Periculum animarum: Bishops, Gender, and Scandal

Scandal was defined in the medieval church as the sin of causing another's fall by providing a bad example in word or deed. The theology of scandal was developed particularly by Peter the Chanter (d1197) and his early thirteenth-century followers Robert Courson, Stephen Langten, and Thomas of Chobham, and it was crystallized by Thomas Aquinas into the doctrine which survives in the Catholic Church today. Scandal was a sin against charity, since it endangered the souls of others, and most thirteenth-century writers on the subject agreed that it could be a mortal sin, depending on the kind of sin it provoked in another. It was so serious that it was to be avoided at all costs, except where the truths of life (the Christian way of living to attain eternal life), doctrine (Christian teaching), and justice (Christian law and order, and rectitude) were concerned.