Thesis 4>10
Latin
Illa uerba (hoc est corpus, etc.), quae in consecratione dicuntur, materialiter tenentur non significatiuae.
Copy-text Farmer 1998, OCR, which prints 'significatiuae' (farmer1998:21666-21667). Copenhaver gives the Conclusions' wording as 'et cetera' and emends 'significatiuae' to 'significatiue' (copenhaver2022:9476-9478). He notes that the Apology's statement of the thesis differs slightly from the Conclusions (copenhaver2022:9463-9466). Garcia's 1489 title, as printed by Edelheit, reads 'hoc est corpus meum' and 'materialiter tenentur et non significative' (edelheit2022:20775-20777).
English
The words spoken in the consecration ('hoc est corpus' and the rest) are taken materially, not significatively.
'materialiter' and 'significatiue' are terms of supposition theory: a term in material supposition stands for the word itself, as 'frog' does in 'frog has four letters', while in personal or significative supposition it stands for the things the word signifies (copenhaver2022:983-986, 9696-9700). 'tenentur' is rendered 'are taken', the logicians' verb for how a term is used in a proposition, the verb Copenhaver also uses (copenhaver2022:9469-9470). The parenthesis abbreviates the formula 'hoc est enim corpus meum', this is my body (copenhaver2022:966-969).
Condemnation
Q10 in the order of the Apology: Eucharist: words of consecration. Printed 7 December 1486; censured by the papal commission in February-March 1487; the work as a whole condemned by the bull of 4 August 1487.
'scandalous and contrary to the usual view of saintly teachers' (copenhaver2022:8902-8903); Farmer's rendering 'scandalous and contrary to the common opinion of holy doctors' (farmer1998:21751-21752); Blum's translation from Dorez and Thuasne, 'Outrageous, contrary to the opinion of the Church Fathers', with 'scandalosus' rendered 'outrageous' (dougherty2008:2183-2184, 2233).
Doctrine
The thesis answers the puzzle of 'hoc': when the priest says 'this', what does the demonstrative pick out (copenhaver2022:968-971)? It cannot be the bread, which is not Christ's body, nor Christ's body, which is not present until the sentence that begins with 'hoc' has been finished (copenhaver2022:970-973). Supposition theory distinguished what a term signifies in isolation from what it stands for, or supposits for, within a proposition (copenhaver2022:987-993). A term in material supposition stands for a word, a term in personal or significative supposition for the things the word signifies (copenhaver2022:9696-9700). To take the words materially, in Farmer's gloss, is to put them in quotation marks; taken otherwise, 'this is my body' in a priest's mouth would refer to the priest's own body (farmer1998:21745-21750). Pico's defence restricts the thesis to the priest: the words were significative when Christ spoke them and are material when a priest narrates (recitat) them, so that the priest's phrase supposits for Christ's significative phrase (copenhaver2022:10066-10072). His evidence is the rest of the rite: the priest says 'take and eat' though he addresses no apostles, and 'which for you and for many is shed' though no blood is shed at that moment, so these words are true only as narration (copenhaver2022:10076-10092). Thesis 2>16 denies that the Treatise on Supposition belongs to logic (farmer1998:19092); Farmer comments that Pico used the language of supposition theory only occasionally, as here, and regarded departures from traditional Aristotelian logic with disdain (farmer1998:19122-19126).
Context
Pico's thesis condenses the Ordinary Gloss on canon 25 of De consecratione, which says that 'hoc' indicates nothing because it is used materially, and that a priest who said the words significatively would be lying (copenhaver2022:9535-9551). The narrative reading had a long history before Pico (copenhaver2022:9842-9845). Lotario dei Segni, later Innocent III, held that the priest uses the words not declaratively but narratively (copenhaver2022:9615-9643). Aquinas rejected the view that the whole utterance is taken materially when spoken as narrative, because the words would then not apply to a present body and the sacrament could not be carried out (copenhaver2022:9738-9747). Scotus held the formula true only at the last instant of its utterance and allowed that the priest's words are narrated (copenhaver2022:9755-9765). Among the theses Pico reported from Scotus, 4.15 states that consecration cannot be made by the bare words 'Hoc est corpus meum' without the narrative words that precede them (farmer1998:12357-12358). Durand de Saint-Pourçain argued that the priest speaks 'recitative et non significative' (copenhaver2022:9766-9772, 9799). Ockham treated the problem through his distinction between spoken and mental language, and Wyclif agreed with Thomas that the glossator's account made the sacrament ineffective (copenhaver2022:9803-9810). Jean Cabrol, defending Thomas, gave 'hoc' a merely confused supposition (copenhaver2022:9811-9825). Copenhaver concludes that Pico relied on terms of art, materialiter, significative and recitative, that had been developing since the twelfth century (copenhaver2022:9842-9845).
