|[ Previous Lecture / Essay ]|[ Medieval Christianity Index ]|[ Next Lecture / Essay]|
Through the preceding dark age the Christian faith survived among the people more as an illiterate cultural superstition than an informed literate faith. Early Scholastic thought in the eleventh century was primarily stimulated by the recovery and elaboration of the Platonic viewpoint as mediated through the Christian Platonism of Augustine of Hippo and his lesser successors such as Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, and Bede. Even in its semi-literate form during the dark ages the imprint of this unconscious Platonism is quite recognizable even if garbled and adulterated. Today we label this Platonic theological view, Augustinian. At the time these scholars were only vaguely aware that the intellectual structure of their theology came largely from the thought of the fourth century BC classical Greek philosopher, Plato. Yet, we can scarcely expect them to have conceived of a Christianity that was not Augustinian.
While Augustinian theology was dominant throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, not all Augustinians are alike.
Up
Some were involved deeply in the development of rational proofs and explanations for their revealed faith. This group employing both grammar and dialectic also divided into two wings. Scholars like Berengar of Tours, Roscellinus of Compiègne and Abelard emphasized the rules of grammar and logic to the point that traditional religious doctrines were sometimes challenged. Most of these scholars insisted that every effort should be made to understand something before you accept or believe it. Some of them were brave enough to assert that one ought not believe what was grammatically and dialectically false even though the Church was teaching it.
Up
There were more moderate scholars like Landfranc, Prior of Bec and Archbishop of Canterbury, and his learned pupil and successor in both posts, Anselm. They insisted that grammar and dialectic had a proper place in defending and explaining the teachings of the faith, but the rules of grammar and dialectic must never be allowed to challenge the revealed truth. Anselm summed it up with the oft-quoted Latin phrase: credo ut intelligam, "I believe in order that I may understand."
Up
Other not so scholarly religious leaders rejected, resented and condemned the use of dialectic in relation to theology. Perhaps the greater part of the clergy in the middle of the eleventh century found themselves in the position of fearing grammar and dialectic. These leaders were just coming out of a half-millennium of intellectual obscurity and darkness when many of the Church's cherished teachings had been preserved only as mysterious, unexplainable pronouncements that must be "believed", that is accepted uncritically. Their attitude was that classical Latin learning was of little value to the theologian; indeed, enjoying the pagan classics just might be sinful. And more to the point applying rational methods to theological teachings was not only dangerous it was heresy.
Frustrated and unequipped to defend their cherished doctrines against the radical dialectical explanations of a Berengar of Tours or Roscellinus of Compiègne. They were only tentatively willing to allow scholars like the learned Lanfranc and his likable pupil Anselm to use a more balanced approach to refute the offending arguments and defend the traditional teaching. Yet, they remained highly suspicious, if not openly antagonistic toward, any churchman whose use of dialectical and grammatical explanation even came close to challenging the unquestionable verities of their cherished theological tradition.
Up
The defense they developed against the use of reason was that of mysticism. Mysticism was not new to Christianity; indeed, it has a long career parallel to the development of early Christian thought. Its roots plunge deeply into the Greek intellectual heritage and it consists of a style of thinking associatied to some degree or another with almost all religious movements since.
In this instance it served as an argument against the emerging skills of grammatical and dialectic arguments that threatened the authority of their traditional interpretations. They argued that God reveals truth directly to man without it being necessarily subject to the rules of grammar or logic. Man receives it by faith, not by reason. They eventually drew the ideas to support this mystical view from the Church fathers, especially Gregory the Great and, through him, Augustine of Hippo. Gregory had condemned those who would "fetter the language of the Holy Spirit with the rules of Donatus", i.e. Donatus was the authority on Grammar from the fifth century AD.
Peter Damian, named Cardinal by Pope Stephen IX in 1057/1058, was a relatively successful grammar teacher at Ravenna before renouncing his career to become a monk. Having abandoned Donatus he claimed Christ as his grammar (mea grammatica Christus est.) Damian's many letters always carried the trademark of his eloquent rhetorical condemnations of the wickedness and corruption of the world. He inveighed against the foibles of the clergy, the papacy, the study of classical Latin, the use of dialectic, politics, kings, monks, and even his own besetting sin, which we would probably identify as his sense of humor. His scathing description of the morals of the Italian clergy was published in 1049. Damian declared that dialectic was only a handmaid of Theology. The philosopher using logic may perceive that in nature certain things are logically impossible or contradictory. In Theology, however, the omnipotent God cannot be limited in His actions by the rules of worldly logic.
