Medieval Theology and ‘Women Priests’

• St. Thomas Aquinas
• St. Bonaventure
• The Theologians who finalised Church Law
• Other Theologians

St. Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas himself gives three reasons why women cannot be ordained priests.

1. The prohibition for women to teach or to have authority over men.
   1 Timothy 2,11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14,34-35 only mean a temporary exclusion of women from speaking in the assembly, or having another function. Extending Paul's sayings to a fixing of the status of women goes beyond the inspired sense.
   Aquinas will also have been influenced by the fact that this text had been quoted by the Didascalia Apostolorum and the Apostolic Constitutions, both of which were wrongly attributed to the Apostles themselves.
   Conclusion: this scriptural argument is not a valid reason to exclude women from the priesthood. If it were, why does present Church Law allow women to teach in and preside over liturgical functions?
2. The female sex cannot signify eminence of degree.
   This theological argument is based on a presumed, threefold inferiority of women.
   a. Women are biologically inferior. Following Aristotle's view of procreation, Aquinas believed that a woman is born by some defect in the generative process. A woman is a ‘defective male’. The biologically secondary status is also clear from the belief that the male seed contains the generative power. The mother only provides a womb that gives nourishment to the seed/foetus. This view was common among the Fathers.
   b. Women are socially inferior. A woman is subject to man by nature, because human reason, though common to both men and women to some extent, predominates in the male.
   c. Women are created as dependent on men. Man was created first. Though both men and women are the image of God as to our intellectual nature, man is the image of God in a special sense.
   Aquinas argues that, on account of these inherent defects, woman cannnot signify eminence of degree and can, therefore, not represent Christ as an ordained minister.
   Conclusion: Since women are absolutely equal to men, both biologically, socially and in the order of creation, the argument is invalid. In fact, the argument rests on the social and cultural prejudices of the time.
3. ‘Deaconesses’ of the past had no part in the sacrament of Holy Orders
   Because of historical ignorance, Aquinas dismisses the deaconess as ‘a woman who shares in some act of a deacon, namely who reads the homilies in the Church’.
   We know, however, that deaconesses were validly ordained as ministers of the sacramental diaconate.
   Conclusion: If Aquinas had known what we know, he would have admitted the capacity of women for sacramental ordination.

It is clear that Thomas Aquinas's reasons for rejecting the ordination of women rested on ignorance and on the social and cultural prejudices of the time. Surely his reasonings do not reflect valid Tradition. In this matter he is no valid witness to Christ's revealed will.

Rome says: ‘The same conviction [that women cannot be ordained] animates mediaeval theology, even if the Scholastic doctors, in their desire to clarify by reason the data of faith, often present arguments on this point that modern thought would have difficulty in admitting or would even rightly reject.’ Inter Insigniores, § 7.

Reply: It is obvious from Aquinas’s arguments that none of his scriptural or theological reasons are valid. This undermines their authority and even their ‘witness’ to a socalled ‘tradition’. The truth of the matter is that the real reasons for excluding women, as reflected in the ‘arguments’ themselves were the enduring social and cultural prejudices against women.

St. Bonaventure (1217-1274 AD)

If we analyse Bonaventure’s reasoning, there are four principal reasons why women cannot be ordained:

1. Women are inferior to men.
   * Women need to have their heads veiled and so cannot wear the tonsure.
   * Women do not bear the image of God.
   * A woman cannot be the head of a man.
   All this is based on the general prejudices of the time and a wrong interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11,2-16.
2. Women cannnot hold power.
   * A woman ‘is not capable of such power’.
   * ‘In Orders there is a concentration of power which many reasons show to be not at all suitable for women’.
   This reason too is based on the general prejudices prevailing at the time, as well as on a wrong interpretation of 1 Timothy 2,11-15.
3. Popes have forbidden women to touch sacred objects.
   Bonaventure here quotes an excerpt from the Decretum Gratiani which obviously is a major argument for him. However, he does not know that it concerns a forged letter presumably by Pope Soter which, via the socalled False Decretals, found its way into the law book of the Church!
4. Deaconesses were not validly ordained to the sacramental diaconate.
   Bonaventure recognises the importance of this question, implying that a valid ordination of women deacons would settle the question of women's valid admission to Holy Orders (even if it would leave the question of legitimate ordination open).
   However, it is clear from his answer that he did not have accurate information about deaconesses: ‘It is gathered that the women who communicated with the deacons in reading the homily were called deaconesses. They received some kind of blessing. Therefore in no way should it be believed that there were ever women promoted to sacred orders according to the canons [=laws of the Church].’
   If he had known the ordination rites and ministry of women deacons, he would certainly have judged differently.
5. Since Christ the Mediator was male, he can only be signified by the male sex.
   Bonaventure does not clearly and in detail explain the reason why only men can signify Christ in the paragraph where he states this argument. However, it is clear from the rest of the text that women cannot represent Christ in his view because they have an inferior status and cannnot exercise spiritual power (see no 1 & 2 above!).

Conclusion: If Bonaventure had known what we know, especially if he had realised how women had functioned as validly ordained deacons in the Church, he would have admitted the capacity of women for sacramental ordination.

