Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages by Ian Christopher Levy (review)

646 BOOK REVIEWS Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages. By IAN CHRISTOPHER LEVY. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. 352. $38.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-268-03414-6. Although the title of this work would suggest that it is principally about scriptural exegesis in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the real value contained here is in the broad vision of the period and the breathtakingly full context. Ian Christopher Levy, associate professor of theology at Providence College, presents a radical rereading of late-medieval theology, with a particular focus on Wyclif and Hus and their opponents, and a surprising presentation of the “orthodox” foundations of these two famous teachers, masters understood by many of their contemporaries as archetypes of heretics. Levy’s study, however, also demonstrates intriguing intersections between the works of these men and other controversies of quite long standing. The first controversial thread contributing to the vibrancy of this tapestry is the ongoing struggle between theologians and canonists. The disciplines of each of these groups became recognized as “sciences,” or organized bodies of knowledge taught by experts who had satisfied a prescribed course of study, at roughly the same time, or about a century or two before the period under consideration in this book. Following Gratian’s Decretum (or, more properly, the Concordia Discordantium Canonum) for canonists, and Peter Lombard’s Sentences perhaps twenty years later, these two disciplines had authoritative textbooks which served as the basis for teaching and exposition for the remainder of the Middle Ages. But the relationship between theology and law in general, and canon law in particular, was always fraught. Most of the sources found in this book are from theological sources, moaning that all of the choice positions are going to canonists and not to theologians, and portraying canonists in a none-too-favorable light. While canon law was regarded as a branch of theology prior to the middle of the twelfth century, from at least that time forward canonists were subjected to the virulent ire of theologians. For theologians to complain about canonists was common in the later Middle Ages, but the most common complaint was not that the lawyers raised other sources to the same level of authority as the sacred Scriptures, but that canonists were simply too greedy. It is fascinating to read the responses canonists made to this abuse, and to see that they gave as good as they got. This raises the strikingly modern question of what is the relationship—if any!—between canon law and theology. Johannes Teutonicus, referenced by Levy for his consideration of the question of papal heresy, presented the following case: “A certain man had books on theology, canon law, and civil law. At his death he made a will in which he left his theology books to the church of St. Stephen and his law books to the church of St. Proclus. He said nothing about any other. To which church should the books on canon law go?” (The full quaestio is published in Fransen, BMCL 13 [1983] 47.) Hostiensis (ca. 1200-1271) compared the three disciplines to parts of the BOOK REVIEWS 647 human body: theology is the head, civil law is the feet, and canon law is the hands; canon law is thus the noblest of all fields of learning, Hostiensis concludes, because it is the one that actually gets the work done. It is the most like Jesus Christ, and a more perfect field of learning than theology, because as true God and true man are united in the person of Christ, so theology and civil law are united in canon law, “and accordingly just as a composite nature is worthier and greater than all others, therefore so is our science, because the same conclusion is to be reached concerning similar things” (In quinque decretalium libri commentaria on X 1.1.1 §19 and 1.14.14 §6 [Venice, 1581], fol. 5vb and 110ra-rb). This is at least more complimentary than his previous triad comparing theology to a horse, civil law to a donkey, and canon law to a mule. The definitive estrangement between canon...