Ordination Angst

Hus at the Stake

Tonight, my doubts crawl like roaches out of the cracks of my theology and fly about the room with whispering wings before the snap of a hard-shelled landing on the wall.  In two days, I shall finally be ordained a priest.  I am honored that the University’s protegé, Johann Eck, will officiate.

But I cannot sleep and sit for hours by the window.  A mist falls.  The street is empty.  The lamps that burn before the shops make weak circles that hardly dent the night. 

In his cot, my friend Zell sleeps untroubled.  At repose, his face is not nearly as handsome as it seems when he is awake, animated, amused.  His nose is long and as straight as if drawn with a ruler.  His chin is reticent, his eyelids so thick that his eyes appear half closed much of the time.  He is a lean, angular man with bony cheeks and forehead.  Asleep, he appears halfway to a skeleton. 

But awake, he is always in good humour, playful as a pudel, shining with love for life and people.  When he speaks at the cathedral, the crowds are large.  He is thirty-two years old, a man whose enthusiasm and sympathy married to eager, virile movements are an irresistible bait to women.  Matthew is often over his head before he even realizes he’s reached the water.  Now he sleeps, his arms thrown wide as if to embrace the world.  He questions neither his sins nor his redemption.

I take the candle and walk to the door of our room.  Across from us, the students keep a dog and several cats.  They let the excrement accumulate, and the stench reaches me.  Our Midas landlady charges extra for the dog.  She turns even dog turds to gold.

Perhaps I am troubled by my dead father’s voice, who begged me with his final breath not to become a priest.  He believed the clergy parasites, keeping concubines, fathering bastard children who never have legal rights, and fleecing the people for money at every turn. 

My father was only a winemaker, but he thought much.  He had a copy of the writings of Jan Hus, the Bohemian heretic, hidden in a sling under a chair.  He agreed with Hus that Christ was the Head of His church, not the Pope, a belief that calls into question the authority of Rome and makes every pronouncement of the Curia suspect.

I turn away from the stench, retreating to the window again.  I always saw a life of service to Christ’s people to be a marvelous thing.  “If you want to serve the people,” my father growled, “then become a doctor.”  He sacrificed much for my medical studies.  Yet, I never believed myself gifted as a doctor, and I followed the maxim of Hippocrates when I deserted medicine, that being the only way to be certain that I did no harm. 

But though I may have absorbed my father’s doubting inclination, his doubts are not mine.  That some priests are lazy or corrupt is no reason to shun the priesthood, for I shall not be lazy or corrupt.  No, my doubts are deeper and strike at the very heart of faith.  I cannot believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  And yet, I shall be ordained a priest to celebrate the Eucharist.  I shall teach the  people this doctrine, and I shall, by my very lifting of the elements, testify to my faith in such.  And so, I shall be a fraud.

In desperation, I can only clutch at Ockham’s Nominalism.  There is reason, and there is revelation.  Two truths.  I accept by faith what reason rejects.  And yet, I hear Hubmaier’s voice at our last card game.  Two truths or three hundred.  Or none at all. 

I see two staggering figures leaning on one another, two students trying to find their house after hours of debauchery.  One lists to the side until he steps into the Bächle, the rivulets that flow in Freiberg’s streets to water cattle, contain fires, and carry away refuse.  The students make no noise, as if aware of the gravity of their situation.  May God have mercy upon us all.

 

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In the Land of the Blind

When I arrived home, Matthew Zell and the peasant named Fedor were standing in the door, chatting like boon companions. 

It seems Matthew’s satchel had been thieved, and this Fedor had shot down the alley, caught the rascal, cuffed his ears, and returned the bag to Matthew, who began rummaging in it for a coin to reward the peasant. 

Matthew, perpetually disorganized, gave the fellow a book to hold while he searched out the money.  The first surprise was when this Fedor opened the book and said, “Is this Latin?”

“Yes,” Matthew said.  “It’s Erasmus’ translation into Latin of the Greek Adagia.”

The peasant studied the page.  His hair stood up in tufts like miniature sheaves among scabby bald patches, and the scar on his face looked like a giant white leech.  “Why write Latin and Greek?  German says all that needs to be said.” 

I would have given the fellow his coin and moved on.  But Matthew loves all people.  He pushed up the sleeves of his scholar’s robe and looked as if he might give this Fedor a Latin lesson.  “It’s like this: the writings of the ancient civilizations were lost to us for centuries.  But the eastern scholars, fleeing the Turks, brought these old writings with them.  So now we have manuscripts from Greece and Rome.”

“Rome!”  The peasant appeared about to spit, then thought better.

“Not Rome now,” Matthew said.  “Ancient Rome.”

“Like Plato.”

Matthew’s eyes, the color of mink, shone.  “Yes!  You know Plato?”

“If one has made a mistake,” the peasant quoted, “and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake.”

“By the Muses!  That’s very good.”

But the peasant dropped his head.  “Just a man reading in an ale house.  It stuck in my mind.

