CHAPTER XXXVI

TWELFTH-CENTURY SCHOLASTICISM

I. THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS: ABAELARD.

II. THE MYSTIC STRAIN: HUGO AND BERNARD.

III. THE LATER DECADES: BERNARD SILVESTRIS; GILBERT DE LA PORRÉE;

WILLIAM OF CONCHES; JOHN OF SALISBURY, AND ALANUS OF LILLE.

I

From the somewhat elaborate general considerations which have occupied the

last two chapters, we turn to the representative manifestations of

mediaeval thought in the twelfth century. These belong in part to the

second or “logical,” and in part to the third or “meta-logical,” stage of

the mediaeval mind. The first or “grammatical” stage was represented by

the Carolingian period; and in reviewing the mental aspects of the

eleventh century, we entered upon the second stage, that of logic, or

dialectic, to use the more specific mediaeval term. Toward the close of

the tenth century Gerbert was found strenuously occupying himself with

logic, and using it as a means of ordering the branches of knowledge. At

the end of the eleventh, Anselm has not only considered certain logical

problems, but has vaulted over into constructive metaphysical theology.

Looking back over Anselm’s work, from the vantage-ground of the twelfth

century’s further reflections, one may be conscious of a certain genial

youthfulness in his reliance upon single arguments, noble and beautiful

soarings of the spirit, which however pay little regard to the firmness of

the premises from which they spring, and still less to a number of

cognate and pertinent considerations, which the twelfth century was to

analyze.

Anselm’s thoughts perhaps overleaped logic. At all events he appears only

occasionally absorbed with its formal problems. Yet he lived in a time of

dawning logical controversy. Roscellin was even then blowing up the

problem of universals, a problem occasioned by the entering of mediaeval

thought upon the “logical” stage of its appropriation of the patristic and

antique.

The problem of universals, or general ideas, from the standpoint of logic,

lies at the basis of consistent thinking. It reverts to the time when

Aristotle’s assertion of the pre-eminently real existence of individuals

broke away from the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. For the early mediaeval

philosophers, it took its rise in a famous passage in Porphyry’s

Introduction to the _Categories_, the concluding sentence of which, as

translated into Latin by Boëthius, puts the question thus: “Mox de

generibus et speciebus illud quidem sive subsistant sive in nudis

intellectibus posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia sint an

incorporalia, et utrum separata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita

et circa haec consistentia, dicere recusabo.” “Next as to _genera_ and

_species_, do they actually exist or are they merely in thought; are they

corporeal or incorporeal existences; are they separate from sensible

things or only in and of them?--I refuse to answer,” says Porphyry; “it is

a very lofty business, unsuited to an elementary work.”

Thus, in three pairs of crude alternatives, the question came over to the

early Middle Ages. The men of the Carolingian period took one position or

another, without sensing its difficulties, or observing how it lay athwart

the path of knowledge. Students were not as yet attempting such a dynamic

appropriation of the ancient material as would evoke this veritable

problem of cognition. Even Gerbert at the close of the tenth century was

still so busy with the outer forms and figments of logic that he had no

time to enter on those ulterior problems where logic links itself to

metaphysics. One Roscellin, living and teaching apparently at Besançon in

the latter part of the eleventh century, seems to have been the first to

attack the currently accepted “realism” with some sense of the matter’s

thorny intricacies. With his own “nominalistic” position we are acquainted

only through his adversaries, who imputed to him views which a thoughtful

person could hardly have entertained--that universals were merely words

and breath (_flatus vocis_). Roscellin seems at all events to have been a

man strongly held by the reality of individuals, and one who found it

difficult to ascribe a sufficient intellectual actuality to the general

idea as distinguished from the perception of things and the demands of the

concepts of their individual existences. His logical difficulties impelled

him to theological heresy. The unity in the Trinity became an

impossibility; he could only conceive of three beings, just as he might

think of three angels; and he would have spoken of three Gods had usage

not forbidden it, says St. Anselm.[458] As it was, he said enough to draw

on him the condemnation of a Council held at Soissons in 1092, before

which he quailed and recanted. For the remainder of his life he so

constrained the expression of his thoughts as to ensure his safety.

One may say that Plato’s theory of ideas was a metaphysical presentation

of the universe, sounding in conceptions of reality. But for the Middle

Ages, the problem whether genera and species exist when abstracted from

their particulars, sprang from logical controversy. It was a problem of

cognition, cognizance, understanding: how should one understand and

analyze the contents of a statement, _e.g._ Socrates is a man. Moreover,

it was a fundamental and universal problem of cognition; for it was not

merely occupied, like all mental processes, with bringing data to

consistent formulation, but pertained to those processes themselves by

which any and all data are stated or formulated. It touched every

formulation of truth, asking, in fine, how are we to think our statements?

The philosophers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, did not

view this problem as one pertaining to the mind’s processes, and as having

to do solely with the understanding of the contents of a statement.

Rather, even as Plato had done, they approached it as if it were a problem

of modes of existence; and for this very reason it had pushed Roscellin

into theological error.

The discussion was to pass through various stages; and each stage may seem

to us to represent the point reached by the thinker in his analysis of his

conscious meaning in stating a proposition. Moreover, each solution may be

valid for him who gives it, because of its correspondence to the meaning

of his utterances so far as he has analyzed them. But mediaeval men could

not take it in this way. Their intellectual task lay in appropriating, and

in their own way re-expressing, all that had come to them from an

authoritative past. The problem of universals had been stated by a great

authority, who put it as pertaining to the objective reality of genera and

species. How then might mediaeval men take it otherwise, especially when

at all events it pertained in all verity to their endeavour to grasp and

re-express the contents of transmitted truth? It became for a while the

crucial problem, the answer to which might indicate the thinker’s general

intellectual attitude. Far from keeping to logic, to the _organon_ or

instrumental part of the mediaeval endeavour to know, it wound itself

through metaphysics and theology. Obviously the thinker’s answer to the

problem would bear relation to his thoughts upon the transcendent reality

of spiritual essences.

The men who first became impressed with the importance of this problem,

gave extreme answers to it, sometimes crassly denying the real existence

of universals, but more often hailing them as antecedent and

all-permeating realities. If Roscellinus took the former position, a pupil

of his, William of Champeaux, held the extreme opposite view, when both he

and the twelfth century were still young. One may, however, bear in mind

that as the views of the older nominalist are reported only by his

enemies, so our knowledge of William’s lucubrations comes mainly from the

exacerbated pen of Peter Abaelard.

William held apparently “that the same thing, in its totality and at the

same time, existed in its single individuals, among which there was no

essential difference, but merely a variety of accidents.”[459] Abaelard

appears to have performed a _reductio ad absurdum_ upon this view that the

total genus exists in each individual. He pointed out that in such case

the total genus _homo_ would at the same time exist in Socrates and also

in Plato, when one of them might be in Rome and the other in Athens. “At

this William changed his opinion,” continues Abaelard, “and taught that

the genus existed in each individual not _essentialiter_ but

_indifferenter_ or [as some texts read] _individualiter_.” Which seems to

mean that William no longer held that the total genus existed in each

individual actually, but “indistinguishably,” or “individually.”

And the students flocked away with Abaelard, _he_ also says; and William

fled the lecture chair. William and Peter; shall we say of them _arcades

ambo_? This would be but a harmless depreciation of Abaelard, in the face

of the universal and correct tradition as to his epoch-making intellectual

progressiveness. Indeed it might be well to let the phrase sound in our

ears, just for the reminder’s sake, that Abaelard was, like William, a man

of logic, although far more expert both in manipulating the dialectic

processes and in applying them to theology.

Before endeavouring briefly to reconstruct the intellectual qualities of

Abaelard from his writings, let us see how the famous open letter to a

friend, in giving an apologetic story of the writer’s life, discloses the

fatalities of his character. This _Historia calamitatum suarum_ makes it

plain enough why the crises of his life were all of them

catastrophes--even leaving out of view his liaison with Heloïse and its

penalty. A fatal impulse to annoy seems to drive him from fate to fate;

the old word of Heraclitus ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων (character is a man’s

genius) was so patently true of him. Much that he said was to receive

orthodox approval after his time. Quite true. It has often been remarked,

that the heresy of one age is the accepted doctrine of the next, even

within the Church. But would the heretic have been _persona grata_ to the

later time? Perhaps not. Peter Abaelard at all events would have led

others and himself a life of thorns in the thirteenth century, or the

fourteenth had he been born again, when some of his methods and opinions

had become accepted commonplace. Did he have an eye for logical and human

truth more piercing than his twelfth-century fellows? Apparently. Was his

need to speak out his truth so much the more imperative than theirs?