Another like-minded scholar, Manegold, an Augustinian canon from Lautenbach near Strasbourg (d. 1103), put it this way. The mysteries of the faith like the Virgin birth and the Resurrection both upset and annihilate the conclusions of philosophy and human reason. Going farther than Damian, Manegold declared that dialectic was superfluous to the theologian.
Bernard, the widely influential Cistercian abbot of Clairvaux (d. 1153) seems to have believed that rational inquiry was heresy. Whatever you understand you have no need to believe.
Up
In 1108 a college of canons regular was organized at the baptismal church of Saint Victor in the southeastern outskirts of Paris. A school was established there under their care. Hugh of St. Victor was the scholasticus at St. Victor's collegiate church from 1125 until his death in 1141. He combined the theological tradition of the mystics like Damian, Manegold, and Bernard, with the more sensible scholarly attitude of Anselm of Bec, Abelard's position on universals, and the broad liberal arts focus of the school at Chartres.
Hugh of Saint Victor's writings were very influential in the following century, especially with Thomas Aquinas. Hugh resolved the conflict between faith and reason for most of his contemporaries and successors through the thirteenth century by distinguishing between four types of truth as related to faith and reason.
Faith is not operable with the first and fourth categories (what is necessary and what is incredible); for reason here rules out faith. We cannot "believe" what is "known" rationally to be true, nor can we "believe" what is "known" rationally to be contrary to reason.
In the second category faith and reason work together. Revelation and faith confirms and makes certain what reason demonstrates to be probable.
Faith works entirely alone in the third category. Reason can be brought into play only to assure us that what is revealed is not irrational. Therefore, what is wonderful is not contrary to reason, just beyond its reach. What is wonderful cannot be proven or disproven by rational methods.
To follow the faith and reason controversy click here
Up
The lecture (reading aloud to students the text of an ancient author or contemporary scholar word by word and line by line.) was the practice that may have enabled the swift students to make their own copy of the text. Irnerius, the great rhetorical scholar of Bologna, pioneered with this methodology about 1120 in the study of Roman law. In practice his method was dictating a passage verbatim from the text of the corpus juris civilis and commenting, explaining and clarifying it line by line. By the thirteenth century the schoolmen much preferred to have the lecturer read smoothly and fairly rapidly; indeed, that became the rules at the University of Paris.
Up
Irnerius' students later came to be called Glossators because they had generally recorded Irnerius' comments (glossae) in the margins and between the lines on their copy of the passage. These glosses included word definitions, cross-references to other corpus passages, applications and examples drawn from other legal sources. The cross-references were organized separating those references that agreed with the passage in question and those that disagreed. Occasionally in dealing with a sticky issue he might go so far as to state his judiciously reasoned opinion (sententium).
Written works prepared by the Schoolmen themselves sought to demonstrate the "truth" of a stated proposition (thesis) by quoting verbatim from ancient authorities that support it. As they grew more daring they tested the "truth" of a stated proposition by quoting verbatim from both contradictory authorities and favorable authorities. Finally they sought to prove the "truth" (or "falsity") of a stated proposition by seeking to reconcile, resolve or eliminate any contradictions among the authorities or between the authorities and the stated proposition. This was accomplished through grammatical analysis and dialectic (logical analysis and judgment) expressed in a written opinion called a sententium or sentence.
Up
Anselm the younger, was the first scholar to open a school dedicated to the study of theology, a little after 1100 at the town of Laon (80 miles northeast of Paris). Anselm was the student of the elder Anselm of Bec. He seems to have pioneered an approach that became standard elsewhere, that of approaching theology as set of theses or topics. Each of these theses would be supported by quotations from the writings of authoritative churchmen. His pupil William of Champeaux introduced this method in Paris within the first decade of the century.
