William of Saint-Amour

French theologian

• Born: c. 1200
• Birthplace: Saint-Amour, Jura, Kingdom of Arles (now in France)
• Died: September 13, 1272
• Place of death: Saint-Amour, Jura, France

William opposed the papal and royal support of the newly created Franciscan and Dominican orders in Europe, laying foundations for opposition to the Papacy and papal authority seen in later Protestantism and in Gallicanism, a movement started in France in 1407.

Early Life

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, there were two clergies, seculars and regulars. The seculars served in the world (hence their name) as bishops and parish pastors; the regulars, on the other hand, submitted themselves to a regimen (from the Latin word regula) and lived as monks in a monastery or as members of a cathedral chapter. Many of the regulars were ordained and able to serve the sacraments, but ideally they restricted their use of these powers to their fellow regulars. William of Saint-Amour (san-tah-mewr) accepted this bipartite arrangement from his earliest school days and chose for himself the way of the seculars.

Probably given his basic education in the arts at Saint-Amour and Mâcon, William attended the University of Paris as a secular cleric, a subdeacon. He received in the course of his career the incomes of several ecclesiastical positions: By 1228, he was canon of Beauvais and rector of the church of Guerville, and in 1247, he was given the pastorate (though William was not an ordained priest) of the parish of Granville in the diocese of Coutances. These earnings supported William in his career as a master (teacher) at Paris. William distinguished himself by becoming one of the few persons of his age to take three advanced degrees, in liberal arts (1228), in canon law (1238), and in theology (c. 1250).

No doubt William was established as a young student-teacher when his university welcomed the Franciscans (in 1228) and the Dominicans (in 1231) into the Paris academic community. At first, William may have shared the popular esteem for these friars (from the Latin fratres, “brothers”), who exhibited admirable evangelical zeal. Officially recognized by the Papacy only a generation earlier, the friars were the most conspicuous ecclesiastical innovation of the thirteenth century. They operated outside the ordinary ecclesiastical hierarchy, preaching, serving sacraments, and performing various other services directly under the auspices of the pope. At Paris, as well as at other universities, both orders set up independent houses of study and recruited their students from their own outlying provincial schools. In time, however, the zeal of these newcomers attracted converts from the secular staff and student body of the university. Moreover, other orders imitated the friar convents. Consequently, by 1254, only three of the fifteen chairs of theology at the University of Paris were still occupied by seculars, and there was considerable sentiment among the remaining seculars in favor of halting further encroachment by the friars. Also, out in the parishes of France, secular priests and bishops had begun to resent the intrusion of the friars into their traditional spheres of ministry. Accordingly, one of the three remaining secular theologians emerged to provide brief but powerful leadership to the campaign against the friars a campaign that brought on him the condemnation of both Louis IX, known as Saint Louis, the king of France, and Pope Alexander IV. This man was William of Saint-Amour.

Life’s Work

William argued that there was no biblical support for the mendicant orders. The bishops properly base their existence on the Apostles, and priests rightly trace their authority back to the seventy-two disciples commissioned by Christ. Similarly, deacons (such as William himself), and those in other minor orders, find biblical precedent for their ministry in the “helpers” who assisted the Apostles. Monks present no problem because they simply reside in monasteries and seek after perfection, as Jesus directed those who “would be perfect.” Yet where is the scriptural foundation for friars? William found none. The friars, in his view, were neither fish nor fowl. They could not be regarded as true seculars or as true regulars.

Further, William even claimed to have discovered biblical warnings to beware of the friars and to repulse them as heretics. Saint Paul prophesied that in the “last days” there would be corrupt men, proud and treacherous, who would “make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins.” Such are the friars, according to William. They steal their way into the consciences of laypersons, hear their confessions, and absolve them without episcopal authority. They abduct the faithful parishioners away from the sheepfold. They build on other men’s foundations, contrary to the precepts of Paul. They beg for their living, even though the Apostle commands manual labor. They are like the abominable Egyptian magicians Jannes and Jambres, who, according to medieval legend, were brothers (fratres). In short, friars lead students and faithful laity away from their proper bishops and teachers and therefore away from Christ.

