Western philosophy
History of Western philosophy from its development among the ancient
Greeks to the present.
Medieval philosophy
Medieval philosophy » The early Middle Ages » The Greek Fathers of the
Church and Erigena
Another stream from which Greek philosophy, especially Neoplatonic
thought, flowed into the Middle Ages was the Greek Fathers of the
Church, notably Origen (c. 185–c. 254), St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c.
394), Nemesius of Emesa (flourished 4th century), Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite (flourished c. 500), and St. Maximus the Confessor
(c.
580–662). In the 9th century John Scotus (810–c. 877), called Erigena
(“Belonging to the People of Erin”) because he was born in Ireland, a
master at the Carolingian court of Charles II the Bald (823–877),
translated into Latin some of the writings of these Greek theologians,
and his own major work, De divisione naturae (862–866; On the Division
of Nature), is a vast synthesis of Christian thought organized along
Neoplatonic lines. For Scotus, God is the primal unity, unknowable and
unnameable in himself, from which the multiplicity of creatures flows.
He so far transcends his creatures that he is most appropriately called
superreal and supergood. Creation is the process of division whereby the
many derive from the One. The One descends into the manifold of creation
and reveals himself in it. By the reverse process, the multiplicity of
creatures will return to their unitary source at the end of time, when
everything will be absorbed in God.
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Origen
Christian theologian
Latin in full Oregenes Adamantius
born c. 185, probably Alexandria, Egypt
died c. 254, Tyre, Phoenicia [now Ṣūr, Lebanon]
Main
the most important theologian and biblical scholar of the
early Greek church. His greatest work is the Hexapla, which
is a synopsis of six versions of the Old Testament.
Life
Origen was born of pagan parents, according to the
Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry, but of Christian parents,
according to the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius of
Caesarea, whose account is probably more accurate. Eusebius
stated that Origen’s father, Leonides, was martyred in the
persecution of 202, so that Origen had to provide for his
mother and six younger brothers. At first he lived in the
house of a wealthy lady. He then earned money by teaching
grammar and lived a life of strenuous asceticism. Eusebius
added that he was a pupil of Clement of Alexandria, whom he
succeeded as head of the Catechetical school under the
authority of the bishop Demetrius. Eusebius also alleged
that Origen, as a young man, castrated himself so as to work
freely in instructing female catechumens; but this was not
the only story told by the malicious about his extraordinary
chastity, and thus it may merely have been hostile gossip.
Eusebius’ account of Origen’s life, moreover, bears the
embellishments of legends of saints and needs to be treated
with this in mind.
According to Porphyry, Origen attended lectures given by
Ammonius Saccas, the founder of Neoplatonism. A letter of
Origen mentions his “teacher of philosophy,” at whose
lectures he met Heraclas, who was to become his junior
colleague, then his rival, and who was to end as bishop of
Alexandria refusing to hold communion with him. Origen
invited Heraclas to assist him with the elementary teaching
at the Catechetical school, leaving himself free for
advanced teaching and study. During this period (from c.
212), Origen learned Hebrew and began to compile his Hexapla.
A wealthy Christian named Ambrose, whom Origen converted
from the teachings of the heretical Valentinus and to whom
he dedicated many of his works, provided him with shorthand
writers. A stream of treatises and commentaries began to
pour from Origen’s pen. At Alexandria he wrote Miscellanies
(Stromateis), On the Resurrection (Peri anastaseos), and On
First Principles (De principiis). He also began his immense
commentary on St. John, written to refute the commentary of
the Gnostic follower of Valentinus, Heracleon. His studies
were interrupted by visits to Rome (where he met the
theologian Hippolytus), Arabia, Antioch, and Palestine.
Because of his reputation, Origen was much in demand as a
preacher, a circumstance that provoked the disapproval of
Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, who was anxious to control
this free lay teacher and especially angry when Origen was
allowed to preach at Caesarea Palestinae. In about 229–230
Origen went to Greece to dispute with another follower of
Valentinus, Candidus. On the way he was ordained presbyter
at Caesarea. The Valentinian doctrine that salvation and
damnation are predestinate, independent of volition, was
defended by Candidus on the ground that Satan is beyond
repentance; Origen replied that if Satan fell by will, even
he can repent. Demetrius, incensed at Origen’s ordination,
was appalled by such a doctrinal view and instigated a
synodical condemnation, which, however, was not accepted in
Greece and Palestine. Thenceforth, Origen lived at Caesarea,
where he attracted many pupils. One of his most notable
students was Gregory Thaumaturgus, later bishop of
Neocaesarea.
From Caesarea, Origen continued his travels. In 235 the
persecution of Maximinus found him in Cappadocia, from which
he addressed to Ambrose his Exhortation to Martyrdom. During
this period falls the “Discussion with Heracleides,” a
papyrus partially transcribing a debate at a church council
(probably in Arabia) where a local bishop was suspected of
denying the preexistence of the divine Word and where
obscure controversies raged over Christological issues and
whether the soul is, in actuality, blood. During the
persecution under the emperor Decius (250), Origen was
imprisoned and tortured but survived to die several years
later. His tomb at Tyre was held in honour, and its long
survival is attested by historians of the period of the
Crusades.
Writings
Origen’s main lifework was on the text of the Greek Old
Testament and on the exposition of the whole Bible. The
Hexapla was a synopsis of Old Testament versions: the Hebrew
and a transliteration, the Septuagint (an authoritative
Greek version of the Old Testament), the versions of Aquila,
Symmachus, and Theodotion and, for the Psalms, two further
translations (one being discovered by him in a jar in the
Jordan Valley). The purpose of the Hexapla was to provide a
secure basis for debate with rabbis to whom the Hebrew alone
was authoritative.
Origen’s exegetical writings consist of commentaries
(scholarly expositions for instructed Christians), homilies
for mixed congregations, and scholia (detached comments on
particular passages or books). All extant manuscripts of the
commentary on St. John, which extended to 32 books, depend
on a codex preserved in Munich containing only a few of the
books. This codex and a related manuscript at Trinity
College, Cambridge, are the sole witnesses for the Greek
original of books 10–17 of his commentary on St. Matthew.
Greek fragments of this, as of most of Origen’s exegetical
works, survive in writings known as catenae (“chains”; i.e.,
anthologies of comments by early Church Fathers on biblical
books). Commentaries on the Song of Solomon and on Romans
survive in a drastically abbreviated Latin paraphrase by the
Christian writer Tyrannius Rufinus (c. 365–410/411). The
homilies on Genesis through the Book of Judges (except
Deuteronomy) and Psalms 36–38 survive in a Latin translation
by Rufinus. Jerome, the great Christian scholar (c. 347–c.
