The Holy Spirit: Medieval Roman Catholic and Reformation Traditions

By Stanley M Burgess

The Holy Spirit: Medieval Roman Catholic and Reformation Traditions (Sixth-Sixteenth Centuries) is the third in a series of three volumes devoted to the history of Christian pneumatology.

In the first volume, The Holy Spirit: Ancient Christian Traditions (formerly titled The Spirit and the Church: Antiquity), Stanley M. Burgess detailed Christian efforts from the end of the first century to the end of the fifth century A.D. to understand the divine Third Person. Volume 1 explored the tensions between the developing institutional order and various prophetic elements in the Church.

The second volume, The Holy Spirit: Eastern Christian Traditions, brought together a wealth of material on the Spirit from Eastern Christian traditions, a rich heritage often overlooked in Western Christianity. By exploring the various ways in which Eastern theologians understood the Third Person of the Trinity, volume 2 showed how modern Christians can gain a wider vision and fuller understanding of the workings of the Holy Spirit in history and in our own generation.

This concluding volume examines medieval Roman Catholic and Reformation attitudes toward the Holy Spirit beginning with the writings of medieval Catholic theologians from Gregory the Great and Bede to Aquinas and Bonaventure. Subsequent sections describe the contributions of influential women such Hildegard of Bingen, Birgitta of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena; "fringe" figures such as Joachim of Fiore and the Cathars; the magisterial reformers Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin; leading Catholic reformers such as Ignatius of Loyola; and the "radical reformers" Thomas Muntzer and Menno Simons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: May 1, 1994
• ISBN: 9781441242365

Stanley M Burgess

In this engaging book, Ruth Vassar Burgess integrates the stories of multiple generations of kin. She seeks their insider voices, through their tapes, documents and diaries,. One feels the trauma of their losses, the steadfastness of their spirituality, social concerns and loves. Dedication to cross-cultural experiences complicates as well as enriches their stories of lives well lived. Ruth Burgess is professor emeritus, Missouri State University and has written heritage, biographical and educational materials. The Marquis Who’s Who Publications Board awarded Dr. Ruth Burgess the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award (2017) for career longevity and unwavering excellence in Education

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© 1997 by Stanley M. Burgess

Published by Baker Academic

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P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

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ISBN 978-1-4412-4236-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

The Spirit filled a boy who played upon a harp and made him a psalmist (1 Sam 16:18), a shepherd and herdsman who pruned sycamore trees and made him a prophet (Amos 7:14–15), a boy given to abstinence (Dan 1:8) and made him a judge of mature men, a fisherman and made him a preacher (Matt 4:19), a persecutor and made him the teacher of Gentiles (Acts 9:1–20), a tax collector and made him an evangelist (Luke 5:27–28). What a skillful workman this Spirit is! The Spirit’s very touch is teaching. It changes a human mind in a moment to enlighten it; suddenly what it was it no longer is, suddenly it is what it was not.

Gregory the Great

Holy Spirit, making life alive,

moving in all things, root of all creative being,

cleansing the cosmos of every impurity,

effacing guilt, anointing wounds.

You are lustrous and praiseworthy life,

you waken and re-awaken everything that is.

Holy Spirit,

through you clouds billow, breezes blow,

stones drip with trickling streams,

streams that are the source of earth’s lush greening.

Likewise you are the source of human understanding,

you bless with the breath of wisdom.

Thus all of our praise is yours,

you who are the melody itself of praise,

the joy of life, the mighty honor,

the hope of those to whom you give the gifts of the light.

Hildegard of Bingen

The Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.

