In his commentary on St Matthew’s gospel, Thomas Aquinas identifies two purposes of prophecy: confirmation of the faith and the correction of morals. In his view, the second task ‘is never complete, nor will it ever be’. There is some continuity between this statement and Benedict XVI’s recent assertion that a certain ‘prophetic-charismatic history traverses the whole time of the Church. It is always there especially at the most critical times of transition.’ Such statements indicate the necessity, and indeed the inevitability, of prophetic discourse as an essential element in the evolution and continuous reform of the Church. But ‘prophecy’ has always been a multivalent term requiring nuanced taxonomy, and different levels of institutional privilege have been granted to its various modes over time. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton has recently argued for the existence of a fundamental antagonism between ‘the revelatory and the scholastic’ during the high and late Middle Ages, seeing them as ‘rivals for the prize of theological illumination … with contempt for each other’s methods’.

Revelation was only one of the prophetic modes, however, and scholastic theologians retained an important role for a different kind of prophecy among their professional duties. Most pertinent for the concerns of this essay is what such theologians understood as prophetia comminationis, ‘the prophecy of denunciation’, a prominent mode of discourse among the Old Testament prophets, which typically took the form of the denunciation of lax mores and calls to repentance. Prophetia comminationis was one of the forms identified by Aquinas in his treatise on prophecy and charismata in the Summa Theologiae. In this he was following the taxonomy established in the Glossa Ordinaria, which had stated that denunciation was ‘significative of the divine wrath’ [‘quae fit ob signum divinae animadversionis’]. The exegesis of scriptural examples of prophetia comminationis became a fundamental resource for the rhetoric of late medieval ecclesiastical reform, even among theologians who contested the validity of other prophetic modes. As sanctioned by scripture, and by scriptural exegesis, the prophecy of denunciation became a standard rhetorical feature in the works of both avowedly orthodox writers – such as Thomas Gascoigne, the subject of this essay – and those whose ideas were hereticated. As I will show in this essay, examination of the prevalence and significance of the prophecy of denunciation focuses attention on the extent to which, under the umbrella of reformist thinking, orthodox and heterodox alike shared the same auctoritates, rhetorical strategies and many substantive concerns.