Article by Shael Herman
From its infancy in a declining Roman world, the church has faced an ethical dilemma: According to church doctrine based upon Christ's message, poverty was a blessed human condition while material wealth entailed spiritual hazard. Yet, paradoxically, the church's spiritual program for the hereafter depended upon building a vast patrimony in the here-and-now. The paradox suggested that a cleric who luxuriated in worldly riches risked accusations of hypocrisy. To rationalize the paradox, churchmen relied upon metaphors and legal constructs that separated into different hands the ownership and enjoyment of an asset. The interest of the clergy in church property was explained in terms of a trust in which the beneficiaries were the eternal church and her faithful flock. In this trust arrangement clerics occupied the role of trustees who administered assets confided to them in accordance with a standard of utilitas ecclesiae. A distinction between ownership and enjoyment characterized other property-holding institutions such as foundations and chantries. To clarify their role as stewards, churchmen also seized upon an appealing Augustinian metaphor that depicted the temporal world as a vast hostelry and faithful congregants as temporary sojourners. In this metaphorical hostelry, the clergy acted as spiritual innkeepers who maintained for all time accommodations for those who sought sanctuary whenever they grew weary during their spiritual pilgrimage. Both the trust and the hostelry figured in fifteenth-century works, such as William Lyndwood's Provinciale and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
About the Author
Shael Herman. Professor, Tulane Law School, New Orleans, Louisiana; Associate Professor, University of Paris (Pantheon-Sorbonne).
Citation
73 Tul. L. Rev. 1231 (1999)