Up
It was Abelard who first ventured in 1121 to publish a book of 50 theological theses quoting authorities both in favor of and contradicting the theses. Sic et non, Yes and No, was Abelard's most influential publication, but also his most controversial one. The evidence quoted from both ancient and more recent Church authorities showed that there was no clear unanimity in the Church's teachings. Abelard made no effort to resolve the obvious contradictions--that, he said, could and should be the business of every intelligent person who is seeking the truth--, but he bitterly attacked those who demanded a single dogmatic response to permanently close the door to every theological question or doubt. His point well made, many scholars quickly followed his precedent.
Up
Robert of Melun, student of both Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor who ended his career in 1163 as Bishop of Hereford in England, became the first Scholar to add another important element that became a customary procedure of later scholastic scholarship. This element consisted of a concluding discussion for each thesis that attempted to provide a reasoned resolution of the various views quoted from the sources and to arrive at a judicious conclusion. The term sententium, sentence, was borrowed from judicial practice to label this new procedural element. His book was called Liber sententiarum, Book of Sentences.
Peter [the] Lombard, similarly a student of Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor, taught at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from 1140-1159. His Four Books of Sentences published in 1150-1152, dealt comprehensively with theology and became a standard textbook for nearly a century.
Up
Scholastic Scholarship sought to integrate into a logically coherent and exhaustive list or outline the proven theses of all related knowledge. This methodology produced works called summae. Scores, eventually hundreds, of scholars wrote comprehensive studies; the word summa was usually in the title. This tendency toward comprehensive knowledge was already apparent in the career of Hugh of St. Victor, canon and schoolmaster of the collegiate church of St. Victor, a suburb of Paris, who during his teaching career, 1125-1141, wrote summaries of virtually every branch of knowledge. His De sacramentis christianae fidei, Concerning the Sacraments of the Christian Faith, has been described by one modern scholar as "the grandmother of all the summae of the following hundred years." (David Knowles, Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 143.)
Up
There was one issue in which the laws of grammar and logic presented a real threat to the cherished truths of Christianity in the early twelfth century. It was the grammatical problem of the definition of common nouns or universals, as they called them. Donatus, the ancient grammatical authority, indicated that such common nouns were to be understood as either genera or species. The problem with this was stated and left unresolved in the last paragraph of Porphyry's Introduction to Logic in reference to Aristotle's Categories.
Porphyry's statement raised the question whether universals/common nouns represent something that actually exists somewhere outside of the mind or were simply mental ideas that have nothing corresponding to them outside the mind. To the theologian this was crucial issue. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity could be most easily understood when the word "god" is classified as a universal noun corresponding to a substance (a species) outside of the mind which can be predicated equally of three substances (individuals), the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hence, "The Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Spirit is God." If, on the other hand, the word "god" is merely a mental construct with no corresponding existence outside the mind, questions about the existence of God are raised that no one in the eleventh century was willing to entertain, not even the dialecticians.
Up
The untenable view that universals exist only in the mind--a view called Idealism--was so obviously absurd that no one considered it seriously. This view would deny reality to all universals including such as man, tree, box, hammer, ox, etc. The first attempts to demonstrate that universals must, indeed, have an existence somewhere outside the mind were unsuccessful but portents of a view that eventually won much support in the fourteenth century.
Up
Roscellinus of Compiègne (20 miles west of Soissons) was perhaps not the first to tackle the problem stated by Porphyry, but he concluded that, indeed, genera and species had an existence entirely apart from the mind, that existence being flatus vocis, "sound in the wind". He went ahead to say universalia sunt nomina, "universals are names". In 1092 Roscellinus was charged with the heresy of tritheism, but not convicted because the charges assumed he had taught what he had never ventured to assert. Nevertheless, this episode provided the name Nominalism to this unacceptable view.
Up
Even the anti-dialectical mystics argued that the reality of species and genera was a matter of revealed dogma and did not need to be explained or identified with anything in the material world of the senses. The moderate scholarly view of the late eleventh and early twelfth century supporting the traditional dogma was known as Realism. This view relied heavily on Plato's ontology and insists that reality is confined to the unchanging non-material realm. Conscious knowledge of this reality according to Plato was the result of what is usually called insight, a high level mental activity of "knowing" that is in no way dependent on input from the human senses. Hence universals have a true existence outside and apart from the mind, but in a form which has no material or physical properties and is therefore unknowable by means of human senses. Knowledge of this invisible, non-material (i.e., spiritual) reality comes by revelation.
