The Medieval Question of Women and Orders

THE MEDIEVAL QUESTION OF WOMEN AND ORDERS TAKING ITS START from Peter Lombard's Sentences (c. 1148) ,1 the medieval discussion of the sacrament of ordination went beyond his text to raise a question whose answer must have seemed so obvious that Lombard felt no need to mention it: whether male sex is a requirement for ordination. Many of the elements necessary to ask and to answer this question had already been assembled in Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140) .2 But it is not until the thirteenth century that it achieved either juridical or theological articulation.3 The elaboration of the question of women and orders occurred in the context of the general twelfth century movement toward systematization in canon law and theology; its development reflects the pattern of interaction between these two sciences.4 If the medieval conclusions to this question are to be used in the present-day discussion of women's ordination,5 they must be understood in terms of this historical development . 1 Libri 4 Sententiarum (Quaracchi, 1916), vol. 2. •Ida Raining, The Exclusion of Women From the Priesthood: Divine Law or Sex Discrimination?, tr. by Norman R. Adams (Metuchen, N. J.: 1976), pp. 7-39, sets out the major texts in the Decretum that bear on the question of women and ordination. See also the discussion below. 8 Of the later literature of canon law, the glossa ordinaria of the Decretum and several decretals and their glosses (particularly the decretal Nova Quaedam) are important for the statement of the question and will be treated below. In theological literature of the period, the question is raised explicitly for the first time, as far as I can ascertain, by Bonaventure and, shortly afterwards, by Thomas Aquinas (see below). •For the interaction of canon law and theology, see J. de Ghellinck, Le Mouvement theologique de XII• siecle (2nd ed., Brussels, 1969), pp. 52-65, 203-213, 416-510. •As in the Vatican "Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood" (Vatican City: Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1976), no. 1, pp. 5-6. 58~ WOMEN AND ORDERS 583 At the heart of the theological movement of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the injunction of 1 Peter 3: 15-"Always be ready to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you."6 Peter Lombard and his thirteenth century followers worked in the tension between the extremes of inarticulate :fideism and overly articulate rationalism . Their arguments and conclusions depended as much on internal coherence as on the teaching of Scripture or the church. Not until the fourteenth century was the tension broken with the rise of a new fideism. The shift in theological perspective and method from Peter Lombard to Duns Scotus (or William of Ockham) is reflected in the developing discussion of women and orders, so that, by the end of the period considered here, Duns Scotus can attribute the exclusion of women from ordination solely to the will of Christ. The process that led from Peter Lombard to Duns Scotus requires closer examination. As the various commentators on the Sentences expanded and refined their treatment of the sacrament of orders, room was made for the eventual posing of the question about the ordination of women. Once the question had been raised it could be developed according to the interests and concerns of the individual commentator. At the same time as this theological development was taking place, the decretists and decretalists who commented on the growing body of canon law influenced the theologians not only in the arrangement of their subject matter but in the nature of their conclusions. This was especially the case in regard to the sacraments.7 What I propose to do here is to trace the development of the question of women and orders in the Sentence commentaries of Alexander of Hales,8 Albert the Great,9 Bonaventure,1° •de Ghellinck, Mouvement, pp. 279-284. • Ibid., pp. 449 ff. • Glossa in Quat:uor Libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (Quaracchi, 1957), vol. 4. • Commentarii in 4 Sententiarum, in Opera, ed. A. Borgnet (Paris, Vives, 1894), vol. 20. 1...