IN THE MOST CHARACTERISTIC and representative of the Scriptural exegesis produced in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the respective roles of God and man in producing Holy Scripture were described precisely. According to St Thomas Aquinas, God is the sole auctor of things and can use things to signify, whereas human auctores are auctores of words and use words to signify1. When things are used significatively in Scripture, allegorical senses arise; when words are used significatively, we have the literal sense2. The literal sense was believed to express the intention of the human auctor. As St Thomas’s teacher Albert the Great put it (writing shortly after 1270), ‘the intention of the speaker as expressed in the letter is the literal sense’3. In his commentary on Romans, St Thomas rejected those received interpretations which do not pay sufficient attention to the intentio auctoris (‘this response seems not at all to be in accordance with the intention of the Apostle’) but accepted those which keep close to the letter (‘this exposition is literal and according to the intention of the Apostle’4).
A more rigorous logical method was being applied in the study of the Bible. St Thomas made much of Augustine’s remark that an argument can be drawn only from the literal sense of Scripture, and for Thomas, ‘argument’ in this context meant strictly logical argument, proceeding by means of premiss and syllogism5. Allegorical senses which involve significative things, are of no use to the logician, who is confined to the literal sense6. ‘From the literal sense alone can arguments be drawn, and not from the things said by allegory’7.
But there are various kinds of literal sense: sometimes, the auctor may speak plainly and directly; sometimes, he may employ figurative expressions. All kinds of figurative language, including metaphors, parables and similitudes, involve significative words and are, therefore, part of the literal sense.
Although spiritual things are set forth under the figures of corporeal things, yet those things which are intended by sensible figures to concern spiritual things do not pertain to the mystical sense, but to the literal; because the literal sense is that which is first intended by the words, either speaking properly or figuratively.8
As a result, the exegete has the task of sifting the literal sense of the human auctor, deciding when his meaning is expressed ‘properly speaking’ (proprie dicta) and when it is expressed figuratively (figurate)9.
The commonplace nature of this approach is indicated by the fact that it was restated in the early fourteenth century by the controversial Nominalist philosopher, William of Ockham (c. 1285–1347), who argued that the statements of auctores cannot always be taken ‘according to the propriety of speech’ (secundum proprietatem sermonis)10. Many figurative expressions were employed by philosophers, by saints and by Scriptural auctores, and they are to be found even in everyday speech. According to the grammarians, ‘transferences’ (translationes) from ‘proper’ to ‘improper’ speech are made for three reasons: for the sake of metre, as in poetry; for the sake of ornament, as in rhetoric; and for the sake of necessity, either brevity or utility, as in philosophy. In all of these ways, Ockham concludes, ‘transferences’ occur in Scripture. Unfortunately, many errors originate among the simple-minded who wish to accept all the statements of the auctores ‘according to the propriety of speech’ when they ought to be understood ‘in accordance with authorial intention’.
Because of such procedures as these, the fact of the divine inspiration of Scripture no longer interfered with thorough examination of the literary issues involved. The roles played by the human auctores, and the literary forms and devices which they had employed in their works, were established as features of the literal sense, as facets of their personal purposes in writing. The ideas concerning literary style and structure which emerged from theologians’ discussions of ‘formal causes’ will be considered in the following chapter. Our present chapter has as its subject their discussions of the inspired authors as ‘efficient causes’.
At the outset, something must be said about the impact of the Aristotelian ‘four causes’ on Scriptural exegesis, with particular reference to the ‘efficient cause’. It will be argued that the Aristotelian theory of causality helped to bring about a new awareness of the integrity of the individual human auctor. We shall then turn our attention to the connection between the individuality of the human auctor and the ‘literal sense’ which he was supposed to express. In particular, the influence of Jewish scholarship, which emphasised the ‘literal sense’ of Scripture, encouraged a more precise discrimination between the inspired authors. The major exegetes of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, it would seem, were not prepared to submerge their auctores in the amorphous ocean of auctoritas. This is borne out by our examination of the way in which these new attitudes to authorship resulted in a transformation of exegesis of the Psalter—one of the Scriptural texts which, as was suggested in the previous chapter, medieval theologians found particularly difficult to describe in terms of authorial role and literary form.
All these ideological and procedural changes having been illustrated, we shall be able to analyse in more depth the diverse authorial roles and functions that were then being found in the literal sense of Scripture. These roles seem to fall into two main groups, in accordance with two types of personal activity which (in the opinion of the commentators) the human auctores had practised, namely, their individual literary activity and their individual moral activity.
The late-medieval interest in the individuality of the human auctor extended to pagan auctores. Writers from both camps, the Scriptural and the secular, were being credited with comparable literary and moral achievements. Moreover, Old Testament auctores and pagan auctores were held to possess comparable degrees of auctoritas in common subject-areas. The final section of this chapter, therefore, will consider the extent to which the new attitudes to authorship contributed to a general reconciliation, within late-medieval scholarship, of sacred and profane auctores.
The single most important impulse behind the new conceptions of authorial role and literary form was the new method of thinking and techniques of study which late-medieval scholars derived from Aristotle. Among many other influences and implications, commentators were encouraged to adopt and develop a prologue based on Aristotelian theories of causality.
The technical philosophical details of these theories were worked out in generations of commentaries on Aristotle’s Physica and Metaphysica. For example, in expounding the Metaphysica (after 1270) Albert the Great had contrasted ‘certain ones who said there were five kinds of causes’ with others who believe in only four causes11. It would appear that he regarded ‘Plato and his followers’ (perhaps including Avicenna) as the thinkers who had arrived at a five-fold division of causes by distinguishing between an ‘efficient cause’ of being and a ‘moving cause’ of generation and change. The partisans of the four-cause theory were identified as ‘Aristotelians’ for, according to Albert, Aristotle did not posit an efficient cause that was not also a moving cause and, therefore, maintained that there were four main causes: the efficient and moving cause, the material cause, the formal cause and the final cause. Albert seems to have considered himself to be a member of the latter camp, for he is quite consistent in identifying the efficient cause with the moving cause.
This was the view which had won wide acceptance. The four causes as explained by Aristotle provided the paradigm for the ‘Aristotelian prologue’ to commentaries on auctores. Between 1235 and 1245, it became popular among lecturers in the arts faculty at the University of Paris. For example, in ‘Master Jordan’s’ commentary on Priscianus minor (written c. 1245), Priscian’s modus agendi and the form in which his materials were arranged were described as two aspects of a single thing, the formal cause (causa formalis):
The formal cause of this science is the form of treatment and the form of the treatise. The form of treatment is the mode of proceeding which is principally definitive, divisive, probative, improbative, and applies examples; the form of the treatise is the form of the thing produced which consists in the separation of books and of chapters and the order thereof.12
The efficient cause (causa efficiens) had two aspects also, the external (extra) and the internal (intra). The external efficient cause was identified with the author, as in the logical commentaries of Robert Kilwardby, who lectured in the Parisian arts faculty (c. 1237–c. 1245) before his entry into the Dominican Order. In expounding the Isagoge, Kilwardby remarks, ‘concerning the efficient cause which is altogether external, much solicitude need not be taken’13. Similar comments are found at the beginnings of his commentaries on Aristotle’s Praedicamenta and Peri hermeneias, the anonymous Liber sex principiorum and Boethius’s Liber divisionum14. In an anonymous commentary on the Praedicamenta, the internal efficient cause is identified with the internal formal cause and the internal final cause, on the authority of a passage in Aristotle’s Physica:
The external efficient cause of this book, which is first within the whole of logic, was Aristotle. The internal efficient cause is the same as the internal final cause and formal cause, according to what Aristotle says in the Physics, that three causes coincide in one.15
In this anonymous commentary, the external final cause is in its turn divided into the immediate cause (causa propinqua) and the remote cause (causa remota):
The external final cause is twofold, namely immediate and remote. The immediate cause is to know the predicaments; the remote cause is demonstration and those things which avail for demonstration like definition and division.
The immediate cause was the specific didactic aim of the text, while the remote cause was the more general way in which it could instruct and improve the human mind, as is made clear by the description of the final cause of Aristotle’s Topica provided by a master ‘Elyas’ who may be the Dominican Elias Brunetti:
The final cause is double, internal and external. The internal is the same as the form; the external is twofold, namely immediate and remote. The immediate cause is artificially to construct syllogisms concerning both parts of a problem; the remote cause is the whole of philosophy, and as a result the perfection of the rational soul by virtue, for which science finally exists.16
These attempts to impose dichotomies on the efficient and final causes probably reflect the continuing influence of the extrinsecus/intrinsecus distinction17.
The prologues of artistae usually began with a discussion of the material cause, their main interest being in comprehensive definition, subdivision and analysis of the subject-matter18. The efficient cause was usually discussed last, receiving cursory treatment. After the auctor of one’s textbook had been identified as Priscian, Aristotle or whoever else, there seemed to be little more to say. A concomitant of this was that, while the artistae were very concerned with the formal cause of the science in question (in particular, with its proper modes of procedure and the correct order of study), they paid little attention to the specific formal cause which the auctor, in writing his book, had brought into being19. By contrast, the theologians—because they were dealing with divinely-inspired texts—had a special interest in the efficient and formal causes of the books of the Bible, and adapted the ‘Aristotelian prologue’ accordingly. As we shall see, this resulted in discussions of authorial role and literary form which possess a degree of complexity and sophistication not found in prologues to the textbooks of the arts faculty, works which had been produced by merely human agency.
Between 1223 and 1227, the Franciscan Alexander of Hales had substituted Peter Lombard’s Libri sententiarum for the Bible in his lectures in the Parisian faculty of theology20. The four causes are not invoked in the prologue to his Sentences commentary21; neither do they appear at the beginning of his commentary on St John’s gospel (written before 1236)22. However, the influence of artists’ discussion of the four causes is manifest in Alexander’s later Summa theologiae, completed by his disciples after his death in 1245 (see pp. 119 et seq.).
