Part 15

I. =The Dialectic Side of the Gulf.=--=Peter Abælard=, superior to all his contemporaries in acuteness, learning, dialectic power, and bold freethinking, but proud and disputatious, was born at Palais in Brittany in A.D. 1079. His first teacher in philosophy was Roscelin. Afterwards he entered the school of William of Champeaux at Paris, the most celebrated dialectician of his times. Having defeated his master in a public disputation, he founded a school at Melun near Paris, where thousands of pupils flocked to him. In order to be nearer Paris, he moved his school to Corbeil; then to the very walls of Paris on Mount St. Genoveva; and ceased not to overwhelm William with humiliations, until his old teacher retreated from the field. In order to secure still more brilliant success, he began to study theology under the Schoolman Anselm of Laon. But very soon the ambitious scholar thought himself superior also to this master. Relying upon his dialectical endowments, he took a bet without further preparation to expound the difficult prophet Ezekiel. He did it indeed to the satisfaction of scholars, but Anselm refused to allow him to continue his lectures. Abælard now returned to Paris, where he gathered around him a great number of enthusiastic pupils. Canon Fulbert appointed him teacher of his beautiful and talented niece Heloise. He won her love, and they were secretly married. She then denied the marriage in order that he might not be debarred from the highest offices of the church. Persisting in this denial, her relatives dealt severely with her, and Abælard had her placed in the nunnery of Argenteuil. Fulbert in his fury had Abælard seized during the night and emasculated, so that he might be disqualified for ecclesiastical preferment. Overwhelmed with shame, he fled to the monastery of St. Denys, and there in A.D. 1119 took the monastic vow. Heloise took the veil at Argenteuil. But even at St. Denys Abælard was obliged by the eager entreaties of former scholars to resume his lectures. His free and easy treatment of the church doctrine and his haughty spirit aroused many enemies against him, who at the Synod of Soissons in A.D. 1121 compelled him before the papal legate to cast into the fire his treatise _De Unitate et Trinitate divina_, and had him committed to a monastic prison. By the intercession of some friends he was soon again set free, and returned to St. Denys. But when he made the discovery that Dionysius at Paris was not the Areopagite the persecution of the monks drove him into a forest near Troyes. There too his scholars followed him and made him resume his lectures. His colony grew up under his hands into the famous abbey of the Paraclete. Finding even there no rest, he made over the abbey of the Paraclete to Heloise, who had not been able to come to terms with her insubordinate nuns at Argenteuil. He himself now became abbot of the monastery of St. Gildasius at Ruys in Brittany, and, after in vain endeavouring for eight years to restore the monastic discipline, he again in A.D. 1136 resumed his office of teacher and lectured at St. Genoveva near Paris with great success. He wrote an ethical treatise, “_Scito te ipsum_,” issued a new and enlarged edition of his _Theologia christiana_, now extant as the incomplete _Introductio ad theologiam_ in three books, and composed a _Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judæum et Christianum_, in which the heathen philosophers and poets of antiquity are ranked almost as high as the prophets and apostles. In _Sic et Non_, “Yes and No,” a collection of extracts from the Fathers under the various heads of doctrine contradictory of one another, the traditional theology was held up to contempt.

§ 102.2.