“But you see,” Matthew said, excited by his passion for the subject, “the wisdom of the ancients.  From them, one can learn also grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry, history.  It’s called ‘good letters.’  The studia humanitatis.”

“Stu-dia-hu-ma-na-tis.”

Matthew leaned against the door frame.  “Humanists believe the greatest civilizations were the ancient ones and that, when the Germanic invaders conquered Rome in the fifth century, the world was plunged into intellectual darkness.  They say Europe continues to live in ruins.  Of course, many scholastics rail against valuing anything not strictly ‘Christian.’” 

Fedor scratched under his arm.  “Well, wouldn’t it threaten some to think that there is truth outside the Church?”

“But if man is in God’s image,” Matthew said, “shouldn’t he be able to reach some truth on his own?  Humanists believe man can improve himself by returning ad fontes–to the sources–to reclaim his ancient knowledge.  So they search everywhere for these old texts.  But few know Greek.  So scholars like Erasmus translate the Greek texts into Latin–that more people may read them.”

“If he wished more people to read them,” Fedor said, ‘he should translate them into German.”

“That’s true.  Another truth is that scholars often write in Latin when they want to have discussions among themselves without making their thoughts public to the populace.

“So they can keep us ignorant,” the peasant said.

Matthew looked startled.  Then he said, “Do you read, Friend?”

“No.  But I always listen in the ale houses or on the street.”  Fedor looked at the book in Matthew’s hand and said softly, “Tell me one thing in this book.”

Matthew opened it at random.  “In regione caecorum rex est luscus.  In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

And a smart peasant, I thought, is a dangerous thing.

 

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The Dead Hand

The peasant carpenters working in this house simply lie down on the floor at night.  My Midas landlady long ago threw up flimsy dividers in what was once a large dining room.  These are not true walls, but only partitions one board thick and pierced by knot holes and cracks.  Matthew Zell and I share this stall, only large enough for our beds and chests and one writing table.  Now the carpenters divide the room beside ours yet again.  I can hear their nightly talk from my bed.

Earlier today, I noticed Clovis’ boots, held together by string, were falling from his feet in pieces.  Tonight, he said, “I need new bundshuh.  But no.  The shoemaker has to have the money.  He’ll not trade for my wife’s lace.  So, I wait.  Because maybe we need the money.”

“The money ruins us,” the mouselike Ergot squeaked.  “Everyone wants the money now.   How can a tenant have the money, when all he gets for his labor is a small part of the crop?”

(Personally, I think this new use of money is a good thing.  Though perhaps not for those who do not have any.  I will say, though, that when Freiburg began to mint its own coins two years ago, I thought prices would stabilize.  But they haven’t.)

Then Clovis said, “To St. Margen’s monastery, my friend made a self-donation.  Himself, his wife, three sons and three daughters.  To forever serve the monastery for food.  Already his son Zorg runs away.  If he comes not back, the Prior will excommunicate both the son and the father.”

Ergot must have moved very near the wall, for his squeak grew louder.  “This self-donation is a bad business.  I pray to God I never get in such straits that I have to give myself to the Church.  It’s bad enough to be serf to a monastery.”

“Who’s your lord?” asked the sharp Fedor.

“St. Peter’s of the Black Forest.  But in winter, I am allowed to work in the city that I may pay more tithes.”

There were sympathetic moans from the others.  (Indeed, I know that Ergot’s lot is a bad one.  He is a true serf, tied to monastery lands.  He can never move or marry a woman under a different lord.  The law is absolute in declaring that a man belonging to the Church can never be free.)

“The monks,” said Fedor, “are the worst lords.  They show up, right on time, to collect every tax and tithe.”

Ergot listed them.  “I must pay the large tithe on grain, the small tithe on vegetables, flax, chickens, eggs, grass. . .And with a Cloister Lord, if you fail to pay, they excommunicate you.”

“Yeah, but when we die,” Fedor said, “every lord requires the Dead Hand, to repay him for the loss of our labor.  A man’s best animal, a woman’s best gown.  So, even in death they get you.  When my brother died, they took the widow’s only cow.”

I watched the tip of Ergot’s finger as he traced the crack in the wall.  “Pist!  He had a Cloister Lord, I wager.  Bloodsuckers.  When the stonemason’s wife died, he paid the Dead Hand with her best gown, and a fortnight later, the priest’s concubine wore it to the church.”

 

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Fleas, fleas, fleas

These fleas, the bane of urban man, are abominable.  The only way to find relief is to sit so hard by the fire that the heat drives them to hop off. 

It is reported that Frederick the Wise rules mostly from such a seat in the fire.  I roast myself nightly until my legs are broiled to a pied color that never fades and the skin feels like leather.

Of late, the vermin are even worse, due, I suspect, to the three peasants encamped in the room beside me.  My Midas landlady has devised yet another way to squeeze a few guilders from this sty.  She is dividing the room next to mine into two.   The peasant “carpenters” are continually hammering and sawing, and the racket makes study impossible.

