Knowledge of the law of the church has always existed outside the world of practising lawyers, and the uses to which the canon law was put in earlier centuries were so varied that only casting a wide net can do justice to the subject's history. Of this there are few better examples than that of John de Burgh. The author of what his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes as ‘a very influential work of pastoral theology entitled Pupilla oculi’, Burgh knew his subject.Footnote 1 The description in the ODNB is not inaccurate. However, it does not do justice to the author's knowledge of the church's laws or to his place in securing the law's application. The Pupilla oculi digested complex and sometimes confusing legal texts, providing usable summaries of their meaning, adding learned authorities to support them and giving advice about how they could be employed. It was widely used.
The starting point for understanding the work's importance must be a recognition of the rudimentary nature of the formal education required of parochial clergy during the Middle Ages. ‘Precious little’ is how the foremost student of the subject summed up the quantity of learning that candidates were obliged to acquire before they were ordained.Footnote 2 No time spent at a university was necessary. No training in the law of the church was required. With Burgh's treatise in hand, however, the men charged with the administration of parochial life might still learn the basic rules of canon law and put them into practice. It was training on the job, no doubt. It may have slighted the law's nuances. But it was a vast improvement on ignorance, and that is the reason why Burgh's contribution counted for as much as it did.
BURGH‘S LIFE AND CAREER
Many aspects of Burgh's life remain unknown – even to the date of both his birth and his death. We know only a few things with any certainty.Footnote 3 A native of Lincolnshire, he entered the University of Cambridge and had proceeded MA by 1370. He then remained at the university for 18 years. Elected to the normal two-year term as chancellor of the university in 1384, by that year he had received a doctorate in theology.Footnote 4 Whether he studied the Roman and canon laws during that long time span is uncertain, but it would not have been unusual for a student in the arts or theological faculties to have done so, and this common practice may explain the familiarity that Burgh had acquired with the ius commune by the time he left the university in 1388.Footnote 5 Moreover, he himself would have witnessed legal skills being put to use: he served as proctor of the university in 1370 and as chancellor he would have presided over a court governed by the civil law. In these offices, Burgh would have had the opportunity to learn to use the legal texts and the works of commentators on them.
Burgh's move out of university circles was certainly something he desired. During the decade before he left he sought to obtain a benefice by petitioning Pope Gregory XI, and by 1388 he had become rector of Collingham in the Diocese of York.Footnote 6 Retaining that benefice, he added another ten years later when he became vicar of Newark in the same diocese. For all we know, he lived out his life as a country parson in the north of England. Even that conclusion, however, rests simply on assumptions based on the offices he held. We know nothing of his activities there, not even the circumstances or the place of his death. No known monument to him remains to us. What marks him out as worthy of attention is the composition of the Pupilla oculi, which took place before he left Cambridge.
THE PLACE OF THE PUPILLA OCULI IN THE LITERATURE OF THE IUS COMMUNE
Burgh's treatise belongs within the broad category of mediaeval pastoral manuals meant for use by the clergy.Footnote 7 They are sometimes described as Summae confessorum because of their utility in the internal forum of auricular confession.Footnote 8 Most of them (as Burgh's work did) sought to summarise the church's penitential and sacramental laws so that they could be understood and applied in practice.Footnote 9 The utility of these works was not limited to confession, however. They were used to good advantage, for example, in preparing sermons,Footnote 10 and they provided instructions for the clergy on how to live up to legal standards. It would not be off the mark to describe them as vehicles by which the mediaeval church's doctrines and laws were taken from the schools and brought into parishes. Their authors mostly eschewed the juristic speculation and debates that were familiar (and appropriate) parts of university education. Whenever Burgh did allude to disagreements found in the texts or to debates among the commentators, he did so briefly and also stated his own view of which was the better opinion.
