In late February or early March 1417, Hermann Schwab--titular bishop of Nicopolis, auxiliary bishop of Prague--was seized in the town of Německý Brod by the secular magnate Čeněk of Vartemberk, hauled off to Lipnice Castle, held captive, and compelled to ordain roughly 100 Hussite clergy into the priesthood. The surviving sources generally agree that he did so under duress. The newly ordained priests filtered throughout southern Bohemia; many were associated with the radical Hussites at Tabór. In consecrating these adherents of Jan Hus, who had been burned at the stake in Constance less than two years prior (6 July 1415), Hermann inadvertently and perhaps very much against his own wishes “changed the political and religious landscape of south Bohemia” (3). The archbishop of Prague, Konrad of Vechta, quickly nullified Hermann’s ordinations and placed his office under interdict. For the bishop’s troubles, Čeněk gifted Hermann with a benefice under his authority (108-109). There, now deposed, he fulfilled the responsibilities of a parish priest for three years, at which point he was stoned to death in the Lužnice River by the very Hussites whose clergy he had made priests. As for the archbishop, he soon shifted his support to the Hussites, and may also have consecrated Hussite ordinands to holy orders (40-41).
This dramatic episode serves as the inspiration for Thomas A. Fudge’s monograph on coerced ordinations in late medieval Bohemia. The kidnapping and forced ordinations at Lipnice Castle and the surviving historical sources are well known to area specialists (5). As the author states at the outset, the book is not primarily concerned with the theological implications of a compelled sacrament and Fudge does not adduce new sources or interpretations of the event itself, on the details of which the texts are fairly consistent (21). The broader historical context to the affair (22-47) and its written sources (6-22), while surveyed, serve primarily as an orientation to the legal issues raised by Hermann’s ordinations. This is also not a study of the Hussite church(es) or a consideration of Hussite thought on the subject of ordination or other sacraments (xix). Fudge’s monograph offers, rather, a “contribution to the history of the medieval church and its understanding of the relation of episcopal authority to the sacrament of ordination” (xix). In that all sacraments enacted by the priest follow from the sacrament of ordination, the coerced bestowal of that sacrament by a bishop raises a priori a host of legal conundra: were the ordinations valid, and thus understood to have conferred sacramental authority to the Hussite priests? Legally speaking, how was this so, and if not, why not? Fudge sets off in pursuit of answers to these questions in the three chapters that form the heart of the monograph.
The methodological challenge Fudge faces is that coerced ordinations by a lawfully ordained bishop, as Hermann was, had no obvious precedent in canon law, although the prerequisites for postulants seeking ordination--that they be of canonical age, that they be morally upright and at least minimally learned, that they first progress through the various grades and be examined by the bishop, and so on--were extensively if not exhaustively treated from the early Middle Ages onward. Likewise discussed at length from Augustine on were the validity and theological implications for sacraments conferred upon or performed by priests who had obtained their office irregularly, such as sacraments performed by simoniacs, a subject of acute concern in the eleventh century. The law was reasonably consistent that unlettered or morally unfit candidates for the priesthood not be ordained, nor should simoniac bishops confer the sacraments. But of course they were and they did, and the validity of the sacraments they offered was generally (though by no means uniformly) upheld. Fudge explores the historical-legal parameters surrounding ordination conferred and received in chapter 2, together with Hussite views on the significance of the apostolic succession of bishops for valid ordination of priests. Uniquely among dissident sects, some Hussites believed that a bishop was necessary for a proper priestly ordination, although they were seemingly untroubled by the theological implications of that position, dependent as it was upon claims for apostolic succession inhering in the Roman church. They also do not seem to have been much disturbed by the irregular circumstances in which Hermann’s ordinations occurred (29, 45, 77, 106-107, 135).
Chapter 3 takes up the question of whether forced consecrations could be nevertheless legitimate. Because the Lipnice ordinations lacked clear legal precedent, Fudge examines cases of coerced baptism and coerced marriage for legal insights into the arguments that might be made for their validity or invalidity. This chapter proceeds much like asic et non; there is a legal case to be made for both positions. Here, the intricacies and varieties of legal commentary on coercion and sacramental efficacy are on full display. For example, a de facto argument in favor of the ordinations’ validity holds that, providing the rite itself were correctly performed, and given that Hermann himself was a lawfully ordained bishop, the consecrations were valid even though the bishop performed them against his will (132-133). Conversely, canon law considered that marriages or monastic vows compelled by force or fear invalidated them. Arguing by analogy, because Bishop Hermann to all appearances seems to have been coerced to ordain the priests at Lipnice, grounds existed for the ordinations to be held void, which was what the archbishop concluded (159-160).