Possibly. At all events, he was certainly possessed with an inordinate

impulsion to undo his rivals. He sits down before their fortress walls by

night, and when they see him there, they know not whether they look on

friend or foe--in this auditor. They will find out soon enough. He studied

dialectic under William of Champeaux at Paris, as all men were to know. He

got what William had to teach, and moved on, to lecture in Melun and

elsewhere. Then he returned and sat at William’s feet awhile to learn

rhetoric, as he announced. But quickly he rose up, and assailed his

master’s doctrine of universals, and overthrew him, as we have seen. The

victim’s friends made Abaelard’s eristically won lecturer’s seat a prickly

one. He left Paris for a while, and then returned and taught on Mount St.

Geneviève, outside the city.

Up to this time he had not been known to study theology. But in 1113, at

the age of thirty-four, he went to Laon to listen to a famous theologian

named Anselm, who himself had studied at Bec under a greater Anselm. Says

Abaelard in his _Historia calamitatum_: “So I came to this old man, whose

repute was a tradition, rather than merited by talent or learning. Any one

who brought his uncertainties to him, went away more uncertain still! He

was a marvel in the eyes of his hearers, but a nobody before a questioner.

He had a wonderful wordflow, but the sense was contemptible and the

reasoning abject.” Well, I didn’t listen to him long, Abaelard intimates;

but began to absent myself from his lectures, and was brought to task by

his auditors, to whom jokingly I said, I, too, could lecture on Scripture;

and I was taken up. Nothing loath, the next day I lectured to them on the

passage they had chosen from Ezekiel’s obscure prophecies. So, all

unprepared, and trusting in my genius, I began to lecture, at first to

sparse audiences, but they quickly grew. Such is the substance of

Abaelard’s own account, and he goes on to tell how “the old man aforesaid

was violently moved with envy,” and shortly Abaelard had to take his

lecturings elsewhere. He returned to Paris, and we have the episode of

Heloïse, for whom, as his life went on, he evinced a devoted

affection.[460]

Now he is monk in the abbey of St. Denis; and there again he lectures, and

takes up certain themes against Roscellinus, whom he seems to resurrect

from the quiet of old age to make a target of. This old man, too, hits

back, and other vicious people blow up a cloud of envy, until the gifted

lecturer finds himself an accused before the Council of Soissons, and his

book condemned. Untaught by the burning of his book, Abaelard returns to

his convent, and proceeds to unearth statements of the Venerable Bede

showing that Dionysius the Areopagite who heard Paul preach, was not the

St. Denis who became patron saint of France, and founder of the great

abbey which even now was sheltering a certain Abaelard, and drawing power

and revenue from the fame of its reputed almost apostolic founder. Its

abbot and monks did not care to have the abbey walls undermined by truth,

and Abaelard was hunted forth from among them.

It was after this that he made for himself a lonely refuge, which he named

the Paraclete, not far from Troyes, and thither again his pupils followed

him in swarms, and built their huts around him in the wilderness. But

still mightier foes--or their phantoms--rise against this hunted head. The

_Historia_ seems to allude to St. Norbert and to St. Bernard. Whatever the

storm was, it was escaped by flight to a remote Breton convent

which--still for his sins!--had chosen Abaelard its abbot. There in due

course they tried to murder him, and again he fled, this time back to his

congenial sphere, the schools of Paris, where he lectured, now at the

summit of fame, to enthusiastic multitudes of students. Some years pass,

and then the pious jackal, William of St. Thierry, rouses his lion Bernard

to contend with Abaelard and crush him, not with dialectic, at the

Council of Sens in 1141. In a year he died, a broken man, in Cluny’s

shelter. The conflict had not been of his seeking. Perhaps, had he been

less vain, he might have avoided it. When it was upon him, the unhappy

athlete of the schools found himself a pigmy matched against the giant of

Clairvaux--the Thor and Loki of the Church! Whether or not the unequal

battle raises Abaelard in our esteem, its outcome commends him to our

pity; and all our sympathy stays with him to the last days of a life that

was, as if physically, crushed. This accumulation of sad fortune bears

witness enough to the character of the man on whose neck it did not fall

by accident. Now let us try to reconstruct him intellectually.

We have heretofore observed the genius and noted the somewhat swaddling

dialectic categories of a certain eager intellect bearing the name of

Gerbert.[461] Abaelard’s mental processes have advanced beyond such

logical stammerings. He and his time are in the fulness of youth, and feel

the strength and joyful assurance of an intellectual progress, to be

brought about by a new-found proficiency in dialectic. In the first half

of the twelfth century, the intellectual genius of the time--and Abaelard

was its quintessence--knew itself advancing by this means in truth. A like

intellectual consciousness had rejoiced the disputants in Plato’s academy,

under the inspiration of that beautiful reasoner’s exquisite dialectic.

The one time, like the other, was justified in its confidence. For in such

epochs, language, reasoning, and knowledge advance with equal step;

thought clears up with linguistic and logical analysis; it becomes clear

and illuminated because more distinctly conscious of the character of its

processes, and the nature of statement. There is thus a veritable

progress, at least in the methodology of truth.

In Abaelard’s time men had already studied grammar, the grammar of the

Latin tongue, and the quasi-grammar of rearrangement and first painful

learning of the knowledge which it held. They had studied logic too, its

simpler elements, those which consist mainly in a further clearing up of

the meanings of language. Some men--Anselm of Canterbury--had already

made sudden flights beyond grammar, and out of logic’s pale. And the

labour of logical and organic appropriation, with some reconstruction of

the ancient material, was to go on in this first half of the twelfth

century, when Hugo of St. Victor lived as well as Abaelard. Progress by

means of dialectic controversy, and first attempts at systematic

construction, mark this period intellectually. Abaelard lived and moved

and had his being in dialectic. The further interest of Theology was lent

him by the spirit of his time. Through the medium of the one he reasoned

analytically; and in the province of the other he applied his reasoning

constructively, using patristic materials and the fragments of Greek

philosophy scattered through them. Thus Abaelard, a true man of the

twelfth century, passes on through logic to theology or metaphysics.

For the completeness of his logical knowledge he lived and worked twenty

or thirty years too soon. He was unacquainted with the more elaborate

logical treatises of Aristotle, to wit, the _Prior_ and _Posterior

Analytics_, the _Topics_, and _Sophistical Elenchi_. The sources of his

own treatises upon Dialectic are Porphyry’s Introduction, Aristotle’s

_Categories_ and _De interpretatione_, and certain treatises of

Boëthius.[462] A first result of the elementary and quasi-grammatical

character of the sources of logic upon which he drew, is that the

connection between logic and grammar is very plain with him. Note, for

example, this paragraph of his, the substance of which is drawn from

Aristotle’s _Categories_:

“But neither can substances be compared,[463] since comparison relates

to attribute, and not to substance; so it is shown that comparison

lies not as to nouns, but as to their attributes. Thus we say _whiter_

but not _whitenesser_. Much more are substances which have no

attribute (_adjacentiam_) immune from comparison. More or less cannot

be predicated of nouns (_nomina substantiva_). For one cannot say

_more man_ or _less man_, as _more_ or _less white_.”[464]

Evidently this elementary sort of logic, whether with Aristotle or

Abaelard, represents a clearing up of the mind on current modes of

expression. And sometimes from such studies men make discoveries like that

of Molière’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who discovered that he had always been

talking prose. Some of the points on which the minds of Abaelard’s

contemporaries required clarification, would be foolish word-play to

ourselves, as, for instance, whether the significance of the sentence

_homo est animal_ is contained in the subject, copula, or predicate, or

only in all three; and whether when a word is spoken, the very same word

and the whole of it comes to the ears of all the hearers at the same time:

“utrum ipsa vox ad aures diversorum simul et tota aequaliter veniat.”[465]

Such questions, as was observed regarding the problems of logical

arrangement in Gerbert’s mind, may be pertinent and reasonable enough, if

viewed in connection with the intellectual conditions of a period; just as

many questions now make demand on us for solution, being links in the

chain of our knowledge, or manner of reasoning. But future men may pass

them by as not lying in their path to progressive knowledge of the

universe and man.

So the problem of universals was still cardinal with Abaelard and his

fellow-logicians, who through logic were advancing, as they believed,

along the path of objective truth. Its solution would determine the nature

of the categories into which logic was fitting whatever might be

enunciated or expressed. The inquiry represented an ultimate analysis of

statement, of the general nature of propositions; and also related to

their assumed correspondence with realities. What William of Champeaux had

unqualifiedly alleged, Abaelard tried to determine more analytically, to

wit, the value of the proposition “si aliquid sit ea res quae est species,

id est vel homo vel equus et caetera, sit quaelibet res quae eorum genus

est, veluti animal aut corpus aut substantia,”--if species be something,

as man, horse, and so forth, then that which is the genus of these may be

something, as animal, body, or substance.[466]

Abaelard’s discussion of this matter is a discussion of the true content

of propositions. His conclusion is not so clear as to have occasioned no

dispute. One must not think of him as an Aristotelian--for he knew little

of the substantial philosophy of Aristotle. Our dialectician had absorbed

more of Plato, through turbid patristic channels and the current

translation of the _Timaeus_. So his solution of the question of genus and

species may prove an analytic bit of eclecticism, an imagined

reconcilement of the two great masters. The universal or general is, says

he, “quod natum est de pluribus praedicari,” that which is by its nature

adapted to be predicated of a number of things. The universal consists

neither in things as such nor in words as such; it consists rather in

general predicability; it is _sermo, sermo praedicabilis_, that which may

be stated, as a predicate, of many. As such it is not a mere word: _sermo_

is not merely _vox_; that is not the true general predicable. On the other

hand, one thing cannot be the predicate of another; _res de re non

praedicatur_: therefore _sermo_ is not _res_. Yet Abaelard does not limit

the existence of the universal to the concept of him who thinks it. It

surely exists in the individuals, since _substantia specierum_ is not

different from the _essentia individuorum_. But does not the general

concept exist as an objective unity? Apparently Abaelard would answer:

Yes, it does thus exist as a common sameness (_consimilitudo_).