In the first Sentences commentary to issue from Oxford (c. 1241-8), the Dominican, Richard Fishacre, distinguished between the diverse instrumental efficient causes of theology, namely, its human auctores, and its principal efficient cause, namely, God23.
Although therefore some part of sacred Scripture seems to have been written by Moses, and similarly some part by the prophets, some by the Evangelists, and some by the Apostles, yet not they themselves but God both wrote and spoke by them, as the principal efficient cause by the instrument.24
A similar distinction is found in Robert Kilwardby’s Sentences commentary (written sometime between 1248 and 1261), which has a much more elaborate introduction. The framework of Kilwardby’s Aristotelian prologue’ is as follows:
‘Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven pillars’. [Proverbs ix. 1] In these words can be considered the four causes of this doctrine and indeed of the whole of sacred Scripture. The efficient cause, by the name ‘wisdom’ . . . The material cause is indicated in the signification of the statement. For in the name ‘wisdom’ the material or subject of the first book of Sentences is intimated . . . The formal cause for its part is obvious from the order of the words in the foresaid authoritative statement. The order of the books also is according to the order of the words . . . The final cause can in a certain manner be considered in that it is said, ‘has built her house’.25
As has already been mentioned, the ‘Aristotelian prologue’ made its appearance in Scriptural exegesis in the commentaries on St Mark and the Acts of the Apostles which Hugh of St Cher produced at St Jacques, Paris, between 1230 and 1236. St Mark’s gospel is described as a summary of what was said more fully in St Matthew’s gospel; in his first nine chapters Mark employed an abbreviating style (modus abbreviationis). Then, the ‘introductory causes’ are explained:
The efficient cause is Mark himself, or the grace of God, or the request of the disciples of Peter, on whose petition the Evangelist wrote, as Peter confirmed. . . . The material cause is Christ and his works. The formal cause or the mode of treatment has few words but many profundities. The final cause is indicated by John xx.[31], where it is said, ‘these things are written that you may believe, and that believing you may have life’.26
Hugh’s younger contemporary, Guerric of St Quentin (who held the second chair of theology at St Jacques between 1233 and 1242), was perhaps the first exegete to apply the four causes in exegesis of the Old Testament27. Guerric began his commentary on Isaiah by quoting Ecclesiasticus xlviii.27, ‘in the power of the spirit he saw the last things, he comforted the mourners of Zion’. Here one may perceive the text’s two levels of authorship, the human and the divine, which Guerric describes as the ‘twofold efficient cause’ (duplex causa efficiens):
The efficient cause is twofold, namely moving and operating. The operating cause is Isaiah, which is understood by the supposition of this word, ‘he saw’. But there is also a cause which is efficient and not operating, which is noted here: ‘by the spirit’, namely by the Holy Spirit, which moved Isaiah that he should write. The Holy Spirit itself did not write, which is noted in that it says ‘by the spirit’.28
In other words, the Holy Spirit may be regarded as the ‘moving’ efficient cause which motivated the ‘operating’ efficient cause, namely the prophet Isaiah, to write.
This idea of the duplex causa efficiens became popular as a useful formula for summary description of the inspired authorship of Biblical texts. God was regarded as the first auctor or the unmoved mover of such a book, whereas the human auctor was both moved (by God) and moving (in producing the text). This is the point made in prologues to the Psalter and the Apocalypse wrongly ascribed to Albert the Great:
From these statements it is clear what are the efficient causes of this book, because the cause which is moving and not moved is the holy Spirit, while the cause which is moving and moved is David himself.29
The efficient cause which is moving and not moved was the entire Trinity, revealing to Christ the man . . . The cause moving and moved was the man Christ, and the angel, and John.30
The same basic distinction between types of efficient cause occurs, for example, in the Psalter-commentaries of Nicholas Gorran (written in the period 1263–85) and Nicholas of Lyre31.
Human feelings and emotions could also play a part in this causal system. In the prologue to his commentary on Romans, St Thomas Aquinas analysed the emotions of fear and love as possible motivating forces32. What did St Paul mean when he described himself as a servant (servus) of Jesus Christ (Romans i. 1)? Whoever is the cause of his own actions is free; whoever is another’s cause, in the sense of being directed by another, is a servant. But there are two kinds of servitude, the servitude of fear and the servitude of love. The servitude of fear forces a man to act against his will; on the other hand, if someone acts as another’s cause in accordance with a chosen end or objective, this is the servitude of love. As ‘the philosopher’ (Aristotle) says in his Ethica concerning friendship, one should benefit a friend and submit oneself to him on his account. It would seem, then, that there was nothing abject or degrading in St Paul’s role as a servant of Christ, since he served out of love and in accordance with his final end.
The idea of complex motivation also comes out in the heading ‘causes moving to write’ (causae moventes ad scribendum), a heading which could designate some or all of the four causes, or a causal system in which the four causes were said to play a major part. In his commentary on Peter Lombard’s prologue to the Libri sententiarum (written c. 1245–50), St Albert the Great distinguished between the auctor and the causae moventes (final cause, material cause and formal cause) which moved the auctor to write33. When analysing the same prologue, St Thomas Aquinas provided a similar explanation of the causae moventes34. Writing much later (c. 1332), the Oxford Dominican, Thomas Waleys, divided the efficient cause of De civitate Dei into the causa effectiva librorum and the causa movers ad scribendum35. The first is St Augustine, the second consists of the saint’s personal reasons for writing, what he hoped to achieve in his work.
Other texts were believed to have had an even more complex motivation and, in these cases, commentators were not content to speak of a merely double causa efficiens. In his commentary on St Luke’s Gospel (written between 1254 and 1257), the great Franciscan theologian, St Bonaventure, defined a triple efficient cause (triplex causa efficiens): the Holy Spirit, divine grace and the evangelist.
And so in this work there was a triple efficient cause, namely the supreme, which is the person of the Holy Spirit; the lowest, the evangelist himself; and the intermediate, namely the grace of the Holy Spirit . . .36
The Paris Dominican, Nicholas Gorran, and the Cambridge Dominican, John Russel (a little-known theologian who flourished at the turn of the thirteenth century) believed that a quadruple efficient cause (quadruplex causa efficiens) was at work in the Apocalypse: God, Christ, the angel who visited St John on Patmos, and St John himself37. Here is Russel’s version:
Indeed, the efficient cause is quadruple in this book, namely God, Christ, the angel and John. God is the principal and primary efficient cause; Christ, the secondary; the angel, the mediate; and John, the immediate . . .38
The element of comparison suggested by these accounts of double, treble and quadruple efficient causality is important in so far as it manifests the exegetes’ belief in the essential unity and rapport of the roles of God and man in the production of Scripture. But the element of distinction also suggested therein is far more important from our point of view. Discrimination between the primary efficient cause and the secondary or instrumental efficient causes meant that all contributors to Scripture, both divine and human, received due attention, with important consequences for the development of literary theory. These two elements will now be considered in turn.
Late medieval theologians, of course, accepted unquestioningly the fact of the divine authorship of the Bible, a fact which guaranteed its authority. As St Bonaventure put it in his commentary on the Sentences, if we wish to prove that the human auctores of Scripture told the truth, the short answer is that we know this to be the case because the Holy Spirit inspired them39. It is the faith which the auctores received from God which makes their writings authentic. In one of the ordinary disputations which he held at Paris between 1276 and 1292, Henry of Ghent made the same point by reference to artistic skills40. Where there is a craftsman (artifex) who directs and guides a work and another who works with his hands in accordance with rules conveyed from the craftsman, the latter is not said to be the auctor of the work but rather the former. Similarly, although the science of theology is described by men, it is directed and guided by God, who alone can properly be called its auctor. The auctoritas of this science is reducible to divine auctoritas; its sole source was God. By contrast, philosophy, which in its first invention involved the cooperation of human ingenuity, is, to that extent, fallible.
Similar confirmations of authority are found in the prologues of the Bible-commentators. For example, Albert the Great distinguished between the human auctor and the auctoritas of the Book of Baruch:
Psalm cxvii. 26, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’. In this statement the author and the cause of the following work is demonstrated, and the authority of this Scripture. The author, because the ‘blessed’ man may be interpreted as Baruch . . . The authority of the Scripture is noted in that it is said, ‘in the name of the Lord’. For a name is applied from knowledge, and knowledge of God, who is truth alone, supplies the authority of the words. For the authority [of the Book of Baruch] is revelation, and revelation is the most firm foundation which is to be had.41
The human auctor of the text is Baruch, but its auctoritas came from God. In a commentary on St John’s Gospel attributed to Albert, God is designated as the ‘interior’ auctor while the human writer is the ‘exterior’ auctor42. From the former derives the authenticity of the text; from the latter derives its fidelity. Giles of Rome went so far as to remark that it was superstitious to inquire about the human auctor of Scriptural text when one knew very well that its auctoritas was vouched for by the God who had inspired His instrumental causes to write (see p. 38).
But, by the same token, the great auctoritas of Scripture could be taken for granted, and this is precisely what happened in many late-medieval prologues to Biblical commentaries. God was invoked as ultimately being responsible for all that was written in Scripture because He was its primary efficient cause. The point required little elaboration or substantiation. In the world of the ‘Aristotelian prologue’, the divine omnipotence no longer interfered with the integrity of the human auctor.
The Aristotelian theory of causality, as interpreted by many late-medieval scholars, made careful provision for the integrity of instrumental efficient causes. God was the first mover or primary efficient cause, who moved inferior causes from potentiality to act. The primary efficient cause divulged power to instrumental efficient causes, each of which set in motion those parts of creation which were under its jurisdiction.
