Reception history, and in particular the history of the reception of Saint Augustine of Hippo, is a burgeoning field of study.Footnote 1 This is in large part because, as Eric Leland Saak, a leading voice on the medieval reception of Augustine, observes, “the reception of Augustine is virtually synonymous with the intellectual history of the west.”Footnote 2 While research on the historical reception of Augustine is a vibrant field of study, one area in need of further research is the function of appeals made to him in the documents surviving from church councils.Footnote 3 For example, considering the use of Augustine as an authority in church councils gathered to improve the state of relations between the Latin West and Byzantine East can enhance our understanding of relations among ecclesial parties, for he does not hold the same place of authority among the Greeks as he does with the Latins.Footnote 4 In conciliar contexts, Latins often cite Augustine as a chief auctoritas in support of the position(s) for which they are arguing.Footnote 5 The way Latins use him to bolster their positions in dialogue with Greeks confirms that they saw him as a venerable father of the church but also reveals the pertinence of his writings to enduring theological questions.
Considering the afterlife of early Christian literature in councils aimed at the union of the Latin West and Byzantine East can aid in the historian's literary substantiation of various ecclesial and political factors. The general aim of this essay is to show how this is the case by conducting a case study in the use of Augustine in an important conciliar document. In particular, I explore the role of Augustine as an authority at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1431–1449). This is a suitable example for at least two reasons.Footnote 6 First, there is a sense in which this council marks the high point in unionist efforts between the divided Latin West and Byzantine East. Second, we have not only the acts of the council but also a programmatic theological treatise written to represent the Latins’ theological perspective as expressed in Laetentur caeli (“Let the heavens rejoice”), the papal bull disseminated by Pope Eugenius IV on July 6, 1439.Footnote 7 The work in question is Juan de Torquemada's Apparatus Super Decretum Florentinum Unionis Graecorum, published in 1441.Footnote 8 In this treatise, Torquemada outlines the Latin view of the council and specifically the viewpoint of those Latins who affirmed the decree of union with the Greeks. I argue here that Torquemada's use of Augustine corroborates the otherwise circumstantial probability that he composed the Apparatus both to explain the theological terms on which Eugenius IV and the Latin papalists declared union with Byzantine Christians and simultaneously to defend the bull against the doubts held among conciliarists and their sympathizers around Europe. The argument involves two parts. First, I introduce the historical context, (1) explaining how Torquemada came to be a Dominican papalist supporting Eugenius at Ferrara-Florence, and (2) describing the circumstances precipitating his publication of the Apparatus. Second, I specify five strategies he used to mobilize Augustine, showing how they reinforce his expository and apologetic intentions.
I. Historical Context I: Torquemada and Conciliar Developments (1414–1440)
To fully appreciate the role of Torquemada (1388–1468) and his Apparatus (1441) at the Council of Ferrara-Florence, one must have at least a general understanding of the events leading up to the council.Footnote 9 While a young Dominican friar, Torquemada attended the final session of the Council of Constance (1414–1418) as an ambassador. Constance was called mostly to resolve the coexistence of three popes, which it accomplished by electing Martin V as pope on November 5, 1417.Footnote 10 In the years following Constance there were competing views about the character of ecclesial authority among Latins. On the one hand, there was the view that councils hold greater authority than popes, an idea which can be identified as “conciliarism.” Haec Sancta, the controversial decree of Constance given on April 6, 1415, which pronounced that ecumenical councils have authority over the pope, can be viewed as one public impetus for such popular sentiments. In contrast, the Dominican Master General Leonardo Dati defended the “papalist” tradition of the mendicants at Constance, asserting that “the council received its power from the pope.”Footnote 11 Upon being elected as pope on March 3, 1431, Pope Eugenius IV inherited the Council of Basel from Martin V. After a time of instability in the papalism of the Dominicans, it was at Basel that Dominican papalism rebounded, with John of Montenero and Torquemada as the foremost papalist friars. As the Council of Basel proceeded in the early-to-mid-1430s, Torquemada emerged as a defender of the mendicants in response to the “antifraternal sentiment” at Basel in 1434 and as a dissenter from the Immaculate Conception in 1439, following the tradition Thomas Aquinas began in the thirteenth century. According to Thomas Izbicki, “These tensions, coupled with the papalist tradition of the Order of Preachers, help to explain Torquemada's progression from a balance between papalism and reforming zeal to a blank opposition to conciliarism.”Footnote 12
The shift in Torquemada's perspective is symptomatic of his growing opposition to the Council of Basel as it sought to curtail papal authority.Footnote 13 It was the council's attempts to obstruct the pope's power to elect legates and to force papal obedience to conciliar decrees that incited Torquemada's defense of the Roman see such that “for the first time he questioned the validity of the decree Haec Sancta, in which he came to see the seeds of an ecclesiastical revolution.”Footnote 14 Martin Anton Schmidt provides a succinct description of the state of affairs at Basel:
The issue between the followers of Eugenius IV and the thoroughgoing conciliarists of Basel was about the relation between the Church and the Pope as the Church's earthly head. Whereas, conciliarism saw this head as a member of the body of the Church and therefore subordinated his claims to those of the whole body, the other side viewed the Pope's headship in the light of the divine origin and authorization, not in the light of privileges within a corporation.Footnote 15
This difference was the source of a major divide in Basel, but the final or “fatal rift was caused by negotiations with the Greeks over the site of a council of reunion.”Footnote 16 This disagreement led to two separate sites being decreed on May 7, 1437. Despite the visit of three Greek legates to the conciliarists at Basel a few years earlier, the Greeks agreed to meet Pope Eugenius and the papalists in Ferrara, Italy.Footnote 17
The Greeks departed for Ferrara from Constantinople that November. Although they were not inclined to travel too far, they were politically motivated because they hoped that ecclesial union with the Latins would be accompanied by military support against the Turks of the Ottoman Empire, who were converging on Constantinople. The Greeks likely came to meet the Latins with some degree of familiarity with Augustine.Footnote 18 As Joseph Gill observes, Augustine was one of a number of important Latin authors translated into Greek during the fourteenth century.Footnote 19 Shortly after the Latins and Greeks met at Ferrara, Torquemada joined Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini to represent Eugenius in debates over contested topics heretofore precluding unity. Cesarini presented and responded to critical remarks from the Greeks concerning the doctrine of purgatory, and Torquemada did the same with respect to papal primacy. During the ensuing two years, in which there were about five months of public disputation, representatives of the ongoing Council of Basel (conciliarists) and the council proceeding at Ferrara (papalists) were appealing to princes and other power brokers in Europe for favor, a project for which Eugenius sent Torquemada abroad. At the beginning of 1439, while Torquemada was on mission in Germany, Eugenius relocated the Council of Ferrara to Florence in response to the extreme danger presented by the spread of the plague.Footnote 20
From his diplomatic mission to Germany, Torquemada arrived in Florence in the spring of 1439 when the Greeks and Latins had come to an important point of agreement on the issues of the addition of the filioque (“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son”) to the Nicene creed, the Trinitarian doctrine it implied, and the consonance of the Greek and Latin fathers in support of both.Footnote 21 The Greeks had been anxious to return home since before the council was translated to Florence, and the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos faced the urgent need to form union with the Latins to secure support against the Ottoman Turks in defense of Constantinople. However, there remained a few areas they had not yet covered. Due to the pope's hope for a formal decree of unity, his representatives, Montenero and Torquemada, brought forward Latin cedulae (“a proposed wording of the part of the union decree referring to that subject drafted earlier by the Latins”Footnote 22), the former on papal primacy and the latter on the Eucharist. Eventually, after facing numerous difficulties, the Latins and Greeks reached a formal solution, which Eugenius disseminated in Laetentur caeli, the conclusion of the discussions between the Greeks and Latins in Florence.Footnote 23 Laetentur caeli celebrated the end of the wall of division between the Eastern and Western churches and the union established through persistent conciliar efforts. The primary issues on which the bull declared unity included: two different but compatible ways of describing the procession of the Holy Spirit; the legitimacy of the addition of filioque to the Nicene creed; the confection of the body of Christ in either leavened or unleavened bread; the gradations of peoples’ post mortem experiences depending on the state in which they died; the primacy of the pope; and the hierarchy of the pentarchy of patriarchs. Laetentur caeli is particularly famous for offering the first truly definitive formula of a papal claim to primacy, a result of the occasional need for complete clarity on the part of all parties. The bull was proclaimed in Latin and Greek, signed by both churches, and assented to by the emperor. The differences between the cedulae and the final decree of Laetentur caeli reveal that the Latins adapted their position to accommodate at least some of the Greeks’ concerns.Footnote 24 Thus, despite the Greeks’ eventual rejection of Ferrara-Florence, there is good reason to consider Laetentur caeli as a genuine document of unity between representatives of the Latin West and Byzantine East.Footnote 25
II. Historical Context II: Torquemada's Apparatus
Little more than a week before the dissemination of the bull, the conciliarists remaining at Basel deposed Eugenius. When Eugenius learned of this, his first course of action was to issue the bull Moyses nullifying all the proceedings at Basel as well as the Haec Sancta from Constance on the basis that it was not the act of a general council.Footnote 26 The conciliarists countered in November by electing Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy as Anti-Pope Felix V.Footnote 27 In the winter of early 1440, Torquemada met with Charles VII of France, seeking to “[win] support for Eugenius against the Council of Basel.”Footnote 28 In August 1440, Torquemada's embassy succeeded in convincing Charles to recognize Eugenius as pope against the rebellion at Basel. However, Charles displayed a persistent desire for a third council to be held at a neutral site, eventually producing a petition, which called into question the validity of Ferrara-Florence altogether. Although Torquemada wrote a scathing rejoinder on behalf of Eugenius, Charles never received it.