420), translated homilies on the Song of Solomon, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Luke. These Latin homilies were
widely read in medieval monasteries and have a rich
manuscript tradition. The Greek original of homilies on
Jeremiah survives in a single manuscript in the Escorial
(Spain), and that of a homily on the witch of Endor (which
provoked early criticism for its thesis that Samuel really
was conjured up) in a manuscript in Munich and on papyrus.
Prior to 231 Origen wrote De principiis, an ordered
statement of Christian doctrine on an ambitious scale, based
on the presupposition that every Christian is committed to
the rule of faith laid down by the Apostles (the Creator as
God of both Old and New Testaments, the incarnation of the
preexistent Lord, the Holy Spirit as one of the divine
triad, the freedom of rational souls, discarnate spirits,
the noneternity of the world, judgment to come) but that
outside this restriction the educated believer is free to
speculate. Origen was writing long before the conciliar
definitions of Chalcedon (451) concerning the Trinity and
the Person of Christ and at a period when a far larger area
of doctrine could be regarded as open for discussion and
argument than was the case by 400. De principiis diverged in
its speculations from later standards of orthodoxy. The
original was consequently lost and can only be reconstructed
from the Philocalia (an anthology compiled by Basil the
Great and Gregory of Nazianzus illustrating Origen’s
biblical interpretation), from Rufinus’ Latin paraphrase
(which avowedly rewrites heterodox-sounding passages), and
from later writers, notably Jerome and Justinian I (who
quote especially compromising passages to prove Origen a
heretic). The polemical anti-Origenists, however, need to be
read with care since they were not above misquoting Origen
and ascribing to him the words of later Origenists.
Origen’s great vindication of Christianity against pagan
attack, Contra Celsum, written (probably in 248) at
Ambrose’s request, survives in its entirety in one Vatican
manuscript, with fragments in the Philocalia and on
papyruses. Paragraph by paragraph it answers the Alēthēs
logos (“The True Doctrine” or “Discourse”) of the
2nd-century anti-Christian philosopher Celsus and is
therefore a principal source for the pagan intelligentsia’s
view of 2nd-century Christianity as well as a classic
formulation of early Christian reply. Both protagonists
agree in their basic Platonic presuppositions, but beside
this agreement, serious differences are argued. Celsus’
brusque dismissal of Christianity as a crude and bucolic
onslaught on the religious traditions and intellectual
values of classical culture provoked Origen to a sustained
rejoinder in which he claimed that a philosophic mind has a
right to think within a Christian framework and that the
Christian faith is neither a prejudice of the unreasoning
masses nor a crutch for social outcasts or nonconformists.
The tract On Prayer, preserved in one manuscript at
Cambridge, was written in about 233; it expounds the Lord’s
Prayer and discusses some of the philosophical problems of
petition, arguing that petition can only be excluded by a
determinism false to the experience of personality, while
the highest prayer is an elevation of the soul beyond
material things to a passive inward union with Christ,
mediator between men and the Father.
Theological System
Origen’s experience as a teacher is reflected in his
continual emphasis upon a scale of spiritual apprehension.
Christianity to him was a ladder of divine ascent, and the
beginner must learn to mount it with the saints in a
never-ceasing advance.
Everything in Origen’s theology ultimately turns upon the
goodness of God and the freedom of the creature. The
transcendent God is the source of all existence and is good,
just, and omnipotent. This omnipotence is never mere power
emptied of moral quality; one cannot appeal to it to
rationalize absurdity or the extraordinary. In overflowing
love, God created rational and spiritual beings through the
Logos (Word); this creative act involves a degree of
self-limitation on God’s part.
In relation to the created order, God is both conditioned
and unconditioned, free and under necessity, since he is
both transcendent to and immanently active in it. In one
sense, the cosmos is eternally necessary to God since one
cannot conceive such goodness and power as inactive at any
time. Yet in another sense, the cosmos is not necessary to
God but is dependent on his will, to which it also owes its
continued existence. Origen was aware that there is no
solution of this dilemma. The rational beings, however,
neglected to adore God and fell. The material world was
created by God as a means of discipline (and its natural
catastrophes such as earthquakes and plagues remind man that
this world is not his ultimate destiny). Origen speculated
that souls fell varying distances, some to be angels, some
descending into human bodies, and the most wicked becoming
devils. (Origen believed in the preexistence of souls, but
not in transmigration nor in the incorporation of rational
souls in animal bodies.) Redemption is a grand education by
providence, restoring all souls to their original
blessedness, for none, not even Satan, is so depraved and
has so lost rationality and freedom as to be beyond
redemption. God never coerces, though with reformative
intention he may punish. His punishments are remedial; even
if simple believers may need to think of them as
retributive, this is pedagogic accommodation to inferior
capacity, not the truth.
The climax of redemption is the incarnation of the
preexistent Son. One soul had not fallen but had remained in
adoring union with the Father. Uniting himself with this
soul, the divine Logos, who is the second hypostasis
(Person) of the triad of Father, Son, and Spirit
(subordinate to the Father but on the divine side of the
gulf between infinite Creator and finite creation), became
incarnate in a body derived from the Virgin Mary. So intense
was the union between Christ’s soul and the Logos that it is
like the union of body and soul, of white-hot iron and fire.
Like all souls Christ’s had free will, but the intensity of
union destroyed all inclination for change, and the Logos
united to himself not only soul but also body, as was
apparent when Jesus was transfigured. Origen, influenced by
a semi-Gnostic writing, the Acts of John, thought that
Jesus’ body appeared differently to different observers
according to their spiritual capacities. Some saw nothing
remarkable in him, others recognized in him their Lord and
God. In his commentary on St. John, Origen collected titles
of Christ, such as Lamb, Redeemer, Wisdom, Truth, Light,
Life. Though the Father is One, the Son is many and has many
grades, like rungs in a ladder of mystical ascent, steps up
to the Holy of Holies, the beatific vision.
The union of God and man in Christ is pattern for that of
Christ and the believer. The individual soul, as well as the
church, is the bride of the Logos, and the mystery of that
union is portrayed in the Song of Solomon, Origen’s
commentary on which was regarded by Jerome (in the period of
his enthusiasm for Origen) as his masterpiece. Thus,
redemption restores fallen souls from matter to spirit, from
image to reality, a principle directly exemplified both in
the sacraments and in the inspired biblical writings, in
which the inward spirit is veiled under the letter of law,
history, myth, and parable. The commentator’s task is to
penetrate the allegory, to perceive within the material body
of Scripture its soul and spirit, to discover its
existential reference for the individual Christian. Correct
exegesis (critical interpretation) is the gift of grace to
those spiritually worthy.