The title of Burgh's work – an odd one today, though no stranger to the literature coming out of the European schools – meant ‘apple of the eye’, as in ‘He kept him as the apple of his eye’ (Deut 32:10). Its title made a connection with the earlier work which provided Burgh's starting point: the Oculus sacerdotis of William Paull (or William Pagula, as he was called by the scholar who had the most to do with bringing Paull's work to the attention of modern historians, Leonard Boyle).Footnote 11 Boyle downplayed the contributions made by Burgh's text, apparently regarding it as a derivative work – and perhaps a needless one at that.Footnote 12 However, the view of most scholars (and mine) is that the Pupilla oculi is a distinct improvement on its predecessor.Footnote 13 The topics are more economically arranged; they are easier to find; their exposition is clearer: and the work's statements of the church's law are better established by textual references. Whether either of the two men would have regarded the other as a rival or as a co-worker, we can only speculate, since they did not meet: Paull died in 1332. However, the verdict of the marketplace supports Burgh's higher reputation. Although both works are found in many manuscript copies from the Middle Ages, including a handsome ‘showpiece’ manuscript of Burgh's work, only the Pupilla oculi reached print.Footnote 14 Paull's treatise did not. Burgh's work was printed several times in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, including editions published both in England and on the Continent (Paris, Rouen and Strasbourg).Footnote 15
In common with Paull's treatise, the conclusions in Burgh's text rested on recognised authorities. He cited legal sources for every topic he covered, though without the accumulation of authorities found in many of the canonical treatises from the later Middle Ages. Normally, the Pupilla oculi provided only one relevant text for each conclusion. They came from a range of sources. The Bible and works by theologians appeared often; also Church fathers such as St Augustine and more recent theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. Burgh also cited Roman law texts occasionally, though the religious nature of his subject discouraged frequent reference to them.Footnote 16 The majority of his references were to the Corpus iuris canonici – from Gratian's Decretum to the Extravagantes – and also to the best known of the commentaries on them. He referred repeatedly to the works of Hostiensis, Innocent IV, Joannes Andreae and Raymund of Peñaforte. He also did not neglect the provincial constitutions of the province of Canterbury. These had an immediate impact on parochial life in England and he was right to refer to them.
THE CONTENTS OF THE PUPILLA OCULI
Burgh divided his work into ten parts of unequal length.Footnote 17 They were: I) The sacraments in general; II) Baptism; III) Confirmation; IV) The Eucharist; V) Penitence and sentences of excommunication; VI) Extreme unction; VII) Holy orders; VIII) Marriage and matrimonial causes; IX) Tithes, sanctuary, last wills and testaments, clerical residence, and similar matters; and X) Practical theology, including the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, and works of mercy. Each part was then divided into separate chapters; within each chapter, separate letters were assigned to subject as they were discussed. Thus, in the copy printed in Paris in 1521, the treatment of the rules regulating clerical residence with women is found in part VII, chapter 10, letter L. A serviceable index in this edition also helped an uninstructed clerical reader to find the specific subjects he required.
What most immediately strikes a modern reader of Burgh's treatment of his subjects is the economy and clarity of his exposition. Compare, for example, his handling of the prohibition mentioned against clerics living together with women with the fuller coverage in the Decretals. Burgh's text gives a reason for the rule (avoidance of the temptation to commit the sin of adultery) and a statement of one of its exceptions (women related to a cleric in close degrees of consanguinity). But that is about all. The same subject was dealt with at great length in the formal texts of the canon law and Burgh provided a reference to two of them in his own treatment of the subject (Dist 37 c 27 and X 3.2.9). However, he did not go into detail. It was not a classroom exercise, nor was it a preparation for litigation. It was an exposition of the basic law on the subject and a plain statement of the reasons supporting it.
Burgh's treatment of clandestine marriages contains a good example of his normal approach. Under mediaeval canon law, an agreement made by words of present consent was a full and indissoluble marriage. A secret marriage, even if entered into without ceremony or witnesses, bound the contracting parties in conscience. Without doubt, it was an awkward law in practice – ‘no masterpiece of human wisdom’ was how Maitland once described it.Footnote 18 Here, however, is what Burgh told his clerical readers: make an investigation of your own; if the spousals were not celebrated in facie ecclesie but were contracted publicly before others, they cannot be dissolved by the mutual agreement of the parties but the matter must be referred to a court for decision. If, however, they were contracted entirely secretly, they can be dissolved without a judgment of the church.Footnote 19 Practical advice, one might call it, although Burgh supported it only by a reference to one commentator on Peter Lombard's Sentences.
Among the matters covered by Burgh's treatise is a lengthy treatment of Magna Carta.Footnote 20 Inclusion of the Charter in a religious treatise may seem surprising today, but in the context of its own times it fitted. Led by Archbishop Stephen Langton, the bishops had taken a hand in its formulation in 1215, though just how strong a hand it was remains a matter of uncertainty. Successive archbishops had later issued sentences of excommunication against any person who infringed the Charter's provisions.Footnote 21 Among those subjected to these sentences were all persons who acted against Clause One's promise of the freedom for the English Church. The sanction was not limited to them, however, but extended to all. As Professor Cheney put it, by the start of the fourteenth century, ‘Magna Carta had come to stay, and the English hierarchy was committed to safeguarding it.’Footnote 22
CONCLUSION
‘Neither English university produced a lawyer of international reputation during the Middle Ages.’Footnote 23 That has been the verdict of most historians of the canon law, and the example of John de Burgh does not disprove it. No mention of Pupilla oculi appears in today's standard works on the history of the canon law.Footnote 24 However, what Burgh sought to accomplish he achieved. His work provided the means by which basic rules of law for the administration of a mediaeval parish and the conduct of a Christian life could be found and put to use – no mean accomplishment.