Martin Luther

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1: The Catholic Church in the Early Middle Ages

1. Gregory the Great

2. The Venerable Bede

Part 2: Catholic Scholastics in the High Middle Ages

3. Anselm of Canterbury

4. Rupert of Deutz

5. Peter Abelard

6. Bernard of Clairvaux

7. Richard of St. Victor

8. Bonaventure

9. Thomas Aquinas

Part 3: Catholic Women in the High Middle Ages

10. Hildegard of Bingen

11. Gertrude of Helfta

12. Birgitta of Sweden

13. Catherine of Siena

14. Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe

Part 4: The Heretic Fringe: Millenarians and Radical Dualists

15. Joachim of Fiore

16. The Cathars

Part 5: Magisterial Reformers

17. Martin Luther

18. Ulrich Zwingli

19. John Calvin

Part 6: Catholic Reformers

20. Ignatius of Loyola

21. John of Avila

22. John of the Cross

Part 7: Radical Reformers

23. Thomas Müntzer

24. Menno Simons

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index of Names and Subjects

Index of Biblical Citations

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Abbreviations

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Acknowledgments

I wish to express my appreciation to Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, Missouri, for support in providing summer faculty fellowships, reduced teaching loads, and a 1993 sabbatical leave. I also am indebted to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for funds to study in the Vatican Film Library at the Pius XII Memorial Library, Saint Louis University. Again, I highly value the time spent at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, studying manuscripts housed in the Hill Manuscript Library. I am appreciative to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts, for providing housing while I was working in the libraries of the Boston Theological Institute.

Special thanks to the many friends and professional colleagues who have encouraged and assisted me in preparing this work. I am especially grateful to my wife, Ruth, for her patience and spirit of enthusiasm, which inspired me to complete this trilogy.

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Introduction

Completion of a Trilogy

This is the final volume in a trilogy on the concept of the Holy Spirit in the history of Christianity. Volume one treats the ancient church, volume two Eastern Christian traditions. This third volume is devoted exclusively to Western Christianity from the beginning of the Middle Ages in the sixth century through the sixteenth-century Reformation.

Because this work covers eleven centuries, it has been necessary to be highly selective rather than comprehensive. Those Christian thinkers or groups which have been included represent theological emphases of their times, although most of them also helped to shape those times and a few, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ignatius Loyola, were dominant forces. Naturally, all of them had something significant to say about the divine Third Person. In the process, I have excluded such prominent individuals as Albert the Great, Alcuin, Angela of Foligno, Balthasar Hubmaier, Robert Bellarmine, Benedict of Nursia, Boethius, Dionysius (Denis) the Carthusian, Dorothy of Montau, Hans Denk, Hugh of St. Victor, Kaspar von Schwenckfeld, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, Jan van Ruysbroeck, Heinrich Suso, John Tauler, Teresa of Avila, and John Wycliffe—each of whom spoke or wrote about the Holy Spirit.

From one perspective, it can be argued that the Holy Spirit was a central concern for each of the individuals featured in this work. For one thing, all were concerned with issues relating to the Trinity, and, as a consequence, the Holy Spirit was featured in many of their writings. On the other hand, it would be dishonest to suggest that the divine Third Person was as important an issue as the Second Person. Western Christians usually were strongly Christocentric.

Those who did treat the Holy Spirit as their primary theme often came from two groups. The first were those who argued the Roman Catholic case for the Filioque against Eastern Christians, insisting that the Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son.

The second included a variety of fringe elements, each of whom believed that the Holy Spirit in some ways intervened in human affairs, superseding established Roman practices and beliefs. Among the most interesting were the dispensationalists, who predicted a coming age of the Spirit in which all would be perfected. Especially troubling to the Roman church were the radical dualists who viewed the Holy Spirit as an active agent among true Christians, representing forces of good in their cosmic struggle with evil. Finally, certain of the spiritualists and mystics claimed that the Holy Spirit spoke directly to them, revealing the divine will.

Our study opens with Pope Gregory the Great (540?–604), who bridges the ancient and medieval periods in church history. While theologically orthodox, he also reminds us that many Western Christians in his troubled time had a deep belief in the intervention of the Holy Spirit in everyday life. The Venerable Bede (ca. 673–735), an English historian writing a century later, is also a witness to the faith of his age and the strong belief of his contemporaries in the supernatural.