All this is anything but clear. And the various twelfth-century opinions

on universals no longer possess human interest. It is hard for us to

distinguish between them, or understand them clearly, or state them

intelligibly. They are bound up in a phraseology untranslatable into

modern language, because the discussion no longer corresponds to modern

ways of thought. But one is interested in the human need which drove

Abaelard and his fellows upon the horns of this problem, and in the nature

of their endeavours to formulate their thought so as to escape those

opposing horns--of an extreme realism which might issue in pantheism, and

an extreme nominalism which seemed to deprive predication of substance and

validity.[467]

So much for Abaelard as sheer logician, formal adjuster of the

instrumental processes of thinking. Dialectic was for him a first stage in

the actualization of the impulse to know, and bring knowledge to

consistent expression. It was also his way of approach to the further

systematic presentation of his thoughts upon God and man, human society

and justice, divine and human.

“A new calumny against me, have my rivals lately devised, because I

write upon the dialectic art; affirming that it is not lawful for a

Christian to treat of things which do not pertain to the Faith. Not

only they say that this science does not prepare us for the Faith, but

that it destroys faith by the implications of its arguments. But it is

wonderful if I must not discuss what is permitted them to read. If

they allow that the art militates against faith, surely they deem it

not to be science (_scientia_). For the science of truth is the

comprehension of things, whose _species_ is the wisdom in which faith

consists. Truth is not opposed to truth. For not as falsehood may be

opposed to falsity, or evil to evil, can the true be opposed to the

true, or the good to the good; but rather all good things are in

accord. All knowledge is good, even that which relates to evil,

because a righteous man must have it. Since he should guard against

evil, it is necessary that he should know it beforehand: otherwise he

could not shun it. Though an act be evil, knowledge regarding it is

good; though it be evil to sin, it is good to know the sin, which

otherwise we could not shun. Nor is the science _mathematica_ to be

deemed evil, whose practice (astrology) is evil. Nor is it a crime to

know with what services and immolations the demons may be compelled to

do our will, but to use such knowledge. For if it were evil to know

this, how could God be absolved, who knows the desires and cogitations

of all His creatures, and how the concurrence of demons may be

obtained? If therefore it is not wrong to know, but to do, the evil is

to be referred to the act and not to the knowledge. Hence we are

convinced that all knowledge, which indeed comes from God alone and

from His bounty, is good. Wherefore the study of every science should

be conceded to be good, because that which is good comes from it; and

especially one must insist upon the study of that _doctrina_ by which

the greater truth is known. This is dialectic, whose function is to

distinguish between every truth and falsity: as leader in all

knowledge it holds the primacy and rule of all philosophy. The same

also is shown to be needful to the Catholic Faith, which cannot

without its aid resist the sophistries of schismatics.”[468]

In this passage the man himself is speaking, and disclosing his innermost

convictions. For Abaelard’s nature was set upon understanding all things

through reason, even the mysteries of the Faith. He does not say, or quite

think, that he will disbelieve whatever he cannot understand; but his

reasoning and temper point to the conclusion. This was obviously true of

Abaelard’s ethical opinions; his enemies said it was true of his theology.

Such a man would naturally plead for freedom of discussion, even for

freedom of conclusion; but within certain bounds; for who in the twelfth

century could maintain that heretics or infidels did rightly in rejecting

the Christian Faith? Yet Abaelard says heretics should be compelled

(_coercendi_) by reason rather than force.[469] And he could at least

conceive of the rejection of the Faith upon, say, imperfect rational

grounds. In his dialogue between Philosopher, Jew, and Christian, the

Christian says to the Philosopher: One cannot argue against you from the

authority of Scripture, which you do not recognize; for no one can be

refuted save with arguments drawn from what he admits: _Nemo quippe argui

nisi ex concessis potest_.[470] However this sounded in Abaelard’s time,

the same was enunciated by Thomas Aquinas after him, in a passage already

given.[471] But it is doubtful whether Thomas would have cared to follow

Abaelard in some of the arguments of his _Ethics_ or _Book called, Know

Thyself_, in which he maintains that no act is a sin unless the actor was

conscious of its sinfulness; and therefore that killing the martyrs could

not be imputed as sin to those persecutors who deemed themselves thereby

to be doing a service acceptable to God.[472]

The titles given by Abaelard to his various treatises are indicative of

the critical insistency of his nature. He called his _Ethica_, _Scito te

ipsum_, _Know Thyself_: understand thy good and ill intentions, and what

may be vice or virtue in thee. Through the book, the discussion of right

and wrong directs itself as pertinaciously to considerations of human

nature as was possible in an age when theological dogma held the final

criteria of human conduct. And Abaelard is capable of a lofty insight

touching the relationship between God and man.

“Penitence,” says he, “is truly fruitful when grief and contrition

proceed from love of God, regarded as benignant, rather than from fear

of penalties. Sin cannot endure with this groaning and contrition of

heart: for sin is contempt of God, or consent to evil, and the love of

God in inspiring our groaning, suffers no ill.”[473]

Possibly when reading the _Scito te ipsum_ one is conscious of a

dialectician drawing distinctions, rather than of a moralist searching the

heart of the matter. Everything is set forth so reasonably. Yet Abaelard’s

impartial delight in a rational view of belief and conduct shows nowhere

quite as obviously as in his _Dialogue_ between Philosopher and Jew and

Christian. Each in turn is made to set forth the best arguments his

position admits of. The author does his best for each, and perhaps seems

temperamentally drawn to the position of the Philosopher, whom he permits

to call the Jews _stultos_ and the Christians _insanos_. This philosopher

naturally is no Greek of Plato’s or Aristotle’s time, but a good Roman,

who regards _moralis philosophia_ as the _finis omnium disciplinarum_, and

hangs all intellectual considerations upon a discussion of the _summum

bonum_. His well-worn arguments are put with earnestness. He deprecates

the blind acceptance of beliefs by children from their fathers, and the

narrowness of mind which keeps men from perceiving the possible truth in

others’ opinions:

“so that whomsoever they see differing from themselves in belief, they

deem alien from the mercy of God. Thus condemning all others, they

vaunt themselves alone as blessed. Long reflecting on this blindness

and pride of the human race, I have unceasingly besought the Divine

Pity that He would deign to draw me forth from this miserable

Charibdian whirlpool of error, and guide me to a port of safety. So

you [addressing both Jew and Christian] behold me solicitous and

attentive as a disciple, to the documents of your arguments.”[474]

The qualities cultivated by dialectic, and the impartial rational temper,

here displayed, reappear in the works of Abaelard devoted to sacred

doctrine. Enough has been said of the method and somewhat captious

qualities of the _Sic et non_.[475] Unquestionably its manner of

presenting the contradictory opinions of the Fathers, without any attempt

to reconcile them, tended to bring into view the difficulties inhering in

the formulation of Christian belief. And indeed the book made prominent

all the diabolic insoluble problems of the Faith, or rather of life itself

and any view of God and man: Predestination, for example; whether God

causes evil; whether He is omnipotent; whether He is free. The Lombard’s

_Sentences_ and Thomas’s _Summa_ considered all these questions; but they

strove to solve them; and Thomas did solve every one, leaving no loose

ends to his theology. More potently than Abaelard did the Angelic Doctor

employ dialectic in his finished scheme. With him, this propaedeutic

discipline, this tool of truth, perfectly performs its task of

construction. So also Abaelard intended to work with it; but his somewhat

unconsidered use of the tool did not meet the approval of his

contemporaries. Accordingly, in his more constructive theological

treatises his impulse to know and state appears finally actualized in the

systematic formulation of convictions upon topics of ultimate interest, to

wit, theology, the contents of the Christian Faith, the full relationship

of God and man. Did he sever theology from philosophy? Nay, rather, with

him theology was ultimate philosophy.