Early attempts to defend the position of Realism using dialectic were not very happy. In his exuberance to prove Realism dialectically William of Champeaux, master of the school at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, attempted to demonstrate logically on the basis of individuals that a universal had an existence outside the mind. He first argued that the substance of the universal, e.g., man, was simultaneously and wholly present in each and all individual men. The individuals were not uniquely different in substance, but only in external features or accidents.
This argument refuted itself, when his pupil Abelard pointed out that William had contradicted the definition of individuality by confusing Aristotle's first and second class substances. William then revised his argument by dropping the notion of substance and trying to argue that each and all individual men are indifferenter, "nondifferent, similar", but not the same. Now he was saying the individuals of a species are not different from one another except in some undefined degree of accidents that he labeled "status".
Abelard was one of the sharpest minds of the early twelfth century and eventual successor in William's teaching position at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. He looked for a better way to explain the reality of universals but could not avoid the condemnation of his contemporaries who were neither ready, willing nor able to follow the nuances of his arguments. First he chided the dialecticians for attempting to prove that genera and species are things. While Aristotle had taught that things exist, he also seems to have taught something quite different. Aristotle himself defined a universal as "that which can be predicated of several things, like man." Abelard then incisively pointed out, "Only a name [nomen], not a thing, can be applied to many. It is monstrous to predicate a thing about a thing." While it is grammatically correct, even the simple understand that you cannot reasonably declare "this tree [the individual substance] is a horse [the universal = species]". Everyone can see that you can only reasonably predicate horseness with regard to any number of horses. Every horse possesses the recognizable status that allows the observer to declare "This (individual horse) is a horse (universal)."
While Abelard's position appeared to his detractors to be a variety of Nominalism he had refined it considerably. Nominalism excluded the reality of the universal from the mind, but Abelard's view does not. The universal is a sermô, an expression, a figure of speech that conveys a complex meaning. In the mind the sermô elicits a particular but vague mental concept. Each person's concept is unique and subjective, unlike any other person's concept in all details, yet including the attributes commonly possessed by all the known individuals of that status. Outside the mind the sermô can be used as a name and predicated of any number of particular individuals that possess the real attributes corresponding to the concept in the mind of the speaker.
For all the efforts of the anti-intellectual wing of Augustinian thought the scholarly forces prevailed. No matter that Abelard's character was constantly attacked and his teachings ridiculed by Saint Bernard and others more than 50 of his students became bishops and in excess of 20 went on to become cardinals. While most scholars by the middle of the twelfth century were Realists, many still appreciated Abelard's refinement of Nominalism.
Gilbert de la Porrèe, head of the cathedral school and chancellor to the Bishop of Chartres (1124-1140), was perhaps more successful in resolving the dilemma of the universals and supporting Realism than was Abelard. Nevertheless, he too was harassed and condemned for his efforts by Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux. Gilbert's approach was to interpret Aristotle's categories of reality in a consistently Platonic fashion. He argued that individual things (substances) were material copies of real, but invisible and non-material, forms. These forms, of which all the earthly individuals are copies, are also individual substances of Aristotle's second class; hence, Aristotle's genera and species correspond to the Platonic forms and do indeed have an existence beyond the mind.
Up
Scholars in northern Europe were drawn to the communities with the largest and richest manuscript collections wherever they were to be found; namely, where older monesteries and cathedrals were clustered. Schools were established under the authority of the local bishop. At Paris by 1100 there were important schools at Notre Dame Cathedral, at the Collegiate Church of Mont Sainte Geneviève, and still another at the Collegiate Church of Saint Victor. The scriptoria at Notre Dame and at the monastery of Saint Denis were the most valuable resources in Paris proper while some outlying locations in northern France made valuable contributions. Sometime before 1200 the scholars of Paris had begun to think of themselves as a craft guild and work together as a unit to police and protect themselves. They described their organization in typical craft guild terminology as a universitas artium liberalium magistrorum, meaning the totality of liberal arts master craftsmen. There were also faculties of Law, Medicine and Theology which at first were not part of the university.