Three and a half centuries later, another Englishman, Anselm of Canterbury (ca. 1033–1109), emerges as the most important early scholastic in Western Europe. Because of his dependence on Aristotelian logic, his concerns are different than those of earlier writers, such as Augustine or Gregory the Great, who place a stronger emphasis on faith. Anselm is interested in the problem of essence and person in the Godhead, and of how God’s triunity can be demonstrated by reason.

One of the most prolific writers of the Middle Ages, Rupert of Deutz (ca. 1075–1129) represents an emerging new piety which singles out the Spirit’s work in Christian life. He identifies an Age of the Spirit during which the seven spiritual gifts (Isa 11:2) are poured out on the faithful, each gift dominating a different age of church history.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142) attempts to use human reason to explore unity and diversity in the Christian Trinity. He discusses the names, the origination, and the operation of each divine person, as well as their common essence. He argues that Trinitarian faith was already implicit in the Greek philosophers, especially Plato.

In contrast to Abelard, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), the great medieval theologian, teaches that God cannot be known by rationalism or apocalyptic speculation, but can be approached only through mysticism, prayer, and ascetic practices. He, too, testifies to the active work of the Holy Spirit in his time, in certain saints such as Malachy the Irishman.

Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) finds a middle ground between the rationalist, Abelard, and the mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux. He finds in human love an explanation for the triunity of God; and in the triunity of God, illumination of the nature of human personality. To Richard, the Holy Spirit is the overflowing of the love of Father and Son, making the Trinity a community of love.

Two of the most profound Western thinkers belong to the thirteenth century. Bonaventure (ca. 1217–1274) provides what may be the most important spiritual synthesis of the Middle Ages. Like Bernard of Clairvaux, he attempts to portray the journey of the inner person upward into the mystery of the triune God. Bonaventure was helping to shape the spirituality of the newly formed Franciscan order, and was devoted to its charismatic founder, Francis of Assisi.

Bonaventure’s contemporary, Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274), is the prince of the scholastics, and probably the greatest medieval Christian rationalist. Aquinas delves into the interrelationship of persons within the Godhead, although he recognizes that human reason can never comprehend the mystery of the triunity of God. Here we have the most comprehensive treatment of the virtues, gifts, fruits, beatitudes, and charismatic graces of the Holy Spirit.

No study of medieval Western spirituality would be balanced without the inclusion of such prominent and influential women as Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), Gertrude of Helfta (1256–1301/2), Birgitta of Sweden (1302/3–1373), Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342–after 1413) and Margery Kempe (ca. 1373–after 1433). Their understandings of the Holy Spirit rank among the most dynamic and personal of all those held by medieval Christians.

Equally dynamic, but considered by contemporaries as far less orthodox, were the teachings of the prophetic figure Joachim of Fiore (ca. 1130–1202). Joachim predicted a new Age of the Holy Spirit which would be utopian, replacing existing Christian institutions and practices.

While Joachim’s message was upsetting to Rome, it was not nearly as threatening as that of the medieval Western radical dualists, the Cathars. These unorthodox Christians taught that the decisive moment in one’s life was the consolamentum, when one was baptized in the Holy Ghost and fire, thereby entering the ranks of the perfect ones.

This volume concludes by examining pneumatology within three branches of the sixteenth-century Reformation—the Protestant mainline (magisterial or teaching) Reformers, the Catholic Reformers, and the radical or left wing Reformers. The three most famous magisterial Protestant Reformers were Martin Luther (1483–1546), Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), and John Calvin (1509–1564).

Luther’s understanding of the Holy Spirit serves as an integrating center for other basic tenets of his faith, such as justification by faith, law and grace, and the cross.

Both Zwingli and Calvin have been called theologians of the Holy Spirit. Because Zwingli distinguishes between the Holy Spirit and the Word (the outward word of preaching), and because he appears to stress the work of the Spirit above the Word, he also is called a spiritualist by certain detractors, including Luther.