Several times Abaelard rewrote what was substantially the same general

work upon Theology. In one of its earliest forms it was burnt by the

Council of Soissons in 1121.[476] In another form it exists under the

title _Theologia Christiana_;[477] and the first part of its apparently

final revision is now improperly entitled, _Introductio ad

theologiam_.[478]

The first Book of the _Theologia Christiana_ is an exposition of the

Trinity, not clinched in syllogisms, but consisting mainly of an orderly

presentation of the patristic authorities supporting the author’s view of

the matter. The testimonies of profane writers are also given. Liber II.

opens by saying that in the former part of the work “we have collected the

_testimonia_ of prophets and philosophers, in support of the faith of the

Holy Trinity.” Hereupon, by the same method of adducing authorities,

Abaelard proceeds to refute those who had blamed him for citing the pagan

philosophers. He marshals his supporting excerpts from the Fathers, and

remarks: “That nothing is more needful for the defence of our faith than

that as against the importunities of all the infidels we should have

witness from themselves wherewith to refute them.” Then he points to the

moral worth of some of the philosophers, to their true teaching of the

soul’s immortality, and quotes Horace’s

“Oderunt peccare boni virtutis amore.”

He continues at some length setting forth their well-nigh evangelical

virtue, and speaks of the Gospel as _reformatio legis naturalis_.

At the beginning of Liber III. comes the statement: “We set the faith of

the blessed Trinity as the foundation of all good.” Whereupon Abaelard

breaks out in a denunciation of those who misuse dialectic; but again he

passes to a defence of the art as an art and branch of knowledge, and

shows its need as a weapon against those wranglers who will be quieted

neither by the authority of the saints nor the philosophers: against whom,

he, Abaelard, trusting in the divine aid, will turn this weapon as David

did the sword of Goliath. He now states the true object of his work:

“First then is to be set forth the theme of our whole labour, and the sum

of faith; the unity of the divine substance and the Trinity of persons,

which are in God, and are one God. Next we state the objections to our

theses, and then the solutions of those objections.” And he gives the

substance of the Athanasian Creed. From this point, his work becomes more

dialectical and constructive, although of course continuing to quote

authorities. He is emboldened to discuss the deepest mysteries, the very

penetralia of the Trinity, and in a way which might well alarm men like

Bernard, who desired acceptance of the Faith, with rhetoric, but without

discussion. To be sure Abaelard pauses to justify himself by reverting to

his apologetic purpose: “Heretics must be coerced with reason rather than

by force.” However this may be, the work henceforth shows the passing on

of logic to the exercise of its architectonic functions in constructing a

systematic theological metaphysics.

The miscalled _Introductio ad theologiam_, as might be expected of a last

revision of the author’s _Theology_, is a more organic work. In the

Prologue, Abaelard speaks of it as a _Summa sacrae eruditionis_ or an

_Introductio_ to Divine Scripture. And again he states the justifying

purpose of his labour, or rather puts it into the mouths of his disciples

who have asked for such a work from him: “Since our faith, the Christian

Faith, seems entangled in such difficult questions, and to stand apart

from human reason (_et ab humana ratione longius absistere_), it should be

fortified by so much the stronger arguments, especially against the

attacks of those who call themselves philosophers.” Continuing, Abaelard

protests that if in any way, for his sins, he should deviate from the

Catholic understanding and statement, he will on seeing his error revise

the same, like the blessed Augustine.

The work itself opens with a statement of its intended divisions: “In

three matters, as I judge, rests the sum of human salvation: _Fides_,

_caritas_, and _sacramentum_”; and he gives his definition of faith, which

was so obnoxious to Bernard and others, as the _existimatio rerum non

apparentium_. The three extant Books do not conclude the treatment even of

the first of these three topics. But one readily sees that were the work

complete, its arrangement might correspond with that of Thomas’s

_Summa_.[479] One may reiterate that it was more constructively

argumentative than the _Theologia Christiana_, even in the manner of

using the cited authorities. For instance, Abaelard’s mind is fixed on the

analogy between the Neo-Platonic Trinity of _Deus_, _nous_, and _anima

mundi_, and that of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The _nous_ fitly

represents Christ, who is the _Sapientia Dei_--which Abaelard sets forth;

but then with even greater insistency he identifies the Holy Spirit with

the world-soul. Nothing gave a stronger warrant to the accusations of

heresy brought against him than this last doctrine, with which he was

obsessed. Yet what roused St. Bernard and his jackals was not so much any

particular opinion of Abaelard, as his dialectic and critical spirit,

which insisted upon understanding and explaining, before believing. “The

faith of the righteous believes; it does not dispute. But that man,

suspicious of God (_Deum habens suspectum_), has no mind to believe what

his reason has not previously argued.”[480]

Still, when Bernard says that faith does not discuss, but believes, he

states a conviction of his mind, a conviction corresponding with an inner

need of his own to formulate and express his thought. Only, with Abaelard

the need to consider and analyse was more consciously imperative. He could

not avoid the constant query: How shall I think this thing--this thing,

for example, which is declared by revelation? Just as other questioning

spirits in other times might be driven upon the query: How shall we think

these things which are disclosed by the variegated walls of our physical

environment? Those yield data, or refuse them, and force the mind to put

many queries, and come to some adjustment. So experience presents data for

adjustment, just as dogma, Scripture, revelation present that which reason

must bring within the action of its processes, and endeavour to find

rational expression for.

II

The greatest dialectician of the early twelfth century felt no problems

put him by the physical world. That did not attract his inquiry; it did

not touch the reasonings evolved by his self-consciousness, any more than

it impressed the fervid mind of his great adversary, St. Bernard. The

natural world, however, stirred the mind of Abaelard’s contemporary, Hugo

of St. Victor.[481] Its colours waved before his reveries, and its visible

sublimities drew his mind aloft to the contemplation of God: for him its

_things_ were all the things of God--_opus conditionis_ or _opus

restaurationis_;[482] the work of foundation, whereby God created the

physical world for the support and edification of its crowning creature

man; and the work of restoration, to wit, the incarnation of the Word, and

all its sacraments.

Hugo was a Platonic and very Christian theologian. He would reason and

expound, and yet was well aware that reason could not fathom the nature of

God, or bring man to salvation. “Logic, mathematics, physics teach some

truth, yet do not reach that truth wherein is the soul’s safety, without

which whatever is is vain.”[483] So Hugo was not primarily a logician,

like Abaelard; nor did he care chiefly for the kind of truth which might

be had through logic. Nevertheless the productions of his short life prove

the excellence of his mind and his large enthusiasm for knowledge.

As Hugo was the head of the school of St. Victor for some years before his

death, certain of his works cover topics of ordinary mediaeval education,

secular and religious; while others advance to a more profound expression

of the intellectual, or spiritual, interests of their author. For

elementary religious instruction, he composed a veritable book of

_Sentences_,[484] which preceded the Lombard’s in time, but was later than

Abaelard’s _Sic et non_. Without striking features, it lucidly and amiably

carried out its general purpose of setting forth the authoritative

explanations of the elements of the Christian Faith. The writer did not

hesitate to quote opposing views, which were not heralded, however, by

such danger-signals of contradiction as flare from the chapter headings of

the _Sic et non_.

The corresponding treatise upon profane learning--the _Eruditio

didascalica_--is of greater interest.[485] It commences in elementary

fashion, as a manual of study: “There are two things by which we gain

knowledge, to wit, reading and meditation; reading comes first.” The book

is to be a guide to the student in the study both of secular and divine

writings; it teaches how to study the _artes_, and then how to study the

Scriptures.[486] Even in this manual, Hugo shows himself a meditative

soul, and one who seeks to base his most elementary expositions upon the

nature and needs of man. The mind, says he, is distracted by things of

sense, and does not know itself. It is renewed through study, so that it

learns again not to look without for what itself affords. Learning is

life’s solace, which he who finds is happy, and he who makes his own is

blessed.[487]

For Hugo, philosophy is that which investigates the _rationes_ of things

human and divine, seeking ever the final wisdom, which is knowledge of the

_primaeva ratio_: this distinguishes philosophy from the practical

sciences, like agriculture: it follows the _ratio_, and they administer

the matter. Again and again, Hugo returns to the thought that the object

of all human _actiones_ and _studia_ is to restore the integrity of our

nature or mitigate its weaknesses, restore the image of the divine

similitude in us, or minister to the needs of life. This likeness is

renewed by _speculatio veritatis_, or _exercitium virtutis_.[488]

Such is a pretty broad basis of theory for a high school manual. Hugo

proceeds to set forth the scheme, rather than the substance, of the arts

and sciences, pausing occasionally to admonish the reader to hold no

science vile, since knowledge always is good; and he points out that all

knowledge hangs together in a common coherency. He sketches[489] the true

student’s life: Whoever seeks learning, must not neglect discipline! He

must be humble, and not ashamed to learn from any one; he must observe

decent manners, and not play the fool and make faces at lecturers on

divinity, for thereby he insults God. Yea, and let him mind the example of

the ancient sages, who for learning’s sake spurned honours, rejected

riches, rejoiced in insults, deserted the companionship of men, and gave

themselves up to philosophy in desert solitudes, that they might be more

free for meditation. Diligent search for wisdom in quietude becomes a

scholar; and likewise poverty, and likewise exile: he is very delicate who

clings to his fatherland; “He is brave to whom every land is home

(_patria_); and he is perfect to whom the whole world is an exile!”[490]

Hugo has much to say of the _pulchritudo_ and the _decor_ of the

creature-world. But with him the world and its beauty point to God. One

should observe it because of its suggestiveness, the visible suggesting

the invisible. Hugo has already been followed in his argument that the

world, in its veriest reality, is a symbol.[491] Here we follow him along

his path of knowledge, which leads on and upward from _cogitatio_, through

_meditatio_, to _contemplatio_. The steps in Hugo’s scheme are rational,

though the summit lies beyond. This path to truth, leading on from the

visible symbol to the unseen power, is for him the reason and

justification of study; drawing to God it makes for man’s salvation.

