Medieval Education

Chapter 5: Reason, Rhetoric, and Redemption:The Teaching of Law and the Planctus Mariae in the Late Middle Ages

        Reason, Rhetoric, and Redemption: The Teaching of Law and the Planctus Mariae in the Late Middle Ages  .  I n The Making of the Middle Ages R. W. Southern contended that, following Anselm’s repudiation of Satanic prerogatives in Cur Deus Homo, the issue of the Devil’s rights was universally rejected (, –). According to this view, Anselm shifted the focus of the pretium redemptionis from ransom owed the Devil to the satisfaction owed God. Satan’s due was nothing other than punishment for his crimes, and therefore there was no need to defeat his claims justly. But recent scholarship, most notably that of C. W. Marx () and Brian Patrick McGuire (), has demonstrated that earlier theories of the redemption endured and that the High Middle Ages manifested the same eclecticism as prevailed even among the Church Fathers. The Devil’s rights remained a popular motif well into the late Middle Ages. Indeed, the scenario of Satan pleading his rights to humankind in the heavenly court emerges dramatically, first as a topos in theological literature as early as the mid-twelfth century (Marx ), then as a genre of legal literature beginning in the mid-thirteenth century. Elaborated and translated into the vernacular tongues, the genre underwent a renaissance by the late Middle Ages. The renewed interest in Satan’s rights was undoubtedly occasioned by the contemporaneous palingenesis of canon and civil law. Whereas prior literature concerning the harrowing of Hell and the Devil’s rights had been annotated with scriptural and patristic references , the processus genre teemed with citations to the developing corpus juris. The latest phase of this literature generally portrayed the Virgin Mary as the advocate for humanity, no longer in the role of PAGE 68 ................. 11150$ $CH5 02-02-05 07:57:54 PS Reason, Rhetoric, and Redemption  Bernard of Clairvaux’s intercessor de facto, but as the attorney de jure in a courtroom drama brought to vindicate Satan’s due. Clement V’s constitutions Pastoralis cura and Saepe contigit established certain standards of minimal due process which easily could be interpreted as providing even Satan with procedural rights, regardless of the tenability of his substantive claims, that earlier theological treatment tended to obviate. The trial as drama provided heuristic exercise for students assimilating these legal innovations by reviving the preAnselmic notion that the Devil must be defeated justly. Justice now consists, however, in according Satan a fair hearing. This essay will deal with the pedagogical elements of one genus of the processus genre, the fourteenth-century treatise entitled Processus Sathane infernalis contra genus humanum. This tract portrays the Virgin Mary as advocate before the court of Christ exhibiting the legal and rhetorical skills of the trained lawyer against a demon procurator. Although it was fairly widely distributed in manuscript (Kamp , ; Jacquin , ), no attribution was made until  or , when one or more publishers ascribed the work to the Italian jurist Bartolo of Sassoferrato, professor of law at Pisa in  and at Perugia from  until his death; he was a pupil of Cino of Pistoia, who has been credited with introducing the scholastic techniques of the commentators from France into Italy. Thereafter, the treatise was published in a number of editions and versions that can be categorized into at least three distinct genera (Stintzing , –). However, with the exception of the editor of the  Processus joco-serius, the authorship of the text does not appear to have been seriously questioned until the late nineteenth century when Franz Roediger repeated the objections of the  edition (Roediger , –). Gaston Raynaud was drawn to the issue by his interest in the low Norman poem L’Advocacie Nostre-Dame, much of which is nothing other than a translation of the Processus, devoid of citations and legal subtleties but with the addition of lengthy encomia to the Virgin Mary. Raynaud noted that a manuscript of that poem exists accompanied by another, La Chapelerie Nostre-Dame de Baiex, detailing the disputes between the bishop of Bayeux, William of Trier, and the viscount of Constance, Adam of Orleans. Since it speaks of William as living and reigning in Bayeux, it must have been composed PAGE 69 ................. 11150$ $CH5 02-02-05 07:57:55 PS Medieval Education  between , the date in which the litigation ended, and , the date William quit the see of Bayeux for that of Rheims. Since the versification of these poems indicates common authorship (presupposing that the manuscript transmits them in the order they were...