Annotation XVIII

”Blessed are the poor in spirit.” — Matthew 5:3

Whether Christ and the apostles begged (were mendicants).

John 4; John 13.

Thomas, Cardinal Cajetan, while explaining these things in his commentaries, proposed a question in these words: “Why does JESUS call the ‘poor in spirit’ blessed, when he himself — the exemplar of all perfection — was not a beggar according to the truth of the matter, but rather [one] giving alms to beggars, as is clear from John 13, when it was supposed that Jesus had ordered Judas (who held the purse) to give something to one in need? For from this it is clearly established that he did not number himself and his own among beggars. And the same is plain when the disciples went into the city, not to beg but to buy food; and in several other Gospel passages the same is found.” — I answer that Jesus was not a beggar, because he is nowhere read to have asked [anything] except from the Samaritan woman a drink of water — which is agreed not to be, properly, [an act] of beggars, since it can befall anyone of higher station. (Although elsewhere, following others, we may have written otherwise.) But he was, in a moderate a moderate [poverty] of beggars — because he had nothing at all of his own, except clothes, from the time he began to preach. But he lived not on begged things, but on things offered by devout persons — according to that [passage] of John 13: “Judas held the purse, and carried the things that were given.” And Luke 8 clearly says that women ministered to Christ, as he went about preaching, out of their own means. Thus far Cajetan.

Whom Ambrose [Catharinus], bishop of Compsa, attacked in the second book of [his] Annotations, in a sharp and lengthy digression — maintaining that these things do the greatest injury to the mendicant orders, and are diametrically opposed to the doctrine of the saints and to the ecclesiastical decrees. And he shows, from several testimonies of divine Scripture and opinions of the fathers, that the Apostles were truly beggars, and that Christ — of whom it is said in the Psalm, “But I am a beggar” [Ps. 39/40:18] — lowered himself of his own accord to the state of mendicancy for two reasons: first, that he might make abundant satisfaction for our pride and wantonness. For we arrogantly seized food not our own, but forbidden (which we do continually); but he, [asking for] what was his own, humbly and lowlily, as if it were another’s, asks [for it] as a favor. Then, that he might give us an example of humility and subdue our pride, he begged the place where he might celebrate the Passover with the disciples; he begged the ass on which he rode into the holy city; he begged lodging from Zacchaeus, and likewise food from the women who are read to have ministered to him out of their means.

But to the things which Cajetan brought forward to confirm his opinion, he [Catharinus] responds thus: First, Cajetan argues: “The disciples went into the city to buy food; therefore they were not begging.” Good God, what is this worth? — as if we, who continually beg, do not also buy food with what we have begged! Secondly he argues: “Judas carried the purse and received from devout persons what was given there; therefore the disciples were not begging.” Who would not marvel at the argument? — whence one ought rather to have concluded, “Therefore they were begging.” For so do we too beg, sending one of our number with a purse, that he may thus ask, and receive, and bring back what is given there. Thirdly he argues that Christ gave to the needy. But this the state of mendicancy required — that what was left over be given out to the poor; for so did the blessed men Dominic and Francis, and so they commanded it to be done. Fourthly, what he adds about the women who ministered to him is rightly turned back against himself — even on his own authority, since [Cajetan], thinking more correctly elsewhere, said that Christ, inasmuch as [he was] a beggar, had brought them in for this [purpose]. Finally, Ambrose infers that this opinion of Cajetan was of old condemned by the Church in [the person of] William of Saint-Amour, who first — out of hatred of the mendicant friars — taught that neither Christ nor the apostles ever begged, and that those who beg by choice are unworthy of the fellowship of Christians.