Truly, mediate causes between the primary efficient cause and the ultimate effect have purposes (intentiones) proper to them, as is the case with intelligences and celestial bodies and corruptible corporeal agents . . .43
This statement by Robert Grosseteste (Bishop of Lincoln 1235–53) concerns the movement of the heavens, but the general principle contained therein was so fundamental to thirteenth-century Aristotelian science that it is relevant to the literary theory which this science fostered. The intermediate causes were allowed a certain amount of individual power; they were not mere cogs in a smoothly-running divine machine44. In the same way an auctor of Scripture, being a cause which existed between the first efficient cause (God) and the effect (the text), was granted his personal purpose.
A similar conclusion emerges from an examination of the relevant passages in the Summa theologiae of St Thomas Aquinas. There is a unique first cause of all things, to be identified with God; its activity is the universal cause of all other activity. But, Aquinas assures us, this is not to deny a measure of independence and individuality to created things: on the contrary, each thing has its proper and inalienable operation.
If the active powers that are observed in creatures accomplished nothing, there would be no point to their having received such powers. Indeed, if all creatures are utterly devoid of any activity of their own, then they themselves would seem to have a pointless existence, since everything exists for the sake of its operation.45
But what happens to these proper operations when creatures are brought under the direct control of the first cause, thereby becoming divine tools or instruments? The status of the instrumental efficient cause, as understood by Aquinas, is well summed up by T. Gilby:
Instrumental secondary causes act in virtue of a causality passing through them from a higher principal cause, and produce an effect of an order higher than their own proper order: a man is the instrumental secondary cause of a miracle.46
In Biblical inspiration, God inspires an auctor to write with a sublimity which far exceeds his normal powers. But this does not mean that the normal powers of the human instrument are thereby either destroyed or disregarded. As Aquinas says, when discussing the causes of the sacraments, an instrumental cause has two actions47. First, there is its instrumentai action, according to which it acts not by any virtue of its own but by virtue of the principal agent of which it is an instrument. Then there is its proper action, which was fully taken into account by the superior agent who sought to utilise this property. Hence, the water of baptism, which washes the body according to its proper operation, also washes the soul in so far as it is an instrument of the divine power. Applying this theory to Biblical inspiration, it would seem that a writer’s diverse talents are presupposed and exploited by God. As a result, the differences between the personalities and the various modi agendi of the human auctores of Scripture can be fully recognized. Peter is not Paul; neither are they alike in style. Moreover, a single auctor can express himself in different ways in different books, as was the case with Solomon and St John.
From all this it would appear that the influence of Aristotle’s theory of causality as understood by late-medieval schoolmen helped to bring about a new awareness of the integrity of the individual human auctor. Henceforth each and every inspired writer would be given credit for his personal literary contribution. Different levels of authorship had been identified: the efficient cause could be double, triple or quadruple, depending on the particular causal process. Different types of motivation had been recognised: personal reasons could have played a significant part, working in harmony with the crucial (but rarely overbearing) factor of divine direction.
The impression we have gained from the sources cited above, of a change of attitude to the human auctor of Scripture, seems to be confirmed by the material brought together in the following section, which attempts to illuminate the relationship between the individual human auctor and his intended meaning, i.e. the ‘literal sense’ of holy writ. The way in which two highly articulate commentators, Nicholas Trevet and Nicholas of Lyre, justified their use of literalistic Jewish exegesis will make abundantly clear the high value which was being placed on the literal sense as the expression of the human auctor. Then, in the Psalter exegesis provided by these scholars and by a distinguished predecessor who influenced them considerably, Thomas Aquinas, we shall see, as it were, the new attitude in action, producing new solutions to old problems concerning the literary form of the Psalter and the authorship of the various psalms.
With the decline of interest in the allegorical senses of Scripture corresponded an increase of interest in a Jewish tradition of exegesis which emphasised the importance of the literal sense. In general, it was believed that the Jews did not fully understand the Old Testament, that their understanding of it was limited to the literal sense; Christian exegetes accepted their learning on these conditions48. The thirteenth century was the age of the expert49, and the ‘Hebrew doctors’ were believed to possess a considerable, if limited, expertise.
By the early fourteenth century, Hebrew studies were firmly established as an essential part of exegesis50. Nicholas Trevet, the greatest scholar among the English ‘classicising friars’ of the early fourteenth century, broke with convention in writing a commentary (completed between 1317 and 1320) on Jerome’s Hebraica instead of his Gallican Psalter; herein, constant reference is made to the new translation which Grosseteste had made from the Hebrew51. The dedicatory letter to John of Bristol which is prefixed to Trevet’s Psalter-commentary castigates, as two extremes, excessive allegorical interpretation on the one hand and, on the other, that pernicious Jewish literalism which denies Christ52. The ancient commentators, Trevet claims, concentrated on the profound mysteries found in allegories and, as a result, they rejected or treated perfunctorily the literal sense, in the mistaken belief that they were throwing away the rind and securing the sweet kernel. Now, the blessing of his Provincial is sought for a commentary which concentrates on the solid base of the letter and provides an historical and literal exposition. Trevet assures John of Bristol that his use of Jewish learning has not led him into error: he has studiously avoided those ‘Jewish fables’ which treacherously exclude Christ from their understanding of Scripture.
Trevet then affirms that he is concerned with whatever offers itself as being from the primary intention (prima intentio) of the words of the auctor, and with ‘what kind of foundation the holy Ghost, speaking through the mouth of the author, first laid for the mystical senses’53. The literal sense, it would seem, is the expression of the prima intentio; it was provided by the inspired human auctor, while the mystical senses were the work of the Holy Spirit. Considered as a whole, Trevet’s Psalter-commentary manifests the conviction that the Jews were, and are, adept at expounding the words of the human auctor, even though they fail to grasp the spiritual significance intended by the divine auctor.
Nicholas of Lyre (c. 1270–1340), widely regarded as the best-equipped Biblical scholar of the Middle Ages, made more extensive use of rabbinic tradition in general and of the opinions of Rashi in particular54. The second prologue to his Postilla litteralis on the whole Bible (completed 1331) stresses the importance of the literal sense, and justifies his use of Jewish exegesis in explaining it55. Lyre complains that the sensus litteralis, the foundation of all the other senses of Scripture, has been much obscured. This is partly the fault of scribes, who corrupt the text, and partly the fault of would-be correctors, who do not place punctuation marks where Lyre thinks they should be. Then, he raises the problem that Latin often does not translate the Hebrew idioms as well as one would wish. Jerome advocated the use of Hebrew codices in order to gain an accurate literal sense, but Lyre complains that this advice has fallen on deaf ears.
Another kind of obscurantism is then discussed, that practised by previous generations of Christian commentators. Although the antiqui said many good things, they spent little time on the literal sense but multiplied the spiritual senses to such an extent that the literal sense was partly suffocated. Lyre, therefore, proposes to concentrate on the literal sense, only occasionally inserting short spiritual expositions. He intends to explain the literal sense, not only with the help of the opinions of the Catholic doctors but also with reference to the opinions of the Jews.
With the exegetes’ two major new interests in mind—the human auctor as efficient cause and the literal sense as the personal meaning of the human auctor—we may proceed to examine the way in which interpretation of the Psalter was transformed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The attitudes and approaches of Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Lyre and Nicholas Trevet often contrast strikingly with those of the twelfth-century commentators discussed in our previous chapter.
In the Psalter-commentary of Aquinas, written at Naples 1272–3, there is little left of the old extrinsecus headings:
Three things in general are to be considered. The first is the translation of this work. The second is the method of expounding it. The third is its distinction.56
The last of these headings is a variant of the causa distinctionis, but Aquinas sought a principle of division which works at the literal level and not at the allegorical57. The one hundred and fifty psalms which comprise the Psalter do not follow the chronology of history, but in so far as some of them touch on historical events, they can be compared and related accordingly. For St Thomas, the basic order or structure of the Psalter consisted in relationships existing between the various psalms understood in their literal sense: although he did briefly paraphrase an account of number-symbolism from the Glossa ordinaria, he was not interested in systematically pursuing an underlying and mystical principle of structure58. Moreover, whereas twelfth-century exegetes had, through allegorical interpretation, emphasised the similarities between the various books of the Bible, Aquinas was very aware of their differences. There is a multiform mode or forma in Holy Scripture, he claims59. The narrative mode is found in the historical books; the admonitory, exhortative and preceptive mode in the books of the Law and the prophets and in Solomon’s books; the disputative mode, in Job and in the Apostle Paul. But the deprecative or praising mode is used in the Psalter: although other modes are found in other books, the Psalter has a special modus agendi which consists of the mode of praise and oration (modus laudis et orationis).
The headings ‘translation of this work’ (translatio huius operis) and ‘mode of exposition’ (modus exponendi) are new, and indicate new interests. Under the former, Aquinas provides a short account of the three translations made by St Jerome, the Roman Psalter, the Gallican Psalter and the Hebraica. The Gallican Psalter is the basis of Aquinas’s commentary, while constant recourse is made to the Hebraica which, he declares, ‘is used by many’ although it is not employed in the liturgy. Under the latter heading, an orthodox literalism is advocated, the errors of Theodore of Mopsuestia being singled out for special censure. St Thomas’s concern for the literal sense intended by the human auctor (which has been discussed above) here extends to include the intentions of the translator and the commentators who follow in the author’s footsteps. This concern was shared by the Psalter-commentators who followed Aquinas, notably Nicholas Trevet and Henry Cossey (regent master at Cambridge c. 1325–6), both of whom discuss the translation of the Psalter and the correct method of expounding it60.
For Aquinas, the case of Theodore of Mopsuestia epitomised the problems faced by commentators who wished to provide a literal interpretation of the Psalter. Aquinas believed that Theodore, in rejecting the Christological interpretation of the Old Testament, had claimed that therein nothing had expressly been said about Christ: the writers in question were speaking of other things, though it was possible to adapt their statements to apply to Christ61. St Thomas cites, as an example of this error, Psalm xxi. 18, ‘They divide my garments among them’, which according to Theodore does not refer to Christ but was literally said about David. This method of exegesis was condemned by ‘the Fifth Synod’ (the Council of Constantinople in 553); whoever follows it is a heretic.
