Pastoral Reform in the Brixen Sermons

chapter 6 Pastoral Reform in the Brixen Sermons

Pastoral Reform and the Brixen Clergy

Nicholas of Cusa’s reform of the diocesen clergy, like the monastic reform alongside it, reflected a broader movement in the late medieval church. The conciliarism to which Cusanus owed much of his early notoriety arose in large part due to a desire for reform of the clergy. Through the later Middle Ages, repeated calls for a reform of the church in head and members (reformatio in capite et membris) expressed the desire to begin reform with pope and curia under the assumption that it would have a corresponding effect on the clergy at the diocesan level.1 The Council of Vienne (1311) first lodged a conciliar cry for the reformatio in capite et membris.2 The Council of Constance (1414–18) proceeded on this assumption that the reform of the higher clergy would eventuate in the reform of the diocesan clergy, ensconced in the 1418 decree Frequens that stipulated the regular convocation of councils for purposes of reform.3 The Council of Basel (1431–49) met in order to continue these reform ef- forts and only raised the question of conciliar authority over the papacy when Eugenius iv resisted.4 There were numerous problems within the ranks of the late medieval clergy that necessitated reform. One was the tandem of plural- ism and absenteeism depriving diocesan parishes of their bishops and leaving them a less qualified or less competent vicar to care for pastoral duties. Due to the benefice system inherited from medieval feudalism, the more intellectu- ally gifted or better educated clergy often found their way out of the diocesan parish and into the service of curia, secular court, or university.5 A related de- mand arose for regular preaching on the part of diocesan bishops or parish

1 On this trajectory in late medieval reform, see Jedin, History of the Council, 1:5–165; Frech, Reform, 91–108; Pascoe, Jean Gerson, 146–74; and Bellitto, Renewing Christianity, 105–18. 2 On the use of the formula at Vienne, see Fasolt, Council and Hierarchy, 115–216, and Frech, Reform, 193–214. 3 Stump, Council of Constance, 138–69, and Alberigo, Chiesa Conciliare, 187–228. 4 Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption, 12–86, and Decaluwe, Successful Defeat, 174–91. 5 On the late medieval clergy, see Pantin, English Church, 9–75; Barraclough, Papal Provisions, 71–177; and Hay, Europe, 45–60. For somewhat less pessimistic appraisals, see Lawrence Dug- gan, “The Unresponsiveness of the Late Medieval Church: A Reconsideration,” Sixteenth Cen- tury Journal 9 (1978), 3–26; Moeller, “Piety in Germany,” 50–75; and more recently F. Donald Logan, University Education of the Parochial Clergy in Medieval England: The Lincoln Diocese,

Pastoral Reform In The Brixen Sermons 157 priests, but left unfulfilled it would devolve to mendicant preachers or human- ist rhetoricians.6 The misuse of the penitential system, in particular hearing confessions for pecuniary gain, also caused much consternation among clergy and faithful alike.7 Beyond vocational obligations, there remained problems of clerical morality, especially concubinage.8 Cusanus had long concerned himself with the reform of the clergy, even if his ecclesiastical duties and speculative preoccupations since Basel had not given him occasion to write about it. The conciliar De concordantia catholica approached clerical reform from a constitutional perspective, with attention to the council as the ordinary means for administration and reform of the church.9 Like the fifteenth-century conciliar movement, however, such structural reform failed to address the deeply rooted financial, behavioral, and educational roots of the ills. Both De concordantia catholica and the conciliar movement focused on questions of jurisdiction—more specifically on the external forum of that jurisdiction (in foro exteriori), which dealt with the decision-making authority of pope and council.10 As a diocesan bishop, Cusa- nus would have to devote less attention to general ecclesiopolitical consider- ations and more to specific local exigencies and their solutions, which in turn led him to a reconsideration and adaptation of his concept of the priesthood

c. 1300–c. 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2014), and Salonen and Hanska, Entering a Clerical Career. 6 Taylor, Soldiers of Christ, 15–51; Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Prot- estantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 15–46; and Mormando, Preacher’s Demons, 1–21. 7 For one highly critical study of the late medieval penitential system and its uses and abus- es, see Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1977). More nuanced responses to Tentler can be found in Leonard E. Boyle, “The Summa Confessors as a Genre, and Its Religious Intent,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Heiko A. Oberman and Charles Trinkaus (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 126–31, and Lawrence G. Duggan, “Fear and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 75 (1984): 153–75. 8 Marjorie Plummer, From Priest’s Whore to Pastor’s Wife: Clerical Marriage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation (Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2012), 11–50. 9 dcc ii.208–46; Sigmund, 160–92. On the normative role of the councils in church gover- nance, see Alberigo, Chiesa Conciliare, 300–22. 10 On the relationship of the two potestates in the context of conciliar thought, see Thomas M. Izbicki, Protector of the Faith: Cardinal Johannes de Turrecremata and the Defense of the Institutional Church (Washington, d.c.: Catholic University of America Press, 1981), 53–60; Oakley, Western Church, 157–74; and Tierney, Foundations, 31–33, 175–76. More gen- erally, see Benson, Bishop-Elect, 23–55, 64–71.