In southern France Montpellier became the choice of scholars and after 1170 rapidly developed a reputation for the study of Medicine. Arabic speaking Jewish scholars exiled from Spain c. 1140 settled in the vicinity and their scholarship gave ready access to Arabic medical authorities like Avicenna and others.
Up
In Italy the tradition of private schools had not been broken by the dark age, so the schools established at monasteries and cathedrals tended to specialize in just theology while the private schools sponsored by the rising urban populations were for laymen and specialized in rhetoric and law. Scholars in Italy began to congregate at the several schools in and around Bologna in the north and those in Salerno in the south by 1050. In Italy it was apparently the students that organized a guild instead of the masters. Bologna became known for its study of Law and Salerno for its study of Medicine.
In England, Oxford was the community chosen by scholars evidently after 1167 when a group migrated from Paris. There were no cathedral or monastic libraries there, but modern scholars speculate that the English monarch had something to do with their choice of location. Cambridge was started as a schism from Oxford in the next century.
Up
The discovery and study of additional works of Aristotle stimulated scholastic philosophy in the universities. Thirteenth century Realists strengthened their position by using Aristotle's teaching that reality consists of form and matter and the form is invisible except when "realized" or "materialized" in matter. Hence they concluded that its "realization" or actualization demonstrated the reality of the universals in each individual.
Western European scholars beginning in the eleventh century knew the name Aristotle and something of his reputation, but the only fragment of his massive works that had survived in Latin in the west was part of his book on logic. Also surviving was an elementary textbook on logic written by Porphyry in the fifth century that quoted Aristotle repeatedly. Boethius had translated both these pieces into Latin from the Greek in the sixth century.
Up
The full recovery of Aristotle's works in Arabic translations complete with two extensive commentaries on Aristotle written by Muslim philosophers who possessed very different points of view provided Europeans with a fascinating challenge to understand and integrate this new knowledge with what they already possessed. Rival schools of thought emerged among the schoolmen of the thirteenth century. His works included: On Physics; On the Heavens; On Meteorology; On the Soul; On Sensation; On Memory and Remembering; On Sleeping and Waking; On Longevity; On Youth and Old Age; On Respiration; On Life and Death; On Metaphysics; On Stoics; On Politics; On Rhetoric. In addition to Aristotle's own works the commentaries on his works by the Muslim philosophers Avicenna (Ibn Sinna, 980-1037) and the more recent Averroës (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198), as well as the brilliant Jewish Talmudic scholar of Spain, Maimonides (Moses ben Maimum, 1135-1204) were translated into Latin.
Up
Because Christian scholars were unconsciously Platonic/Augustinian in their view, their early effort to absorb Aristotle's thought resulted in great confusion. Jewish and Muslim scholars had experienced the same difficulty in dealing with Aristotle. For example, Aristotle based all knowledge on sense perception and reason ruling out any possibility of revelation. Aristotle taught that matter is eternal rather than created, and that the individual human soul was not immortal. Aristotle understood god as a totally transcendent being, completely beyond human capacity to comprehend; his god's only vital action is to spin the universe on its axis--he is the "unmoved mover" the entity necessary to explain logically all motion and change in the universe. Because Jewish and Islamic theology likewise depended strongly on Platonic thought forms the Christian scholars discovered immediate empathy with the struggles evidenced in the works of Maimonides, Averroës and others. Scholars today conclude that the western understanding of Aristotle in the early decades of the thirteenth century was only partial and often distorted by Muslim, Jewish, and Neoplatonic preconceptions, coupled with the use of mistranslations or biased paraphrases of the ancient Athenian scholar's teachings.
About 1215 the Papacy intervened and prohibited the study of Aristotle's natural philosophy and metaphysics, and all paraphrases of them at Paris. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX amended the prohibition with a qualifying phrase all but promising that as soon as his books on nature had been examined and purged of suspicion and error they would be released. Meanwhile the universities at Toulouse and Oxford proceeded to study them.