I see these fellows as I come and go, and I have sorted them out.  Two are amiable, and their names are Clovis and Ergot.  Clovis is huge, hairy, and speaks a Niederdeutsch dialect.  Ergot is a meek mouse with a squeak of a voice.  The third, Fedor, is also thin, but thin as a knife blade and keen.  Half his face is covered by a thick white scar, and there is always an edge in his voice.   

They dress in typical brown goods and ragged bundshuh.  Whenever I see them, at least one is scratching his crotch or pulling up his shirt to catch a flea, which he rolls in his strong fingers. 

Yesterday, I met my cousin at the cathedral.  She has grown into a charming young woman, radiating devotion and virtue.  Appropriately, she was wearing a new zibellino with a head and front paws of jet.  When I commented upon it, she lowered her voice and said, “Uncle, do you think it’s possible the merciless fleas will go to it?”

“Foolish child.  Why would a flea choose a dead and bloodless pelt?”

“Oh Uncle!”  She sighed.  “It’s not the biting I mind, so much as the crawling.” 

French Zibellino--1563

 

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Of Truth and Cards

We included the young monk, Michael, in our weekly Karnöffel game, but then we harassed him, as older men will, when they perceive excessive seriousness in a young scholar. 

“What are you studying?” Zell asked.

“Mathematics, Latin, theology–”

Hubmaier yawned.  “Are you learning anything?  What did you learn yesterday?” 

“We talked more of the Via moderna.”

“The Modern Way,” Zell said.  “The modern way to where?”

Michael lay a card on the barrel, which Zell and I use for a table in our sty.  “Not a way to somewhere.  A way of  thinking.”

Hubmaier played.  “How is thinking different, now that it is modern?”

The boy sighed.  “Aquinas believed that theology and philosophy were one.  He united Aristotle to Scripture.  This was the old way.  The via antiqua.”

“I like Aquinas,” I said, as I caught the cards.

“Yes, but Scotus and William of Ockham began the via moderna.”

We all played again.

Michael pointed to a card face.  “See that object.  What is it?”

“An acorn,” I said.

“How do you know?  Have you a knowledge of some universal acornness?”

“I suppose.”

Michael shook his head.  “William of Ockham believed only in particulars.  So in the via moderna there are only individual things.  Acorns, leaves, hearts.  But the word ‘acorn’ is only a name.  So, the via moderna is called ‘nominalism‘.”

Zell played.  “Why should it matter whether I say, ‘acornness existed first’ or ‘I see the object and call it an acorn after I see it?’”

“Because the question is: how does man know anything?  Ockham, in his nominalism, said that the universal quality is only the voice’s breath–flatus vocis–so that to share a universal is simply to be described by that word.  The object is an acorn.  Acornness does not exist.”  

“But I knew ‘acornness’,” I said, “before I saw that one.”

“From previous objects, you learned the name was ‘acorn’.”

Hubmaier uncorked a costrel of ale and passed it around.  “How does that help me?”

“Ockham simplified Aristotle’s and Plato’s explanations of how man knows anything.  He devised the Law of Parsimony, called ‘Ockham’s Razor.’  You excise the intermediate steps.  There is the acorn, which you know only through your senses.  You were not born with knowledge of a universal acorn.  You experience the individual acorn first.  Later, you may imagine a universal concept of an acorn, but that will only be a name.  To understand the acorn, there is no need to compare it to a universal.  You delete that with Ockham’s Razor.”

There was a long pause.  Then Hubmaier spoke.  “This modern way seems a dreary philosophy.”

Michael looked surprised.  “How so?”

“Does it not reduce all knowledge to that of the senses?  There is nothing greater, nothing transcendental?”

Michael frowned.  “Maybe.”

“No universal acorn, no universal beauty.  No universal good.  No ideal of  what man can be.”

Michael shrugged.  “Man can strive to be better.”

“What is ‘better’?  If there is no ideal good, but only individual goodnesses, then there is no Better, but only individual betters.  No Truth but only individual truths.”

“Perhaps.”

“Who defines those individual truths?”

“The Church.  The Pope, theologians–”

“They never agree.  So each must decide for himself.  Every man decides his own truth.” 

The young monk frowned.  Ockham only said that philosophy and theology are separate things.  There is reason and faith.  One, a man arrives at by his logic.  The other, he receives by revelation.”

“But won’t that lead to skepticism toward faith in the man committed to reason?”

Michael’s frown deepened.  “Can you not see that there are two truths?  One from reason and one from faith?”

“Two truths,” Hubmaier said softly.  “I don’t understand that.  How can there be multiple truths?  Truth is truth.  It must be one consistent entity.  If we say there are two truths, why not three hundred?  As many truths as men.  In which case, if my truth contradicts your truth, I do not see how there is any truth at all.”

(All 16th-Century German Playing Cards from The World of Playing Cards)

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