Proving Woman (50 page)

My rather moralistic reading of Albert’s quodlibetal chastisement, effected through a seemingly unanswerable question, may
approximate the way William of Ockham (d. 1347) was regarded by many of his contemporaries. Ockham’s firm insistence on the
absolute power of God is traditionally construed as the single most important factor in the collapse of the optimistic collaboration
between faith and reason that characterized thirteenth-century scholasticism. From an Ockhamite perspective, God’s absolute
power meant that he could not be constrained by rules—a proposition that, if accepted, would necessarily undermine past speculation
on God’s salvific plan for humanity. Thus when the question presented itself as to whether God could make something appear
to the senses that did not in fact exist, Ockham concedes this as a possibility—despite its ramifications for the integrity
of God’s dealing with humankind.
¹⁸
But Ockham himself treated the proposition of a God who could baffle through illusion only in the course of a discussion on
intuitive versus abstract knowledge.
¹⁹
Subsequent scholars would walk through the door opened by Ockham’s inquiry, considering the question of a deceptive God more
pointedly and in isolation.
²⁰
Soon God’s liberty would expand further to accommodate the potential for God to plant false thoughts in an individual’s mind
or even voluntarily to will someone to err.
²¹

The English scholar Robert Holkot (d. 1349) was very much alive to the possibilities that this new perspective on God opened
up, and he devotes a lengthy article to the Ockhamite problem, now bluntly recast as “Whether God is able to deceive someone.”
At the outset of the article, Robert cheerfully asserts that God is fully capable of deception, but there are ethical limits:
“he cannot deceive unjustly, or through a fault of his own, or inordinately [
deordinate
].”
²²
Robert outlines the theoretical underpinnings of divine deception: whenever God deals in contingencies, whether describing
or predicting an event that could change or not come true, he is, in a sense, deceiving;
²³
since God is the first and last cause of everything, one could additionally argue that every error is from God;
²⁴
the many effects that God is capable of working on the mind (
in mente
humana
) through mediation, including the activities usually allotted to an evil angel, could be accomplished by God himself.
²⁵
Robert adduces a suggestive set of biblical examples indicating God’s capacity to deceive. Thus the twelve-year-old Christ
was acting deceptively when he purposefully eluded Mary in order to remain in Jerusalem with the doctors of the temple (Luke
2.42–49).
²⁶
God ordered Abraham to immolate his son, a command that, as it later turns out, was made under false pretenses (Gen. 22.1–12).
Peter was doubtlessly deceived through a divine vision, wherein he saw a vessel containing certain animals descending from
the heaven (Acts 10.11–12), and again when he was released from prison by an angel (Acts 12.7). In each of these cases, he
was tricked into mistaking spiritual forms for corporeal ones. God inspired the Magi to steal away from Herod, although they
had promised to return, thus making good men deceive evil ones (Matt. 2.12). The Christ who appeared on the road to Emmaus
seemed to mislead the apostles purposefully (Luke 24.13). Then there are the many other instances of angels deceptively appearing
in assumed bodies throughout the Old Testament.
²⁷

The doctrine concerning the simulated bodies of angels—among the strongest evidence adduced by Robert and other scholars who
argue in favor of a deceptive God—was directly indebted to the thirteenth century’s fascination with angelology. (It is no
accident that Albert’s demonic quodlibet was on angels.) Thirteenth-century theologians had finally broken with the equivocation
of past tradition by pronouncing that angels were entirely incorporeal, a quality Robert exploits to its full advantage. Thus
all angels, good and bad, relied on dissemblance in their dealings with humanity since the very bodies they assumed were constituted
from borrowed matter—only the semblances of semblances and hence doubly illusory.
²⁸
But if angels and demons, mere created beings, could and did make things seem to appear that were not actually there, it was
impossible to deny this ability to the creator, since “God is not of lesser power than the devil or a jester; but they can
make appear that which is not and make one thing become another”—a point made in no uncertain terms by one of Robert’s contemporaries.
²⁹

As the creator’s capacity for deception expanded under Robert, the usually generous scope for culpability that was the lot
of his creatures proportionately dwindled. And this is as one would expect. The kind of arguments that Robert and certain
contemporaries deployed had the effect of blunting the sharp edges distinguishing God from his wayward agents, the demons.
Moreover, with a God who was prepared to exercise his absolute power by befuddling the fallible senses of his creatures, who
could blame them for the errors that might ensue from their simply trusting the testimony of their senses? This line of argument
is particularly emphasized by two questions that Robert places in sequence: “Whether one invincibly deluded by error into
worshiping the devil transformed into an effigy of Christ is excused from idolatry by such ignorance” and “Whether someone
is able to win merit through false faith.”
³⁰