Other theologians

The same prejudices and mistaken arguments we find with:

• Richard of Middleton (13th century)
• John Duns Scotus (1266 - 1308 AD)
• Durandus a Saint-Pourçain (1270 - 1334 AD)

The Theologians who finalised Church Law

The theologians who finalised Church Law by adding their comments to the Decretum Gratiani, expressed the following reasons for the restrictions imposed on women:

• “Women are not allowed to visit a church during menstruation or after the birth of a child. For a woman is an animal that menstruates. Through touching her blood fruits will fail to get ripe. Mustard degenerates, grass dries up and trees lose their fruit before time. Iron gets rusted and the air becomes dark. When dogs eat it, they acquire rabies” Paucapalea, Summa, Dist. 5, pr. § 1 v.
• Women may not take communion to the sick and have to stay out of church after childbirth. Reason: “That blood is so execrable and impure, as already Julius Solinus has written in the book about the miracles of the world, that through its contacts fruits do not mature, plants wither, the grass dies, the trees lose their fruits, the air becomes dark, if dogs eat it they are afflicted with rabies..... And intercourse at the time of the monthly period is very risky. Not only because of the uncleanness of the blood has the desire to be restrained from contacting a menstruating woman: from such an intercourse a spoilt foetus could be born.” Rufinus, Summa Decretorum, passim.
• Women may not touch any sacred vessel. The birth of a child carries a double curse: “There were two commandments in the (Old) Law, one pertaining to the mother giving birth, the other to the delivery itself. With regard to the mother giving birth, when she had given birth to a male child, she was to refrain from entering the Temple for forty days as an unclean person: because the foetus, conceived in uncleanliness, is said to remain formless for forty days. But if she gave birth to a female child, the space of time was doubled, for the menstrual blood, which accompanies birth, is considered to such an extent unclean that, as Solinus states, fruits dry up and grass withers at its touch. But why was the time for a female child doubled? Solution: because a double curse lies on the feminine growth. For she carries the curse of Adam and also the (punishment) ‘you will give birth in pain’. Or, perhaps, because, as the knowledge of physicians reveals, female children remain at conception twice as long unformed as male children” Sicardus of Cremona, Mitrale V, ch. 11.
• “On account of three reasons the man is said to be an image of God and not the woman. First of all: just as there is one God and from him everything arose, so one man was created from the beginning from whom all the others arose. Therefore to this extent he has a similarity with God namely that as everything proceeded from this one God so all other human beings proceed from this one man. Secondly just as from the side of Christ when he was sleeping in death on the cross the origin of the Church flowed namely water and blood through which are signified the sacraments of the Church through whom the Church subsists and has its origin and becomes the spouse of Christ, so from the side of Adam when he was sleeping in paradise was formed his spouse because from there was taken a rib, from which Eve was formed. Thirdly: just as Christ is head of the Church and governs the Church so the husband is head of his wife and rules and governs her. And through these three causes the man is stated to be the image of God and not the woman, and therefore the man must not be like the woman a sign of subjection, but a sign of freedom and preeminence. However, in a fourth way both the man and the woman are said to be an image of God, wherefore we have the expression ‘Let us make man’ that is ‘let us make him in our image and our likeness’ that is capable of the divine essence through reason, through the intellect, through memory, through genius and this is said both about the woman and the man.” Hugguccio, Summa, C. 33, qu. 5, ch. 13.
• “Women cannot carry any public responsibility . . . . Women cannot hold any civil office . . . . Nature produced women for this purpose that they give birth to children . . . The man is the image of God . . . . The womb is the soil in which the seed grows . . ., etc. ” Johannes Teutonicus, Apparatus, passim.
• “God is not glorified through the woman, as through a man, because through a woman the first sin came about”. Johannes Teutonicus, Apparatus, C. 33, qu. 5, ch. 13, ad v
• “Original sin is called original because it had its origin from a woman before it came to man.” Johannes Teutonicus, Apparatus, C. 33, qu. 5, ch. 19, ad v
• “Women cannot hold male responsibilities. This applies even to noble women and abbesses . . . . Eighteen reasons why women are worse off than men . . .” Henrick de Sergusio, Commentaria, I fol. 173r, 204v.
• “Women are unfit to receive ordination, for ordination is reserved for perfect members of the church, since it is given for the distribution of grace to other men. But women are not perfect members of the church, only men are.”
  “Add to this that woman is not an image of God, only man is. Moreover, woman was the effective cause of damnation since she was the origin of transgression and Adam was deceived through her, and thus she cannot be the effective cause of salvation, because holy orders causes grace in others and so salvation.”Guido de Baysio, Rosarium, c. 27, qu. 1, ch. 23.
• “It is fitting that woman does not possess the power of the keys because she is not made in the image of God, but only man who is the glory and image of God. That is why a woman must be subject to man and be as his slave, and not the other way about” Anthony de Butrio, Commentaria, II, fol. 89r.
• “Regarding the ordination of women . . . it is clear that the sacrament requires both substance (res) and sign (signum) . . . . But in the female sex a pre-eminence of degree cannot be signified since she occupies a state of subjection: (1 Timothy 2) ‘I do not allow a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man’.
  For because she had made a bad use of her equality, she was put into subjection: (Gen 3) ‘you shall be under the power of your husband’.
  Therefore she does not receive the character of the sacrament which possesses pre-eminence.” Joannes Andreae, Novella V, fol. 125v.

Other Theologians

I am researching the original writings of other medieval theologians at present. The results will appear here soon!

John Wijngaards

Please, credit this document
as published by www.womenpriests.org!