Origen viewed both the biblical revelation and the
spiritual life of the believer as progressive processes. The
church is the great “school of souls” in which erring pupils
are disciplined: elementary education in this life, higher
education in the world to come, where the atoning and
sanctifying process will continue in a purging baptism of
fire. Hell cannot be an absolute since God cannot abandon
any creature; because of his respect for freedom it may take
time, but God’s love will ultimately triumph. Christ’s work
remains unfinished until he has subdued all to himself.
Heaven is not necessarily absolute because freedom is an
inalienable characteristic of the rational creature. “If you
remove free will from virtue, you destroy its essence.”
Because the redeemed remain free, when all souls have been
restored the whole drama may begin again. The Stoics
believed in world cycles determined by fate. Origen thought
them possible for the opposite reason, because freedom means
that there is no ultimate finality.
Influence
If orthodoxy were a matter of intention, no theologian could
be more orthodox than Origen, none more devoted to the cause
of Christian faith. His natural temper is world denying and
even illiberal. The saintliness of his life is reflected in
the insight of his commentaries and the sometimes quite
passionate devotion of his homilies. The influence of his
biblical exegesis and ascetic ideals is hard to
overestimate; his commentaries were freely plagiarized by
later exegetes, both Eastern and Western, and he is a
seminal mind for the beginnings of monasticism. Through the
writings of the monk Evagrius Ponticus (346–399), his ideas
passed not only into the Greek ascetic tradition but also to
John Cassian (360–435), a Semi-Pelagian monk (who emphasized
the worth of man’s moral effort), and to the West. Yet he
has been charged with many heresies.
In his lifetime he was often attacked, suspected of
adulterating the Gospel with pagan philosophy. After his
death, opposition steadily mounted, respectful in the Greek
Christian Methodius of Olympus’ criticism of his
spiritualizing doctrine of the Resurrection (c. 300),
offensive in Epiphanius’ (375), a refuter of Christian
heresies, violent in Jerome’s anti-Origenist quarrel with
Rufinus (c. 393–402). Origen had his defenders, especially
in the East (Eusebius of Caesarea; Didymus the Blind, the
head of Catechetical School of Alexandria; Athanasius,
bishop of Alexandria, to some degree; and especially the
Cappadocian Fathers—i.e., Basil the Great, Gregory of
Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa); but in the West Rufinus’
translation of De principiis (398) caused scandal, and in
the East the cause of Origen suffered by the permanent
influence of Epiphanius’ attack.
In the 6th century the “New Laura” (monastic community)
in Palestine became a centre for an Origenist movement among
the monastic intelligentsia, hospitable to speculations
about such matters as preexistent souls and universal
salvation. The resultant controversy led Justinian I to
issue a long edict denouncing Origen (543); the condemnation
was extended also to Didymus and Evagrius by the fifth
ecumenical council at Constantinople (553). Nevertheless,
Origen’s influence persisted, such as in the writings of the
Byzantine monk Maximus the Confessor (c. 550–662) and the
Irish theologian John Scotus Erigena (c. 810–877), and,
since Renaissance times, controversy has continued
concerning his orthodoxy, Western writers being generally
more favourable than Eastern Orthodox.
The chief accusations against Origen’s teaching are the
following: making the Son inferior to the Father and thus
being a precursor of Arianism, a 4th-century heresy that
denied that the Father and the Son were of the same
substance; spiritualizing away the resurrection of the body;
denying hell, a morally enervating universalism; speculating
about preexistent souls and world cycles; and dissolving
redemptive history into timeless myth by using allegorical
interpretation. None of these charges is altogether
groundless. At the same time there is much reason to justify
Jerome’s first judgment that Origen was the greatest teacher
of the early church after the Apostles.
The Very Rev. Henry Chadwick
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Saint Gregory of Nyssa
Byzantine philosopher and theologian
Latin Gregorius Nyssenus
born c. 335, Caesarea, in Cappadocia, Asia Minor [now
Kayseri, Turkey]
died c. 394, ; feast day March 9
Main
philosophical theologian and mystic, leader of the orthodox
party in the 4th-century Christian controversies over the
doctrine of the Trinity. Primarily a scholar, he wrote many
theological, mystical, and monastic works in which he
balanced Platonic and Christian traditions.
A younger son of a distinguished family, Gregory was
educated in his native province but was more deeply
influenced by his philosophical training than by the other
two Cappadocian Fathers of the Church, his brother Basil of
Caesarea and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus. He began his
adult life as a teacher of rhetoric and may have been
married—although several references that suggest this are
capable of a different interpretation, and the strictures on
marriage in his treatise On Virginity seem to imply the
contrary. In the 360s he turned to religious studies and
Christian devotion, perhaps even to the monastic life, under
Basil’s inspiration and guidance. As part of Basil’s
struggle with Bishop Anthimus of Tyana—whose city became the
metropolis (civil and therefore ecclesiastical capital) of
western Cappadocia in 372—Gregory was consecrated as bishop
of Nyssa, a small city in the new province of Cappadocia
Secunda, which Basil wished to retain in his ecclesiastical
jurisdiction. In 375, however, Gregory was accused of
maladministration by the provincial governor as part of the
Arianizing campaign of the Roman emperor Valens (an attempt
to force the church to accept the views of the heretic Arius,
who denied the divinity of Christ). He was deposed in 376 by
a synod of bishops and banished. But on Valens’ death in 378
his congregation welcomed him back enthusiastically.
Though Basil had considered Gregory unsuited for
ecclesiastical diplomacy, after his return to his diocese he
was active in the settlement of church affairs in the years
that followed. In 379 he attended a council at Antioch and
was sent on a special mission to the churches of Arabia
(i.e., Transjordan); his visit to Jerusalem on this occasion
left him with a dislike for the increasingly fashionable
pilgrimages, an opinion he expressed vigorously in one of
his letters. In 381 he took part in the General (second
ecumenical) Council at Constantinople and was recognized by
the emperor Theodosius as one of the leaders of the orthodox
communion in Cappadocia, along with Basil’s successor at
Caesarea. Gregory declined election to the important
bishopric of Sebaste; however, the care of his small diocese
left him free to preach at Constantinople on such special
occasions as the funerals of Theodosius’ wife and daughter.
Under the unlearned Nectarius, the successor of Gregory of
Nazianzus at Constantinople, Gregory of Nyssa was the
leading orthodox theologian of the church in Asia Minor in
the struggle against the Arians.