This example also points to one of the frustrations of the volume: Fudge diligently pursues what he appositely refers to as “catenae of [legal] possibilities” (176) in raising the questions he sets before himself. There are only “possibilities,” because the legal issue of whether coerced ordinations by a lawfully ordained prelate were legally valid had not been treated. Apart from there being no settled law on the issue, we are prevented from drawing any conclusions from this episode because of the limitations of our sources. We know with certainty only that Hermann was seized and performed dozens of ordinations in the Lipnice fortress over several days. We also know the outcome: the archbishop of Prague nullified the ordinations (the priests continued to minister their flocks), and the pope demanded the new priests travel to Rome for questioning (none went). What we cannot know is Hermann’s mind, nor Čeněk’s, nor the minds of the ordinands who gathered at the castle (150). We know little of the new priests or their backgrounds. As to what the bishop intended or believed about the rite he was performing when he bestowed his blessing on the candidates, no inquest survives that preserves his own thoughts or post hoc explanations. Beyond this solitary historical event, the bishop remains an enigma. We are thus left, as the title of the fourth and final chapter signals, with “an irresolvable paradox.” Even if coerced ordination had been a res iudicata, Fudge points out that “[n]o definition or canons is without limitation or impervious to diverse interpretation or susceptible to manipulation...We appear to be left with the inescapable vagaries of medieval casuistry in attempting to resolve the conundrum [of whether the validations were legally valid]” (181). He concludes his study by granting that “the bricks [of legal evidence] utilized in this duty have formed an invalid, inconsistent, or weak canonical scaffold. Despite the best efforts sometimes ‘the pursuit of clarity...only muddies the waters’” (200).
In the practical matter of writing a monograph on a question that had not been decided, Fudge is forced into cascades of “if”-statements and conditional declaratives. Sampling from pages 190-191: “If all these things be true...If we substitute coercion for simony as the central aggravating factor...If one or more ordinand was unaware that the bishop was being forced to consecrate...If the records from the previous generation are anything to go on...If simony and coercion have any comparative applicable evidence...” Many others follow in the ensuing pages, to a distracting degree. Another of Fudge’s literary-rhetorical devices is to interject clusters of questions--three, four, five, even six at a time--to set up his analysis. Apart from the repetition of this technique (e.g., at 4, 36, 39, 59, 71, 72-73, 76, 149, 156, 159, 186, 193)--singular questions likewise abound throughout the volume, such as the ten that appear on pages 80-81--the questions themselves are often unanswerable, as he notes at, e.g., page 36: “All of these queries...are unanswerable...”; and 156: “We have no answers to these queries.” This is partly literary styling, but I came away wishing that the volume had been subjected to a firmer editorial hand, as the effect is to lead the reader down a myriad of speculative or simply blind alleys. Some repetition and confusion on isolated points might also have been avoided, as when Hermann is first stated to have been “lured to the town of Německý Brod” (2) and later “kidnapped from his home in Mindelheim [Bavaria]” (32). In the opening pages of the book, Hermann is variously identified as a titular bishop of Nicopolis, auxiliary bishop of Prague, as Hermann “of Mindelheim,” as a monk, and as an Augustinian canon, all before we get to a full biographical treatment of him on pages 31-36. The dramatis personae, while helpful, is left until page 30, after a discussion of the fifteen or so sources that describe the kidnapping (6-22) and historical context (22-30).
Uncertainty and irresolvability are, of course, the sometimes unavoidable elements of historical inquiry and Fudge diligently combs the legal terrain from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries in pursuit of a means to cut the Gordian knot. The stumbling block in this study is that it can go no further than the acknowledge the bare facts of the events and offer the observation that the existing law on coerced sacraments and ordination yields no clear answer regarding the validity of the ordinations Hermann performed. We are left, as Fudge acknowledges, with “speculation” (xiii): “The rigor iuris on our question is uncertain. There are principles...in theology and in canon law that can be applied, but these propositions are not consonant with each other...Were the ordinations valid? There are fishhooks and even harm in declaring that consecrations were either valid or invalid. Arguments for assuming the consecrations were efficacious are vulnerable to close interrogation and are not impervious to challenge. Opposing theses supporting a finding of invalidity are, in the long run, no more certain...Casuistry prevails” (196-197). There is value in the journey taken in posing these questions, and as he seeks clues to an answer Fudge takes us on a wide-ranging tour of the canon law and theology surrounding the sacraments of baptism and marriage, especially as they pertain to the question of heresy. He has read widely and deeply in pursuit of his quarry. Yet one is left to wonder if the guiding question(s) of the volume might have been reframed to produce a result other than a negative conclusion, and readers may be left frustrated by the lack of resolution. Not that history always leaves us with clear answers. But the unresolved questions make unclear what we finally learn about the relationship of ordination to episcopal authority, which is the promise held out in the introduction. For the historian, many questions--theological, legal, sacramental--are surfaced by the events at Lipnice. For contemporaries, before and after, this does not seem to have been the case.