By such arguments, William launched against the friars a polemic that went beyond simple criticism of friarly misbehavior. He called for the virtual suppression of both orders. At first glance, this argument appears motivated wholly by self-interested defense of traditional privileges. On close examination, however, it is clear that William was echoing the antipapal sentiments of the entire secular ecclesiastical hierarchy, which believed itself subverted from above. Could the pope justly send legions of friars, loyal only to himself, across diocesan boundaries, alongside long-established parish churches, and into the universities, to compete with the duly ordained and installed resident clerics? This century saw papal power greatly extended (for example, in taxation and legal review). This period was the age of “papal monarchy,” when even kings were sometimes punished by excommunication and their lands subjected to the interdict. Thus William and his secular allies, in their attack on the friars, were protesting the papal assertion of plenitudo potestatis (fullness of power), first articulated by Pope Innocent III in 1198 and augmented throughout the 1200’.

The pope, the king, and the friars took offense at such criticism. In their view, Christendom was in need of renewal and reform, and the best corrective measure consisted in an evangelical “end run” around the vested interests of the complicated and complacent secular hierarchy. The friar movement, as they saw it, met the spiritual needs of parishioners long starved by poorly educated priests and absentee bishops. In the parishes, the Franciscans and Dominicans were usually the best preachers; in the universities, they were often the best teachers. At Paris, for example, Thomas Aquinas (a Dominican) and Bonaventure (a Franciscan) countered William’s views. If William was distinguished for nothing else, he may be remembered as the man who was opposed by these scholars, both later canonized as saints and certainly the greatest theologians of the century.

This controversy between William’s party and the friars lasted from 1250 to 1257. It passed through two phases. First, from 1250 to 1254, there were some encouraging developments for the seculars, and consequently they had some confidence that their side would prevail. Then, from 1255 to 1257, the contest turned in favor of the friars. The death of Pope Innocent IV in 1254 and his replacement by Alexander IV was the principal factor in this shift.

Innocent was originally disposed to favor the friars and had in fact ordered the secular masters to readmit the friar-masters as full members of the Paris theological faculty (in 1253 the seculars had ordered the friar-masters to confine their teaching to their own convents and friar-students). Innocent was alarmed, however, by the publication of a sensationalist Franciscan book, Introductorius in evangelium aeternum (1254; introduction to the everlasting Gospel), that made extravagant predictions of a coming Age of the Spirit in which the traditional structure of the Church would be dismantled. This writing did not reflect the sober judgment of the majority of the friars, but it was an effective pretext for William to secure papal support for the seculars. Thus, on November 21, 1254, the pope placed extensive restrictions on the ministries of the friars. This victory was to be short-lived, however, as Innocent died a few weeks later. Seculars at Paris lamented his passing and mockingly attributed his death to the influence of Dominican intercessions. Thus the seculars sang in the streets, “From the prayers of the Dominicans, good Lord deliver us.” On December 22, 1254, Alexander annulled the decree of his predecessor and restored the privileges of the friars. Alexander, because he had been the cardinal-protector of the Franciscans before his elevation, could be relied on to support his own friar-dependents unreservedly.

William’s party, undaunted, continued to disallow the readmittance of the friar-masters into the Paris faculty of theology. Thomas Aquinas, as a consequence, was forced to await his licensure to teach. (When Thomas eventually gave his inaugural lecture, in 1256, he and his audience had to be protected by soldiers of Louis IX.) The bishops of Orléans and Auxerre, under directives from the Papacy, began proceedings in 1255 to bar William and his followers from the consolation of the Sacraments. However, in the summer of that year, William successfully defended himself in the episcopal courts of Mâcon and Paris, and at Paris, he was supported by a sympathetic audience of four thousand clerics. Moreover, in October, the secular masters sought to annul the pope’s directives, and thereby cancel their status of excommunication, by dissolving the university and they threatened to leave the university altogether. Alexander obdurately insisted that they submit to him. In December, he instructed the chancellor of the university to license only those faculty who observed his pronouncement and demanded that William and his partisans be deprived of their teaching positions.

Throughout 1256, the dispute increasingly came to center on William himself. In the spring and early summer of that year, William composed in rapid succession three drafts of his best-known work, De periculis novissimorum temporum (1256; on the dangers of the last times), the third of which passed into the hands of king and pope.

In August, Alexander ordered the examination of De periculis novissimorum temporum by a commission that was dominated by the great Dominican biblical scholar, and William’s rival at Paris, Hugh of Saint-Cher. The university, for William’s defense, sent three theologians, the university rector, and a master of arts. Before this delegation arrived, however, the commission found the treatise to be scandalous and pernicious. Thus, by the time the seculars entered Rome, Alexander had condemned the treatise, and William and his supporters argued his case in vain. All other seculars at length submitted to the pope, but William stood alone and recalcitrant. In the winter of 1257, in ill health, William went into exile (by order of the king), where he remained despite numerous attempts by his colleagues at Paris to have his sentence overturned. He was later allowed to return to his native Saint-Amour, where he remained until his death in 1272. While in forced retirement, he composed his Collectiones catholicae et canonicae scripturae (1266; collections of Catholic and canonical writings), an extensive final warning to the Church to beware of the mounting dangers introduced by the friars.