For Calvin, the word of God is made alive by the secret testimony of the Spirit. The Spirit testifies to and cannot contradict the Bible. Calvin also teaches that true Christians—the elect—are called by the Spirit and demonstrate their election by virtue which proceeds from the divine Spirit.

The leading Catholic Reformer and founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), describes his mystical experiences with each person in the Trinity. These include divine visitations, spiritual tears, visions and illuminations, various kinds of locutions (loquelae), consolations, and joys.

John of Avila (1499/1500–1569) wrote six homilies on the Holy Spirit. In these he mixes strong asceticism with pneumatology. More than most writers of the period, John describes signs of the Spirit’s presence.

The even more mystical John of the Cross (1542–1591) describes the work of the divine Spirit in leading the soul to union with the triune God. He examines in detail the anointings and shadings of the Spirit, and a variety of supernatural apprehensions which are given through the Spirit.

Finally, we examine the pneumatology of two leading radical Reformers, Thomas Müntzer (ca. 1488/89–1525) and Menno Simons (ca. 1496–1561). Müntzer prophesies the coming renewal of the world through the reception of the Holy Spirit, and argues that those who do not accept the testimony of the new radical prophets should be put to the sword. In contrast, Menno Simons finds a prominent place for the Spirit’s activity in a community dedicated to peace and mutuality.

Themes in Medieval and Reformation Pneumatology

The early Christian church was convulsed by controversies over the nature and relationship of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. These great Trinitarian issues were settled by councils at Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381). During the same fourth century, Athanasius (ca. 296–373) and the three Cappadocian fathers—Basil (ca. 330–379), Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 330–ca. 395), and Gregory Nazianzen (329–430) provided the most important Eastern Christian Trinitarian formulations. Shortly thereafter, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) furnished the definitive Trinitarian statement for Western Christendom. From the fourth century onwards, Christians turned from the now-settled Trinitarian questions to equally divisive issues of Christology and soteriology. Understandably, therefore, medieval thinkers tended to fill in and shade, rather than completely rework, the existing Trinitarian canvas.

Medieval Eastern Christians continued to be vitally interested in the person and offices of the Holy Spirit.[1] For them, the Spirit was central to the Christian life and to Christian theology. They attempted to define the Spirit’s role in creation and re-creation (or theosis—deification or becoming Godlike); considered ways in which the Spirit of God can be experienced; and debated whether such experiences were necessary steps in the process of theosis. They developed a rich symbolism for the Holy Spirit, and a number of Eastern mystics even suggested that the divine Third Person can be experienced at levels higher than natural powers can reach and human language can describe. And, while Eastern Christians were badly divided ecclesiastically, they argued almost without exception that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone.

The medieval Western church was also vitally interested in the Holy Spirit. However, it tended to be preoccupied with the issue of procession and the resultant division between East and West, rather than with the broader range of pneumatological issues considered in the East. In contrast to the East, the Roman church taught that humans were sorely depraved. Because fallen humanity needed a savior who offered himself up as a propitiatory sacrifice, Roman Catholics emphasized Christology more than pneumatology.[2] Most Western Christians in the medieval and Reformation eras were content with Augustine’s pneumatological formulation, including his view that the Holy Spirit is the communion of divine mutual love between the Father and the Son.

Just as the waters of a great river cut and shape the landscape most noticeably along its banks, so religious innovation frequently comes from fringe elements. This was certainly true in the Christian West between the sixth and the sixteenth centuries. As our story unfolds, it will become increasingly apparent that much of the creative energy shaping pneumatology came from the mystics, the heretical dualists, the prophetic women, and the apocalypticists.

To be sure, mainstream theologians used the new scholastic tools and techniques on all theological issues. This resulted in new proofs of the existence of the triune God, of the interrelationship between persons in the Godhead—especially of the Holy Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son, and of the Filioque.