As a second form of response, Torquemada composed his Apparatus, which Izbicki once described as “a gloss on Laetantur coeli (sic) that demonstrated the validity of the Council of Florence while it underlined its most important achievement.”Footnote 29 The achievement of Florence, which the Apparatus highlights, is the very purpose of Laetentur caeli—namely, unity between Latin and Greek Christians. According to Izbicki, “This commentary was meant to defend the work of union done at Florence against the implication in the proposal that a third council be called that the assembly at Florence was not a true general council.”Footnote 30 So Torquemada's Apparatus expands on the union established at Ferrara-Florence but as a response to doubts among conciliarists and their sympathizers around Europe. For these reasons, the Apparatus should be considered as a document composed at the intersection of a number of important ecclesio-political affairs during the early-to-mid-fifteenth century.
The Apparatus is best described as a commentary in which Torquemada exposits Laetentur caeli line by line, from start to finish.Footnote 31 This means that early in the Apparatus Torquemada discusses preliminary matters as he works from the greeting of the bull to its initial declarations. His commentary on the definition of faith will receive attention here:
Definition of the Faith
Art. 1—On the Procession of the Holy Spirit
Art. 2—On the Sacrament of the Eucharist
Art. 3—On Purgatory
Art. 4—On Suffrages on behalf of the Dead
Art. 5—On the Immediate Retribution of the Just after Death
Art. 6—On the Beatific Vision
Art. 7—On the Fate of the Condemned
Art. 8—On the Supremacy of the Roman Pontiff
The Order of the Patriarchal SeatsFootnote 32
This outline of the conclusion reveals that Laetentur caeli—and Torquemada's Apparatus after it—has to do with the issues of continual disputation between Greeks and Latins during this period. Immediately preceding the definition of the bull, Eugenius suggests that “in accordance with the writing below, holy and pleasing to God, by the same sense and by the same mind they were in agreement and assented unanimously.”Footnote 33 According to Torquemada, the declarations of the bull's definition are “the principal articles of faith defined and declared among those present at the sacred synod, in which the principal controversy between the Latins and the Greeks is said to consist.”Footnote 34 Perhaps because it is neither his most original nor his most sophisticated treatise, as compared to his later Summa de ecclesia (1448/1449), there has been little research conducted on the Apparatus itself.Footnote 35 This is inopportune, however, because its programmatic character sheds light on the unique unionist perspective of the Eugenian papalists at this complex historical moment.
III. Augustine as Auctoritas in Torquemada's Apparatus
There are many methods available for analyzing Augustine's presence in church councils. Saak intimates that his research has verified the standard notion that “we find both the diffused Aug., as well as a more specific, identifiable reception of Aug.'s texts and teachings.”Footnote 36 To understand Torquemada's use of Augustine, “our task,” as he puts it, “is one of hermeneutics,” for we must consider that “within the general, omnipresent influence of Aug. was the use of Aug. as an authority, whereby Aug. was cited to prove a point.”Footnote 37 For this reason, Saak observes, “when, how, where, and why an author chose to cite Aug. explicitly offers perhaps a greater insight into Aug.'s reception than do the explicit citations themselves.”Footnote 38 Understanding the function of Augustine in certain authors’ discursive strategies tells us more than the number and kind of sources available to them. It is these “textual strategies” that illuminate how Torquemada's appeals to Augustine operate within the line-by-line commentary he published in support of ecclesial unity and Eugenian papalism.Footnote 39 Exploring his uses of Augustine in these declarations reveals at least five textual strategies he uses to mobilize his authority, thereby illustrating the expository and apologetic concerns operative in his Apparatus.
