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The century which followed the disappearance of Erigena was
intellectually, the most sterile of all the long transitional period.
Of any writers in the first half of it (c. 880-930) literally no record
at all has survived. The life of the second half is perhaps best seen
in Gerbert, head of the school at Rheims, Abbot of Bobbio (982)
Archbishop of Rheims (991), of Ravenna (996), and pope, as Silvester
II, from 998 to 1003. Gerbert was, like Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, a
man of encyclopaedic knowledge. He had studied in Spain, and was a
famous mathematician, but he is chiefly important as a teacher. One of
his pupils, Fulbert, became Bishop of Chartres and under his rule the
school of Chartres became the first great nursery of the revival of
intellectual life.
The school first attained a more than local fame through Fulbert's own
pupil, Berengarius (999-1089), whose philosophising led him into a
controversy, about the nature of the Real Presence in the Holy
Eucharist, which lasted for thirty years and more. The controversy had
a more general importance in that it raised, for the first time for
centuries, the bitterly disputed question as to whether it was lawful
to use the secular science of dialectic to scrutinise and explain the
teachings of faith Berengarius was typical of the passionate enthusiasm
of this first generation to learn again the rules of logic. Its formal
rules were, indeed, almost all that was known of the Aristotelian
philosophy to the men of this time. This new instrument they must apply
universally, and Berengarius turned to examine with it the traditional
faith of the Church that Jesus Christ is really present in the Holy
Eucharist. Berengarius -- for whom the conclusions of his dialectic
were the ultimate source of truth, and to whose mind no accident could
exist in separation from its proper substance -- from the fact that in
the Holy Eucharist the appearances of bread and wine continue after the
consecration, deduced that the bread and wine still continued to exist.
Jesus Christ was really present, he thought. but in the bread and wine.
His great opponent was Lanfranc of Pavia (1005-1089), Prior of Bec in
Normandy and later (1070) Archbishop of Canterbury. For years the
discussions continued, Berengarius condemned repeatedly in different
councils, yielding each time, signing the required retractations and
then publishing explanations of his retractations that emptied them of
all meaning. Into the controversy two of the great figures of the
reform movement were drawn -- Gregory VII and St. Peter Damian. It was
Gregory VII, as the legate Hildebrand, who presided over the stormy
council of Sens in 1054 at which Berengarius was heard and from which
he was cited to Rome, and who, as pope, in 1079, accepting as sincere
his latest profession of faith, took the old theologian into his
special protection So far as the Holy See was concerned this ended the
controversy; but in France the discussion as to the sincerity of
Berengarius continued as long as he lived.
St. Peter Damian's intervention in this confused affair was of quite
another kind. Berengarius, thanks to a certain mastery of the arts of
grammar and logic, had thrown doubts on the traditional belief about
the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. What else
could be expected if men presumed to examine and discuss what the very
angels could only adore? The first grammarian obviously was the devil,
teaching the first man and woman to decline "God" in the plural; [ ]
and to apply the profane sciences to the things of God was an outrage
whence serious troubles were bound to follow.
There was evidently urgent need for the nature and office of reason to
be made clear; and for its relations to belief to be set forth in such
a way that the mischief of the confused hostility to intellectual
activity, to which St. Peter Damian, among others, bore witness, might
be arrested. In this useful task, which was to occupy all the efforts
of all the thinkers from now on until St. Thomas, one of the pioneers
was Lanfranc, with his careful insistence that a distinction must be
made between the art of logic and its misuse. Between that art and the
teaching of faith there is no opposition and, rightly used, the art
assists belief and confirms it.
The controversy that centred round Berengarius was a kind of
preliminary skirmish in which the parties who were to fight the long
triangular battle of the next two hundred years made their first
appearance; the philosophers, using an imperfect knowledge of what
reason is, and reasoning, to criticise the traditional doctrine; the
theologians denying the lawfulness of any application of philosophical
methods to explain the traditional doctrine; and the middle party whom
the conflict between the traditional doctrine and the results of the
re-discovered dialectic urges to an ever deeper study Or the dialectic
and, ultimately, to a truer understanding of what the human reason is,
what its province, and what its limitations.
The first great name in the development of the middle party was also a
contemporary of Berengarius, St. Anselm. Like Lanfranc he was from the
north of Italy, born in 1033 at Aosta, and, again like Lanfranc, a monk
of Bec, where, indeed, in 1063 he had succeeded Lanfranc as prior.