=Abælard= maintained, in opposition to the Augustinian-Anselmian theory, that faith preceded knowledge, that only what we comprehend is to be believed. He did indeed intend that his dialectic should be used not for the overthrow but for the establishment of the church doctrine. He proceeded, however, from doubt as the principle of all knowledge, regarding all church dogmas as problems which must be proved before they can be believed: _Dubitando enim ad inquisitionem venimus, inquirendo veritatem percipimus_. He thus reduced faith to a mere probability and measured the content of faith by the rule of subjective reason. This was most glaring in the case of the trinitarian doctrine, which with him approached Sabellian modalism. God as omnipotent is to be called Father, as all wise the Son, as loving and gracious the Spirit; and so the incarnation becomes a merely temporal and dynamic immanence of the Logos in the man Jesus. The significance of the ethical element in Christianity quite overshadowed that of the dogmatic. He taught that all fundamental truths of Christianity had been previously proclaimed by philosophers and poets of Greece and Rome, who were scarcely less inspired than the prophets and apostles, the special service of the latter consisting in giving currency to these truths among the uncultured. He turns with satisfaction from the theology of the Fathers to that of the apostles, and from that again to the religion of Jesus, whom he represents rather as a reformer introducing a pure morality than as a founder of a religious system. Setting aside Anselm’s theory of satisfaction, he regards the redemption and reconciliation of man as consisting in the awakening in sinful man, by means of the infinite love displayed by Christ’s teaching and example, by His life, sufferings and death upon the cross, a responding love of such fulness and power, that he is thereby freed from the dominion of sin and brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God.[298]--Abælard’s fame and following grew in a wonderful manner from day to day; but also powerful opponents dragged his heresies into light and vigorously combated them. The most important of these were the Cistercian monk William of Thierry and St. Bernard, who called attention to the dangerous tendency of his teaching. St. Bernard dealt personally with the heretic, but when he failed in converting him, he appeared in A.D. 1141 at the Synod of Sens as his accuser. The synod condemned as heretical a series of statements culled from his writings by Bernard. Abælard appealed to the pope, but even his friends at Rome, among whom was Card. Guido de Castella, afterwards Pope Cœlestine II., could not close their eyes to his manifest heterodoxies. His friendship for Arnold of Brescia also told against him at Rome (§ 108, 7). Innocent II. therefore excommunicated Abælard and his supporters, condemned his writings to be burnt and himself to be confined in a monastery. Abælard found an asylum with the abbot Peter the Venerable of Clugny, who not only effected his reconciliation with Bernard, but also, on the ground of his _Apologia s. Confessio fidei_, in which he submitted to the judgment of the church, obtained permission from the pope to pass his last days in peace at Clugny. During this time he composed his _Hist. calamitatum Abælardi_, an epistolary autobiography, which, though not free from vanity and bitterness, is yet worthy to be ranked with Augustine’s “Confessions” for its unreserved self-accusation and for the depth of self-knowledge which it reveals. He died in A.D. 1142, in the monastery of St. Marcellus at Chalons, where he had gone in quest of health. He was buried in the abbey of the Paraclete, where Heloise laid on his coffin the letter of absolution of Peter of Clugny. Twenty-two years later Heloise herself was laid in the same quiet resting place.[299]

§ 102.3.