First, Torquemada uses Augustine most often to authorize readings of the Bible that substantiate Latin perspectives on certain doctrinal positions. By observing how the testimony given from Augustine is intended to validate the doctrinal conclusions at which the bull arrived as well as their biblical grounds, we see tangible evidence for the conclusion that the Apparatus is written both as an apology to dissenting Latins and as the expository legitimation of the Latin-Greek unity achieved in Florence. For example, Torquemada renders Augustine as the chief authority in his account of the bull's statements on the filioque, showing the Trinitarian doctrine of the Latin papalists to be biblical and traditional enough for the Greeks and sufficiently Augustinian for Latin conciliarists.
Most of the issues discussed by the Latins and Greeks at Ferrara-Florence had to do with the doctrinal content of the Christian faith (fides). Included in this category are articles related to the filioque (1) and the novissima (3–7).Footnote 40 For the Latins, then, overcoming differences of belief with the Greeks was the foremost concern. In his discussion of the filioque as a doctrine, Torquemada establishes three conditions for a given proposition to count as what he describes as a “truth of faith” (veritas fidei), a phrase he applies to the filioque in the bull.Footnote 41 He uses Augustine more than any other source to define the conditions for what constitutes such a proposition. In explaining the first condition for what qualifies—that it be contained explicitly or implicitly in scripture—he cites Augustine's declaration that “concerning holy Scripture it cannot in any way be doubted that anything contained in it is true and right.”Footnote 42 The other two conditions for a truth of faith are that it be proven “by the declaration or confirmation of the universal church” and “by the determination of the Apostolic See.”Footnote 43
As a part of his argument that on biblical grounds the filioque is such a proposition, Torquemada cites Augustine's In Iohannis euangelium tractatus (99.4) as clarifying how John 16:13 (“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all truth for he does not speak from himself, but, he will speak whatever he hears”Footnote 44) is evidence in favor of the Spirit's procession from the Son. Thus: “To hear those things, however, is to know, to know in truth is to be; because therefore it is not from he himself, but from the one from whom he proceeds, from whom is his essence, from whom his knowledge, from whom his hearing.”Footnote 45 Torquemada uses Augustine's exegesis of John 16:13 to make the connection between the Spirit teaching what he has heard and the derivation of the Spirit's essence, knowledge, and hearing from the Father and the Son. It is on the basis of this line of reasoning that Torquemada comments, “Therefore by necessity it is concluded that it is a veritas fidei that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son.”Footnote 46 On this controversial topic, Torquemada situates Augustine as authorizing the filioque as a biblical teaching, which should meet with approval from the Greeks and conciliarists.
Torquemada spends much less time providing evidence for the second and third conditions because he seems to view them as less controversial. Concerning the second condition, the declaration of the universal church, Torquemada breaks the argument into two parts. First, he exhibits the agreement of authorities from the Latin and Greek tradition.Footnote 47 He includes Augustine in his list of “holy fathers and doctors of the church” who together authorize the Latin view of the Spirit's procession.Footnote 48 Second, he submits the definition of Ferrara-Florence on which he is commenting as evidence of the filioque meeting the second condition.Footnote 49 Between this brief statement and his comment about the filioque meeting the third condition, Torquemada gives an apology for the decision of Ferrara-Florence simultaneously both to affirm the truthfulness and antiquity of the doctrine of the filioque and to permit the Greeks to conduct their own “custom” (consuetudo) or “practice” (mos).Footnote 50 This is an important moment in which he suggests that the universal church can uphold two ways of describing the procession of the Holy Spirit. Although we can interpret his use of Augustine to be defending the council's preservation of the filioque, he also has in mind the importance of continuing to recognize the value of concessions made to the Greeks. Finally, Torquemada suggests that the filioque, inasmuch as it has been the lasting doctrine of the Apostolic See and requires no testimony, has met the third condition. In following his argument for the filioque as a truth of faith, then, Torquemada shows himself to be leveraging Augustine's theology and interpretation of scripture to advocate a traditional Latin view, to make an allowance for the Greeks, and thereby to show the conciliarists that the unionist efforts of Ferrara-Florence complemented traditional Latin theology.
Second, along the same lines, Torquemada's sustained reliance on Augustine to detail the contours of the Latin doctrine of the Trinity shows him to be arguing for an undeniably Augustinian position, which directly counters the supposition of the Greeks that the Latin notion of the filioque was a late innovation and the likely objection from the conciliarists that the papalists at Ferrara-Florence conceded too much when they suggested consonance between the filioque and the procession of the Spirit from the Father through the Son. While this strategy of establishing a sort of antiquity dating back to Augustine comes forth most clearly in his commentary on the conclusions concerning the filioque, it is also operative in his treatment of the novissima.
