§ 1. “I know,” says Gregory of Toulouse, book 2 of the Syntagma, chapter 28, “that many have envied the property of the Church and preferred it for themselves rather than for God and the uses of the pious; and therefore they have also twisted certain profane examples into authority for their wickedness and presented a certain piety as a pretext.”
What, therefore, do those men who suffer no one besides themselves to be wealthy say? First, that Christ Jesus our Lord was poor and that Paul labored and supported himself with his hands; all ecclesiastics ought to live by this example. Second, that luxury and pride have arisen from wealth. Third, that wealth requires care and solicitude, while clerics must be constituted free for the service of God.
§ 2. The advancement of very many in virtue through contempt for human affairs is indeed to be desired, so that they embrace not only the precepts of God but also the counsels. Yet because such great virtue belongs to few, the Lord did not command but counseled it. He went before them by example, invited them, and did not compel them. We praise chastity, yet we do not desire that there be no marriages in the Christian world; otherwise those who live chastely could not be born.
Therefore I confidently assert that, although Christ the Lord did not have a place to lay His head, He nevertheless did not prescribe the same law to His Church or her ministers. Rather, He showed the summit of perfection, which some strive to ascend, and left to the rest the use of their own property. For since He knew that that harsh road of poverty was not for all, but that the supports of wealth sustained many, He did not wish to institute His Church otherwise than was fitting among men. Therefore He wished Bishops and others to use those aids for the government of peoples, and regarded it as sufficient if in mind they were above wealth, just as riches did not hinder Abraham, Isaac, and David but were incentives and instruments for doing good and for liberality.
Otherwise the poverty of Christ the Lord and the other things which He did are proposed for imitation to all Christians, not to clerics alone. Why, therefore, do they wish only these men to be poor? Do they wish only these also to be chaste, sober, just, and truthful? Christ lived a poor life, and indeed so did the Apostles. Yet God, who chose poor food and clothing for Himself, said to His ancient ministers: “All the richest part of the oil, wine, and grain, whatever they offer as firstfruits to the Lord, I have given to you,” Numbers 18:12. He also promised the same to the priests of the new Testament: that kings would be their foster-fathers. The Apostles too, if you regard the iniquity of the times, had that poverty which nevertheless permitted them to live from the Gospel. The Lord did not prohibit the use of riches which He Himself did not possess.
Yet the heretics who are most offended by the attendance and retinue of our Bishops approve the same thing among their own. Hadrian à Saravia, On the Honor Owed to Bishops and Presbyters, chapter 29:
Furthermore, the retinue of Bishops and the bustle of attendants offend the eyes of certain men not a little, because in that matter they appear similarly to imitate the dukes and counts of the kingdom. Response: this argument is popular and deludes the minds of the simple with an empty appearance. For I dare assert that the retinue of the Lord and the Apostles was as honored as it could be in proportion to the time and the matter for which He had come into this world; it would have been more honored if God had approved another plan for saving the human race.
For He had voluntarily taken eighty men into His household, who accompanied Him wherever He went or went before Him to the place where He was about to come.
And in the dedicatory Letter to On the Different Ranks of Ministers:
Evangelical doctrine does not disturb civil society or anything that pertains to preserving it. Since the pastors of Churches live in that society, the Lord nowhere commanded that they be strangers to those things by which the state is either adorned or defended. Different degrees of honor, moreover, are necessarily established everywhere for the sake of preserving society. Our ancestors gave to Bishops those among them which appeared capable of being given with the utility of the Church and the state, and judged it becoming that they be reckoned among the nobles of the state. Certainly, since that honor is also granted to jurists in the toga who preside over the administration of justice in courts, all nations have always judged it equitable that the Prelates of sacred things and religion possess it. Hence it also follows that they have that retinue and attendance which by usage and custom sober and modest nobles commonly have. I do not see what there is here at which men either ignorant of human affairs or assuredly excessively morose should turn up a crooked nose.