Gregory was primarily a scholar, whose chief contribution
lay in his writings. Besides controversial replies to
heretics, particularly the Arians—in which he formulated the
doctrine of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) that
emerged as a clear and cogent answer to Arian questioning—he
completed Basil’s Hexaëmeron (“Six Days”), sermons on the
days of the Creation, with The Creation of Man, and he
produced a classic outline of orthodox theology in his Great
Catechesis (or Address on Religious Instruction). The latter
work is especially notable for developing systematically the
place of the sacraments in the Christian view of restoration
of the image of God in human nature—lost through sin in the
fall of Adam. His brief treatise On Not Three Gods relates
the Cappadocian Fathers’ theology of three Persons in the
Godhead (i.e., the Trinity) to Plato’s teachings of the One
and the Many. As a Christian Platonist, Gregory followed the
great Alexandrian theologian Origen, though not slavishly;
most notably, he shared Origen’s conviction that man’s
material nature is a result of the fall and also Origen’s
hope for ultimate universal salvation. In imitation of
Plato’s Phaedo, Gregory presented his teaching on
resurrection in the form of a deathbed conversation with his
sister, the abbess Macrina.
Platonic and Christian inspiration combine in Gregory’s
ascetic and mystical writings, which have been influential
in the devotional traditions of the Eastern Orthodox church
and (indirectly) of the Western church. His Life of Macrina
blends biography with instruction in the monastic life. On
Virginity and other treatises on the ascetic life are
crowned by the mystical Life of Moses, which treats the
13th-century-bc journey of the Hebrews from Egypt to Mount
Sinai as a pattern of the progress of the soul through the
temptations of the world to a vision of God. A notable
emphasis of Gregory’s teaching is the principle that the
spiritual life is not one of static perfection but of
constant progress. His greatest achievement is his
remarkably balanced synthesis of Hellenic (Greek) and
Christian traditions, in an age when both were represented
by vigorous and acute minds.
Gregory did not, however, neglect his practical and
pastoral duties, as is attested by his preserved letters and
sermons. Many of the latter were written in praise of the
saints venerated in Cappadocia or to celebrate the great
days of the church year. Others, such as Gregory’s attacks
on usury and on the postponement of Baptism, deal with
ethical problems of the church in his time. His more
intimate discourses on the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes
(Matthew 5:3–12) combine ethical and devotional interests,
as does his commentary on the Song of Solomon. Gregory
disliked attending gatherings of bishops but was
periodically invited to preach at such occasions. His last
public appearance was at a council at Constantinople.
Gregory’s ecclesiastical career was less successful than
those of Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus, but his work as
scholar and writer was creative, and in the 20th century it
was rescued from undeserved neglect.
Edward R. Hardy
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Saint Maximus the Confessor
Byzantine theologian
born c. 580, Constantinople
died Aug. 13, 662, Lazica
Main
the most important Byzantine theologian of the 7th century,
whose commentaries on the early 6th-century Christian
Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and on the
Greek Church Fathers considerably influenced the theology
and mysticism of the Middle Ages.
A court secretary of the Eastern Roman emperor Heraclius
I, Maximus became a monk c. 613 at a monastery near
Chrysopolis in Bithynia. Fleeing to North Africa because of
the Persian invasion of 626, he took part at Carthage (near
modern Tunis) in the Monothelite controversy over the
doctrine that Christ, while having two distinct natures,
divine and human, in his one Person (a doctrine firmly
established) nonetheless had only one will and one
operation. Arguing for a dual-will faculty in Christ,
Maximus was called to Rome, where he supported the
condemnation of Monothelitism by a regional church council
under Pope Martin I in 649. Maximus and Martin were arrested
by the emperor Constans II in an intricate
theological–political tactic, and, after imprisonment from
653 to 655, Maximus was later tortured and exiled; he died
in the wilderness near the Black Sea.
Throughout his approximately 90 major works Maximus
developed a Christocentric theology and mysticism. His
Opuscula theologica et polemica (“Short Theological and
Polemical Treatises”), Ambigua (“Ambiguities” in the works
of Gregory of Nazianzus), and Scholia (on Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite), mostly authentic, express Maximus’ teaching
on the transcendental, nonpredicable nature of the divinity,
his intrinsic Trinitarian existence, and his definitive
communication in Christ. In his 400 Capita de caritate
(“Four Hundred Chapters on Charity”), Maximus counselled a
Christian humanism, integrating asceticism with ordinary
life and active charity.
Maximus’ attempt to achieve balance in spiritual theory
and practice was not always furthered by later theologians;
he thus remains an independent and original thinker in the
history of Christian speculation.
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John Scotus Erigena
Irish philosopher
also called Johannes Scotus Eriugena
born 810, Ireland
died c. 877
Main
theologian, translator, and commentator on several earlier
authors in works centring on the integration of Greek and
Neoplatonist philosophy with Christian belief.
From about 845, Erigena lived at the court of the West
Frankish king Charles II the Bald, near Laon (now in
France), first as a teacher of grammar and dialectics. He
participated in theological disputes over the Eucharist and
predestination and set forth his position on the latter in
De predestinatione (851; “On Predestination”), a work
condemned by church authorities. Erigena’s translations of
the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Maximus
the Confessor, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Epiphanius,
commissioned by Charles, made those Greek patristic writings
accessible to Western thinkers.
Erigena’s familiarity with dialectics and with the ideas
of his theological predecessors was reflected in his
principal work, De divisione naturae (862–866; “On the
Division of Nature”), an attempt to reconcile the
Neoplatonist doctrine of emanation with the Christian tenet
of creation. The work classifies nature into (1) that which
creates and is not created; (2) that which creates and is
created; (3) that which does not create and is created; and
(4) that which does not create and is not created. The first
and the fourth are God as beginning and end; the second and
third are the dual mode of existence of created beings (the
intelligible and the sensible). The return of all creatures
to God begins with release from sin, physical death, and
entry into the life hereafter. Man, for Erigena, is a
microcosm of the universe because he has senses to perceive
the world, reason to examine the intelligible natures and
causes of things, and intellect to contemplate God. Through
sin man’s animal nature has predominated, but through
redemption man becomes reunited with God.
Though highly influential upon Erigena’s successors,
notably the Western mystics and the 13th-century
Scholastics, De divisione naturae eventually suffered
condemnation by the church because of its pantheistic
implications. The works of Erigena are in J.-P. Migne’s
Patrologia Latina, Vol. 122.
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Medieval philosophy » The early Middle Ages » Anselm
Although the Carolingian empire collapsed in the 10th century and
intellectual speculation was at a low ebb in western Europe, signs of
revival appeared almost contemporaneously. Political stability was
achieved by Otto I, who reestablished the empire in 963, and Benedictine
monasteries were revitalized by reform movements begun at Cluny and
Gorze. In the next century, reformers such as Peter Damian combined the
ascetic and monastic traditions and laid the foundation for the vita
apostolica. Like Tertullian, a Christian writer of the 2nd and 3rd
centuries, Damian mistrusted secular learning and philosophy as harmful
to the faith. Other monks showed a keen interest in dialectic and
philosophy. Among the latter was Anselm, an Italian who became abbot of
the French monastery of Bec and later archbishop of Canterbury.