St Thomas sought his solution in a development of St Jerome’s theory of prefiguration: the psalms at once designate events which were actual to the psalmist (res gestae) and prefigure or foreshadow various things concerning Christ or the Church62. As St Paul says in I Corinthians x. 11, ‘all these things concern us in figure’. When the prophets spoke of events which occurred in their day, they were writing, principally, not about these events themselves but in so far as they were figurae of future and fulfilling events. The Holy Spirit ordained that, in speaking of things which were contemporaneous to them, they added certain features which transcended the immediate historical context, thereby encouraging the soul to rise to a Christological understanding63. Therefore, in the Psalter, we read certain things concerning the reign of David and Solomon which were simply not implemented in that historical period, but which were to be implemented in the reign of Christ, in figure of whom they were written. Psalm lxxi provides a good example. According to its title, Aquinas explains, it concerns the reign of David and Solomon. Yet it includes references to things exceeding the capability of those men: ‘In his days may righteousness flourish, and peace abound, till the moon be no more’ (verse 7), and ‘May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth’ (verse 8). Aquinas concludes that this psalm is to be expounded of the reign of Solomon, in so far as he is a figura of Christ the King, in whom all the things here stated will be completed and fulfilled.
Erich Auerbach has discovered in ‘figural’ mimesis a means whereby the concrete particulars of Old Testament history could be preserved, even while the spiritual significance which it carried was manifest. In the process of foreshadowing and fulfilment, the historical reality of both the foreshadowing type (the Old Testament character or event) and the fulfilling type (its New Testament counterpart) were accommodated.
Figura is something real and historical which announces something else that is also real and historical. . . . Real historical figures are to be interpreted spiritually . . . , but the interpretation points to a carnal, hence historical, fulfilment—for the truth has become history in flesh.64
These remarks certainly apply to St Thomas’s exposition of the psalms. His theory of prefiguration provides the occasion for comprehensive retailing of much historia David, history concerning the life and times of David and his people.
This quest for an orthodox literalism helps to explain the peculiar blend of tradition and originality in St Thomas’s commentary. If Psalm xxi must be interpreted as designating Christ in its literal sense, other psalms are literally about the personal achievements and tribulations, the virtues and the vices, of King David. Understood literally, Psalm vii tells how David felt when he fled from the face of his son Absalom (cf. n Kings xvii); Psalm viii indicates David’s special devotion to the ‘feast of weeks’ (cf. Deuteronomy xvi); Psalm ix records David’s thanksgiving on being delivered from Absalom (cf. II Kings xviii–xxix), and so on65. The second part of the second decade of psalms fits into the period in which, after Saul’s death, David became King, while Psalm 1 tells of David’s repentance for his two great sins, the adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah66.
Such literal expositions are balanced by extensive figural interpretations, and by the occasional moralisation from the Glossa ordinaria. The following schemata are applied in glossing Psalms x and xx respectively:
This psalm can be expounded literally of David, but mystically or allegorically of Christ. But morally it can be interpreted of the just man and heretics, as the Glossa expounds it.67
This Psalm is related of Christ who is ‘the king’ and David who was his figure, and therefore it can be expounded of both: of Christ according to truth, of David according to figure.68
Sometimes Aquinas will declare his preference for the figural aspect: for example, because Psalm xxxix speaks in the person of the Church, it is better understood as referring to mankind awaiting the grace of the New Testament69. But in general he seems to want to reduce the amount of allegorical interpretation. Peter Lombard had claimed that Psalm xxvii treats briefly of the passion and resurrection of Christ70. In St Thomas’s gloss the stress is rather on the fact that, according to ‘the letter’, certain psalms relate to the person of David, and this is one of them71.
On some occasions, Aquinas’s awareness of the humanity of the psalmist extends to an interest in the rhetorical style of his orations. The Psalter has as its special modus agendi the ‘mode of praise and oration’, and this may be analysed with the help of Ciceronian oratory72. David composed his work in the modus orantis, which does not follow a single method but adapts itself to the diverse dispositions (affectus) and motions. Therefore, the first psalm expresses the disposition of the man raising his eyes to the whole state of the world, and considering the way in which some advance while others fail; the tenth psalm is spoken in the person of a man desiring the benefits of God and the security which they bring, and so on73. Elsewhere, the continuing influence of twelfth-century exegesis is manifest, as when, for example, the persona in question is the mystical body of Christ, head and members74.
But the most conservative facet of St Thomas’s exegesis surely must be his championship of the theory that David was the single auctor of all the psalms. Asaph, Itamar, Idithun and the others recited the psalms, but the credit must go to the poet and not to the reciter75. The stock allegorical interpretations of the names in the tituli psalmorum are briefly reiterated76. It would appear, then, that St Thomas was prepared to follow St Jerome, whom he admired so much, only part of the way.
Nicholas Trevet went much further, by reiterating the possibility that certain psalms were the work of writers other than David. In the discussion of the efficient cause of the Psalter provided in his prologue, we are informed that David composed either every psalm (according to Augustine) or at least the greater part of them (according to the Jews)77. When expounding the titulus of Psalm xxviii, which cites the sons of Core, Trevet suggests that this poem could pertain to these men in one of four different ways, ‘either because they were the authors of the psalm, or because they were the subject of the psalm, or because this psalm was allotted to be sung by one of them, or because it concerned them in some manner’78. Trevet constantly refers back to this account when analysing the other psalm-titles which refer to the sons of Core. Asaph is afforded similar treatment: Psalm xlix is described as the first psalm in which this personage is represented, indicating that either he was its auctor or he had the task of singing it79.
However, Nicholas of Lyre, who was indebted to Aquinas for many of his basic theological ideas, went all the way; indeed, one could say that he went the second mile. The magnificent ‘Aristotelian prologue’ to his Psalter-commentary constitutes one of the major landmarks of late-medieval discussion of authorial role80. Lyre’s concern was with the ‘mind of the prophet’ (mens prophetae), the inspired mind of David. Whereas twelfth-century commentators had devoted much space to the ‘kind of prophecy’ (genus prophecie) which God had granted to David, Lyre believed that the prophet had a mind of his own: when God uses human beings as instruments, He must make use of the mental equipment which men actually have. Divine inspiration works on and through the human mens. The man who sees visions or dreams dreams is now much more than a mere ‘sleeping partner’ of God.
But Lyre was careful to make it clear that his distinction between the two efficient causes of the Psalter does not imply any disharmony between the intentions of the two auctores. In the act of divine inspiration, the mind of God and the mind of man concur.
In the act of prophesying, God (touching or elevating the mind of the prophet to supernatural knowledge) and the mind of the prophet (touched or illuminated in this way), concur. It is necessary that the moving action and the thing moved should coincide . . . God concurs as the principal agent, and the mind of the prophet as the instrumental agent.
God revealed the mysteries which are contained in the Psalter, and David expressed them. Or did he? Certainly this was the opinion of St Augustine, but St Jerome thought otherwise. According to Jerome, Hilary and the ‘Hebrew doctors’, David did not compose all the psalms, though he was certainly responsible for many of them. Jerome named no less than ten auctores: David, Moses, Solomon, the three sons of Core, Asaph, Etham, Heman and Idithun. He also suggested that there were others whose names have been lost to us. Some names have been preserved in the tituli psalmorum, but certain psalms are without titles, while others have titles which do not give the authors’ names. ‘Rabbi Solomon’ agrees with Jerome that there were ten auctores involved, but his list is not identical with Jerome’s: Melchisedec, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Asaph, the three sons of Core and Idithun. Lyre was concerned to give each contributor to the Psalter his due and, where authorities differed concerning the names of the auctores, he recorded the differing opinions, lest a name be lost. The opinions of the ‘Hebrew doctors’, functioning within the framework of the Aristotelian causes, encourage an emphasis on the identity of individual auctores.
Lyre also discusses Esdras, the person responsible for the form of the Psalter as we now have it81. Much weight is given to the view of Jerome that Esdras, scribe and prophet, or perhaps some other holy prophet, collected the psalms together and placed them in a single book. Lyre points out that the fact that Esdras collected psalms ‘made by diverse people’ does not make him the human auctor or instrumental efficient cause of the book: Esdras engaged in a literary activity which was different in kind from David’s.
The psalms made by David and others were collected and assembled in one book, which is called the book of psalms: and this was done by Esdras the scribe and prophet, or by some other holy prophet, as Jerome says . . . But it is commonly held by our doctors, that Esdras, who recovered the law burnt by the Chaldeans, assembled the psalms made by diverse people in this volume. However, he is not called the author or instrumental efficient cause of the book, but rather David himself, who made the major part of the psalms.
A whole takes its name from the major part, and David wrote most of the psalms: therefore we may speak of ‘the psalms of David’, fully aware that there were other auctores involved. Esdras, the collector, provided the first psalm as the prologue to his collection. Lyre has distinguished between the individual auctores of the psalms and also between two kinds of literary activity involved in the production of the Psalter. The activity of an auctor is different from that of a collector.
The measure of autonomy which the Aristotelian efficient cause has provided here for the human contributors to the Psalter may be better understood if it is related to the other causes which, together with the efficient cause, comprised the analytical framework of the ‘Aristotelian prologue’. The distinctions which (according to late-medieval scholars) Aristotle had posited between the four causes were of course reflected in the prologues which commentators elaborated around the causes. In his commentary on the Metaphysica, Aquinas explained that the final cause is the goal or end (finis) of every process and motion: the goal of motion is something sought for outside ‘the thing moved’82. These ideas being applied in literary analysis, ‘the thing moved’, the text, was considered apart from the terminus of motion, the final cause. Because the ultimate reason ‘for the sake of which’ the text came into existence was thereby regarded as a distinct though related aspect of analysis, the allegorical justification which had permeated the typical twelfth-century type of analysis was, as it were, channelled away from the discussion introduced by the other headings. The exact differentiation between causes which was a requirement of Aristotelian science encouraged exact differentiation between the auctor, materia, modus agendi and utilitas, within the prologue which this science fostered.