II. =The Mystic Side of the Gulf.=--Abælard’s most famous opponent was =St. Bernard of Clairvaux= (§ 98, 1), born in A.D. 1091 at Fontaines near Dijon in Burgundy, died in A.D. 1153, a man of such extraordinary influence on his generation as the world seldom sees. Venerated as a miracle worker, gifted with an eloquence that carried everything before it (_doctor mellifluus_), he was the protector and reprover of the Vicar of God, the peacemaker among the princes, the avenger of every wrong. His genuine humility made him refuse all high places. His enthusiasm for the hierarchy did not hinder him from severely lashing clerical abuses. It was his word that roused the hearts of men throughout all Europe to undertake the second crusade, and that won many heretics and schismatics back to the bosom of the church. Having his conversation in heaven, leading a life of study, meditation, prayer, and ecstatic contemplation, he had also dominion over the earth, and by counsel, exhortation, and exercise of discipline exerted a quickening and healthful influence on all the relations of life. His theological tendency was in the direction of contemplative mysticism, with hearty submission to the doctrine of the church. Like Abælard, but from the opposite side, he came into conflict with the theory of Anselm; for the ideal of theology with him was not the development of faith into knowledge by means of thought, but rather the enlightenment of faith in the way of holiness. Bernard was not at all an enemy of science, but he rather saw in the dialectical hair-splitting of Abælard, which grudged not to cut down the main props of saving truth for the glorification of its own art, the overthrow of all true theology and the destruction of all the saving efficacy of faith. Heart theology founded on heart piety, nourished and strengthened by prayer, meditation, spiritual illumination and holiness, was for him the only true theology. _Tantum Deus cognoscitur, quantum diligitur. Orando facilius quam disputando et dignius Deus quæritur et invenitur._ The Bible was his favourite reading, and in the recesses of the forest he spent much time in prayer and study of the Scriptures. But in ecstasy (_excessus_) which consists in withdrawal from sensible phenomena and becoming temporarily dead to all earthly relations, the soul of the pious Christian is able to rise into the immediate presence of God, so that “_more angelorum_” it reaches a blessed vision and enjoyment of the Divine glory and that perfect love which loves itself and all creatures only in God. Yet even he confesses that this highest stage of abstraction was only attained unto by him occasionally and partially through God’s special grace. Bernard’s mysticism is most fully set forth in his eighty-six Sermons on the first two chapters of the Song of Solomon and in the tract _De diligendo Deo_. In his controversy with Abælard he wrote his _Tractatus de erroribus Petri Abælardi_. To the department of dogmatics belongs _De gratia et libero arbitrio_; and to that of history, the biography of his friend Malachias (§ 149, 5). The most important of his works is _De Consideratione_, in 5 bks., in which with the affection of a friend, the earnestness of a teacher, and the authority of a prophet, he sets before Pope Eugenius III. the duties and dangers of his high position. He was also one of the most brilliant hymn writers of the Middle Ages. Alexander III. canonized him in A.D. 1173, and Pius VIII. in A.D. 1830 enrolled him among the _doctores ecclesiæ_ (§ 47, 22 c).--Soon after the controversy with Abælard had been brought to a close by the condemnation of the church, Bernard was again called upon to resist the pretensions of dialectic. Gilbert de la Porrée (Porretanus), teacher of theology at Paris, who became Bishop of Poitiers in A.D. 1142 and died in A.D. 1154, in his commentary on the theological writings of Boëthius (§ 47, 23) ascribed reality to the universal term “God” in such a way that instead of a Trinity we seemed to have a Quaternity. At the Synod of Rheims, A.D. 1148, under the presidency of Pope Eugenius III., Bernard appeared as accuser of Porretanus. Gilbert’s doctrine was condemned, but he himself was left unmolested.[300]

§ 102.4.

III. =Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Mysticism.=--At the school of the monastery of St. Victor in Paris, founded by William of Champeaux after his defeat at the hands of Abælard, an attempt was made during the first half of the 12th century to combine mysticism and dialectic in the treatment of theology. The peaceable heads of this school would indeed have nothing to do with the speculations of Abælard and his followers which tended to overthrow the mysteries of the faith. But the mystics of St. Victor made an important concession to the dialecticians by entering with as much energy upon the scientific study and construction of dogmatics as they did upon the devout examination of Scripture and mystical theology. They exhibited a speculative power and a profundity of thought that won the hearty admiration of the subtlest of the dialecticians. By far the most celebrated of this school was =Hugo of St. Victor=. Descended from the family of the Count of Halberstadt, born in A.D. 1097, nearly related to St. Bernard, honoured by his contemporaries as _Alter Augustinus_ or _Lingua Augustini_, Hugo was one of the most profound thinkers of the Middle Ages. Having enjoyed a remarkably complete course of training, he was enthusiastically devoted to the pursuit of science, and, endowed with rich and deep spirituality, he exerted a most healthful and powerful influence upon his own and succeeding ages, although church and science had to mourn their loss by his early death in A.D. 1141. In his _Eruditio didascalica_ we have in 3 bks. an encyclopædic sketch of all human knowledge as a preparation to the study of theology, and in other 3 bks. an introduction to the Bible and church history.[301] His _Summa sententiarum_ is an exposition of dogmatics on patristic lines, an ecclesiastical counterpart of Abælard’s _Sic et Non_. The ripest and most influential of all his works, and the most independent, is his _De sacramentis christ. fidei_, in 2 bks., in which he treats of the whole contents of dogmatics from the point of view of the Sacraments (§ 104, 2). His exegetical works are less important and less original. His mysticism is set forth _ex professo_ in his _Soliloquium de arrha animæ_ and in the series of three tracts, _De arca morali_, _De arca mystica_, and _De vanitate mundi_. He makes Noah’s ark the symbol of the church as well as of the individual soul which journeys over the billows of the world to God, and, by the successive stages of _lectio_, _cogitatio_, _meditatio_, _oratio_, and _operatio_ reaches to _contemplatio_ or the vision of God.--Hugo’s pupil, and from A.D. 1162 the prior of his convent, was the Scotchman =Richard St. Victor=, who died in A.D. 1173. With less of the dialectic faculty than his master--though this too is shown in his 6 bks. _De trinitate_, a scholastic exposition of the _Cognitio_ or _Fides quæ creditur_--he mainly devoted his energies to the development on the mystico-contemplative side of the “_Affectus_” or _Fides qua creditur_, which aims at the vision and enjoyment of God. This he represents as reached by the three stages of contemplation, distinguished as _mentis dilatatio_, _sublevatio_, and _alienatio_. Among his mystical tracts, mostly mystical expositions of Scripture passages, the most important are, _De præparatione animæ ad contemplationem, s. de xii. patriarchis_, and the 4 bks. _De gratia contemplationis s. de arca mystica_. These are also known as _Benjamin minor_ and _B. major_. In Richard there appears the first indications of a misunderstanding with the dialecticians which, among the late Victorines, and especially in the case of Walter of St. Victor, took the form of vehement hostility.