Like Augustine, Anselm used both faith and reason in his search for
truth. Faith comes first, in his view, but reason should follow, giving
reasons for what human beings believe. Anselm’s monks asked him to write
a model meditation on God in which everything would be proved by reason
and nothing on the authority of Scripture. He replied with his Monologium (1077; “Monologue”). It contains three proofs of the
existence of God, all of which are based on Neoplatonic thought. The
first proof moves from the awareness of a multiplicity of good things to
the recognition that they all share or participate more or less in one
and the same Good, which is supremely good in itself, and this is God.
The second and third proofs are similar, moving from an awareness of a
multiplicity of beings that are more or less perfect to the recognition
of that through which everything exists, which itself is supremely
perfect.
Anselm’s later work, the Proslogium (1077/78; “Allocution” or
“Address”), contains his most famous proof of the existence of God. This
begins with a datum of faith: humans believe God to be the being than
which none greater can be conceived. Some, like the fool in the Psalms,
say there is no God; but even the fool, on hearing these words,
understands them, and what he understands exists in his intellect, even
though he does not grant that such a being exists in reality. But it is
greater to exist in reality and in the understanding than to exist in
the understanding alone. Therefore it is contradictory to hold that God
exists only in the intellect, for then the being than which none greater
can be conceived is one than which a greater can be conceived—namely,
one that exists both in reality and in the understanding. Philosophers
still debate the meaning and value of this so-called ontological
argument for God’s existence.
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Saint Anselm of Canterbury
archbishop and philosopher
born 1033/34, Aosta, Lombardy
died April 21, 1109, possibly at Canterbury, Kent, Eng.,
canonized 1163?; feast day April 21
Main
founder of Scholasticism, a philosophical school of thought
that dominated the Middle Ages; he was recognized in modern
times as the originator of the ontological argument for the
existence of God (based on the idea of an absolutely perfect
being, the fact of the idea being in itself a demonstration
of existence) and the satisfaction theory of the atonement
or redemption (based on the feudal theory of making
satisfaction or recompense according to the status of a
person against whom an offense has been committed, the
infinite God being the offended party and man the offender).
Incomplete evidence suggests that he was canonized in 1163.
Early life and career.
Anselm was born in the Piedmont region of northwestern
Italy. His birthplace, Aosta, was a town of strategic
importance in Roman imperial and in medieval times, because
it stood at the juncture of the Great and Little St. Bernard
routes. His mother, Ermenberga, belonged to a noble
Burgundian family and possessed considerable property. His
father, Gondolfo, was a Lombard nobleman who intended that
Anselm would make a career of politics and did not approve
of his early decision to enter the monastic life. Anselm
received an excellent classical education and was considered
one of the better Latinists of his day. His early education
impressed on him the need to be precise in his use of words,
and his writings became known for their clarity.
In 1057 Anselm left Aosta to enter the Benedictine
monastery at Bec (located between Rouen and Lisieux in
Normandy, France), because he wanted to study under the
monastery’s renowned prior, Lanfranc. While on his way to
Bec, he learned that Lanfranc was in Rome, so he spent some
time at Lyon, Cluny, and Avranches before entering the
monastery in 1060. In 1060 or 1061 he took his monastic
vows. Because of Anselm’s reputation for great intellectual
ability and sincere piety, he was elected prior of the
monastery after Lanfranc became abbot of Caen in 1063. In
1078 he became abbot of Bec.
In the previous year (1077), Anselm had written the
Monologium (“Monologue”) at the request of some of his
fellow monks. A theological treatise, the Monologium was
both apologetic and religious in intent. It attempted to
demonstrate the existence and attributes of God by an appeal
to reason alone rather than by the customary appeal to
authorities favoured by earlier medieval thinkers. Moving
from an analysis of the inequalities of various aspects of
perfection, such as justice, wisdom, and power, Anselm
argued for an absolute norm that is everywhere at all times,
above both time and space, a norm that can be comprehended
by the mind of man. Anselm asserted that that norm is God,
the absolute, ultimate, and integrating standard of
perfection.
Under Anselm, Bec became a centre of monastic learning
and some theological questioning. Lanfranc had been a
renowned theologian, but Anselm surpassed him. He continued
his efforts to answer satisfactorily questions concerning
the nature and existence of God. His Proslogium (“Address,”
or “Allocution”), originally titled Fides quaerens
intellectum (“Faith Seeking Understanding”), established the
ontological argument for the existence of God. In it he
argued that even a fool has an idea of a being greater than
which no other being can be conceived to exist; that such a
being must really exist, for the very idea of such a being
implies its existence.
Anselm’s ontological argument was challenged by a
contemporary monk, Gaunilo of Marmoutier, in the Liber pro
insipiente, or “Book in Behalf of the Fool Who Says in His
Heart There Is No God.” Gaunilo denied that an idea of a
being includes existence in the objective order and that a
direct intuition of God necessarily includes God’s
existence. Anselm wrote in reply his Liber apologeticus
contra Gaunilonem (“Book [of] Defense Against Gaunilo”),
which was a repetition of the ontological argument of the
Proslogium.
Appointment as archbishop of Canterbury.
William the Conqueror, who had established Norman
overlordship of England in 1066, was a benefactor of the
monastery at Bec, and lands in both England and Normandy
were granted to Bec. Anselm made three visits to England to
view these lands. During one of those visits, while Anselm
was founding a priory at Chester, William II Rufus, the son
and successor of William the Conqueror, named him archbishop
of Canterbury (March 1093). The see had been kept vacant
since the death of Lanfranc in 1089, during which period the
King had confiscated its revenues and pillaged its lands.
Anselm accepted the position somewhat reluctantly but
with an intention of reforming the English Church. He
refused to be consecrated as archbishop until William
restored the lands to Canterbury and acknowledged Urban II
as the rightful pope against the antipope Clement III. In
fear of death from an illness, William agreed to the
conditions, and Anselm was consecrated Dec. 4, 1093. When
William recovered, however, he demanded from the new
archbishop a sum of money, which Anselm refused to pay lest
it look like simony (payment for an ecclesiastical
position). In response to Anselm’s refusal, William refused
to allow Anselm to go to Rome to receive the pallium—a
mantle, the symbol of papal approval of his archiepiscopal
appointment—from Urban II, lest this be taken as an implied
royal recognition of Urban. In claiming that the king had no
right to interfere in what was essentially an ecclesiastical
matter, Anselm became a major figure in the investiture
controversy; i.e., over the question as to whether a secular
ruler (e.g., emperor or king) or the pope had the primary
right to invest an ecclesiastical authority, such as a
bishop, with the symbols of his office.