Commenting upon the claim that the Spirit is “from the Father and Son aeternaliter,” Torquemada cites Augustine twice (De trinitate 15.26.45, 15.26.47) as a traditional authority for this view of Trinitarian relations because Augustine's theology supports the use of aeternaliter (“eternally”) in the bull to describe the Spirit's procession from the Father and the Son as following the logic of the Son being eternally begotten from the Father. To explain what is meant in the bull by the esse (“being”) of the Holy Spirit, Torquemada again draws upon Augustine's De trinitate (15.26.47), in which Augustine explains that in the case of both the Son and the Spirit, the Father bestows “substance” (substantiam) “without a temporal beginning” and “without a mutable nature,” but for the Son it is by “birth from the Father” while for the Spirit it is “by procession from both.”Footnote 51 Torquemada marshals Augustine's authority here to show that the Son's generation and the Spirit's procession are both eternal, and in both cases the Father communicates his essence.
In explicating the logic of an important phrase in Laetentur caeli—“as from one principle”—he appeals to De trinitate (5.14.15): “It should be confessed that the Father and the Son are the principle of the Holy Spirit, not two principles; but just as the Father and the Son are relative to the creature one creator, called one Lord, so relative to the Holy Spirit one principle.”Footnote 52 This citation mitigates the concern among the Greeks that the filioque implied two separate principles or origins of the Holy Spirit without conceding anything in the received Latin understanding. Instead of dwelling on this insight, Torquemada shifts his discussion of the bull to its explanation of the different language used among the Greeks and Latins for speaking of the place of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father and the Son, with the typical Greek manner being to speak of the Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son. The evident concern to draw together Augustine's ancient Latin authority with the papalists’ “concessions” to the Greeks highlights the complexity of Torquemada's literary aims.
Toward the end of his commentary on the discussion of the filioque, Torquemada comments on the omnia (“all things”), which the Father gives to his Son, bringing forward Augustine's Contra Maximinum Arrianum (2.12.1) to illumine John 16:15 (“all things that belong to my Father are mine”Footnote 53), which is the biblical foundation of the declaration:
That one has nothing less than what is in the Father, who says: “all things, which belong to my Father are mine.” For if he has less in power than the Father, all things that belong to the Father are not his. If all things, which belong to the Father, are his, consequently, the Son has as much power as belongs to the Father. Therefore he is equal with the Father, for the one who receives cannot be unequal with the one who gave to him.Footnote 54
Although Torquemada utilizes Augustine to explicate the wording of the bull on the filioque, he also opens it up to critique, for Father, Son, and Spirit are equal such that the Father should also give all to the Spirit; but if this is true, “all things” surely cannot include the spiration of the Holy Spirit. Although this verse probably should not be marshaled as the basis for the Father giving his spirating power to the Son, he nevertheless mobilizes Augustine's reading of it to support the doctrine of the filioque. This suggests that Torquemada is reaching for his authority to support the theology of the filioque even when Augustine does not seem to fit the mold.
Finally, after offering two brief citations (De trinitate 15.17.29; Contra Maximinum Arrianum 2.14.7) in lieu of giving his own comments on the phrase “he gave his begotten son,” Torquemada provides his final noteworthy appeal to Augustine when he refers to De trinitate (15.17.29) as a summary statement of the Latin position, confirming that he views the Latin vision of the Holy Spirit's procession from the Father and the Son as having an Augustinian horizon.Footnote 55 This account of the importance of Augustine to Torquemada's view of the procession of the Holy Spirit accords well with our sources from the council itself, wherein the Latins frequently cite Augustine to explicate their Trinitarian thought.Footnote 56
Torquemada's tactic of associating the Latin theology of his day with Augustine to establish its antiquity is also evident in his case for purgatory, which arose in the West to the dismay of the Greeks.Footnote 57 In the doctrine of purgatory, which Torquemada treats as the first area of consideration within his extended treatment of “last things” (novissima), he depends on Augustine as an early source that supports the Latin teaching as traditional rather than innovative. Torquemada begins by suggesting that this Latin teaching can be confirmed “by the authority of holy Scripture . . . by the testimony of the holy fathers, who have always been venerated by the universal church . . . and by reason.”Footnote 58 He first calls upon Augustine in his demonstration of the New Testament evidence for purgatory. In explaining Matt. 12:32, he draws from De ciuitate Dei (21.24.1) (although he cites it as De ciuitate Dei 2): “For is it not truly said that it is not remitted to them, not in this age, nor in the future, unless they were those to whom, even if it is not remitted in that [age], nevertheless it is remitted in the future.”Footnote 59 This reference functions as the “testimony of the holy fathers” for the claim that certain faults may be remitted in the future age, which arises as a possibility due to an inference from the negative remark in Matt. 12:32 that “if anyone speaks [a word] against the Holy Spirit, it is not remitted to him, not in this age, nor in the future [age].”Footnote 60 Explaining the notion of purgation in the next life vis-à-vis the “eternal fire” in Matt. 25:40, Torquemada refers to Augustine in support of the purgation of sins in the afterlife, but the quote is from a homily of Caesarius of Arles.Footnote 61 Although the source is not actually Augustine, Torquemada takes Augustine to be an important early authority attesting to the Greeks that the doctrine is not a Latin innovation.