For example, in the prologue to his Psalter-commentary, Aquinas stated that the end (finis) of the text is oration, which he defined as the ‘elevation of the mind in God’, then proceeded to discuss four ways in which the soul may be raised in God83. Nicholas of Lyre explained that man is ‘ordained to a certain supernatural end’ and that, in the pursuit of this goal, he must be helped by the revealed truth which is expressed in Scripture84. The Psalter expresses, ‘by the mode of praise’, truths which are expressed in other ways in other parts of Scripture, and so it has great utility (utilitas) in the inculcation of hope and the pursuit of this final goal. Such ultimate justifications of the Psalter, as aspects of the final cause, no longer impinge on the discussion of more literary issues (including authorship, structure, style of writing and the work’s effect) which is to be found under the other headings.
But the relationship between analysis of finis and analysis of literary features was not merely one of non-interference. The former provided a theoretical basis on which the latter could rest. The efficient cause and the final cause were not alternative aspects of analysis which competed for the attention of the commentator: they were complementary, and the one supported the other within a hierarchical system of analysis85. This may be illustrated from Lyre’s Psalter-prologue. The causa efficiens principalis is God; the intentio libri is divine praise, the causa finalis indicates how efficacious the Psalter is in leading men to salvation86. Paralleling this abstract justification is a concrete procedure of literary analysis. Lyre discusses the diverse intentiones and activities of all the contributors to the Psalter; his definition of the causa finalis provides the basis for an examination of the particular literary style (the modus laudis) which is a means to that end. Once readers have been assured of the divine rapprochement which guarantees the Psalter’s auctoritas, the literary issues can emerge.
We are now in a position to examine more closely the ways in which these literary issues were treated. The new interest in the integrity of the human auctor is manifested by two aspects of his individuality which late-medieval theologians sought to describe, the individual literary activity in which the auctor had engaged, and his individual moral activity. These two aspects will now be examined in turn.
In the thirteenth century, a series of terms came to be employed in theological commentaries which indicates a wish to define more precisely the literary activity characteristic of an auctor. The literary role of the auctor, considered in its widest sense, was distinguished from the respective roles of the scribe (scriptor), compiler (compilator) and commentator (commentator). St Bonaventure discussed this series of terms at the end of the elaborate ‘Aristotelian prologue’ to his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Libri sententiarum (written 1250–2)87. Is it correct to call the Lombard an auctor? Bonaventure decides that this work possesses sufficient auctoritas by virtue of the quality of its materials. But the accuracy of the term auctor is also considered from a more literary point of view. There are four ways of making a book, and only one is appropriate to the auctor:
The method of making a book is fourfold. For someone writes the materials of others, adding or changing nothing, and this person is said to be merely the scribe. Someone else writes the materials of others, adding, but nothing of his own, and this person is said to be the compiler. Someone else writes both the materials of other men, and of his own, but the materials of others as the principal materials, and his own annexed for the purpose of clarifying them, and this person is said to be the commentator, not the author. Someone else writes both his own materials and those of others, but his own as the principal materials, and the materials of others annexed for the purpose of confirming his own, and such must be called the author.
The auctor contributes most, the scriptor contributes nothing, of his own. The scribe is subject to materials composed by other men which he should copy as carefully as possible, nihil mutando. The compilator adds together or arranges the statements of other men, adding no opinion of his own (addendo, sed non de suo). The commentator strives to explain the views of others, adding something of his own by way of explanation. Finally and most importantly, the auctor writes de suo but draws on the statements of other men to support his own views. Applying this schema to the case of Peter Lombard, Bonaventure concludes that, since he offers certain profound statements of his own and supports them with the sententiae of the fathers, he may rightly be called the auctor of the Libri sententiarum.
Bonaventure employed these definitions throughout his commentaries on Scripture. For example, in his commentary on the Book of Wisdom attributed to Solomon (written 1254–7), he distinguished between three degrees or levels of authorship88. At the highest level is the efficient cause ‘by the mode of inspiring’, namely, God. By inspiration, the omnipotent gives understanding to the human auctor: all wisdom comes ultimately from God. Then, there is the efficient cause ‘by the mode of devising’, which is Solomon, for Solomon is commonly held to be the auctor of all the Sapiential Books. Solomon can be regarded as the auctor of Wisdom because this book was compiled from his sayings. The proximate efficient cause is ‘by the mode of compiling’, and this is identified with Philo the Jew. In reiterating the views of Hraban Maur, Bonaventure is careful to provide the correct technical term for Philo’s literary activity:
Hraban asserted that the book was more likely to have been written (i.e. compiled) not by Solomon, as is reputed, but by Philo the most wise Jew.
God is the source of all auctoritas; after Him comes the human auctor who is responsible for what is actually said in a given text, and finally there is the person who compiles the sayings of the human auctor.
A more detailed and critical discussion of the authorship of Wisdom is found in the enormously popular commentary on that book written c. 1333–4 by the Oxford Dominican, Robert Holcot89. Holcot assembles numerous auctoritates on the subject. Jerome said that Philo the Jew, writing in Greek, compiled this book from the sayings of Solomon. Hence, the book can be said to be Philo’s and not Solomon’s and, for this reason, the Jews do not number the book among their sacred Scriptures. But there are evident arguments against this opinion. The Ecclesiastica historia says that Solomon was the auctor, and Matthew xxvii refers to a prophecy from the Book of Wisdom: therefore, Wisdom must have been edited before the passion of Christ, whereas Philo flourished at the time of the Apostles. Moreover, at Wisdom ix.7 we read, ‘you have chosen me to be a king of your people’, words which accord not with Philo, an Alexandrine Jew living in Egypt, but with Solomon.
Augustine, Holcot continues, inclined to the opinion that Jesus, the son of Sirach, made both Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, and that his style of writing had certain similarities with Solomon’s. But Augustine went back on this opinion in his Retractiones: obviously, the Saint had doubts on the issue. Holcot himself is convinced that Solomon is the ‘principal author’ of Wisdom, but he admits that it is possible that Philo, a good Greek scholar, could have known the Hebrew Book of Solomon or the ‘profound sayings of the book’ and edited Solomon’s sayings in Greek. When these sayings were translated into Latin, naturally they were associated with Philo. What, then, about the opinion of Jerome? Holcot argues that Jerome did not assert that the book was Philo’s, but merely reported the opinion of the Jews on the matter. Therefore, this book may be numbered among the canonical Scriptures, as Augustine explicitly says in De doctrina Christiana. The fact that Wisdom prophesies of Christ gives it great auctoritas among the faithful, though naturally the Jews do not accept this point.
A similar treatment of this same problem is provided in Nicholas of Lyre’s Wisdom-commentary (1330). According to Lyre, Solomon is the ‘principal author’ of Wisdom, but the book was compiled from the profound sayings of Solomon by Philo90. In an aside, Lyre makes it clear that, in this context, he is thinking only of the human auctores involved (‘but, speaking of the human authors . . .’) and not of the divine auctor. In his commentary on Ecclesiasticus (1331), Lyre gives an explanation of the translation of the work, concluding that Jesus, the son of Sirach, was, under God, the chief writer involved91. Throughout his commentaries on the Sapiential Books, Lyre is mainly concerned with the ‘human authors’ who work ‘under God’.
All the exegetes cited above were consistent in regarding the Book of Wisdom as a compilation (compilatio). The second book of Machabees was also described as a compilatio by late-medieval exegetes, and this marks a distinct break with the typical twelfth-century way of describing the work. In a passage subsequently incorporated into the Glossa ordinaria, Peter Comestor described II Machabees as a recapitulation (recapitulatio) of I Machabees, an interpretation which was echoed by Stephen Langton: ‘This volume [i.e. of Machabees] is divided in two books. The second is a recapitulation and a following up of the first92. But both Hugh of St Cher and Nicholas of Lyre described II Machabees as a compilation93. Here is part of Lyre’s commentary on the text:
This second book of Machabees is in some measure an abbreviation of a certain large volume, written by Jason Cyrenaeus, having five constituent books in which the deeds of Judaeus Machabaeus and his associates were diffusely treated; in this book they are set forth briefly and succinctly . . . To read this compendium can be done easily and without tedious scanning while reading.
Such an interest in Scriptural compilations may be related to the fact that, by the thirteenth century, medieval techniques of compilation had reached a high level of sophistication, as may be gathered from a reading of two impressive examples, the Speculum maius of Vincent of Beauvais and the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomew the Englishman94.
Nicholas of Lyre regarded Wisdom and II Machabees as compilationes95. Moreover, he regarded the Psalter, Proverbs, and the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets as collections, collectiones96. The difference which Lyre saw between a compilatio and a collectio seems to have been that, whereas a compilatio had an orderly arrangement of materials, a collectio had not—a point to which we shall return. Lyre regarded the Psalter as such an excellent example of a collectio that he referred to it when describing other Biblical collections. For example, at the beginning of his Proverbs-commentary, he points out that those responsible for this collectio were not responsible for the collected items, just as Esdras was not the auctor of the psalms he collected in one volume:
The people responsible for this collection are not nor cannot be said to be the authors of this book, but rather Solomon, who composed the parables; just as Esdras, or whoever else collected the psalms in one book, is not said to be the author of the book of psalms, but rather David, who composed the greater part of the psalms . . .97
Lyre proceeds to say that the collectors of Solomon’s parables wrote a prologue to Proverbs, just as Esdras provided the first psalm as a prologue to the Psalter.
The vocabulary employed in describing the various literary roles performed by the human auctores of Scripture was also used to clarify the issue of the respective roles of God and man in producing inspired Scripture. Our concern with the former must involve us in a brief consideration of the latter, since the technical meanings of the terms were common to both contexts.