The controversy continued for two years. On March 11,
1095, the English bishops, at the Synod of Rockingham, sided
with the King against Anselm. When the papal legate brought
the pallium from Rome, Anselm refused to accept it from
William, since it would then appear that he owed his
spiritual and ecclesiastical authority to the king. William
permitted Anselm to leave for Rome, but on his departure he
seized the lands of Canterbury.
Anselm attended the Council of Bari (Italy) in 1098 and
presented his grievances against the King to Urban II. He
took an active part in the sessions, defending the doctrine
of the Filioque (“and from the Son”) clause in the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed against the Greek Church,
which had been in schism with the Western Church since 1054.
The Filioque clause, added to the Western version of the
Creed, indicated that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the
Father and Son. The Greek Church rejected the Filioque
clause as a later addition. The Council also reapproved
earlier decrees against investiture of ecclesiastics by lay
officials.
The satisfaction theory of redemption.
When Anselm left England, he had taken with him an
incomplete manuscript of his work Cur Deus homo? (“Why Did
God Become Man?”). After the Council of Bari, he withdrew to
the village of Liberi, near Capua, and completed the
manuscript in 1099. This work became the classic treatment
of the satisfaction theory of redemption. According to this
theory, which is based upon the feudal structure of society,
finite man has committed a crime (sin) against infinite God.
In feudal society, an offender was required to make
recompense, or satisfaction, to the one offended according
to that person’s status. Thus, a crime against a king would
require more satisfaction than a crime against a baron or a
serf. According to this way of thinking, finite man, since
he could never make satisfaction to the infinite God, could
expect only eternal death. The instrument for bringing man
back into a right relationship with God, therefore, had to
be the God-man (Christ), by whose infinite merits man is
purified in an act of cooperative re-creation. Anselm
rejected the view that man, through his sin, owes a debt to
the devil, and placed the essence of redemption in
individual union with Christ in the Eucharist (Lord’s
Supper), to which the sacrament of Baptism (by which a
person is incorporated into the church) opens the way.
After completing Cur Deus homo? Anselm attended a council
at the Lateran (papal palace) in Rome at Easter 1099. One
year later, William Rufus died in a hunting accident under
suspicious circumstances, and his brother Henry I seized the
English throne. In order to gain ecclesiastical support, he
sought for and secured the backing of Anselm, who returned
to England. Anselm soon broke with the King, however, when
Henry insisted on his right to invest ecclesiastics with the
spiritual symbols of their office. Three times the King
sought an exemption, and each time the Pope refused. During
this controversy, Anselm was in exile, from April 1103 to
August 1106. At the Synod of Westminster (1107), the dispute
was settled. The King renounced investiture of bishops and
abbots with the ring and crosier (staff), the symbols of
their office. He demanded, however, that they do homage to
him prior to consecration. The Westminster Agreement was a
model for the Concordat of Worms (1122), which settled for a
time the lay-investiture controversy in the Holy Roman
Empire.
Anselm spent the last two years of his life in peace. In
1163, with new canons requiring approvals for canonization
(official recognition of persons as saints), Archbishop
Thomas Becket of Canterbury (1118?–1170) referred Anselm’s
cause to Rome. Anselm was probably canonized at this time,
for the Canterbury records for 1170 make frequent mention of
the pilgrimages to his new shrine in the cathedral. For
several centuries he was venerated locally. Clement XI (pope
from 1700 to 1721) declared Anselm a doctor (teacher) of the
church in 1720.
The Rev. John Arthur Kemp, S.J.
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Medieval philosophy » The early Middle Ages » Bernard de Clairvaux and
Abelard
Anselm’s inquiry into the existence and nature of God, as also his
discussion of truth, love, and human liberty, aimed at fostering
monastic contemplation. Other monks, such as the Cistercian St. Bernard
de Clairvaux (1090–1153), were suspicious of the use of secular learning
and philosophy in matters of faith. Bernard complained of the excessive
indulgence in dialectic displayed by contemporaries such as Peter
Abelard (1079–1142). He himself developed a doctrine of mystical love,
the influence of which lasted for centuries. The monks of the Parisian
abbey of Saint-Victor were no less intent on fostering mystical
contemplation, but they cultivated the liberal arts and philosophy as an
aid to it. In this spirit, Hugh of Saint-Victor (1096–1141) wrote his Didascalicon (c. 1127; “Teaching”; Eng. trans., Didascalicon), a
monumental treatise on the theoretical and practical sciences and on the
trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic,
music, geometry, astronomy). During the same period the School of
Chartres, attached to the famous Chartres Cathedral near Paris, was the
focus of Christian Neoplatonism and humanism.
Urban development in the 12th century shifted the centre of learning
and education from the monasteries to the towns. Abelard founded and
taught in several urban schools near Paris. A passionate logician, he
pioneered a method in theology that contributed to the later Scholastic
method. His Sic et non (1115–17; Yes and No) cites the best authorities
on both sides of theological questions in order to reach their correct
solution. In philosophy his main interest was logic. On the question of
universals, he agreed with neither the nominalists nor the realists of
his day (see nominalism and realism). His nominalist teacher Roscelin
(c. 1050–c. 1125) held that universals, such as “man” and “animal,” are
nothing but words, or names (flatus vocis). Abelard argued that this
does not take into account the fact that names have meaning. His realist
teacher William of Champeaux (c. 1070–1121) taught that universals are
realities apart from the mind. For Abelard, only individuals are real;
universals are indeed names or mental concepts, but they have meaning
because they refer to individuals. They do not signify an essence common
to individuals, as the realists maintained (e.g., the essence “humanity”
shared by all human beings), but signify instead the individuals in
their common condition, or status, of being in a certain species, which
results from God having created them according to the same divine idea.
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Saint Bernard de Clairvaux
French abbot
born 1090, probably Fontaine-les-Dijon, near Dijon,
Burgundy
died Aug. 20, 1153, Clairvaux, Champagne; canonized Jan. 18,
1174; feast day August 20
Main
Cistercian monk and mystic, the founder and abbot of the
abbey of Clairvaux and one of the most influential churchmen
of his time.
Early life and career.