After including Augustine in a list of “holy fathers of the Western church,” Torquemada appeals to two of his sermons to support the church's universal custom of praying for the dead.Footnote 62 Augustine says in his Sermo (159.1.1) that “it is an injustice to pray on behalf of the martyr in the church, by whom we ought to be commended in our prayers”Footnote 63 and in Sermo (172.2.2) that for “those who have departed from the body without faith working through love and its sacraments, their acts of piety are performed in vain.”Footnote 64 Torquemada takes these passages to be sufficient support for this custom of the church. Developing his articulation of the teaching of purgatory, he appropriates Augustine three times while bolstering the notion of the “fitting reward” (fructus dignus) of penance. First, he points to his De sermone domini in monte (likely referring to 1.9.24) in order to highlight the proportionality of “fault” (culpa) and “penalty” (pena).Footnote 65 Second, he refers to the Ps. Augustinian De vera et falsa paenitentia (14.29 and 15.31) to buttress this argument for proportionality.Footnote 66 Third, as though it were authored by Augustine, Torquemada cites Gratian's De paenitentia (5.1), wherein Gratian highlights the necessity of penitence for admission to the kingdom of heaven.Footnote 67 In his penultimate mention of Augustine, he points to Enchiridion 69: “For in the purgative fire, some are purged later, others sooner; it follows that these dying ones have loved more or less.”Footnote 68 He takes this logic of purgation to lend support to the Latin vision of purgatory. His final citation of Augustine forms the conclusion of his consideration of the topic: “What is that power of the water that touches the body and washes the heart?”Footnote 69 Gill has observed that, in the discussions recorded in the acts of the council, Augustine stood as one authority among others Latins cited to support their doctrine of purgatory. The same holds true in Torquemada's discussion of purgatory.Footnote 70 The Greeks agree with the Latins on the twofold destiny of humanity to heaven or hell and on the need for remission of sin after death. They cannot follow the Latins on the idea that fire is the means, however, for the Greek fathers do not claim this. The Greeks also express doubts about the authenticity of the Augustinian texts the Latins cite.Footnote 71
In the final elaboration of eschatological issues resolved at Ferrara-Florence (art. 7), Torquemada takes up the “fate of the damned.” It is this section above all others that includes his greatest dependence on Ps. Augustinian texts, but it remains worth considering, for we have to do with the late medieval appropriation of Augustine, the function of what was understood to be Augustine. Although such passages require qualification, they should not be dismissed. The first two citations are both from Fulgentius. Their function is to articulate the effect of baptism in relation to sin, original and personal, mortal and venial.Footnote 72 The third citation is also Fulgentius, but here he is concerned to describe the Augustinian vision of original sin as concupiscence communicated to the members of all human persons.Footnote 73 The first genuine citation of Augustine is from De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo paruulorum ad Marcellinum (1.15.20), in which Augustine says: “There will be the mildest penalty for these, who have not yet sinned, because they have derived original [sin], and have added nothing more.”Footnote 74 He then refers to Fulgentius's De fide ad Petrum (27.24.70) and another inauthentic source as Augustine.Footnote 75 In both cases, he is explaining Augustine's view that apart from baptism infants are assigned to damnation in eternal fire. His final citation of Augustine is genuine, and it makes the same point: “No salvation is promised to infants [before] baptism, because unless infants pass into the number of believers through the sacrament, which has been instituted by God for this purpose, they remain in darkness.”Footnote 76 As in the case of the filioque, so also in some of the Latin teachings on eschatology Torquemada utilizes Augustine to ground the Latin teachings of his day in the antiquity of Augustine as an early father of the church.