§ 3. Wealth produces luxury, I confess, and ambition. The desire for honors is tickled by a double enticement when it observes sacred and profane power joined into one. Yet the hierarchical order and the supports of wealth are not therefore to be abolished; rather, an honorable and moderate use must be prescribed by good laws. The goods of the Church are to be expended upon the poor, the ministers of the Church, and teachers. Bishops who are not Princes use a moderate retinue; those who have a Principality joined to their Bishopric must not be denied that ornament which other Princes use in the state. I approve no one’s prodigality, condemn everyone’s luxury, and counsel becoming station and magnificence.
Amid these things I wonder at the censors of ecclesiastical wealth. For although they behold the insane expenditures, wantonness, and delights of so many kings and secular Princes, so many wealthy men and nobles, they nevertheless do not judge that their wealth should be taken away by force; they envy only the Prelates, whose moderation is nevertheless remarkable if they are compared with the others. Without doubt those who live luxuriously from the patrimony of Christ offend more gravely, since so many canons and reason itself command its right use; but those are the vices of men, not of wealth.
Ambition indeed appears to me to be kindled by honor, yet not abolished by the government which exists in sectarian Churches. For there is rivalry even in a small presidency, and it is the easier the more common the presidency. Is not a Consul elected with ambition even in small towns? And in villages do not the sons of praetors look proudly about themselves? Many of the heretics acknowledge the arrogance, ambition, and rivalry of their ministers; among them is Saravia, defender of Bishops, page 588: “I wonder whether Master Beza believes that today there is less ambition or less avarice among ministers of the Church who preside for only a week and whose stipends are meager and curtailed than there was formerly either among the ancient Bishops or among those who today profess Christ and have ample revenues.”
They do not understand that they are censuring the divine ordinance which furnished the priests of the old Testament with so much wealth, adorned them with so many magistracies, and finally gave them the prefecture and kingdom of the nation. Indeed, King Agrippa himself professes before Gaius that the priesthood is greater than the kingdom.
If the truth must be spoken concerning morals, it must not be denied that wealth affords the evil a capacity for acting wickedly. Yet I establish that, after all things have been defined by laws in the Church, virtue is cultivated by many amid riches themselves; for poverty, although not to the same vices, nevertheless affords occasion to great vices. The splendor of riches increases arrogance, but I think that Fabricius, the exemplar of Roman virtue praised by every writer, cooked turnips with as much arrogance as Pyrrhus ascended his throne. “I prefer,” he says, “to command the wealthy rather than possess wealth.” Does that commander from the plow seem to you to have been little ambitious when he wished to have kings and magnates as servants?
Delights are tinder for lusts; and nevertheless those vices gained strength amid the filth of brothels, the barbarity of the Scythians, and the nakedness of the Western Indians. If the Church must be discussed, there were graver scandals in primitive times: the horrendous obscenities of the Simonians, Nicolaitans, Gnostics, and Carpocratians; indeed, those times were disturbed by more heresies altogether, when ambition and desire for wealth also afforded an occasion of secession. But in the following ages the sects were fewer and less widely dispersed, and the sincerity of the ancient religion which exists in the present age is owed to the power of the Bishops.
§ 4. It was not said without reason:
Care follows growing money.
Yet the care is greater when money is both lacking and sought; for wealth already acquired occupies men, but while it is sought, it kills them. This, therefore, must be done: the dreadful roots of cupidities must be torn out. When these persist and are agitated by want, they grow remarkably and occupy the whole mind of the soul. For needy avarice judges nothing shameful which is profitable.
Finally, the avaricious poverty of preachers is now so despised that no honorable man canvasses for that province. Concerning this Beza and Hadrian à Saravia have a common complaint, page 8 of On the Different Ranks of Ministers. Yet solicitude and useless occupation can be relieved through stewards for all the Bishops—concerning whom canon law says many things—through administrators, concerning whom the ancients and recent authors speak, through leases, and through other abridgments of cares.