Reception
The commission judged the thesis scandalous and contrary to the usual view of saintly teachers, and added that the glossator's view on the point does not hold (copenhaver2022:8902-8903, 10060-10062). Farmer reads the condemnation of an apparently innocuous thesis as a sign of the commission's hostility to Pico (farmer1998:21750-21752). Copenhaver agrees that Pico had logic and law on his side, and explains the verdict by the company the thesis kept: the judges read it beside Q6 and Q9, where the doctrinal stakes were higher and the insults to the court provocative (copenhaver2022:1015, 9551-9555). Pico turned the charge around, calling the commission's finding the scandalous one and his own view not only Catholic but more acceptable (probabilior) than its opposite (copenhaver2022:10062-10065, 9906-9909). He reminded the judges that the Gloss had never been rejected by the Church (copenhaver2022:9905-9907). Pedro Garcia (Garsia), a judge who published a reply in 1489, gave a philosophical account of 'hoc' in which the pronoun indicates determinately neither the terminus to which nor the terminus from which of transubstantiation (copenhaver2022:548-549; edelheit2022:20756-20758, 20775-20782). Giovanni Caroli answered the thesis together with the other two eucharistic theses (edelheit2022:21280-21283, 21711-21714).
Historiography
Farmer presents the thesis as an instance of Pico's use of late medieval supposition theory and calls it apparently innocuous (farmer1998:21745-21751). Copenhaver reconstructs the canon-law and scholastic background and reads the thesis as a précis of the Gloss that would have seemed harmless in other circumstances (copenhaver2022:9551-9553). He observes that the thesis itself says nothing about narration, which enters only with the defence, and that Pico's 'supponit' could be read in the ordinary sense of 'substitutes for', as an actor stands in for a character (copenhaver2022:9870-9878). He also judges the Apology's Q10 too short to tell whether its text needs emending (copenhaver2022:8958-8959). Edelheit groups the thesis with 4>1 and 4>2 as the eucharistic theses that Caroli attacked, and describes Garcia's account of 'hoc' as evidence that scholastic philosophy was worked out inside theological questions (edelheit2022:20751-20758, 21699-21714). The case shows a thesis that repeated standing canon law being censured for its setting, which is the reading Copenhaver gives (copenhaver2022:9551-9555, 9905-9907).
Pico's sources
- Ordinary Gloss on Gratian's Decretum, De consecratione, distinction 2, canon 25 (Timorem): the one non-biblical authority Pico cited in defence; the thesis gives the gist of the gloss (copenhaver2022:9484-9486)
- Peter Lombard, Sentences 4, distinction 8: the scholastic place of the question, per Farmer (farmer1998:21745)
- Scotus, as reported in thesis 4.15: cross-referenced by Farmer (farmer1998:21745) (farmer1998:12357-12358)
Quotations cited
- “Pico's Q10 thesis gave the gist of this gloss” — Brian P. Copenhaver, Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy (copenhaver2022:9551)
- “Although Pico had logic and law on his side” — Brian P. Copenhaver, Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy (copenhaver2022:1015)
- “not only Catholic but also more acceptable (probabilior) than its opposite” — Brian P. Copenhaver, Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy (copenhaver2022:9908)
- “The commission's hostility towards Pico is reflected in its judgment” — Stephen A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486) (farmer1998:21750)
- “scandalous and contrary to the usual view of saintly teachers” — Brian P. Copenhaver, Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy (copenhaver2022:8902)
- “until now it has never been rejected by the Church” — Brian P. Copenhaver, Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy (copenhaver2022:9906)
Not established
- The Latin of the Apology's tenth Question was not consulted; its wording is known here only through Copenhaver's translation and his note of variants (copenhaver2022:9476-9478).
- Whether Pico read the Gloss directly or through an intermediary is not established by the sources consulted; Copenhaver writes that if Pico read the gloss he would have found the account of 'hoc' there (copenhaver2022:9521-9536).
- The Latin formula of the commission's verdict (Dorez and Thuasne 1897) is not in the corpus.
- Collation against the 1486 Rome print.
Discussed in
- Brian P. Copenhaver, Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy (2022)
- M. V. Dougherty (ed.), Pico della Mirandola: New Essays (2008)
- Amos Edelheit, A Philosopher at the Crossroads: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Scholastic Philosophy (2022)
Farmer's cross-references
- 2>16 Tractatus suppositionum ad logicum non pertinet.
- 3>43 Actus quo foelicitatur natura angelica et rationalis ultima foelicitate, nec est actus intellectus, nec uoluntatis, sed est unio unitatis qu
- 4.15 Per haec uerba precise (Hoc est corpus meum), non expressis uerbis precedentibus, scilicet pridie quam pateretur, non potest consecrari.
- 4>11 Si teneatur communis uia quod actu intellectus attingatur deus, dico duas sequentes conclusiones, quarum haec est prima: quod uidentes uerbu
- 4>12 Beati duplicem habent cognitionem de creaturis, eas formaliter attingentem, quarum altera illatiue est, ex ea qua uerbum attingunt, altera s