Third, Torquemada appropriates Augustine alongside the foremost Greek fathers, which, although not conclusive, offers tacit evidence of his subscription to the common view by this time that the Greek and Latin fathers were in complete agreement.Footnote 77 Although additional evidence would be required to substantiate this point sufficiently, the way that Torquemada always uses Augustine in concert with—rather than against—Greek fathers is evidence in favor of such a conclusion.Footnote 78 Among the Greek fathers Torquemada cites alongside Augustine, the most common and consistent voices are those of Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and John of Damascus.Footnote 79 For instance, even while conceding to the Greeks the pentarchy of patriarchs, Torquemada extends his case for the antiquity of Augustine to the unity and antiquity of the Greek and Latin fathers as witnesses to his argument for papal primacy.Footnote 80 In the final article on the primacy of the pope (art. 8),Footnote 81 Torquemada includes Augustine in a catalogue of early Christians who testify to papal primacy.Footnote 82 Augustine functions as an authority for the historical case that papal primacy stems from Jesus's charge to Peter and through the Roman episcopacy.Footnote 83 According to Schmidt, Torquemada follows Montenero's arguments for papal primacy as being bound up in the pope's being the earthly instrument for the outworking of Christ's own headship.Footnote 84 Finally, although he does not cite Augustine in his section outlining the order of the pentarchy of patriarchates—Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem—the Latins’ concession to the Greeks of the nature and order of the pentarchy, even within the broader and more determinative horizon of papal primacy, is vital to the unionist efforts of the papalists. Whereas Torquemada seems to depend on Augustine to establish credibility among the Latins, he cites Augustine alongside the Greeks to show agreement across the boundaries of the Greek and Latin traditions.Footnote 85
Fourth, Torquemada often uses Augustine to ground basic insights that are not so much integral to his defense of the bull as they are standard theological moves among the Latins. This is likely a way of showing the broadly patristic and Augustinian roots of Laetentur caeli to the conciliarists and to the Greeks. For example, consider his citation of Augustine on the incomprehensibility of God in the midst of a discussion of the state of “holy souls” (animae sanctae) before the Day of Judgment. Article 5, the third topic related to eschatology, pertains to the “immediate retribution of the just after death.” The only point in the discussion at which Torquemada appeals to Augustine involves the citation of two passages: a general reference to a common Augustinian trope located in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Suppl. IIIae.92.1 ad 3) and De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo paruulorum ad Marcellinum (1.15.20). He argues for the imperceptibility and incomprehensibility of the divine essence, attributing to Augustine the statement that “God escapes every form of our understanding.”Footnote 86 From this Torquemada concludes that “therefore the soul separated from the body is capable of ultimate happiness.”Footnote 87 Immediately following this, he cites De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo paruulorum ad Marcellinum (1.15.20) to contend that in baptism “occurs the remission not only of original, but also of voluntary sins.”Footnote 88 This is the second statement Torquemada mentions from Augustine on baptism in his discussion of novissima, which reveals the importance of baptism in accounting for the proportionality of sins and the penalties that follow them. In this instance, we see that his citations of Augustine are not so much the key to his argument as they are helpful sources for grounding some of his rudimentary observations about the assertion of Laetantur caeli concerning the state of holy souls before judgment. Although perhaps less revealing, this is a noteworthy variation among Torquemada's uses of Augustine in the Apparatus.
Torquemada's discussion of the Eucharist marks a shift from theological questions to one of “custom” (consuetudo) or “rite” (ritus). Unlike the continual involvement of Augustine in the discussion of the procession of the Holy Spirit, his role is quite limited in this article. The issues at stake in the discussion of the Eucharist as a custom are inherited from a long trajectory of debates over Eucharistic practices, with the choice of azymes (typical among Latins) or fermented bread (typical among Greeks) being the foremost cause for debate in the centuries leading up to Ferrara-Florence.Footnote 89 The conclusion of Laetentur caeli that the body of Christ can be “confected” (confici) in azymes or fermented bread is a significant development in this history, thus showing the import of Torquemada's comments to relations between the Latins and Greeks. The first citation of Augustine in this article comes from his Epistula to Jerome (40.3.3), which reads: “If they [errors] have been admitted to the Holy Scriptures . . . nothing of authority will remain in them.”Footnote 90 Torquemada uses Augustine here to negotiate the apparent discrepancy between John's and the Synoptic Gospels’ visions for Jesus's institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. The only other citation of Augustine, which he presents as an interpretation of Jesus's words in Luke 22:19, actually comes from Lanfrancus's De consecratione (2.41).Footnote 91 He identifies the notion of “confection” as originating not in Augustine but in the “words of the Savior.”Footnote 92 This is in keeping with the character of this topic, for much of this debate involves primarily appeal to the Gospels and to the words and practices of Jesus himself, not to those of subsequent authorities such as Augustine. Thus, the fifth and final strategy is one of absence, since the church's rituals and customs are more decisively rooted in biblical discourse than theological conclusions resulting from subsequent developments in the tradition of theological reflection upon scripture. In this case, Augustine's absence is felt in Torquemada's attempt instead to ground the Latin position in scripture, revealing Torquemada's concern to meet the Greeks on the plane of biblical interpretation and to follow Laetentur caeli in admitting that both Latin and Greek customs are acceptable practices of the universal church.