In the Sentences commentaries of Fishacre, Kilwardby and Bonaventure, there is disagreement concerning the degrees of responsibility to be allotted to the primary efficient cause and the instrumental efficient causes. For Fishacre, the human writer played the role of mere scribe (scriptor) to God’s auctor; the divine instruments were given little credit98. By contrast, Kilwardby was concerned at once to give the human auctores of the Bible their due, and to describe the human literary activity of the Lombard99. Like Fishacre before him, he argued that neither men nor angels can be the auctores of the science of theology, because they are too limited; only God has the necessary qualifications. But Kilwardby affirms that men and angels have their roles to play. They are the promulgators or scribes of sacred doctrine; indeed, they may be called compilers, just like the master of the Sentences, Peter Lombard.
The analogy with what Kilwardby regarded as the compiling activity of the Lombard is neatly applied. There is no attempt to belittle human achievement: quite the contrary. The Holy Spirit set the assignment; the human auctores carried out the work of God. Their names appear in the titles of their books through the divine ordination, so that we might imitate them, and partake of the grace which God gives to those who produce literature for His benefit. And so, the Lombard must be allowed his reward. God may be responsible for the truth contained in the Sentences, but the Lombard is responsible for the compilation:
Note too, that although God is the author of the truth transmitted in the sentences, yet the efficient cause of the compilation, or the author to the extent that it is a compilation, is well and truly said to be the Master.
The Lombard carried out the literary work, moved (as he says in his prologue) by the love of Christ. Therefore, God is the primary efficient cause of the Libri sententiarum, while Peter Lombard is its secondary efficient cause.
Bonaventure’s neat series of definitions of the terms scriptor, compilator, commentator and auctor, as quoted above, occurs in the prologue to his Sentences commentary as part of an excursus on the scientific nature of theology. This venture into the realm of literary theory may have been occasioned by a desire to improve on the way of assessing Peter Lombard’s contribution favoured by previous schoolmen100. Fishacre, Kilwardby and, apparently, Alexander of Hales, had merged the Bible and the Sentences together as the textbooks of theology; their discussions of causality and scientific procedure concerned theology in the abstract. Bonaventure was more discriminating. First, he treats of God as the auctor of wisdom and of the science of theology; then, he moves to consider the Sentences on its own and not in conjunction with the Bible101. It is because of this clear distinction between the two major textbooks of theology that Bonaventure can describe the Lombard, and not God, as the auctor of the Sentences. The auctoritas of the Bible is, of course, much greater, and in this case one must admit divine responsibility, but the Sentences is a book for which a human auctor can be given the responsibility and the credit.
Similar depictions of the roles of God and man are found in commentaries on the other base-text of theology, the Bible. In his commentary on Baruch (written sometime between 1270 and 1280), St Albert the Great carefully distinguished between the auctor Jeremiah and the compiler Baruch102. Baruch wrote down the words which he took from the erudite sayings of Jeremiah, just as God put His words in the mouth of Jeremiah. Psalm xliv.2 is invoked, ‘my tongue is as ready as the pen of a busy scribe’. Baruch was a busy scribe; Jeremiah was as ready as the pen of a busy scribe. St Albert then puns his way to the theological point. Baruch would not have been one of the Lord’s blessed (benedictus Domini) if he had not written down the blessed statement (benedictio) of the Lord. Everything which proceeds from the mouth of a blessed man must be well said (benedictus).
Albert proceeds to justify the collection and compilation (the verbs colligo and compilo are used) of scraps of truth. After the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus said, ‘Collect the scraps . . . so that nothing is wasted’ (John vi. 12). No scrap of inspired Scripture must be wasted for, as St Paul says, ‘all that is written is written for our doctrine’ (Romans xv.4).
On the other hand, those most authoritative of auctores, the Four Evangelists who had recorded the life and deeds of Christ, could be described as having practised a sort of compilation. For example, the Carmelite, William of Lidlington († 1310), explained how the Evangelists had compiled the eloquence of Christ:
Truly, the efficient cause is double, the principal and the secondary. The principal agent is the son of God Himself, namely Christ, who is the sole master of all the most sound doctrine . . . The secondary agents are the Evangelists inspired by the Holy Spirit, who are the agents compiling eloquence as the instrument of Christ.103
But the most elaborate discussion of this type known to me occurs in the famous Summa in questionibus Armenorum of Richard FitzRalph, who was Chancellor of Oxford University in 1332 and, subsequently, Archbishop of Armagh. This work (written shortly after 1349) takes the form of a dialogue between ‘Ricardus’ and ‘Joannes’, and FitzRalph’s views must be inferred from their consensus of opinion. In the opening debate, which develops the theory of exegesis found in the prologues to Nicholas of Lyre’s Postilla litteralis, Joannes complains that he sometimes finds it difficult to see to what extent a Scriptural utterance expresses the mind of the author (mens auctoris)104. For example, if Moses affirmed as auctor the books of the Pentateuch (and tradition believes this to be so), then it would appear that Moses was the auctor of lies and falsehoods. For example, at Genesis iii.4, a lie is expressed by the statement of the serpent to Eve, ‘you shall not surely die’. And at Genesis xxvii.24, when Isaac asks Jacob, ‘Are you my son Esau’? the reply is, ‘I am’—behold, another lie! If one suggests that persons other than Moses (namely, the serpent and Jacob) are the auctores in these problem-passages, it would appear that there are many auctores in a single book. If, on the other hand, one states that neither Moses nor the speakers concerned possess authorship, these passages are left without an auctor. Both these conclusions are untenable.
FitzRalph’s Ricardus then suggests a solution. Joannes, he claims, is having trouble with the term auctor because, ‘according to the usage of speech’, the notion of authorship can be understood in three different ways. Either an auctor is
1 himself the person who asserts a passage, its assertor,
2 its ‘editor or compiler’ (editor vel compilator), or
3 he is both together. And this is the correct sense of auctor.
In the problem-passages, Moses is not the assertor but the editor or compilator of lies. Moses described the sequence of events, while the serpent and Jacob were the assertors and auctores of the lies. Thus, Moses and no one else fulfils both criteria laid down for the third and correct sense of the term auctor. And so, the truth of sacred Scripture is saved. Moses is personally responsible for what he asserts of himself, not what he asserts others to have said or done.
The theological implications of this analysis are then outlined. No prophet can be called an auctor in the third and correct sense of the term, because a prophet does not assert the revelation he has received as his own property but claims God as its auctor. A comparison is made with Baruch. Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah; Jeremiah wrote from the mouth of the Lord. Baruch fulfilled the roles of scriptor and compilator in relation to the auctor Jeremiah; the prophet fulfilled the roles of scriptor and compilator in relation to the auctor God. Therefore, no prophet can be praised or blamed for what he asserts to be from God. The thorny problems of prophecy and predestination relate not to the human prophet but to the divine will; in this case, the onus of responsibility is God’s and His alone.
Ricardus illustrates this point with examples of prophecies that were not fulfilled in the way in which the prophets claimed they would be. ‘Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown’, Jonah had claimed (Jonah iii.4). However, this catastrophe was averted because God Himself ‘repented’ of His wrath, having been moved by the repentance of the townspeople (Jonah iii. 10). There is no question of calling the prophet a liar, since he wrote and spoke in accordance with the divine will. Jonah’s action of warning was exactly what God willed him to do.
Two major literary points have been clarified by the series of discussions summarised in this chapter-section. The first is that, in opposition to the legalistic connotation of auctor which suggested responsibility for an act or a piece of writing, has emerged a term, compilator, which connotes absence or indeed denial of responsibility for such things. The responsibility lacked or denied by the compilator is both literary and moral, as FitzRalph’s discussion shows. A writer who plays this role cannot take the credit for the value of a piece of writing; neither can he be blamed for any harm it might cause.
Two of Fitzralph’s technical terms, affirmator and assertor, have their source in logic. He uses them to spell out the juridic connotation of the term auctor, to stress that the auctor is the person who bears the responsibility. In the schools, the activity of ‘asserting’ was usually contrasted with that of ‘repeating’ (recitatio) or ‘reporting’ (reportatio)105. A twelfth-century locus classicus for the basic notions involved, if not for the terms themselves, was the prologue to Peter Abelard’s Sic et non106. Here it is suggested that a writer can sometimes report the opinions of others, or make some concession to current opinion. Such statements are to be distinguished from the writer’s statements of his personal opinions. M.-D. Chenu has given several examples of the application of this principle by St Thomas Aquinas, one of which will suffice here:
In many things which pertain to philosophy, Augustine makes use of the opinions of Plato, not asserting them but repeating them (non asserendo sed recitando).107
It is often found in the prologues to late-medieval compilations. Vincent of Beauvais justified the inclusion of passages from the Apocrypha in his Speculum maius on the grounds that he was not asserting them to be true or false, but simply repeating them (recitando)108. This distinction was also a commonplace of Scriptural exegesis. In the Lollard prologue to the English Bible we are told that ‘ofte in storial mateer scripture rehersith the comune opynyoun of men, and affirmeth not, that it was so in dede’109. In sum, an auctor ‘asserts’ while a compilator ‘repeats’ or ‘reports’ what others have said or done, not adding anything ‘of his own’ (de suo). In FitzRalph’s example, Moses, as the editor or compiler of the lies of Jacob and the serpent, only ‘reported’ those things.
The second major literary point to be clarified above is that analysis of the duplex causa efficiens by several generations of theologians produced a highly sophisticated theoretical model for assigning degrees of responsibility to the writers of a given text, or to the literary roles which they perform. This may be summarised as follows. The auctor is twofold, double or, as it were, bilocated: there is a primary efficient cause or ‘far cause’ and an instrumental efficient cause or ‘near cause’110. In relation to the ‘far cause’, the ‘near cause’ may be called a compilator. But the ‘near cause’ may, in his turn, have put yet another cause into operation: he may have a person working under him (either under his direction or, if dead, in his footsteps!), and thus may, in turn, play the role of auctor to this person’s scriptor or compilator.