Robert’s questions, in essence, pit an individual’s conscience against an objective assessment of error.We have seen the way
in which an erroneous conscience can entrap the scrupulous, thus extending the usual ambit for sin considerably. But what
if the promptings of conscience actually contradict the faith? Aquinas, who dedicated two quodlibets to the problem of erroneous
conscience, is intransigent on this issue: “Every conscience, whether right or wrong, is obligatory—either in evil things
per se or indifferent things; so that whoever acts against conscience sins.”
³¹
A heretic who disregards the dictates of his or her conscience and agrees to take an oath—an act not sinful in itself—is still
guilty of sin, but formal rather than material sin. Even in the extreme instance where conscience and orthodoxy are at odds,
the individual in question sins by not following the dictates of conscience. And yet despite the manifold traps that such
a doctrine might spring on a well-intentioned soul, Aquinas was not prepared to compromise over what constituted sin and error.
After posing the prickly question of whether adhering to a heretical belief could be a pious act of faith, Aquinas refutes
this possibility with vigor. Adherence in this context lacks the virtue of faith. A heretic’s adherence is but to a false
faith, even as a bad Christian’s adherence is to a deformed faith. Thus the acts of tenacity inspired by such a faith are
only apparent, not true acts of faith. Moreover, even as adherence to the true faith lends strength to God’s spiritual edifice,
adherence to a false faith assists in building a diabolical abode.
³²

When Aquinas penned this answer, he was writing in an intellectual environment in which God was still clearly on the side
of humanity—a God one could trust. But half a century later, matters were no longer so unequivocal. Thus the reasoning of
someone like Robert Holkot, newly apprised of the negative capacities that the very idea of a deceptive God promoted, seems
more sympathetic to human frailty. As a result he pronounces in the affirmative with respect to both the questions “Whether
one invincibly deluded by error into worshiping the devil transformed into an effigy of Christ is excused from idolatry by
such ignorance” and “Whether someone is able to win merit through false faith.”

Robert’s first contention achieves instant relevance by virtue of the historical circumstances in which the question is posed:
the visionary climate of the later Middle Ages when sightings of Christ were frequent.
³³
According to Robert, an individual suffering such deception not only evades sin but actually wins the same merit that would
have been accorded had he or she been adoring Christ himself. As proof, Robert adduces a hypothetical situation in which Peter
and John, two good men, are both confronted by what is ostensibly the humanity of Christ. Both do what they can to assure
themselves that the revelation is authentic. Peter’s apparitional visitor turns out to be the genuine article. John, however,
is not so fortunate. And yet Robert is prepared to credit John with the intention of worshiping Christ.

That effigy by which the devil appears to John may be the humanity of Christ . . . if God permits it; and John believes that
it is the humanity of Christ: and he adores him by genuflecting and kissing his feet; then according to that rationale it
is necessary to concede that he adores the humanity of Christ. And thus one ought to concede that he touched the body of Christ
in the sky.
³⁴

Basically, Robert is advancing but another version of the orthodox view articulated by Hostiensis and others that prayers
to false saints are nonetheless credited by God. From this perspective neither Peter nor John was worshiping the devil; they
were both worshiping God. Either John participates in the merit accorded to Peter, or Peter is implicated in the error of
John.
³⁵

Robert’s generous appreciation of the evils occasioned by an erroneous conscience is wielded in a way that would have seemed
inconceivable to Aquinas and his generation of scholars. Although Robert is fully apprised of the double bind of the erroneous
conscience, he consistently privileges it over the taint associated with whatever error the misguided conscience instills.
³⁶
Thus John, believing as he did, would have committed a mortal sin had he refused to worship the visionary Christ. A gloss
on 2 Corinthians 2 supports this position: that when Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, he deceives only the
bodily senses, without necessarily moving the mind from the true faith.
³⁷
Furthermore, granting that erroneous conscience ought to be deposed, Robert nevertheless contends that as long as a strong
conviction continues to urge an individual toward error, erroneous conscience has the same claims as right-minded conscience.
³⁸
By the same token, the pagan philosophers’ object of worship could be accredited in their favor since it was their intention
to worship the one God.
³⁹
Robert’s discussion concludes with genuine éclat: if Christ had decided to set aside his humanity without telling the Virgin
Mary, and she (unaware of any change) continued to worship him as before, Mary would likewise win merit through her misapprehension.
Moreover, true to his post-Ockhamite lineage, Robert denies the contention of his alleged opponent, who apparently maintained
that God would necessarily inform the Virgin Mary of such a change in her son’s persona. Such necessity, however, contradicts
the principle of God’s absolute power.
⁴⁰