The serious study of Aristotle at Paris was inaugurated by Alexander of Hales, an English Franciscan who was the first Doctor to teach (1231-1245) at the studium particularium of the Order of Friars Minor at Paris. He was very attracted to Aristotle's works. He began to utilize Aristotelian categories in interpreting Church dogma. Soon thereafter Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), a Dominican who taught in the studium particularium of the Order of Preachers at Paris (1243-1248) and then at a similar institution in Cologne, began serious study of Aristotle's works. Albert's major contribution was cutting through the incipient Platonism of the Muslim commentators and of his own upbringing to understand the original Aristotle. He was particularly interested in the scientific aspects of Aristotle's work. Albert's work consists today of 21 folio volumes of commentaries on Aristotle's scientific writings. He understood Aristotle well enough that he elaborated on subjects Aristotle only suggested--or should have suggested in order to be consistent within himself. Albert was always careful to explain away, not always very satisfactorily, all the unchristian aspects of Aristotle's work.
Up
A hard-nosed, pure Aristotelian approach was, unfortunately, destructive of several aspects of the revealed doctrines of the Church. This led some to favor the solution suggested by the Muslim commentator, Averroës. Christian Averroists such as Siger de Brabant (d. 1281) suggested that both the conclusions of the Aristotelian rational approach and the pronouncements of the Platonic tradition, while flatly contradictory, were nevertheless equally true. While Siger de Brabant did not express himself on the point, it would have been logically consistent for him to adopt the Aristotelian Nominalist approach that was later to surface during the fourteenth century. In any case he was condemned for heresy in 1277.
Up
Some scholars from the outset preferred to approach the conflict by carefully picking and choosing those concepts of Aristotle that seemed most compatible with, and supportive of, the Platonic/Augustinian Realism and its revealed truth. The conservative wing of the Franciscan order became the heirs of the semi-mystical theological position voiced earlier in the twelfth century by scholars like Hugh of St Victor. Bonaventure (1221-1274), the minister-general of the Franciscans was the most eloquent and influential thirteenth century exponent both for the Platonic mystical ideas and for the traditional Augustinian intellectual approach. Bonaventure taught that scientia is knowledge derived through nature by observation and reason. (Aristotelian reason may be used provided its shortcomings are clearly understood.) Sapientia, on the other hand, is divine wisdom and supernatural. Scientia is limited truth, but sapientia is ultimate truth. God reveals sapientia directly, not through observation and the use of the senses. The ultimate ideas constituting sapientia exist in the mind of God. Man must "Journey into the mind of God" by means of love, faith, and decision. Revelation is a supernatural and mystical experience. It can happen to anyone at any time--a direct communication from God to man not necessarily bypassing the senses but not limited by them..
Up
A more venturesome approach recast Christianity in terms of a carefully redefined Aristotle. The quasi-Aristotelian approach of Thomas Aquinas was an expression of Aristotelian Realism. He presented an integrated and coherent, non-contradictory, rational explanation of Christianity and the universe according to a selectively employed Aristotelian logic. Some key Christian doctrines had to be partially redefined in terms more compatible with Aristotelian logic. His work is often cited as the Medieval synthesis of faith and reason, par excellence. Although Thomas' contemporaries condemned his system of thought, today it remains the official position of the Roman Catholic Church.
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) held that the knowledge of God that derives from nature through observation and rational inquiry is properly called Natural Theology. (This combines Hugh of Saint Victor's first and second categories of truth.) The knowledge that is above and beyond reason constitutes Higher Theology. (This corresponds to Hugh's third category.) God acted to reveal this higher theology through once-upon-a-time revelatory events in history. Hence, knowledge of that past revelation of God is not mystical, but rational. Individuals receive that revelation by "reading" God's word and "understanding" it by means of the rational powers humans possess. Rational faculties are then necessary to faith.
All knowledge of God is based on evidence of God's action either in nature (where we must observe it with our senses and understand it with our rational powers) or in revelation (where we must receive, i.e., understand, it through our senses and rational faculties). All God's action has resulted in rational, understandable results that are within the grasp of human reason. God's revelation of himself has been made in natural and totally rational ways--not in irrational and/or supernatural ways. Hence, there can be no contradiction between Natural Theology and Revealed Theology. It is the same God who has provided each of these expressions of himself. All apparent disagreements between Natural Theology and Revealed Theology are the result of man's fallible rational capacities.
Up
Return to the Lecture/Essay Table of Contents for Part II
ht34632e18.html
Most recently edited 1 July 2009