The issue of which auctores were believed to be responsible for which meanings and which activities in the textbooks of theology had this question as its counterpart: does responsibility for sin affect the meaning of an auctor or in any way detract from his auctoritas as a writer? In the late Middle Ages, there was a new awareness of the sins of the auctores. Interest in the integrity of the human auctor seems to have taken two main channels: he was considered as an agent in both literary and moral activity. The commentator’s new-found ability to empathise with his author’s humanity produced discussion, on the one hand, of the kinds of literary activity which the auctor had practised, and on the other, of the kinds of deed, both good and evil, which he had performed during his life. Now we may proceed to investigate the moral activity of the human auctor as regarded by medieval theologians.
Of course, the sins of the Scriptural auctores had always been known, but the early-medieval stress on the allegorical senses of Scripture had ensured that the problem never arose in an acute form. However, when late-medieval commentators came to concentrate on the literal and historical sense of Scripture, they had to recognise the problem as a serious one. Their method of coping with it may be better understood by reference to changing attitudes to one great saint and sinner, the psalmist, David.
In II Kings xi–xii, the story is told of how David saw, from the roof of his house, Bathsheba bathing, and how he desired this woman and soon committed adultery with her. Subsequently, David arranged that her husband Uriah should be placed in the forefront of the hardest fighting against the Ammonites, and killed. This being done, David took Bathsheba as his wife. But the Lord was displeased and sent the prophet Nathan to David. Nathan told the parable of the rich man who, when a guest came to his house, refused to kill any of his own sheep but, instead, took from a poor man his only lamb and prepared it for his guest. David’s anger being aroused against the rich man, Nathan drove the point home: ‘You are the man’ (II Kings xii.7); despite all the prosperity that he had received from God, he nevertheless had taken away Uriah’s wife. Whereupon, David admitted his great sin, repented, and regained his position of favour with the Lord.
In De doctrina christiana, St Augustine interpreted the ‘guest’ of Nathan’s parable as David’s passion for Bathsheba111. This lust was not a lasting disposition but a passing one; as it were, a guest. By contrast, Augustine continued, in the son of David and Bathsheba, King Solomon, this disposition did not pass on, like a guest, but took possession of his kingdom. Holy Scripture has, according to Augustine, condemned Solomon as a lover of women. The beginning of his reign glowed with his desire of wisdom yet, when he had obtained wisdom through spiritual love, he lost it through carnal love. It is then argued that nearly all of the deeds recorded in the Old Testament should be understood not only in their literal sense but figuratively as well, Augustine’s precedent being St Paul’s justification of prefiguration in i Corinthians x. But the other side of the coin is important as well:
On the other hand, when one reads of any sins of noble men, even though he can observe and verify in them some figures of future events, he may still apply the proper meaning of the action to this end, namely, that he will by no means venture to boast about his own virtuous deeds, nor, because of his own uprightness, look down upon others as if they were sinners, when he sees in such noble men the storms of passions that must be shunned and the shipwrecks that must be lamented. The sins of those men have been written down for a reason, and that is that the following passage of the Apostle might be formidable everywhere: ‘Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall’ [I Cor. x. 12].
Similarly, in his two great apologiae for the prophet David, St Ambrose had stressed the exemplary, prefigural and allegorical implications of David’s sins of adultery and murder112.
These accounts showed medieval theologians a way of reconciling the individuality of the human auctores of Scripture with the supreme objectivity of their divine authority but, until the thirteenth century, the latter tended far to outweigh the former. This may be demonstrated by a comparison of glosses from different periods on the major penitential psalm Miserere mei, Dei, the title of which directed the commentators to the history (historia) of David and Bathsheba: ‘A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had been with Bathsheba’.
The gloss on Psalm 1 attributed to Remigius of Auxerre focuses on its warning and advising aspects113. The exemplum of David warns us not to revel in prosperity; the fact that he received divine pardon teaches us never to despair, no matter how great the sin. Similarly, Letbert of Lille (whose Psalter-commentary was published in 1125) remarked that many want to fall with David, but not to recover with him114. The psalm provides an example not of lapse but of resurgence. Divine grace was restored to David; he is, therefore, put forward as an exemplar of the just man, not the sinner. Peter Lombard commended the way in which David, on being accused by Nathan, did not excuse himself, but publicly confessed his sin115. The kind of humility which is appropriate to penitents is thereby shown. And this, claims the Lombard (echoing Cassiodorus), is why Psalm 1 is sung in Church more often than any of the other penitential psalms.
In these expositions, the general moral implications of the historia are emphasised; elsewhere, the allegorical and prefigural aspects are at the centre of attention. Pseudo-Bede, writing in the early twelfth century, moved from an affirmation of the cautionary value of David’s misfortunes to describe David as a figure of Christ116. In this analysis, Bathsheba is said to signify the Church, and the hapless Uriah, the devil! The same procedure was followed by Honorius ‘of Autun’ (writing, perhaps, between 1151 and 1158), who added that Bathsheba’s bathing, which was so pleasing to David, signifies the washing of baptism undergone by the congregation of the faithful to make them fit for association with Christ117. Just as Bathsheba did not sleep with Uriah after having had intercourse with David, so the Church is not joined to the devil after having gone to the desirable Christ. The prophet Nathan does not fit into this allegorical scheme, so he is left uninterpreted.
Honorius was at pains to reassure the puzzled reader. One should not marvel, he claimed, that Christ should be prefigured by an adulterer and the Church by an adultress or that, by a chaste man, the devil should be designated. Such is the special quality of the Bible, written as it were in golden letters (indicating, presumably, its uniqueness and essential purity). The influence of Augustine is manifest in Honorius’s interpretation of the ‘guest’ of Nathan’s parable as illicit love. Lechery was a guest, as far as David was concerned, but it took possession of Solomon’s kingdom. The lapses of the saints were written down, Honorius explained, so that the power of the medicine (of genuine repentance) in curing the desperately sick should be commended; through this example, the lapsed are given hope. Then the question is raised, since David’s sin was such a major one, why is he employed as a prefiguration of Christ? This may seem less surprising when it is realised that the whole Israelite nation was used to foreshadow the Christian people. Like Augustine before him, Honorius claimed the precedent of St Paul: ‘All these things concern us in figure’ (I Corinthians x. 11).
The general moral implications of David’s historia continued to be expounded in later exegesis. For example, the Oxford Dominican, Thomas Waleys, writing in the early fourteenth century, described David and St Paul as Scriptural auctores who had passed through a state of sin118. For Waleys, the fate of each auctor is an exemplum of the penitent man who receives divine mercy. Not only did David obtain remission of sin, but he also turned his mind to the contemplation of divine mysteries. The Holy Spirit uses sin to obtain repentance in the same way as a doctor of medicine uses a poison to effect a cure. Waleys quoted Albert the Great as saying that the bile of a viper is the best possible eye-lotion. As Albert himself admitted, it is marvellous that the eye is not harmed in the process but is, instead, purged. Scripture often links the viper with sin, and so Waleys moralises this piece of medical lore into a parallel with the divine process in which the mind’s eye of his auctor was cleansed.
However, by the time of Waleys, the elaborate allegorising of David, Bathsheba and Uriah had ceased to be popular. The incredulity which it occasioned was fully recognised in the treatise De legibus, which forms part of the vast Magisterium divinale written by William of Auvergne between 1223 and 1240. Is it possible, William asks, that Uriah, a holy and just man, should represent the devil, while the adulterous copulation of David and Bathsheba represents the most immaculate conjunction of Christ and the Church?119 The deeds recorded in II Kings do not seem to have such a significative function; verisimilitude is lacking in many things. However, it can be pointed out that David loved Bathsheba deeply and for her love procured the death of a man, then honoured her with regal marriage and elevated her to the royal throne. Likewise, the King of Heaven loved deeply the synagogue and, having procured the demise of its Jewish magistrate, honoured it with spiritual marriage and elevated it to the kingdom of heaven. If a similitude of this sort is decently expounded, William assures us, the audience will not be offended. However, he soon proceeds to echo Jerome’s warning against tropological exegesis which violently conflicts with the literal sense of a passage.
Similar reservations were expressed in one of the ordinary disputations which Henry of Ghent held at Paris between 1276 and 1292120. Is it possible to allegorise evil deeds in a good sense? Henry replies by distinguishing between the manner in which something is done and the substance of the deed. Regarding the former, David’s manner of acting was reprehensible, and no good interpretation is possible. Regarding the latter, it may be pointed out that a prince can justly have a certain soldier killed, and take his wife for himself. Considered in this light, it is not incongruous that a bad deed should have a good allegory and be expounded in a good sense.
This kind of special pleading is notably absent from the glosses on Psalm 1 by Hugh of St Cher, Nicholas Gorran, Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas Trevet and Nicholas of Lyre, all of whom provide interpretations which are thoroughly literal and historical. Neither is there any attempt to identify David as a figure of Christ, for a reason clearly indicated by Hugh of St Cher and Gorran. Gorran refers back to Psalm xlix, verses 16–17, where it is stated that divine praise from the mouth of a sinner is not acceptable to God121. Therefore, Gorran claims, it is fitting that Psalm 1 should follow, in which is exemplified repentance, the means whereby sin is removed and divine praise is rendered acceptable to God. Hugh of St Cher is concerned with the problem of why Psalm 1 is not included in II Kings xi–xii, where the full story behind its composition is told122. His solution is that this was not possible because the passage in II Kings is to be interpreted allegorically of Christ, and penitence, the subject of the fiftieth psalm, is not accordant with Christ. The implication of both these comments is that, because Psalm 1 treats of penitence, it cannot be said to prefigure Christ and, therefore, a literal reading is the correct response. Some of this literal reading may now be examined.