Hugo has put perhaps his most lucid exposition of the three grades of

knowledge into the first of his _Nineteen Sermons on Ecclesiastes_.[492]

He is fond of certain numbers, and here his thought revolves in categories

of the number three. Solomon composed three works, the Proverbs,

Ecclesiastes, and Canticles. In the first, he addresses his son

paternally, admonishing him to pursue virtue and shun vice; in the second,

he shows the grown man that nothing in the world is stable; finally, in

Canticles, he brings the consummate one, who has spurned the world, to the

Bridegroom’s arms.

“Three are the modes of cognition (_visiones_) belonging to the

rational soul: cogitation, meditation, contemplation. It is cogitation

when the mind is touched with the ideas of things, and the thing

itself is by its image presented suddenly, either entering the mind

through sense or rising from memory. Meditation is the assiduous and

sagacious revision of cogitation, and strives to explain the involved,

and penetrate the hidden. Contemplation is the mind’s perspicacious

and free attention, diffused everywhere throughout the range of

whatever may be explored. There is this difference between meditation

and contemplation: meditation relates always to things hidden from our

intelligence; contemplation relates to things made manifest, either

according to their nature or our capacity. Meditation always is

occupied with some one matter to be investigated; contemplation

spreads abroad for the comprehending of many things, even the

universe. Thus meditation is a certain inquisitive power of the mind,

sagaciously striving to look into the obscure and unravel the

perplexed. Contemplation is that acumen of intelligence which, keeping

all things open to view, comprehends all with clear vision. Thus

contemplation has what meditation seeks.

“There are two kinds of contemplation: the first is for beginners, and

considers creatures; the kind which comes later, belongs to the

perfect, and contemplates the Creator. In the Proverbs, Solomon

proceeds as through meditation. In Ecclesiastes he ascends to the

first grade of contemplation. In the Song of Songs he transports

himself to the final grade. In meditation there is a wrestling of

ignorance with knowledge; and the light of truth gleams as in a fog of

error. So fire is kindled with difficulty in a heap of green wood; but

then fanned with stronger breath, the flame burns higher, and we see

volumes of smoke rolling up, with flame flashing through. Little by

little the damp is exhausted, and the leaping fire dispels the smoke.

Then _victrix flamma_ darting through the heap of crackling wood,

springs from branch to branch, and with lambent grasp catches upon

every twig; nor does it rest until it penetrates everywhere and draws

into itself all that it finds which is not flame. At length the whole

combustible material is purged of its own nature and passes into the

similitude and property of fire; then the din is hushed, and the

voracious fire having subdued all, and brought all into its own

likeness, composes itself to a high peace and silence, finding nothing

more that is alien or opposed to itself. First there was fire with

flame and smoke; then fire with flame, without smoke; and at last pure

fire with neither flame nor smoke.”

So the _victrix flamma_ achieves the three stages of spiritual insight,

fighting its way through the smoke of cogitation, through the smoke and

flame of meditation, and at last through the flame of creature

contemplation, to the high peace of God, where all is love’s ardent

vision, without flame or smoke. It is thus through the grades of knowledge

that the soul reaches at last that fulness of intelligence which may be

made perfect and inflamed with love, in the contemplation of God. All

knowledge is good according to its grade; only let it always lead on to

God, and with humility. Hugo makes his principles clear at the opening of

his commentary on the _Celestial Hierarchy_ of Dionysius.[493]

“_The Jews seek a sign, and the Greeks wisdom._ There was a certain

wisdom which seemed such to them who knew not the true wisdom. The

world found it, and began to be puffed up, thinking itself great in

this. Confiding in its wisdom, it presumed, and boasted that it would

attain the highest wisdom.... And it made itself a ladder of the face

of the creation, shining toward the invisible things of the

Creator.... Then those things which were seen were known, and there

were other things which were not known; and through those which were

manifest they expected to reach those which were hidden; and they

stumbled and fell into the falsehoods of their own imaginings.... So

God made foolish the wisdom of this world; and He pointed out another

wisdom, which seemed foolishness, and was not. For it preached Christ

crucified, in order that truth might be sought in humility. But the

world despised it, wishing to contemplate the works of God, which He

had made to be marvelled at, and it did not wish to venerate what He

had set for imitation. Neither did it look to its own disease, and

seek a medicine with piety; but presuming on a false health, it gave

itself over with vain curiosity to the study of alien matters.”

This study made the wisdom of the world, whereby it devised the arts and

sciences which we still learn. But the world in its pride did not read

aright the great book of nature. It had not the knowledge of the true

Exemplar, for the sanitation of its inner vision, to wit, the flesh of the

eternal Word in the humanity of Jesus.

“There were two images (_simulacra_) set for man, in which he might

perceive the unseen: one consisting of nature, the other of grace. The

former image was the face of this world; the latter was the humanity

of the Word. And God is shown in both, but He is not understood in

both; since the appearance of nature discloses the artificer, but

cannot illuminate the eyes of him who contemplates it.”

Hugo then classifies the sciences in the usual Aristotelian way, and shows

that Christian theology is the end of all philosophy. The first part of

_philosophia theorica_ is mathematics, which speculates as to the visible

forms of visible things. The second is physics, which scrutinizes the

invisible causes of visible things. The third, theology, alone

contemplates invisible substances and their invisible natures. Herein is a

certain progression; and the mind mounts to knowledge of the true. Through

the visible forms of visible things, it comes to invisible causes of

visible things; and through the invisible causes of visible things, it

ascends to invisible substances, and to knowing their natures. This is the

summit of philosophy and the perfection of truth. In this, as already

said, the wise of this world were made foolish; because proceeding by the

natural document alone, making account only of the elements and appearance

of the world, they missed the instructive instances of Grace: which in

spite of humble guise afford the clearer insight into truth.

This is Hugo’s scheme of knowledge; it begins with _cogitatio_, then

proceeds through _meditatio_ to _contemplatio_ of the creature world, and

finally of the Creator. The arts and sciences, as well as the face of

nature, afford a _simulacrum_ of the unseen Power; but all this knowledge

by itself will not bring man to the perfect knowledge of God. For this he

needs the _exemplaria_ of Grace, shown through the incarnation of the

Word. Only by virtue of this added means, may man attain to perfect

contemplation of the truth of God. That end and final summit is beyond

reason’s reach; but the attainment of rational knowledge makes part of the

path thither. Keen as was Hugo’s intellectual nature, his interest in

reason was coupled with a deeper interest in that which reason might

neither include nor understand. The intellect does not include the

emotional and immediately desiderative elements of human nature; neither

can it comprehend the infinite which is God; and Hugo drew toward God not

only through his intellect, but likewise through his desiderative nature,

with its yearnings of religious love. That love with him was rational,

since its object satisfied his mind as far as his mind could comprehend

it.

So Hugo’s intellectual interests were connected with the emotional side of

human nature, and also led up to what transcended reason. Thus they led to

what was a mystery because too great for human reason, and they included

that which also was somewhat of a mystery to reason because lying partly

outside its sphere. Hugo is an instance of the intellectual nature which

will not rest in reason’s province, but feels equally impelled to find

expression for matters that either exceed the mind, or do not altogether

belong to it. Such an intellect is impelled to formulate its convictions

in regard to these; its negative conviction that it cannot comprehend

them, and why it cannot; and its more positive conviction of their

value--of the absolute worth of God, and of man’s need of Him, and of the

love and fear by which men may come close to Him, or avoid His wrath.

What Hugo has had to say as to cogitation, meditation, and contemplation,

represents his analysis of the stages by which a sufficing sense may be

reached of the Creator and His world of creature-kind. In this final

wisdom and ardour of contemplation, both human reason and human love have

part. The intellect advances along its lines, considering the world, and

drawing inferences as to the unseen Being who created and sustains it.

Mind’s unaided power will not reach. But by the grace of God, supremely

manifested in the Incarnation, the man is humbled, and his heart is

touched and drawn to love the power of the divine pity and humility. The

lesson of the Incarnation and its guiding grace, emboldens the heart and

enlightens the mind; and the man’s faculties are strengthened and uplifted

to the contemplation of God, wherein the mind is satisfied and the heart

at rest.