§ 102.5.

IV. =Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Dialectics.=--After Abælard’s condemnation theological dialectics came more and more to be associated with the church doctrine and to approach more or less nearly to a friendly alliance with mysticism. Hugo’s writings did much to bring this about. The following are the most important Schoolmen of this tendency.

1. The Englishman =Robert Pulleyn=, teacher at Oxford and Paris, afterwards cardinal and papal chancellor at Rome, who died about A.D. 1150. His chief work is _Sententiarum Ll. VIII._ Though very famous in its day, it was soon cast into the shade by the Lombard’s work.

2. =Petrus [Peter] Lombardus [Lombard]=, born at Novara in Lombardy, a scholar of Abælard, but powerfully influenced by St. Bernard and Hugo St. Victor, was Bishop of Paris from A.D. 1159 till his death in A.D. 1164. He published a dogmatic treatise under the title of _Sententiarum Ll. IV._; of which Bk. 1 treated of God, Bk. 2 of Creatures, Bk. 3 of Redemption, Bk. 4 of the Sacraments and the Last Things. For centuries this was the textbook in theological seminaries and won for its author the designation of _Magister Sententiarum_. He himself compared this gift laid on the altar of the church to the widow’s mite, but the book attained a place of supreme importance in mediæval theology, had innumerable commentaries written on it and was officially authorized as the theological textbook by the Lateran Council of A.D. 1215. It is indeed a well arranged collection of the doctrinal deliverances of the Fathers, in which apparent contradictions are dialectically resolved, with great skill, and wrought up together into an articulate system, but from want of independence and occasional indecision or withholding of any definite opinion, it falls behind Hugo’s _Summa_ and Robert’s _Sentences_. It had this advantage, however, that it gave freer scope to scholars and teachers, and so was more stimulating as a textbook for academic use. The Lombard’s works include a commentary on the Psalms and _Catenæ_ on the Pauline Epistles.

3. The Frenchman =Peter of Poitiers= (_Pictaviensis_), one of the ablest followers of the Lombard, was chancellor of the University of Paris toward the end of the century. He wrote 5 bks. of Sentences or Distinctions, which in form and matter are closely modelled on the work of his master.

4. The most gifted of all the Summists of the 12th century was the German =Alanus ab Insulis=, born at Lille or Ryssel, lat. _Insulæ_. After teaching long at Paris, he entered the Cistercian order, and died at an advanced age at Clairvaux in A.D. 1203. A man of extensive erudition and a voluminous writer, he was called _Doctor universalis_. He wrote an allegorical poem _Anticlaudianus_, which describes how reason and faith in union with all the virtues restore human nature to perfection. His _Regulæ de s. theologia_ give a short outline of theology and morals in 125 paradoxical sentences which are tersely expounded. A short but able summary of the Christian faith is given in the 5 bks. _De arte catholicæ fidei_. This work is characterized by the use of a mathematical style of demonstration, like that of the later school of Wolf, and an avoidance of references to patristic authorities, which would have little weight with Mohammedans and heretics. He is thus rather an opponent than a representative of dialectic scholasticism. The _Summa quadripartita c. Hæreticos sui temporis_ ascribed to him was written by another Alanus.