IV. Conclusion
Understanding the intra- and inter-ecclesial politics surrounding Ferrara-Florence is crucial for the reader of the Apparatus, which was written to support Eugenius and the papalist Latins in their decision formally to declare union with Byzantine Christians. Having outlined some of the most important ecclesio-political developments of the early-to-mid-fifteenth century preceding the Council of Ferrara-Florence, it has become clear that the convergence of conciliarism and papalism as well as relations between the Latin West and Byzantine East form two crucial parts of the context of the council. In the Apparatus, Torquemada's use of Augustine explained the Eugenian papalism expressed in Laetentur caeli and defended it against the objections of conciliarists around Europe.
Showing how Augustine was used as an auctoritas in this conciliar document has also added greater clarity about his reception at the Council of Ferrara-Florence, in particular about his utility in Torquemada's attempt to adjudicate the relations between the Latin West and Byzantine East on the one hand and between papalist and conciliarist Latins on the other. Having observed five different ways Torquemada mobilizes Augustine in his commentary, we can conclude more generally that his use of Augustine seems to be ordered to his view of the issues of faith, customs, and the primacy of the Roman pontiff. So, in the articles pertaining to faith, Augustine was an important source of authority. However, when trying to build an apology for the declaration on the Eucharist, Torquemada understands that, since the eleventh century, Greeks and Latins had debated the use of azymes in the celebration of the Eucharist on exegetical grounds, coming to divergent interpretations of how to harmonize the chronology of Matthew's and John's Gospels.Footnote 93 Thus, Torquemada here unsurprisingly foregrounds the biblical debate rather than appealing to Augustine and other patristic authorities. In the case of papal primacy, Augustine comes to the stand as a witness indistinguishable from others—such that while Torquemada cites him at a couple important moments in his argument, he does not rely on him as a driving force as he did in the case of the filioque and novissima.
In Sieben's assessment of the role of Augustine at Ferrara-Florence, he focuses on the doctrinal issues of the filioque and purgatory. While these topics correspond to the discourses in which Augustine is most important to Torquemada, and Sieben's analysis has proven true, the cause derives from where he considers Augustine to be most effective for his apologetic commentary. In other words, in building his case in support of the doctrinal vision of Eugenian papalism, Torquemada finds Augustine most useful as it concerns the procession of the Holy Spirit and eschatology and less useful in matters pertaining to the Eucharist and papal primacy. Sieben seems therefore to be well aware of Saak's helpful indication that textual strategies can teach us more about reception than the quality and kinds of sources. However, an important question, which remains to be answered, is how to deal with the appropriation of Augustine in the areas of purgatory and the fate of the damned in particular, where many of the citations are not actually taken from Augustine but from sources wrongly thought to be part of the Augustinian corpus.Footnote 94 Despite Saak's helpful advice, the historian must try to determine the source of the inauthenticity of these citations. For, on the one hand, it could simply be a case of receiving texts previously gathered falsely under an author's name (for whatever reason). On the other, it could also be the purposeful application of an important name, such as Augustine, to a text providing strong evidence for a theological position, such as the late medieval Latin view of the afterlife. In this case, context seems to suggest something along the lines of the former rather than the latter, since Torquemada is advancing an inherited tradition of texts used by other Latin authors under Augustine's name to support the doctrine of purgatory. Despite some of these methodological and historical difficulties, showing how Augustine was used as an auctoritas in this conciliar document has come to add greater clarity to his reception at the Council of Ferrara-Florence, particularly to his role in Torquemada's attempt to adjudicate the relations between the Latin West and Byzantine East on the one hand and between papalist and conciliarist Latins on the other.
