Pastor Bonus or Miles Christi? – Two Ideals of Clerical Conduct at the Age of Catholic Renewal
Journal Title: Ordines Militares Colloquia Torunensia Historica. Yearbook for the Study of the Military Orders - Year 2017, Vol 22, Issue
Abstract
The bipolar structure of Military Orders, with priests on one hand, and the Knights Brethren on the other, are very suitable for the comparison in alterations of religious lifestyle. The Teutonic Knights and Hospitalers are the final subjects of this consideration. Both are examined with regard to charity and chivalry. The spiritual and practical lives of the faithful had greatly changed during the Protestant Reformation, and the Catholic clergy – spurred on by the Council of Trent – began to layout new standards of conduct. Pastor Bonus and Miles Christi represent, at the Age of Catholic Renewal, the two “Leitmotive” of public debates concerning good deeds and bravery. The Struggle for Christ was an ideal developed by patristic and monastic authors but it was rediscovered by humanists and passed on to Protestant Reformers and others. Enunciating this ideal, the Enchiridion of Erasmus of Rotterdam, seems to have appealed to humanists and Church reformers, to mendicants and ascetic monks, to Military Orders and Jesuit preachers alike. It was hence, successful, because it pointed out, that the Care for the Soul, and Struggle for Christ work as a spiritual challenge. Therefore, the Enchiridion presented an obligatory maxim for every Christian, regardless of order or rank. At the same time Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian clerics – if they were searching for codes of conduct – reflected into their patristic and medieval past, in particular with regard to the Struggle for Christ. The Good Pastor as presented by the Portuguese prelate Bartholomew dos Martires figured from then on as a threefold ideal: – an ideal combining the mental fight as a Soldier of Christ against sin and darkness with the service to the poor; – an ideal motivating Catholic clergymen to undertake a host of measures to relieve disease and poverty but also to accentuate the care for soul and body; – and an ideal by which the two opposing elements, chivalry, and charity, might fuse together. All things considered, Miles Christi and Good Pastor pointed out a rule to constitute what should become a wider concept of Christian care for everyone. To resume the main question, the Military Orders of the early modern age shared in all these trends but they didn’t foster them with their own drafts. While chivalry stayed a task of noblemen, charity became a duty of Christian women.
Authors and Affiliations
Marie-Luise Heckmann
Keywords
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- EP ID EP306379
- DOI 10.12775/OM.2017.008
- Views 98
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