The Filioque Controversy[3]

By the time of their final break in the eleventh century, a schism between the Christian East and West had been growing for many centuries. The language gap between the Greeks and the Latins was an important factor, for even in such central doctrinal matters as the Trinity and Christology it caused misunderstandings. Perhaps of greater importance was the political rivalry between Rome and Constantinople, the two poles of the Christian empire. During the Acacian Schism of 484–518 the Roman see had pressed claims to primacy on the basis of its having been founded by the apostle Peter. To these, it added the further claim that its ecclesiastical power was superior to the secular power of the emperor. The Byzantine branch of Christendom directly opposed these claims, precipitating Rome’s struggle against the rule of the emperor Justinian, and Pope Vigilius’s refusal to attend the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. Other acts of antagonism followed on both sides. The West, for example, dealt with the iconoclast controversy clumsily, and Pope Leo III offended Byzantium’s imperial sensibilities when he crowned Charlemagne emperor in 800.

The single greatest theological difficulty which separated East and West was the Filioque controversy. The creed of Nicea and Constantinople originally read, "I believe . . . in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and together is glorified." But the West inserted an extra phrase and from the Son (in Latin, Filioque), so that most Western creeds now read, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. While the exact time and place of the Filioque addition are uncertain, the best estimate places it in Spain sometime before 589—as a safeguard against Arianism. We know that the Spanish church interpolated the Filioque at the Third Council of Toledo in that year, although it may have originated before then. The creedal addition then spread to France and to Germany, where Charlemagne’s writers first made the Filioque into an issue with the East, accusing the Greeks of heresy because they recited the creed in its original form. Eastern writers responded to Western accusations, arguing that the addition of the Filioque disturbed the balance between the three persons of the Trinity and led to an inadequate understanding of the person and work of the Spirit.

Events in the mid-ninth century further aggravated the hard feelings. In 858 the emperor Michael deposed the patriarch Ignatius and appointed Photius, a learned layman. Photius convoked a council in Constantinople in 867 and condemned the Filioque clause as a heretical addition to the Nicene Creed. He argued that the Filioque destroyed the monarchy of the Father and relativized the reality of the personal or hypostatic existence of the Trinity. For Photius the Filioque was the very crown of evils, the product of a poorly educated West.

In the eleventh century, German popes formally introduced the Filioque into the creed, and Pope Sergius included it in a letter written to Constantinople on his assumption of the papacy. Constantinople responded by dropping the pope’s name from the lists of living and dead Christians for whom special prayer was offered at the liturgy, in effect calling the pope’s orthodoxy into question.

The separation between Eastern and Western Christianity became explicitly schismatic with the mutual excommunications of AD 1054. During the summer of that year, Cardinal Humbert and two other legates of the pope entered the Hagia Sophia (The Church of the Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople. They placed a bull excommunicating patriarch Cerularius upon the altar and departed. In this document they accused the Greeks of omitting the Filioque from the creed. Cerularius and his synod retaliated by anathematizing Humbert, although not the Roman church as such. Nonetheless, East and West did not reach definitive animosity until the late eleventh century, when the West forced a Latin patriarch on Antioch. Then in 1182 the citizens of Constantinople rose in bloody revolt against the Latin Crusaders, and in 1204 the Crusaders brutally sacked Constantinople, further fueling the spirit of hatred and bitterness between East and West.

Two attempts were made to reunite the Christian East and West. The first was a reunion council held at Lyons in 1274. Bonaventure was among the Western delegates, and Thomas Aquinas died on his way to Lyons. The Eastern delegates who attended agreed to recognize the papal claims and to recite the creed with the Filioque. But the agreement proved to be unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of clergy and laity in the Byzantine church, as well as to Bulgaria and other Orthodox countries.