We have here the elements of piety, intellectual and devotional. Hugo is

an example of their union; they also preserve their equal weight in

Aquinas. But because Hugo emphasizes the limitations of the intellect, and

so ardently recognizes the heart’s yearning and immediacy of

apperception, he is what is styled a mystic; a term which we are now in a

position to consider, and to some extent exchange for other phrases of

more definite significance.[494]

Quite to avoid the term is not possible, inasmuch as the conception

certainly includes what is mysterious because unknowable through reason.

For it includes a sense of the supreme, a sense of God, who is too great

for human reason to comprehend, and therefore a mystery. And it includes a

yearning toward God, the desire of Him, and the feeling of love. The last

is also mysterious, in that it has not exclusive part with reason, but

springs as well from feeling. Yet the essence or nature of this spirit of

piety which we would analyse, consists in consciousness of the reality of

the object of its yearning or devotion. Not altogether through induction

or deduction, but with an irrational immediacy of conviction, it feels and

knows its object. In place of the knowledge which is mediated through

rational processes, is substituted a conviction upheld by yearning, love’s

conviction indeed, of the reality and presence of that which is all the

greater and more worthy because it baffles reason. And the final goal

attainable by this mystic love is, even as the goal of other love, union

with the Beloved.

The mystic spirit is an essential part of all piety or religion, which

relates always and forever to the rationally unknown, and therefore

mysterious. Without a consciousness of mystery, there can be neither piety

nor religion. Nor can there be piety without some devotion to God, nor the

deepest and most ardent forms of piety, without fervent love of God. This

devotion and this love supply strength of conviction, creating a realness

of communion with the divine, and an assurance of the soul’s rest and

peace therein. But that the intellect has part, Hugo abundantly

demonstrates. One must have perceptions, and thought’s severest

wrestlings--_cogitatio_ and _meditatio_--before reaching that first stage

of wide and sure intelligence, which relates to the creature world, and

affords a broad basis of assurance, whence at last the soul shall spring

to God. Intellectual perceptions and rational knowledge, and all the

mind’s puttings together of its data in inductions and deductions and

constructions, form a basis for contemplation, and yield material upon

which the emotional side of human nature may exercise itself in yearning

and devotion. Herein the constructive imagination works; which is

intellectual faculty illuminated and impelled by the emotions.

This spirit actualizes itself in the power and scope of its resultant

conviction, by which it makes real to itself the qualities, attributes,

and actions of its object, God, and the nature of man’s relationship or

union with the divine. In its final energy, when only partly conscious of

its intellectual inductions, it discards syllogisms, quite dissatisfied

with their devious and hesitating approach. Instead, by the power of love,

it springs directly to its God. Nevertheless the soul which feels the

inadequacy of reason even to voice the soul’s desires, will seek means of

expression wherein reason still will play a submerged part. The soul is

seeking to express what is not altogether expressible in direct and

rational statement. It seeks adumbrations, partial unveilings of its

sentiments, which shall perhaps make up in warmth of colour what they lack

in definiteness of line. In fine, it seeks symbols. Such symbolism must be

large and elastic, in order to shadow forth the soul’s relations with the

Infinite; it must also be capable of carrying passion, that it may satisfy

the soul’s craving to give voice to its great love.

In Greek thought as well as in the Hellenizing Judaism of a Philo,

symbolism, or more specifically speaking, allegorical interpretation, was

obviously apologetic, seeking to cloud in naturalistic interpretations the

doings of the rather over-human gods of Greece.[495] But it sprang also

from the unresting need of man to find expression for that sense of things

which will not fit definite statement. This was the need which became

creative, and of necessity fancifully creative, with Plato. Though he

would have nothing to do with falsifying apologetics, all the more he felt

the need of allegories, to suggest what his dialectic could not

formulate. In the early times of the Church militant of Christ,

allegorical interpretation was exploited to defend the Faith; in the later

patristic period, the Faith had so far triumphed, that allegory as a sword

of defence and attack might be sheathed, or just allowed to glitter now

and then half-drawn. But piety’s other need, with increasing energy,

compelled the use of symbols and articulate allegory to express the

directly inexpressible. Thereafter through the Middle Ages, while the use

of allegory as a defence against the Gentiles slumbered, so much more the

other need of it, and the sense of the universal symbolism of material

things, filled the minds of men; and in age-long answer to this need,

allegory, symbolism, became part of the very spirit of the mediaeval time.

Thus it became the universal vehicle of pious expression: it may be said

almost to have co-extended with all mediaeval piety. It was ardently

loving, as with St. Bernard; it might be filled with scarlet passion, as

with Mechthild of Magdeburg; or it might be used in the self-conscious,

and yet inspired vision-pictures of Hildegard of Bingen. And indeed with

almost any mediaeval man or woman, it might keep talking, as a way of

speech, obtrusively, conventionally, _ad nauseam_. For indeed in treatise

after treatise even of the better men, allegory seems on the one hand to

become very foolish and perverse, banal, intolerably talking on and on

beyond the point; or again we sense its mechanism, hear the creaking of

its jaws, while no living voice emerges,--and we suspect that the mystery

of life, if it may not be compassed by direct statement, also lies deeper

than allegorical conventions.

Hugo’s great _De sacramentis_ showed the equipoise of intellectual and

pietistic interests in him, and the Platonic quality of his mind’s sure

sense of the reality of the supersensual.[496] Other treatises of his show

his yearning piety, and the Augustinian quality of his soul, “made toward

thee, and unquiet till it rests in thee.” The _De arca Noe morali_,[497]

that is to say, the Ark of Noah viewed in its moral significance, is

charming in its spiritual refinement, and interesting in its catholic

intellectual reflections. The Prologue presents a situation:

“As I was sitting once among the brethren, and they were asking

questions, and I replying, and many matters had been cited and

adduced, it came about that all of us at once began to marvel

vehemently at the unstableness and disquiet of the human heart; and we

began to sigh. Then they pleaded with me that I would show them the

cause of such whirlings of thought in the human heart; and they

besought me to set forth by what art or exercise of discipline this

evil might be removed. I indeed wished to satisfy my brethren, so far

as God might aid me, and untie the knot of their questions, both by

authority and by argument. I knew it would please them most if I

should compose my matter to read to them at table.

“It was my plan to show first whence arise such violent changes in

man’s heart, and then how the mind may be led to keep itself in stable

peace. And although I had no doubt that this is the proper work of

grace, rather than of human labour, nevertheless I know that God

wishes us to co-operate. Besides it is well to know the magnitude of

our weakness and the mode of its repairing, since so much the deeper

will be our gratitude.

“The first man was so created, that if he had not sinned, he would

always have beheld in present contemplation his Creator’s face, and by

always seeing Him, would have loved Him always, and, by loving, would

always have clung close to Him, and by clinging to Him who was

eternal, would have possessed life without end. Evidently the one true

good of man was perfect knowledge of his Creator. But he was driven

from the face of the Lord, since for his sin he was struck with the

blindness of ignorance, and passed from that intimate light of

contemplation; and he inclined his mind to earthly desires, as he

began to forget the sweetness of the divine. Thus he was made a

wanderer and fugitive over the earth. A wanderer indeed, because of

disordered concupiscence; and a fugitive, through guilty conscience,

which feels every man’s hand against it. For every temptation will

overcome the man who has lost God’s aid.

“So man’s heart which had been kept secure by divine love, and one by

loving one, afterwards began to flow here and there through earthly

desires. For the mind which knows not to love its true good, is never

stable and never rests. Hence restlessness, and ceaseless labour, and

disquiet, until the man turns and adheres to Him. The sick heart

wavers and quivers; the cause of its disease is love of the world; the

remedy, the love of God.”

Hugo’s object is to give rest to the restless heart, by directing its love

to God. One still bears in mind his three plains of knowledge, forming

perhaps the three stages of ascent, at the top of which is found the

knowledge that turns to divine contemplation and love. There may be a

direct and simple love of God for simple souls; but for the man of mind,

knowledge precedes love.

“In two ways God dwells in the human heart, to wit, through knowledge

and through love; yet the dwelling is one, since every one who knows

Him, loves, and no one can love without knowing. Knowledge through

cognition of the Faith erects the structure; love through virtue,

paints the edifice with colour.”[498]

Then make a habitation for God in thy heart. This is the great matter, and

indeed all: for this, Scripture exists, and the world was made, and God

became flesh, through His humility making man sublime. The Ark of Noah is

the type of this spiritual edifice, as it is also the type of the Church.