§ 102.6. =The Controversy on German Soil.=--The provost =Gerhoch= and his brother, the dean =Arno= of Reichersberg in Bavaria, were representatives of the school of St. Victor as mediators between dialectics and mysticism. In A.D. 1150 Gerhoch addressed a memorial to Eugenius III., _De corrupto ecclesiæ statu_, and afterwards he published _De investigatione Antichristi_. He found the antichrist in the papal schisms of his times, in the ambition and covetousness of popes, in the corruptibility of the curia, in the manifold corruptions of the church, and especially in the spread of a dialectic destructive of all the mysteries of the faith. The controversy in which both of these brothers took most interest was that occasioned by the revival of Adoptionism in consequence of the teaching of French dialecticians, especially Abælard and Gilbert. It led to the formulating of the Christological doctrine in such a form as prepared the way for the later Lutheran theories of the _Communicatio idiomatum_ and the _Ubiquitas corporis Christi_ (§ 141, 9).--In South Germany, conspicuously in the schools of Bamberg, Freisingen, and Salzburg, the dialectic of Abælard, Gilbert, and the Lombard was predominant. Its chief representatives were =Folmar of Triefenstein= in Franconia and Bishop =Eberhard of Bamberg=. The controversy arose over the doctrine of the eucharist. Folmar had maintained like Berengar that not the actually glorified body of Christ is present in the sacrament, but only the spiritual substance of His flesh and blood, without muscles, sinews and bones. Against this gross Capernaitic view (John vi. 52, 59) Gerhoch maintained that the eucharistic body is the very resurrection body of Christ, the substance of which is a glorified corporeity without flesh and blood in a carnal sense, without sinews and bones. The bishop of Bamberg took offence at his friend’s bold rejection of the doctrine approved by the church, and so Folmar modified his position to the extent of admitting that there was on the altar not only the true, but also the whole body in the perfection of its human substance, under the form of bread and wine. But nevertheless both he and Abælard adhered to their radical error, a dialectical dismemberment of the two natures of Christ, according to which the divinity and humanity, the Son of God and the Son of man, were two strictly separate existences. Christ, they taught, is according to His humanity Son of God in no other way than a pious man is, _i.e._ by adoption; but according to His Divine nature He is like the Father omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. In respect of His human nature it must still be said by Him, “My Father is greater than I.” He dwells, however, bodily in heaven, and is shut in by and confined to it. Only His Divine nature can claim _Latria_ or _adoratio_, worship. Only _Dulia, cultus_, reverence, such as is due to saints, images, and relics, should be given to His body and blood upon the altar. Gerhoch’s doctrine of the Supper, on the other hand, is summed up in the proposition: He who receives the flesh of the Logos (_Caro Verbi_) receives also therewith the Logos in His flesh (_Verbum carnis_). Folmar and Eberhard denounced this as Eutychian heresy. A conference at Bamberg in A.D. 1158, where Gerhoch stood alone as representative of his views, ended by his opponents declaring that he had been convicted of heresy. In A.D. 1162 a Council at Friesach in Carinthia, under the presidency of Archbishop Eberhard of Salzburg, reached the same conclusion.

§ 102.7. =Theologians of a Pre-eminently Biblical and Ecclesiastico-Practical Tendency.=

1. =Alger of Liège=, teacher of the cathedral school there, was one of the most important German theologians in the beginning of the 12th century. He resigned his appointment in A.D. 1121, to spend his last years in the monastery of Clugny, in order to enjoy the company and friendship of its abbot, Peter the Venerable; and there he died about A.D. 1130. The school of Liège, in which he had himself been trained up in the high church Cluniac doctrine there prevalent, flourished greatly during his rule of twenty years. His chief works are _De Sacramentis corporis et sanguinis Domini_ in 3 bks., distinguished by acuteness and lucidity, and a controversial tract on the lines of Radbert against Berengar’s doctrine condemned by the church. In his _De misericordia et justitia_ he treats of church discipline with circumspection, clearness, and decision.