The second reunion council was held at Florence in 1438–39. It came at a time when the Byzantine Empire was nearing its end, and leaders of the Eastern Orthodox realm approached the West for help against the impending onslaught of the Turks. At Florence representatives of East and West met to deliberate on their religious differences. The council focused on the four issues thought to be central: the prerogatives of the papacy, the Filioque, the doctrine of purgatory, and whether leavened or unleavened bread was to be used at the Eucharist. After much debate concerning the Filioque, the council reached a compromise. Some important Eastern theologians had said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. Most Western theologians said that the divine Third Person proceeds from the Father and from the Son. The council concluded that these inspired minds could not have disagreed, and therefore the two phrases must mean the same thing. Therefore, each half of Christianity could continue to say the creed in its own way.

Only one of the Eastern delegates rejected this compromise. But when they returned home, the rest were greeted as traitors. In turn, no real military help came from the West. In 1453 Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire fell to the Turks, who held the city until near the end of the First World War. The Hagia Sophia became a mosque. The schism between Christians in East and West has remained to this day.

The Issue of Spiritual Gifts

The subject of the Holy Spirit in medieval and Reformation Christendom has not been totally neglected, although the most comprehensive work on the subject—by H. Watkin-Jones, The Holy Spirit in the Mediaeval Church (1922)[4]—is badly dated and does not speak to contemporary pneumatological concerns. More recent studies have been less ambitious in their coverage. Certainly, the Filioque controversy has been told and retold. But the one aspect of medieval pneumatology that has been ignored is also that which is of most interest currently—namely, that of the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts. It is no longer acceptable to take an elitist posture whereby one ignores this dimension of spirituality as the concern only of extremists and enthusiasts.

As with the first two volumes in this trilogy, this work deals openly with the issue of spiritual gifts. The charismata are of concern to many leading medieval and Reformation figures, as well as to those on the fringe. While most medieval and Reformation theologians emphasize the Isa 11:2 gift list, other gifts—especially those listed in 1 Cor 12—are frequently discussed. Moreover, there are signs of charismatic vitality in the lives and writings of such prominent figures as Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Ignatius Loyola. Spiritual gifts are even more important to apocalyptic writers, such as Rupert of Deutz, Joachim of Fiore, and Thomas Müntzer, and to prophetic women such as Hildegard of Bingen, Gertrude of Helfta, Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe.

According to Eddie Ensley,[5] from the ninth through the sixteenth centuries spontaneity of worship, improvised songs of jubilation, clapping of hands, and even dance movements were common among saints, mystics, and many ordinary believers. Ensley uses the phrase language of jubilation to describe a movement beyond ordinary speech into a transcendent language of praise, which he views as the equivalent of speaking in tongues.

On the other hand, most medieval Catholic theologians taught that the charismata described in 1 Cor 12 and 14 were extraordinary gifts reserved for the ministries of the most pious—thus marking the lives of the saints. Certain of the saints were reported to have spoken in languages not their own: Dominic in German, Colette in Latin and German, Clare of Monte Falcone in French, Angelus Clarenus in Greek, Stephen in Greek, Turkish and Armenian, and Jean of the Cross in Arabic. Hildegard of Bingen is said to have sung in unknown tongues, and Francis Xavier to have spoken the language of angels. Clare of Monte Falcone engaged in holy conversations, speaking heavenly words about heavenly things. Finally, in at least three bulls of canonization (for Vincent Ferrer, Francis Xavier, and Louis Bertrand) the gift of tongues was listed among the evidences of piety supporting elevation to the status of saint.[6]

Other spiritual giftings—such as prophecy, divine healing, and miracles—were reported much more frequently.[7] They were referred to constantly in medieval hagiographic literature (that is, accounts of the lives of the saints)—indeed, so frequently and so uncritically that many modern scholars have come to discredit all such accounts. In so doing, however, skeptics have failed to consider that these reports of the paranormal were believed by virtually all pre-Renaissance Christians.

Mainline Protestant Reformers such as Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin did not place