Thirty years later he succeeded his old master in a still more
distinguished post when he was named Archbishop of Canterbury by
William II. For the remaining sixteen years of his life (he died in
1109) he is perhaps the chief figure of English history, leading in
England that fight for reform and for the emancipation of religion from
State control the story of which, in continental Europe, has already
occupied us. [ ]
St. Anselm, in whom something of the spirit of St. Augustine comes to
life again, wrote his first book -- the Monologium -- to satisfy the
monks of Bec who asked for a treatise on God in which all the proofs
should be from reasoning and, as far as possible not based on the
authority of Sacred Scripture. From the beginning then the author is
led to propound a theory of the relation between reason and belief, and
to set forth their respective roles The teachings of the Faith are for
him data beyond all discussion, facts and realities which reason must
understand and interpret. Belief in them is the necessary preliminary
to understanding their content. But such belief is not the end of man's
concern with the mysteries of the Faith. There is a duty of using the
reason -and therefore the art of dialectic -- to explore ever more
deeply the meaning and implications of what is believed. It is not
enough to say that the Fathers have already explained as much as is
necessary. Had they lived longer they would have explained more. Much
still awaits explanation, nor does God ever cease to enlighten the
Church. How far can reason go in this matter of explaining revelation?
Can it, ultimately, be expected to explain everything? Here St. Anselm
shows himself optimistic. His confidence in the power of reasoning
knows no limits. Even the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Trinity
are proper fields for the operation of this explanatory dialectic which
is not unable to prove the existence of both. This exaggeration of the
role of reason, due to an imperfect understanding of what reason is and
of the nature of rational proof, is a serious weakness in St. Anselm's
work. But the distinction between reason and belief and the
delimitation of their respective domains -- a distinction between
philosophy and theology as sciences -- is an immense advance in
methodology on their identification by Erigena, the last constructive
thinker to appear before St. Anselm
The chief contribution of St. Anselm to the philosophical revival is
his carefully worked out system of Natural Theology, rational proofs of
the existence of God and deductions thence as to God's attributes, His
relation to the universe in general and to man in particular. The
saint's proofs of the existence of God, the famous proof based on the
possibility of our conceiving the idea of God as the Being than whom
nothing is greater, brought him into controversy with another monk,
Gaunilo of Marmoutier.
Another contemporary thinker against whom St. Anselm wrote was
Roscelin, and with this controversy begins the history of the medieval
contribution to a problem related to that of the relations between
reason and belief, the problem, namely, of the value of general
judgements or universals. How can we -- since all our experience is of
the individual, the particular -- justify our formulation of judgements
which are universal? Such general judgements are the basis of all
scientific knowledge. Can they really be said to be true? and in what
sense? Do universals really exist? This immensely important question
had come to the medieval thinkers through the translation by Boethius
of Porphyry's introduction (Isagoge) to one of Aristotle's treatises on
Logic, the Categories.
Porphyry stated the problem but, since it was not a purely logical
problem (and not a matter for beginners in logic) offered no solution.
Boethius summarised the solutions of both the Platonist and the
Aristotelian schools. The solution indeed, whatever it was, would have
far-reaching effects. Ultimately-although, as is often the case, those
who first attempted a solution did not suspect these ramifications --
the solution must involve the whole philosophical position, reaching
speedily from logic to metaphysics. For thinkers who were Catholics
their solution would also determine the character of their whole
philosophical exposition and defence of revelation. On the solution
they adopted was to depend, ultimately, the future of Catholic
Theology. More immediately, what was involved was the prestige of
Platonism as the Catholic philosopher's instrument in explaining
scientifically the data of faith. According to the Platonic philosophy,
universals really existed as such, in another world. The individuals
which exist in this, our own, world, and of which alone we have
experience. reflect the natures of these elsewhere-existent universals.
It was this opinion of the nature of universals which had so far
prevailed. It was, for example, adopted by Erigena.
Now, in the last half of the eleventh century, thanks to Roscelin, a
new explanation began to compete with it. Roscelin (born in 1050) was a
pupil of John the Physician who was himself, like Berengarius, a pupil
of Fulbert of Chartres. It is apparently not easy to define exactly
Roscelin's contribution to the discussion since all e know of his
thought we know from the writings of his opponents. But this much is
certain that, for him, it is the individual alone who possesses
reality: universals are merely words. Men exist: mankind is merely a
name, a mental construction devised to assist thought. Roscelin next
proceeded to apply his theory to the mystery of the Trinity, much as
Berengarius had attempted to philosophise about the Holy Eucharist. The
result was an explanation of the mystery that was indistinguishable
from a theory that the three persons are three Gods, the one divine
nature of the three persons being a universal, and therefore only a
name, the reality being the three divine persons. Roscelin was
condemned at Soissons in 1092, and at Rheims two years later. He
retracted, apparently, his theories on the Trinity, hut, unmolested by
authority, continued to teach his nominalistic logic until his death.