Thus Robert dazzles the reader by applying his defense of individuals beset by an erroneous conscience to the dramatic examples
of the apostles and even Christ’s mother, and then extends his argument to accommodate pagans—an accommodation that certainly
challenges the entire rationale for religious persecution, and possibly for the church militant. His subsequent question,
“Whether someone is able to win merit through false faith,” is a prolongation of that impetus. The personae peopling Robert’s
hypothesis, however, shift away from biblical celebrities to the mundane and parochial. Supposing some old woman (
aliquam vetulam
) heard her prelate preach a heretical article, such as the belief that Christ received the lance in his side before his death?—a
conviction that was, incidentally, shared among the Beguins of southern France.
⁴¹
The woman trusted entirely in what she heard, and held fast to what she construed as the orthodox faith. Could she thereby
win merit? Robert’s veritable catalog of biblical as well as more ordinary personages who won merit through error constitutes
a powerful testimonial: Mary Magdalene mistaking Christ for a gardener; the other apostles’ love for Judas; a judge crediting
a dishonest testimony over the protestations of an innocent man; the ecclesiastical courts crediting false witness that seeks
to portray a faithful wife as an adulteress; Lot receiving angels as men; a putative father raising a child that is not his
own out of ignorance; a layperson adoring an unconsecrated host; an individual who is self-baptized believing this gesture
sufficient for salvation.
⁴²
And this is only a sampling. Robert concludes with the firm assurance that “it ought to be said that an old woman wins merit
in believing heresy that can in no way be imputed to her.”
⁴³

GOD THE TRICKSTER IN FRANCE

Another type of melancholia which afflicts the French is that they believe they are roosters and cry out

just like roosters [
galli
]. Whence they are said to be from Gaul [
agalli
]. But the elements of this ancient affliction ought not to be imputed to the English, for [Gaul] was named the land of roosters
and hens.(Anonymous medical treatise from an

English manuscript)
⁴⁴

One cannot help but observe that questions bearing on God’s capacity to deceive, and other attendant propositions developing
around this central premise, first arose in the British Isles. This may come as a surprise in view of the fact that it was
the Continent that was more experienced in the culture of visions, visionaries, and heretical beliefs. (And these challenges
to a stable perception of reality doubtless inspired the writer cited in the epigraph to satirize the French as prone to a
melancholia that produces a delusional identification with poultry.) Yet this sequence makes sense from the perspective of
cost: perhaps the Continent could not afford this line of speculation, whether on a psychological or a social level. This
hypothesis is sustained by the fact that when such intellectual strains did reach the Continent, they were attended by vigorous
efforts at suppression. There were at least two statutes issued by the University of Paris condemning Ockhamite thought, first
in 1339 and again in 1340.45 Moreover, the articles that a university commission extracted and condemned fromthe work of the
Cistercian monk John ofMirecourt in 1347 clearly indicate an Ockhamite inflected line of questioning. Under the implied banner
of God’s absolute power, John’s contentions pointed to howthis power might manifest itself in a manner hitherto unimaginable:
that Christ was able to have said and asserted a falsity through both mental and vocal assertion (art.2); that it is possible
that Christ erred according to his created will and, according to his human side, perhaps proffered a lie (art. 3); that God
could make someone sin and, because he requires this, it is pleasing to the divine will that this individual is a sinner (art.
10); that no one who sins in any way wishes or does otherwise than God wills him, so that when anyone sins, it is done with
God’s approval and he causes the person to sin (art. 12); that God causes evil and sin, while the sinner is willing and makes
this sin occur (art. 14); that sin is more good than bad (art. 15); that God is the cause of sin so that it is a sin, or the
cause of the fault of evil so that it is evil, and the author of sin so that it is a sin (art. 34).
⁴⁶
The university would likewise compel a certain Augustinian friar named Giles of Mantes to renounce his views in 1354. Fretting
under his sense of God’s predestinary capacity, Giles had posited, among other things, that God can hinder an individual in
the performance of a good act—a natural analogue to the views attributed to John of Mirecourt.
⁴⁷