Significance

Some scholars have dismissed William as an ultraconservative, a mere crank, who stood against the most progressive developments of the thirteenth century. Others have seriously suggested that William’s biblical interpretation that the “last days” were at hand was actually a sophisticated farce designed to mock similar biblical exegeses by the more radical friars. Both views, however, are inaccurate. William is better understood as an early representative of the antipapal cause that reached its height in later centuries. Most striking is William’s biblical interpretation of Church ministry, an exegesis that he certainly intended to be taken seriously, in which the thirteenth century clerical hierarchy is judged in the light of its apostolic first century antecedents. One can see here a precedent for the scriptural exegeses of John Wyclif (in the fourteenth century) and Martin Luther (in the sixteenth century). Indeed, Wyclif acknowledged his debt to William.

It is a matter of historical record that William’s caricatures of the friars proved immensely popular. William was warmly remembered by many of his students and fellow clergy, and his rhetoric made its way into later literature. The poet Rutebeuf (fl. 1245-1285) vigorously defended William against both pope and king, whom he disparaged as Judases. Jean de Meung, author of the last part of Le Roman de la rose (c. 1230; The Romance of the Rose, 1914-1924), devoted some thousand verses to praise of William and his ideas and depicted the friars by the type “False Semblance.” William Langland, in the fourteenth century, portrayed the friars as “Doctor Friar Flatter,” alias “Father Creep-into-Houses.” Sixteenth century Protestants blessed William’s memory and printed (in 1530) his De periculis novissimorum temporum. Perhaps there was even a dim echo as late as the eighteenth century, when Edmund Burke satirized the French radicals as “praters [who] effect to carry back the clergy to that primitive evangelical poverty.”

Bibliography

Bolton, Brenda. Innocent III: Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care. Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1995. Discusses papal primacy and authority as articulated by Pope Innocent III, to which William was deeply opposed. Includes a bibliography and an index.

Dawson, James D. “William of Saint-Amour and the Apostolic Tradition.” Mediaeval Studies 40 (1978): 223-238. Argues that William gave new meaning to the ancient ideal of apostolic tradition and therefore was one of the inventors of the primitive first century ideal that later would be used as a weapon against the Church.

Douie, D. L. The Conflict Between the Seculars and the Mendicants at the University of Paris in the Thirteenth Century. London: Blackfriars, 1954. A brief but comprehensive survey of the controversy between the seculars and the friars.

Douie, D. L. “St. Bonaventura’s Part in the Conflict Between Seculars and Mendicants at Paris.” In S. Bonaventura, 1274-1974, edited by J. G. Bougerol. Vol. 2. Rome: Collegio S. Bonaventura Grottaferrata, n.d. Examines the controversy from 1252 to 1270 with special regard to the role of the Franciscan friar Saint Bonaventure. William figures prominently in this essay, which ends with observations regarding the implications of the controversy for the development of the medieval Papacy.

Lambert, Malcolm D. Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine of the Absolute Poverty of Christ and the Apostles in the Franciscan Order, 1210-1323. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1961. An extensive study of the idea of poverty as conceived by Saint Francis of Assisi and developed by his order until the papacy of Pope John XXII in the fourteenth century. Contains illuminating insights on the practical problems faced by the Franciscans and on the hostility they encountered from the seculars. Includes index.

Leff, Gordon. Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: An Institutional and Intellectual History. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1968. A good introduction to the background of the friar-secular controversy.

Rosewein, Barbara H., and Lester K. Little. “Social Meaning in the Monastic and Mendicant Spiritualities.” Past and Present 63 (May, 1974): 4-32. This article provides insight into the social and economic factors that augmented the spirituality of the friars. Notes the differences between the older Benedictines and the thirteenth century friars.

Traver, Andrew. The Opuscula of William of Saint-Amour: The Minor Works of 1255-1256. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 2003. A study of four of William’s Latin texts in the context of the history and criticism of literature on the friars. Includes a bibliography and index.

Traver, Andrew. “Secular and Mendicant Masters of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Paris, 1505-1523.” Sixteenth Century Journal 26, no. 1 (Spring, 1995). Looks at the relationship between the mendicants and the University of Paris faculty of theology in the early Renaissance period. Although the article’s time period follows that of William, the discussion is still useful as an examination of the tensions between the friars and the seculars.