This opening of the controversy on universals at the close of the
eleventh century is the first great event of the new intellectual life.
[ ] The appearance of Peter Abelard among the masters is a second.
Abelard was born in Brittany in 1079. He studied at Paris under William
of Champeaux, at Laon under Anselm of Laon, and at Compiegne under
Roscelin. It is hard to exaggerate the ascendancy so speedily gained by
this bright and gifted spirit over the student world of his time. A
passion for hard work, a mastery of dialectic that made him an
invincible adversary imagination and the artist's temperament all
combined to make Abelard's genius a brightly coloured legend even in
his own lifetime. His education was hardly finished before his debating
skill routed one after another of the great men of the day. Wherever he
opened a school students deserted the official school to enrol
themselves as his pupils. He was little more than thirty when he
succeeded his recent victim, William of Champeaux, as the chief of the
school at Paris. Then came the great tragedy, his falling in love with
his pupil, Heloise, the birth of their child, the secret marriage, his
mutilation at the hands of her guardian. Abelard resigned his post,
became a monk at St. Denis and, after a few more turbulent years of
success and failure, went into retirement (I 125).
Abelard was not a profoundly original thinker like St. Anselm, nor a
great organiser of knowledge like Erigena. But he had an understanding
of Aristotle's theory of knowledge that surpassed anything hitherto
known, and he was one of the greatest teachers of all time. His
influence here far exceeded what his books alone might have effected. A
worker, and a master who produced other workers, he was responsible for
the greatest impetus so far given to the work of the logical
reconstruction of Theology.
Of all his books the Sic et Non is, from this point of view, the most
important, for with it there appears for the first time the methodology
which comes to perfection in the Summa of St. Thomas. It consists in
setting side by side judgements from the Fathers, or from Sacred
Scripture, that are apparently contradictory. Authority being at
variance with itself the student can only solve the problem by
reasoning. Abelard, in this, is an early precursor of St. Thomas. His
theory of the role of reason in matters of faith is that of St. Anselm.
Not philosophy, but the traditional faith is the all-important thing.
"I have no desire to be a philosopher in contradiction with St. Paul,"
he wrote to Heloise, "nor an Aristotle separated from Christ, for there
is no other name under heaven in which I can be saved. The rock on
which I have built my knowledge is that on which Christ has built his
Church. " A second innovation in method is his combining-in the
Introductio ad Theologiam -- the dialectical exposition of doctrine
with that based on the writings of the Fathers, a combination of
philosophy with the historical method that sounds singularly modern. He
wrote also a treatise on morals -- Scito Teipsum (Know Thyself) --
which is a scientific analysis of actions good and bad, and of the
all-important intention from which derives their moral quality.
But, along with the Sic et Non, Abelard's greatest service is his
destructive criticism of the Platonic theory of universals as so far
held by practically all Catholic philosophers. It was on this point
that he routed his master, William of Champeaux, and drove him into
retirement. His own solution it is not easy to ascertain, for he fought
Roscelin as successfully as he fought William. Though his language
hesitates, there seems little doubt that he placed the reality of the
universal primarily in the concept, while at the same time it has for
him a source in the individual things themselves. The intelligence
acquires its knowledge of universals by consideration of the common
resemblance of the individual members of the class, and an activity of
abstraction.
Like the great majority of the pioneers of this new movement to apply
reason to the teaching of revelation, Abelard came into conflict with
authority. His errors were many, on the Trinity, the Incarnation, the
Redemption and Original Sin. His book on the Trinity was condemned to
be burnt at Soissons in 1121, and he was obliged to declare publicly
his acceptance of the Athanasian creed. How far personal considerations
entered into this movement to prosecute the philosopher, and influenced
the atmosphere in which the legal proceedings took place, it is not
easy to say. There is no doubt that good men were divided and that some
of them showed hearty vindictiveness wherever there was question of
Abelard -- as there is no doubt that Abelard's rapid and easy rise to
fame, his brilliance, and the arrogance with which he conducted
himself, had made him as many foes as admirers. Nor were his troubles
to end with his retirement to Brittany in 1125. [ ]
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