Born of Burgundian landowning aristocracy, Bernard grew up
in a family of five brothers and one sister. The familial
atmosphere engendered in him a deep respect for mercy,
justice, and loyal affection for others. Faith and morals
were taken seriously, but without priggishness. Both his
parents were exceptional models of virtue. It is said that
his mother, Aleth, exerted a virtuous influence upon Bernard
only second to what Monica had done for Augustine of Hippo
in the 5th century. Her death, in 1107, so affected Bernard
that he claimed that this is when his “long path to complete
conversion” began. He turned away from his literary
education, begun at the school at Châtillon-sur-Seine, and
from ecclesiastical advancement, toward a life of
renunciation and solitude.
Bernard sought the counsel of the abbot of Cîteaux,
Stephen Harding, and decided to enter this struggling,
small, new community that had been established by Robert of
Molesmes in 1098 as an effort to restore Benedictinism to a
more primitive and austere pattern of life. Bernard took his
time in terminating his domestic affairs and in persuading
his brothers and some 25 companions to join him. He entered
the Cîteaux community in 1112, and from then until 1115 he
cultivated his spiritual and theological studies.
Bernard’s struggles with the flesh during this period may
account for his early and rather consistent penchant for
physical austerities. He was plagued most of his life by
impaired health, which took the form of anemia, migraine,
gastritis, hypertension, and an atrophied sense of taste.
Founder and abbot of Clairvaux.
In 1115 Stephen Harding appointed him to lead a small group
of monks to establish a monastery at Clairvaux, on the
borders of Burgundy and Champagne. Four brothers, an uncle,
two cousins, an architect, and two seasoned monks under the
leadership of Bernard endured extreme deprivations for well
over a decade before Clairvaux was self-sufficient.
Meanwhile, as Bernard’s health worsened, his spirituality
deepened. Under pressure from his ecclesiastical superiors
and his friends, notably the bishop and scholar William of
Champeaux, he retired to a hut near the monastery and to the
discipline of a quack physician. It was here that his first
writings evolved. They are characterized by repetition of
references to the Church Fathers and by the use of
analogues, etymologies, alliterations, and biblical symbols,
and they are imbued with resonance and poetic genius. It was
here, also, that he produced a small but complete treatise
on Mariology (study of doctrines and dogmas concerning the
Virgin Mary), “Praises of the Virgin Mother.” Bernard was to
become a major champion of a moderate cult of the Virgin,
though he did not support the notion of Mary’s immaculate
conception.
By 1119 the Cistercians had a charter approved by Pope
Calixtus II for nine abbeys under the primacy of the abbot
of Cîteaux. Bernard struggled and learned to live with the
inevitable tension created by his desire to serve others in
charity through obedience and his desire to cultivate his
inner life by remaining in his monastic enclosure. His more
than 300 letters and sermons manifest his quest to combine a
mystical life of absorption in God with his friendship for
those in misery and his concern for the faithful execution
of responsibilities as a guardian of the life of the church.
It was a time when Bernard was experiencing what he
apprehended as the divine in a mystical and intuitive
manner. He could claim a form of higher knowledge that is
the complement and fruition of faith and that reaches
completion in prayer and contemplation. He could also
commune with nature and say:
Believe me, for I know, you will find something far
greater in the woods than in books. Stones and trees will
teach you that which you cannot learn from the masters.
After writing a eulogy for the new military order of the
Knights Templar he would write about the fundamentals of the
Christian’s spiritual life, namely, the contemplation and
imitation of Christ, which he expressed in his sermons “The
Steps of Humility” and “The Love of God.”
Pillar of the church.
The mature and most active phase of Bernard’s career
occurred between 1130 and 1145. In these years both
Clairvaux and Rome, the centre of gravity of medieval
Christendom, focussed upon Bernard. Mediator and counsellor
for several civil and ecclesiastical councils and for
theological debates during seven years of papal disunity, he
nevertheless found time to produce an extensive number of
sermons on the Song of Solomon. As the confidant of five
popes, he considered it his role to assist in healing the
church of wounds inflicted by the antipopes (those elected
pope contrary to prevailing clerical procedures), to oppose
the rationalistic influence of the greatest and most popular
dialectician of the age, Peter Abelard, and to cultivate the
friendship of the greatest churchmen of the time. He could
also rebuke a pope, as he did in his letter to Innocent II:
There is but one opinion among all the faithful shepherds
among us, namely, that justice is vanishing in the Church,
that the power of the keys is gone, that episcopal authority
is altogether turning rotten while not a bishop is able to
avenge the wrongs done to God, nor is allowed to punish any
misdeeds whatever, not even in his own diocese (parochia).
And the cause of this they put down to you and the Roman
Court.
Bernard’s confrontations with Abelard ended in inevitable
opposition because of their significant differences of
temperament and attitudes. In contrast with the tradition of
“silent opposition” by those of the school of monastic
spirituality, Bernard vigorously denounced dialectical
Scholasticism as degrading God’s mysteries, as one technique
among others, though tending to exalt itself above the
alleged limits of faith. One seeks God by learning to live
in a school of charity and not through “scandalous
curiosity,” he held. “We search in a worthier manner, we
discover with greater facility through prayer than through
disputation.” Possession of love is the first condition of
the knowledge of God. However, Bernard finally claimed a
victory over Abelard, not because of skill or cogency in
argument but because of his homiletical denunciation and his
favoured position with the bishops and the papacy.
Pope Eugenius III and King Louis VII of France induced
Bernard to promote the cause of a Second Crusade (1147–49)
to quell the prospect of a great Muslim surge engulfing both
Latin and Greek Orthodox Christians. The crusade ended in
failure because of Bernard’s inability to account for the
quarrelsome nature of politics, peoples, dynasties, and
adventurers. He was an idealist with the ascetic ideals of
Cîteaux grafted upon those of his father’s knightly
tradition and his mother’s piety, who read into the hearts
of the crusaders—many of whom were bloodthirsty fanatics—his
own integrity of motive.
In his remaining years he participated in the
condemnation of Gilbert de La Porrée—a scholarly
dialectician and bishop of Poitiers who held that Christ’s
divine nature was only a human concept. He exhorted Pope
Eugenius to stress his role as spiritual leader of the
church over his role as leader of a great temporal power,
and he was a major figure in church councils. His greatest
literary endeavour, “Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles,”
was written during this active time. It revealed his
teaching, often described as “sweet as honey,” as in his
later title doctor mellifluus. It was a love song supreme:
“The Father is never fully known if He is not loved
perfectly.” Add to this one of Bernard’s favourite prayers,
“Whence arises the love of God? From God. And what is the
measure of this love? To love without measure,” and one has
a key to his doctrine.
St. Bernard was declared a doctor of the church in 1830
and was extolled in 1953 as doctor mellifluus in an
encyclical of Pius XII.
