Una fase del dibattito sulle res ecclesiae: Pier Damiani contro la distinzione tra officium e beneficium

Pier Damiani’s economic thought, investigated through the analysis of some important letters from his vast epistolary, traces some of the topoi that had been elaborated over the centuries about the relationship between the Church and its hierarchy with wealth. The evangelical instance of pauperism, proper to the Church of the early days, is soon surpassed in favor of a system that does not abdicate the possession of res ecclesiae and that, on the contrary, calls for the return to, the increase and the optimization, from a managerial point of view, of assets and rights connected to the ecclesiastical bodies. The discourse on res ecclesiae, however, is not a mere thinking exercise but an instrument to be used in the fight against simony. The officium- beneficium nexus, which he considered indivisible, becomes an instrument to attack those who thought they could separate the assets of the churches from the sacerdotal office without staining themselves of simony.