Theologizing Friendship. Nathan Sumner Lefler

In contrast, the whole scholastic enterprise is predicated upon the ideal of a scientific neutrality which must check the motion of the inquirer’s will at all costs: the goal is the static, indisputable (because demonstrable) proposition, not a moving target.98 Fourth, we have noted the typically “personal” character of monastic theology, where that term is to be taken in both the psychological and in the grammatical sense. Thus, the deep personal investment of the monastic author in his subject, as well as his earnest concern for the spiritual well-being of his readers, both evident in so many stylistic nuances, are made transparent through the frequent use of the first and second grammatical persons. The master of the school, on the other hand, meticulously distances himself from his text, both emotionally and linguistically speaking. Here the third person is the predominant grammatical form employed. Finally, to what has been already explicitly adduced we may add that monastic theology is characteristically “sweet,” where we understand that English word as translating at least two different Latin words: suavis and dulcis. Both of these terms, though especially the latter, can connote the most ordinary, concrete sense of sweetness to the physical palate, as well as a metaphorical spiritual sense deriving from the physical. The first term, however, has a further resonance, highly amenable to the monastic theological sensibility: this arises from its obvious etymological connection to suasion, or persuasion.99 In a connection that can be traced back to Augustine, the sweetness of God’s Word, especially his Incarnate Word, Jesus, has the ultimate power to persuade, and so to win man’s wayward heart to himself.100 By christological extension, the words (both spoken and written) produced by a member of Christ’s Body ought always, sweetly, to urge the sinner to conversion. The schoolmen, in striking contrast, seek not to sway men’s hearts with rhetoric, but through the application of logic to change men’s minds.101 The preceding criteria are intended less as an exhaustive list than as a kind of level, analogous to the carpenter’s tool, whereby, in the ensuing chapters of this dissertation, we may gauge within a single horizon, so to speak, the respective theological projects of St. Aelred of Rievaulx and St. Thomas Aquinas.

      Sources

      To the above framing observations, we must now add some brief notes on the use of sources by monks and schoolmen between 1110 and 1274. What follows is intended only to provide a general picture; certain precisions will need to be made in subsequent chapters, in reference to the sources used specifically by Aelred and Thomas.

      Biblical

      The Bible was far and away the most important source for monastic theology and remained the guiding force for scholastic theology as well, at least through the high Middle Ages, in spite of the increasing importance of Aristotle. In general, both monks and schoolmen show a thorough familiarity with the biblical text, from beginning to end, though each milieu reveals certain clear preferences for particular books or types of biblical material. Thus, the Song of Songs is perennially and by far the favorite book of the monks,102 whereas the schoolmen of the thirteenth century prefer other sapiential literature, especially Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.103 Considering the canon in its entirety, Smalley records the following order of preferences among commentators in the schools during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries:

      the two favourite books for commentators were the Psalter and the Pauline Epistles, their creative energy being centred in the latter; St. Paul provided the richest nourishment to the theologian and logician. Next came the Hexaemeron, because it provided an opportunity to discuss the questions of Creation and angelology. Original work on the Law, the historical books of the Old Testaments, the Prophets, the Gospels, and the Acts seems to be lacking.104

      By contrast, the monks make much of both the historical and the prophetic materials, in part, at least, for reasons already discussed. As for two of the greatest Cistercians, Bernard and Aelred, they incorporate Scripture effortlessly into everything they write, skillfully interweaving passages from every book in both Testaments.105

      Patristic

      After the Bible, the next most-read texts in the Middle Ages are the collective works of the Church Fathers. As should be expected, availability, and hence knowledge, of the works of the Latin Fathers exceeds that of the Greek works. Nevertheless, Leclercq notes that

      In the twelfth century, Latin monks took the initiative of having Greek texts translated whenever it was possible. But a considerable part of the patristic legacy inherited from the Greeks had already been translated: it was preserved and handed on, as was all that remained of ancient culture, especially in Italy and in England.106

      In the peculiarly significant case of Origen, Leclercq makes the following interesting observation:

      If we read the introductions to the different volumes of the critical edition of the Latin Origen, we note that almost all the manuscripts are of monastic origin and that most date from the ninth and the twelfth centuries. Other indications point to the conclusion that in every period or place where there was a monastic renewal, there was a revival of Origen. It is true of the Carolingian reform; it is even more . . . readily apparent in the monastic revival of the twelfth century.107

      In contrast with this strong evidence of Origen’s influence on the monasteries, “Origen is less frequently represented in the libraries of the cathedral churches.”108 In general, however, it is reasonable to assume that such manuscripts as were at the disposal of the monasteries were at least accessible to the masters of the schools as well, and in time, the more important works inevitably became part of the universal intellectual patrimony.

      As for the Western Fathers, the Latin patristic corpus diffused among the medieval monasteries is virtually complete.109 The Fathers whose works are most frequently copied, and the widest range of whose works are represented, are Sts. Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine. In the case of the Latins, the thorough familiarity of the schoolmen would not have varied substantially from that of the monks. Leclercq observes, however, that the uses made of patristic sources, and consequently the parts of works given most attention, differed significantly between the two milieux.110

      Finally, in addition to complete works by particular authors, by about 1130, medieval churchmen had also at their disposal the massive biblical Glossa Ordinaria, a six-volume digest of patristic commentary on the Scriptures, organized into an elaborate series of interlinear and marginal glosses, superimposed on the biblical text itself. Of this “tremendous work” Beryl Smalley notes that “the range of authors quoted in the Gloss is wide. The better known of the Latin Fathers down to Bede, Origen and Hesychius in translation, Raban, Strabo, Paschasius, John the Scot, Haimo, Lanfranc, Berengar have all been laid under contribution.”111

      Pagan

      The humanist renaissance that swept across Europe in the twelfth century entailed a renewed interest in the classics of antiquity, especially in the monasteries. Within this variegated body of literature, the Roman rhetorical tradition undoubtedly had pride of place. Thus, alongside their reading in the Church Fathers, the monks became well acquainted with Virgil, Horace, Terence, Statius, Lucan, and above all others, Cicero. However paradoxical in its superficial aspect, there was at bottom nothing revolutionary about the cloister’s integration of these pagan works into their own living literary tradition: Cicero’s moral, aesthetic and rhetorical concerns the monks easily recognized as profoundly congruent, if not always perfectly identical, with their own. It was rather in the schools that pagan literature provoked a real and lasting revolution, as Latin translations of the entirety of Aristotle’s work became available in the West, the better part of it for the first time. How truly seismic the change was can be glimpsed in R. W. Southern’s juxtaposing of the pattern of citation in Peter Lombard’s Sentences, written in the mid-twelfth century, with that of Aquinas’s ST, a century later. The former work contains “thousands of quotations from the Church Fathers, . . . only three from secular philosophy, and all these were borrowed from St. Ambrose or St. Augustine.” In contrast, “the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas contains about 3500 quotations from Aristotle, of which 1500 come from the Nichomachean Ethics and 800 from the Meteorology