John Richard Meyer
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Peter Abelard
French theologian and poet
French Pierre Abélard, or Abailard, Latin Petrus Abaelardus,
or Abeilardus
born 1079, Le Pallet, near Nantes, Brittany [now in
France]
died April 21, 1142, Priory of Saint-Marcel, near
Chalon-sur-Saône, Burgundy [now in France]
Main
French theologian and philosopher best known for his
solution of the problem of universals and for his original
use of dialectics. He is also known for his poetry and for
his celebrated love affair with Héloïse.
Early life
The outline of Abelard’s career is well known, largely
because he described so much of it in his famous Historia
calamitatum (“History of My Troubles”). He was born the son
of a knight in Brittany south of the Loire River. He
sacrificed his inheritance and the prospect of a military
career in order to study philosophy, particularly logic, in
France. He provoked bitter quarrels with two of his masters,
Roscelin of Compiègne and Guillaume de Champeaux, who
represented opposite poles of philosophy in regard to the
question of the existence of universals. (A universal is a
quality or property that each individual member of a class
of things must possess if the same general word is to apply
to all the things in that class. Redness, for example, is a
universal possessed by all red objects.) Roscelin was a
nominalist who asserted that universals are nothing more
than mere words; Guillaume in Paris upheld a form of
Platonic realism according to which universals exist.
Abelard in his own logical writings brilliantly elaborated
an independent philosophy of language. While showing how
words could be used significantly, he stressed that language
itself is not able to demonstrate the truth of things (res)
that lie in the domain of physics.
Abelard was a peripatetic both in the manner in which he
wandered from school to school at Paris, Melun, Corbeil, and
elsewhere and as one of the exponents of Aristotelian logic
who were called the Peripatetics. In 1113 or 1114 he went
north to Laon to study theology under Anselm of Laon, the
leading biblical scholar of the day. He quickly developed a
strong contempt for Anselm’s teaching, which he found
vacuous, and returned to Paris. There he taught openly but
was also given as a private pupil the young Héloïse, niece
of one of the clergy of the cathedral of Paris, Canon
Fulbert. Abelard and Héloïse fell in love and had a son whom
they called Astrolabe. They then married secretly. To escape
her uncle’s wrath Héloïse withdrew into the convent of
Argenteuil outside Paris. Abelard suffered castration at
Fulbert’s instigation. In shame he embraced the monastic
life at the royal abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris and made
the unwilling Héloïse become a nun at Argenteuil.
Career as a monk
At Saint-Denis Abelard extended his reading in theology and
tirelessly criticized the way of life followed by his fellow
monks. His reading of the Bible and of the Fathers of the
Church led him to make a collection of quotations that
seemed to represent inconsistencies of teaching by the
Christian church. He arranged his findings in a compilation
entitled Sic et non (“Yes and No”); and for it he wrote a
preface in which, as a logician and as a keen student of
language, he formulated basic rules with which students
might reconcile apparent contradictions of meaning and
distinguish the various senses in which words had been used
over the course of many centuries. He also wrote the first
version of his book called Theologia, which was formally
condemned as heretical and burned by a council held at
Soissons in 1121. Abelard’s dialectical analysis of the
mystery of God and the Trinity was held to be erroneous, and
he himself was placed for a while in the abbey of Saint-Médard
under house arrest. When he returned to Saint-Denis he
applied his dialectical methods to the subject of the
abbey’s patron saint; he argued that St. Denis of Paris, the
martyred apostle of Gaul, was not identical with Denis of
Athens (also known as Dionysius the Areopagite), the convert
of St. Paul. The monastic community of Saint-Denis regarded
this criticism of their traditional claims as derogatory to
the kingdom; and, in order to avoid being brought for trial
before the king of France, Abelard fled from the abbey and
sought asylum in the territory of Count Theobald of
Champagne. There he sought the solitude of a hermit’s life
but was pursued by students who pressed him to resume his
teaching in philosophy. His combination of the teaching of
secular arts with his profession as a monk was heavily
criticized by other men of religion, and Abelard
contemplated flight outside Christendom altogether. In 1125,
however, he accepted election as abbot of the remote Breton
monastery of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys. There, too, his
relations with the community deteriorated, and, after
attempts had been made upon his life, he returned to France.
Héloïse had meanwhile become the head of a new foundation
of nuns called the Paraclete. Abelard became the abbot of
the new community and provided it with a rule and with a
justification of the nun’s way of life; in this he
emphasized the virtue of literary study. He also provided
books of hymns he had composed, and in the early 1130s he
and Héloïse composed a collection of their own love letters
and religious correspondence.
Final years
About 1135 Abelard went to the Mont-Sainte-Geneviève outside
Paris to teach, and he wrote in a blaze of energy and of
celebrity. He produced further drafts of his Theologia in
which he analyzed the sources of belief in the Trinity and
praised the pagan philosophers of classical antiquity for
their virtues and for their discovery by the use of reason
of many fundamental aspects of Christian revelation. He also
wrote a book called Ethica or Scito te ipsum (“Know
Thyself”), a short masterpiece in which he analyzed the
notion of sin and reached the drastic conclusion that human
actions do not make a man better or worse in the sight of
God, for deeds are in themselves neither good nor bad. What
counts with God is a man’s intention; sin is not something
done (it is not res); it is uniquely the consent of a human
mind to what it knows to be wrong. Abelard also wrote
Dialogus inter philosophum, Judaeum et Christianum
(“Dialogue Between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian”)
and a commentary on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, the
Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos, in which he outlined an
explanation of the purpose of Christ’s life, which was to
inspire men to love him by example alone.
On the Mont-Sainte-Geneviève Abelard drew crowds of
pupils, many of them men of future fame, such as the English
humanist John of Salisbury. He also, however, aroused deep
hostility in many by his criticism of other masters and by
his apparent revisions of the traditional teachings of
Christian theology. Within Paris the influential abbey of
Saint-Victor was studiously critical of his doctrines, while
elsewhere William of Saint-Thierry, a former admirer of
Abelard, recruited the support of Bernard of Clairvaux,
perhaps the most influential figure in Western Christendom
at that time. At a council held at Sens in 1140, Abelard
underwent a resounding condemnation, which was soon
confirmed by Pope Innocent II. He withdrew to the great
monastery of Cluny in Burgundy. There, under the skillful
mediation of the abbot, Peter the Venerable, he made peace
with Bernard of Clairvaux and retired from teaching. Now
both sick and old, he lived the life of a Cluniac monk.
After his death, his body was first sent to the Paraclete;
it now lies alongside that of Héloïse in the cemetery of
Père-Lachaise in Paris. Epitaphs composed in his honour
suggest that Abelard impressed some of his contemporaries as
one of the greatest thinkers and teachers of all time.
David Edward Luscombe
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