The piety and allegory of this work rise as from a basis of knowledge. The

allegory indeed is drawn out and out, until it seems to become sheer

circumlocution. This was the mediaeval way, and Hugo’s too, alas! We will

not follow further in this treatise, nor take up his _De arca Noe

mystica_,[499] which carries out into still further detail the symbolism

of the Ark, and applies it to the Church and the people of God. Hugo has

also left a colloquy between man and his soul on the true love, which lies

in spiritual meditation.[500] But it is clear that the reaches of Hugo’s

yearning are still grounded in intellectual considerations, though these

may be no longer present in the mind of him whose consciousness is

transformed to love.

One may discern the same progression, from painful thought to surer

contemplation, and thence to the heart’s devoted communion, in him whom we

have called the Thor and Loki of the Church. No twelfth-century soul loved

God more zealously than St. Bernard. He was not strong in abstract

reasoning. His mind needed the compulsion of the passions to move it to

sublime conclusions. Commonly he is dubbed a mystic. But his piety and

love of God poise themselves on a basis of consideration before springing

to soar on other wings. In his _De consideratione_,[501] Bernard explains

that word in the sense given by Hugo to _meditatio_, while he uses

_contemplatio_ very much as Hugo does. It applies to things that have

become certain to the mind, while “_consideratio_ is busy investigating.

In this sense _contemplatio_ may be defined as the true and certain

intuition of the mind (_intuitus animi_) regarding anything, or the sure

apprehension of the true: while _consideratio_ is thought intently

searching, or the mind’s endeavour to track out the true.”[502]

_Contemplatio_, even though it forget itself in ecstasy, must be based on

prior consideration; then it may take wings of its own, or rather (with

orthodox Hugo and Bernard) wings of grace, and fly to the bosom of its

God. This flight is the immediacy of conviction and the ecstasy which

follows. One may even perceive the thinking going on during the soul’s

outpour of love. For the mind still supports the soul’s ardour with

reasonings, original or borrowed, as appears in the second sermon of that

long series preached by Bernard on Canticles to his own spiritual _élite_

of Clairvaux.[503] The saintly orator is yearning, yearning for Christ

Himself; he will have naught of Moses or Isaiah; nor does he desire

dreams, or care for angels’ visits: _ipse, ipse me osculetur_, cries his

soul in the words of Canticles--let _Him_ kiss me. The phrasing seems

symbolical; but the yearning is direct, and at least rhetorically

overmastering. The emotion is justified by its reasons. They lie in the

personality of Christ and Bernard’s love of Him, rising from all his

knowledge of Him, even from his experience of Jesus’ whisperings to the

soul. He knows how vastly Jesus surpasses the human prophets who

prefigured or foretold Him: _ipsos longe superat Jesus meus_--the word

_meus_ is love’s very articulation. The orator cries: “Listen! Let the

kissing mouth be the Word assuming flesh; and the mouth kissed be the

flesh which is assumed; then the kiss which is consummated between them is

the _persona_ compacted of the two, to wit, the mediator of God and men,

the man Christ Jesus.”

This identical allegory goes back to Origen’s _Commentary on Canticles_.

Bernard has kindled it with an intimate love of Jesus, which is not

Origen’s. But the thought explains and justifies Bernard’s desire to be

kissed by the kiss of His mouth, and so to be infolded in the divine love

which “gave His only-begotten Son,” and also became flesh. _Os osculans_

signifies the Incarnation: one realizes the emotional power which that

saving thought would take through such a metaphor. At the end of his

sermon, Bernard sums up the conclusion, so that his hearers may carry it

away:

“It is plain that this holy kiss was a grace needed by the world, to

give faith to the weak, and satisfy the desire of the perfect. The

kiss itself is none other than the mediator of God and men, the man

Christ Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns

God, _per omnia saecula saeculorum_, Amen.”

III

There is small propriety in speaking of these men of the first half of the

twelfth century as Platonists or Aristotelians; nor is there great

interest in trying to find in Plato or Aristotle or Plotinus the specific

origin of any of their thoughts. They were apt to draw on the source

nearest and most convenient; and one must remember that their immediate

philosophic antecedents were not the distinct systems of Plato and

Aristotle and Plotinus, but rather the late pagan eras of eclecticism,

followed by that strongly motived syntheticism of the Church Fathers which

selected whatever might accord with their Christian scheme. So Abaelard

must not be called an Aristotelian. Neither he nor his contemporaries knew

what an Aristotelian was, and when they called Abaelard _Peripateticus_,

they meant one skilled in the logic which was derived from the simpler

treatises of Aristotle’s _Organon_. Nor will we call Hugo a Platonist, in

spite of his fine affinities with Plato; for many of Hugo’s thoughts, his

classification of the sciences for example, pointed back to Aristotle.

Abaelard, Hugo, St. Bernard suggest the triangulation of the epoch’s

intellectual interests. Peter Lombard, somewhat their junior, presents its

compend of accepted and partly digested theology. He took his method from

Abaelard, and drew whole chapters of his work from Hugo; but his great

source, which was also theirs, was Augustine. The Lombard was, and was to

be, a representative man; for his _Sentences_ brought together the

ultimate problems which exercised the minds of the men of his time and

after.

The early and central decades of the twelfth century offer other persons

who may serve to round out our general notion of the character of the

intellectual interests which occupied the period before the rediscovery of

Aristotle, that is, of the substantial Aristotelian encyclopaedia of

knowledge. Among such Adelard of Bath (England) was somewhat older than

Abaelard. His keen pursuit of knowledge made him one of its early pilgrims

to Spain and Greece. He compiled a book of _Quaestiones naturales_, and

another called _De eodem et diverso_,[504] in which he struggled with the

problem of universals, and with palpable problems of psychology. His

cosmology shows a genial culling from the _Timaeus_ fragment of Plato, and

such other bits of Greek philosophy as he had access to.

Adelard was influenced by the views of men who taught or studied at

Chartres. Bernard of Chartres, the first of the great Chartrian teachers

of the early twelfth century,[505] wrote on Porphyry, and after his death

was called by John of Salisbury _perfectissimus inter Platonicos saeculi

nostri_. He was one of those extreme realists whose teachings might bear

pantheistic fruit in his disciples; he had also a Platonistic imagination,

leading him to see in Nature a living organism. Bernard’s younger brother,

Thierry, also called of Chartres, extended his range of studies, and

compiled numerous works on natural knowledge, indicating his wide reading

and receptive nature. His realism brought him very close to pantheism,

which indeed flowered poetically in his admirer or pupil, Bernard

Silvestris of Tours.

If we should analyze the contents of the latter’s _De mundi universitate_,

it might be necessary to affirm that the author was a dualistic thinker,

in that he recognized two first principles, God and matter; and also that

he was a pantheist, because of the way in which he sees in God the source

of Nature: “This mind (_nous_) of the supreme God is soul (_intellectus_),

and from its divinity Nature is born.”[506] One should not, however, drive

the heterogeneous thoughts of these twelfth-century people to their

opposite conclusions. A moderate degree of historical insight should

prevent our interpreting their gleanings from the past by formulas of our

own greater knowledge. Doubtless their books--Hugo’s as well as Thierry’s

and Bernard Silvester’s--have enough of contradiction if we will probe for

it with a spirit not their own. But if we will see with their eyes and

perceive with their feelings, we shall find ourselves resting with each of

them in some unity of personal temperament; and _that_, rather than any

half-borrowed thought, is Hugo or Thierry or Bernard Silvestris.

Silvester’s book, _De mundi universitate, sive Megacosmus et microcosmus_,

is a half poem, like Boëthius’s _De consolatione_ and a number of

mediaeval productions to which there has been occasion to allude. It is

fruitless to dissect such a composite of prose and verse. In it Natura

speaks to Nous, and then Nous to Natura; the four elements come into play,

and nine hierarchies of angels; the stars in their firmaments, and the

genesis of things on earth; Physics and her daughters, Theorica and

Practica, and all the figures of Greek mythology. An analysis of such a

book will turn it to nonsense, and destroy the breath of that

twelfth-century temperament which loved to gather driftwood from the

wreckage of the ancient world of thought. Thus perhaps they expected to

draw to themselves, even from the pagan flotsam, some congenial

explanation of the universe and man.

A far more acute thinker was Gilbert de la Porrée,[507] who taught at

Chartres for a number of years, before advancing upon Paris in 1141. He

next became Bishop of Poictiers, and died in 1154. Like Abaelard, he was

primarily a logician, and occupied himself with the problem of universals,

taking a position not so different from Abaelard’s. Like Abaelard also,

Gilbert was brought to task before a council, in which St Bernard sought

to be the guiding, _scilicet_, condemning spirit. But the condemnation was

confined to certain sentences, which when cut from their context and

presented in distorting isolation, the author willingly sacrificed to the

flames. He refused, some time afterwards, to discuss his views privately

with the Abbot of Clairvaux, saying that the latter was too inexpert a

theologian to understand them. Gilbert’s most famous work, _De sex

principiis_, attempted to complete the last six of Aristotle’s ten

_Categories_, which the philosopher had treated cursorily; it was almost

to rival the work of the Stagirite in authority, for instance, with

Albertus Magnus, who wrote a Commentary upon it in the same spirit with

which he commented on the logical treatises of the _Organon_.

