatory merits of Christ and his Saints—a point to which we will return in our discussion of Chaucer’s Pardoner qua pardoner or “publisher” and distributor of indulgences.
On the other hand, the disassociation of office and man could be deployed to diminish rather than aggrandize the papal office—as often happens in the writings of those who dissented from what the Church was defining as orthodoxy. For example, in his polemical treatises the Franciscan William of Ockham (c. 1288–1347)—a vociferous critic of Clement VI—deduced various radical consequences from the principle that the power which God had given to men was crucially limited. Certain restrictions had been imposed on the power of St. Peter, which should not be transgressed by his successors. As a mortal man and hence imperfect, there is no way in which the pope can possess all the power which Christ, even as mortal man, possessed.51 Far from being infallible, the pope “may not add any ‘novelties’ to the evangelical law, especially such as would be grave or onerous.” Indeed, “without the consent of the faithful he cannot regularly command any special fast or abstinence.”52 Ockham goes so far as to say that, in the interests of the greater good of the universal Church, circumstances might arise whereby it was better for it not to be ruled by any pope—or, alternatively, to be ruled by many popes.53 Such remarks are devoid of any belief in the mystical inevitability of the figure and office of the pope.
Remarkably similar discourses and dilemmas characterize the late-medieval construction of priestly power and responsibility, as may be illustrated with reference to scholastic discussion of the ministration of the sacraments. Can the sacraments be conferred by evil ministers? Thomas Aquinas puts forward three powerful arguments against this proposition— arguments which we find reiterated, again and again, in academic affirmations of the unsubjective authority of ordained ministry.54 First is the challenging question posed by Ecclesiasticus 34:4, “who can be made clean by the unclean?” When ministers lack grace themselves, surely it is impossible for them to confer grace on others? Second, the power of the sacraments derives from Christ, but if the wicked are cut off from Christ, surely they have lost the power of conferring the sacraments? Third, the minister required for a sacrament is one who lacks the stain of sin, as Leviticus 21:17–18 indicates (“Whosoever of your seed throughout their families has a blemish, he shall not offer bread to his God, neither shall he approach to minister to him”). But against all these arguments, Aquinas continues, stands the authority of St. Augustine, who claimed that “the ministry was destined to be transmitted in full to both good and evil. What difference does a bad minister make to you when the Lord is good?”55
Aquinas resolves the issue by applying the principle of instrumentality. A minister may be seen as a sort of an instrument, and an instrument acts not of its own accord but through the power which moves it. True, it may possess some other form or power in addition to that which it needs to function as an instrument. But this is irrelevant to its instrumentality. For example, a physician’s body is the instrument of a mind which possesses certain skills: and it makes no difference to those skills whether the body is healthy or infirm.56 (In other words, a physician who is himself sick can make others well.) According to the same principle, it is unimportant whether the channel “through which water is passed is made of silver or lead.” Hence, Aquinas concludes, “the ministers of the Church can confer the sacraments even when they are evil.” They do not cleanse men from their sins, or confer grace upon them, through their own power; the power involved belongs rather to Christ, who works