Folia Theologica 3. (1992)
Charles Duggan: Decretal letters to Hungary
DECRETAL LETTERS 11 against the identification of Lucas are that Etsi questiones (1167-68), a well-known letter of Alexander III to Lucas, dealt with a series of scruples which Lucas had raised with Alexander in respect of his elevation and other matters, and that it is improbable that he would have raised such doubts seriatim, in different letters, or that Alexander would have failed to allude to the fact, has he done so. The evidence carefully presented in the Decretales ineditae cannot be lightly set aside, but further reflection suggests the reverse conclusion, especially in conjunction with the discovery of Amara nimis, also in Cott. and Pet., with an address to the archbishop of Canterbury. The recipient archbishop had raised with the pope the problem of offences he had unwittingly committed, in handling a consecrated host, while in the hands of his enemies, where he still remained, and that of drunken rustics who had crucified another of their kind. The pope, in reply, prescribed appropriate penances. The attribution to Canterbury in these English manuscripts cannot be reconciled with any known evidence, and no more probable recipient of the decretal can be proposed than Lucas, who is independently recorded as the recipient of papal letters while imprisoned during the rule of the anti-king Ladislas, between May 1162 and January 1163.13 The long admonitory decretal Etsi questiones was certainly sent by Alexander III to Lucas in the period 1167-68, in response to various scruples of conscience raised by the archbishop concerning his election and promotion — his brothers gift of a horse to the papal legate who brought his pallium, the indemnity promised to his church, his earlier election to Eger and translation to Esztergom. The pope dealt painstakingly with each problem in turn, repeatedly insisting that Lucas had no cause for anxiety, citing human laws and scriptural authority — „trepidaverunt timore, ubi non erat timor... super hoc in conscientia tua nullus unquam debet scrupulum dubitationis emergere... cum nos nec minimum conscientie scrupulus ex hoc suboriri noscamus.” But finally, concerning a drunken monk, the pope declined to answer the archbishop’s question — he had written enough already, and could not deal with every syllable of the archbishop’s questions — „nec nos questionibus tuis sillabatim per omnia possumus 13 Decretales ineditae 169-71; to the apparatus and notes given there, add G. GYÓRFFY, „Thomas à Becket and Hungary", Hungarian Studies in English, 4 (1969), 47-9: GYÓRFFY notes two periods of imprisonment in 1162.