In the same year with Gilbert (1154) died a man of different mental

tendencies, William of Conches,[508] who likewise had been a pupil of

Bernard of Chartres. He was for a time the tutor of Henry Plantagenet.

William was interested in natural knowledge, and something of a humanist.

He made a Commentary on the _Timaeus_, and wrote various works on the

philosophy of Nature, in which he wavered around an atomistic explanation

of the world, yet held fast to the Biblical Creation, to save his

orthodoxy. He also pursued the study of medicine, which was a specialty at

Chartres; through the treatises of Constantinus Africanus[509] he had some

knowledge of the pathological theories of Galen and Hippocrates. For his

interest in physical knowledge, he may be regarded as a precursor of

Roger Bacon. On the other hand, he was a humanist in his strife against

those “Cornificiani” who would know no more Latin than was needful;[510]

and he compiled from the pagan moralists a sort of _Summa_. It is called,

in fact, a _Summa moralium philosophorum_ (an interesting title,

connecting it with the Christian _Summae sententiarum_).[511] It treats

the virtues under the head of _de honesto_; and under that of _de utile_,

reviews the other good things of mind, body, and estate. It also discusses

whether there may be a conflict between the _honestum_ and the _utile_.

These men of the first half of the twelfth century lived before the new

revealing of the Aristotelian philosophy and natural knowledge coming at

the century’s close. Their muster is finally completed by two younger men,

the one an Englishman and the other a Lowlander. The youthful years of

both synchronize with the old age of the men of whom we have been

speaking. For John of Salisbury was born not far from the year 1115, and

died in 1180; and Alanus de Insulis (Lille) was probably born in 1128, and

lived to the beginning of the next century. They are spiritually connected

with the older men because they were taught by them, and because they had

small share in the coming encyclopaedic knowledge. But they close the

group: John of Salisbury closing it by virtue of his critical estimate of

its achievement; Alanus by virtue of his final rehandling of the body of

intellectual data at its disposal, to which he may have made some slight

addition. Abaelard knew and used the simpler treatises of the Aristotelian

_Organon_ of logic. He had not studied the _Analytics_ and the _Topics_,

and of course was unacquainted with the body of Aristotle’s philosophy

outside of logic. John of Salisbury and Alanus know the entire _Organon_;

but neither one nor the other knows the rest of Aristotle, which Alexander

of Hales was the first to make large use of.

John of Salisbury, Little John, Johannes Parvus, as he was called, was the

best classical scholar of his time.[512] His was an acute and active

intellect, which never tired of hearing and weighing the views of other

men. He was, moreover, a man of large experience, travelling much, and

listening to all the teachers prominent in his youth. Also he was active

in affairs, being at one time secretary to Thibaut, Archbishop of

Canterbury, and then the intimate of Becket, of Henry II., and Pope Adrian

IV.! A finished scholar, who knew not one thing, but whatever might be

known, and was enlightened by the training of the world, Little John

critically estimates the learning and philosophy of the men he learns

from. Having always an independent point of view he makes acute remarks

upon it all, and admirable contributions to the sum of current thought.

But chiefly he seems to us as one who looks with even eye upon whatsoever

comes within his vision. He knows the weaknesses of men and the

limitations of branches of discipline; knows, for instance, that dialectic

is sterile by itself, but efficient as an aid to other disciplines. So, as

to logic, John keeps his own point of view, and is always reasonable and

practical.[513] Likewise, with open mind, he considers what there may be

in the alleged science of the Mathematicians, _i.e._ diviners and

astrologers. He uses such phrases as “_probabilia quidem sunt haec ... sed

tamen_ the venom lies under the honey!” For this science sets a fatal

necessity on things, and would even intrude into the knowledge of the

future reserved for God’s majesty. And as John considers the order of

events to come, and the diviner’s art, _cornua succrescunt_--the horns of

more than one dilemma grow.[514]

John knew more than any man of the ancient philosophies.[515] For himself,

of course he loved knowledge; yet he would not dissever it from its value

in the art of living. “Wisdom indeed is a fountain, from which pour forth

the streams which water the whole earth; they fill not alone the garden of

delights of the divine page, but flow on to the Gentiles, and do not

altogether fail even the Ethiopians.... It is certain that the faithful

and wise reader, who from love keeps learning’s watch, escapes vice and

draws near to life.”[516] Philosophy is the _moderatrix omnium_ (a

favourite phrase with John); the true philosopher, as Plato says, is a

lover of God: and so _philosophia_ is _amor divinitatis_. Its precept is

to love God with all our strength, and our neighbour as ourselves: “He who

by philosophizing has reached _charitas_, has attained philosophy’s true

end.”[517] John goes on to show how deeply they err who think philosophy

is but a thing of words and arguments: many of those who multiply words,

by so doing burden the mind. Virtue inseparably accompanies wisdom; this

is John’s sum of the matter. Clearly he is not always, or commonly,

wrestling with ultimate metaphysical problems; he busies himself, acutely

but not metaphysically, with the wisdom of life. He too can use the

language of piety and contemplation. In the sixth chapter of his _De

septem septenis_ (The seven Sevens) he gives the seven grades of

contemplation--_meditatio_, _soliloquium_, _circumspectio_, _ascensio_,

_revelatio_, _emissio_, _inspiratio_.[518] He presents the matter

succinctly, thus perhaps giving clarity to current pietistic phraseology.

Alanus de Insulis was a man of renown in his life-time, and after his

death won the title of Doctor Universalis. Although the fame of scholar,

philosopher, theologian, poet, may have uplifted him during his years of

strength, he died a monk at Citeaux, in the year 1202. Fame came justly to

him, for he was learned in the antique literature, and a gifted Latin

poet, while as thinker and theologian he made skilful and catholic use of

his thorough knowledge of whatever the first half of the twelfth century

had achieved in thought and system. Elsewhere he has been considered as a

poet;[519] here we merely observe his position and accomplishment in

matters of salvation and philosophy.[520]

Alanus possessed imagination, language, and a faculty of acute exposition.

His sentences, especially his definitions, are pithy, suggestive, and

vivid. He projected much thought as well as fantasy into his poem,

_Anticlaudianus_, and his _cantafable_, _De planctu naturae_. He showed

himself a man of might, and insight too, in his _Contra haereticos_. His

suggestive pithiness of diction lends interest to his encyclopaedia of

definitions, _Distinctiones dictionum theologicalium_; and his keen power

of reasoning succinctly from axiomatic premises is evinced in his _De arte

fidei catholicae_.

The intellectual activities of Alanus fell in the latter decades of the

twelfth century, when mediaeval thought seemed for the moment to be

mending its nets, and preparing for a further cast in the new waters of

Aristotelianism. Alanus is busy with what has already been won; he is

unconscious of the new greater knowledge, which was preparing its

revelations. He is not even a man of the transition from the lesser to the

greater intellectual estate; but is rather a final compendium of the

lesser. Himself no epoch-making reasoner, he uses the achievements of

Abaelard and Hugo, of Gilbert de la Porrée and William of Conches, and

others. Neither do his works unify and systematize the results of his

studies. He is rather a re-phraser. Yet his refashioning is not a mere

thing of words; it proceeds with the vitalizing power of the man’s plastic

and creative temperament. One may speak of him as keen and acquisitive

intellectually, and creative through his temperament.

Alanus shows a catholic receptivity for all the mingled strains of

thought, Platonic, Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean, which fed

the labours of his predecessors. He has studied the older sources, the

_Timaeus_ fragment, also Apuleius and Boëthius of course. His chief

blunder is his misconception of Aristotle as a logician and confuser of

words (_verborum turbator_)--a phrase, perhaps, consciously used with

poetic license. For he has made use of much that came originally from the

Stagirite. Within his range of opportunity, Alanus was a universal reader,

and his writings discover traces of the men of importance from

Pseudo-Dionysius and Eriugena down to John of Salisbury and Gundissalinus.

These remarks may take the place of any specific presentation of Alanus’s

work in logic, of his view of universals, of his notions of physics, of

nature, of matter and form, of man’s mind and body, and of the Triune

Godhead.[521] In his cosmology, however, we may note his imaginatively

original employment of the conception or personification of Nature. God is

the Creator, and Nature is His creature, and His vice-regent or vicarious

maker, working the generation and decay of things material and

changeable.[522] This thought, imaginatively treated, makes a good part of

the poetry of the _De planctu_ and the _Anticlaudianus_. The conception

with him is full of charming fantasy, and we look back through Bernardus

Silvestris and other writers to Plato’s divine fooling in the _Timaeus_,

not as the specific, but generic, origin of such imaginative views of the

contents and generation of the world. Such imaginings were as fantasy to

science, when compared with the solid and comprehensive consideration of

the material world which was to come a few years after Alanus’s death

through the encyclopaedic Aristotelian knowledge presented in the works of

Alexander of Hales and Albertus Magnus.