It has been mentioned above how Aquinas, conscious of the condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia, had felt obliged to assert that the passion of Christ was treated in the literal sense of Psalm xxi: although this psalm speaks figuratively of David, it also refers specially to Christ123. Commenting on Psalm 1, Aquinas stated that, while in other psalms David spoke of other things (as, in Psalm xxi, he spoke of Christ), he made this psalm about himself124. A copious paraphrase of the historia of II Kings xi–xii is provided, and Aquinas explains that in the Miserere David declares his guilt, which he made manifest to all and, similarly, his remission125. It would seem that Psalms xxi and 1 are at the opposite ends of St Thomas’s exegetical spectrum. If, in Psalm xxi, Christ, the fulfilling type, reigns supreme, in Psalm 1, David, the prefiguring type, may be described in rich historical detail.
Aquinas’s gloss on Psalm 1 verse 14, ‘deliver me from bloodguiltiness’, is revealing126. Two explanations are given, the first being the statement in the Glossa ordinaria that ‘bloodguiltiness’ refers, in general terms, to the concupiscence of the body, which is flesh and blood127. The second explanation is Aquinas’s own. The term could refer to the adultery and murder committed by the historical David, because blood is involved in both sins: in murder, blood is shed, whereas adultery proceeds from a passion of the bood128. It would seem that St Thomas’s concern for historia encouraged him to relate as much textual detail as possible to David’s personal situation.
This practice is even more apparent in Lyre’s Postilla litteralis on the Psalter, the fiftieth psalm meticulously being placed in its full historical context as the psalm which David wrote, not immediately after his adultery with Bathsheba, but after Nathan had accused him129. David is, therefore, at once the auctor and the subject (materia) of this psalm. Hence, his plea (in verse 1) that the multitude of God’s tender mercies might blot out his transgressions is supposed to indicate the multitude of David’s transgressions, which Lyre carefully enumerates. David sinned, in the first instance, by committing adultery; secondly, by wishing to conceal his sin; and thirdly, by the attempted method of concealment: he wanted Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba, so that the child which he had engendered would be ascribed to Uriah. Fourthly, he sinned in so far as he had his most faithful soldier treacherously killed and, fifthly, because, in the process, many of David’s other servants were killed. Explaining the reference (in verse 14) to David’s ‘bloodguiltiness’, Lyre argues that this was incurred by the shedding of the blood of Uriah and those others who died on the same occasion.
Lyre also displays a concern for exact temporal chronology. The time between David’s adultery and Nathan’s declaration must have been one year or thereabouts, he reckons, because Nathan refers to the child of David and Bathsheba as having already been born. The long duration of David’s sin is thereby indicated, which Lyre understands as the explanation of verse 2, ‘Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin’. When clothes are cleaned those stains which have recently been made are washed away easily, while the inveterate stains are removed only with thorough washing.
However, most of Lyre’s moralising was reserved for the Postilla moralis, a brief supplement to the Postilla litteralis, written in 1339 ‘for the readers of Bibles and preachers of the word of God’130. Taken together, these two commentaries by Lyre present a picture of the psalmist which is a substantial development of the views of St Thomas. David is still, on occasion, a figure of Christ, and the spokesman of the Christian Church, but he can also be an ideal king and prelate, as it were complete in himself, with admirable abilities and virtues which constitute a model of behaviour for his successors. In twelfth-century exegesis, what may be called David’s personal ‘good character’ (as opposed to his divinely-ordained function as a figura) was established mainly by brief reference to his sin and repentance. By contrast, Lyre was much more aware of the good qualities possessed by David in his historical context. Medieval kings and prelates, in similar historical contexts and faced with similar problems, would do well to follow the psalmist’s example. This interest in common humanity and common problems is a most striking development of the exemplary aspect of David’s authorial role131.
For example, in the Postilla litteralis, Lyre described Psalm v as having arisen out of the tribulation suffered by David at the hands of Saul and his other enemies132. In the Postilla moralis, this psalm is allegorically interpreted as a prayer of the Church against the infidels who occupy the Holy Land133. Because of this significance, Lyre claimed, the psalm ought to be pronounced intently and with great devotion by priests. It is not fitting that Saracens should live next to Christ’s tomb, that unbelievers should remain in the land on which His eyes once gazed. The Saracens falsely say that the most vile Mohammed was a prophet of the great Lord. Having lived by the sword, the followers of this false prophet will die by it. The obligation placed on contemporary kings, the successors of David, is obvious.
In the Psalter-commentaries examined above, the problem of the sins of the Scriptural auctor was resolved through description of the total situation in which those sins occurred. Exegetes became progressively more aware of the historical details of that situation, but the central tenet remained unchanged, namely, that David was to be regarded, not as a sinner, but as a true penitent and, indeed, a just man.
Another method of coping with the problem was to stress the importance of correct understanding of the intention of the author (intentio auctoris). While the auctor is responsible before God for his sins he is not responsible for a reader’s misinterpretation of his work: if the reader does not get the moral point this is the fault of the reader and not of the auctor. There is a right way and a wrong way of interpreting authorial intention, and each reader should be careful to choose the right way. The theologians’ general attitude to the interpretation of authorial intention is well expressed by the Paris master Raoul Ardent (†c. 1200) in a dominical sermon on Romans xv.4, ‘all that is written is written for our doctrine, that by patience and by the consolation of the writings we may have hope’. Raoul asked, how can one reconcile this text with the sins of the auctores. such as the adultery of David, the pride of Saul and the womanising of Solomon? The answer is that such passages do pertain to doctrine if one reads them with correct understanding of the intentio in each case:
They are pertinent, my brothers, if we should consider the intention of the writer. For in sacred Scripture four things are written with diverse intentions: evils, good things, punishments and rewards. Evils are written to be feared, good things to be imitated, punishments to be discouraging, rewards to be encouraging. Therefore the adultery of David and other sins are written for the purpose of warning. And if perchance it transpires that we should fall into such sins, we should not despair but, by the example of David, revert to the remedy of repentance. In what way do those things which are written avail for our doctrine? ‘That by patience’, it is said, ‘and the consolation of the writings’, i.e. those things which are read in the Scriptures, ‘we may have hope’.134
In this way, the exegetes of the later Middle Ages could reconcile the problem of the sins of their auctores with the fact of their authority as writers. A more elaborate example is found in the prologue to St Bonaventure’s very popular commentary on Ecclesiastes (written 1254–7), where it is asked if Solomon can properly be called the auctor of this book135. Solomon was certainly a sinner, and God demands of the wicked man at Psalm xliv. 17, ‘what business have you reciting my statutes . . . since you detest my discipline?’ Perhaps Solomon sinned again by speaking of the divine justice. Only a good writer is capable of sustaining faith, for only the work of a good writer or auctor has auctoritas. If Solomon was a wicked man, can his work be said to have any authority?
The answer is ‘yes’ because, according to Jerome and Hebrew tradition, the Book of Ecclesiastes was composed not by a man in a state of sin, but by a repentant man who regretted his sins. Bonaventure claims that the epilogue of Ecclesiastes, in which worldly vanity is renounced, makes this clear. Moreover, it may be argued that the Holy Spirit sometimes uses a bad man to express true and good things. Solomon did not sin in what he said but in so far as he failed to put his preaching into practice. Besides, God stands as the guarantor of the truth in Ecclesiastes.
But Bonaventure was not content merely to invoke God and leave it at that. He provides a literary answer as well, by examining Solomon’s modus agendi136. The Book of Ecclesiastes has, he says, a singular modus agendi among the works of Solomon because it proceeds in the manner of an orator propounding diverse sententiae, sometimes in the person of a wise man, sometimes in the person of a foolish man, so that in the mind of the reader a single truth may be gleaned from the divers sayings. But it may be objected that this modus agendi will create enormous problems for the reader. One should pay heed to the things which a wise man says, but not to what a foolish man says: yet how can the reader be sure when the auctor is speaking in his own person (in propria persona) and when he is speaking in the person of others (in persona aliorum)? Bonaventure replies that when Solomon speaks in persona aliorum, for example in the person of the foolish man, he does not approve of the foolishness but abhors it. The sententia found at the end of Ecclesiastes makes clear the good intentio auctoris:
Thus I say, that Ecclesiastes proceeds like disputation right to the end of the book and at the end he provides a profound statement, when he says, ‘Let us all together hear the end of that which is to be spoken: fear God, and know that on account of every error God will bring you into judgment’. In which statement he condemns all the sayings of the fatuous, the carnal and the worldly. Whence, whatever concurs with that profound statement, he says in his own person; whatever indeed disagrees with it, he says in the person of others: and therefore this book cannot be understood, unless it is examined as a whole.137
Therefore, Solomon’s epilogue provides us with a measure with which to judge the ways in which doctrine is being communicated in the other parts of the book. Bonaventure also takes the opportunity to uphold Solomon as an exemplum of the penitent sinner138. Solomon sinned and repented; he received divine grace. His life is an example for us sinners, who may imitate the repentance of Solomon and hope for a corresponding grace. The analogy with the experience of David, as described in the glosses on Psalm 1, is quite obvious. This seems to be Bonaventure’s general precedent, and not the harsh judgment of Solomon made by St Augustine in the passage from De doctrina christiana quoted above (p. 104). In sum, it would appear that both David and Solomon have become men writing to men. ‘Modern’ men may read of the personal lives of these auctores and relate that ‘ancient’ experience to their own lives.
This completes our illustration of the manner in which Bible-commentators of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries described two aspects of the individuality of the human auctor, his individual literary activity and his individual moral activity. It seemed to them that the inspired auctores had engaged in a series of literary roles (auctor, compilator, collector, editor, etc.) and a series of moral roles, one of the most important of which was (in the cases of David and Solomon) the role of penitent sinner and ethical example. One result of the new literalistic exegesis of Scripture was that the auctor, as it were, came closer to the reader. David and Solomon, for example, had adopted certain literary stances and employed certain styles and structures which a modern writer could imitate; the moral reform of these same ‘ancients’ was held up to the ‘moderns’ as a model of self-improvement. This awareness of common humanity meant that the gap between the auctor and his medieval audience had narrowed somewhat.
Our next section is concerned with the narrowing of another traditional gap, the gap between Scriptural auctores and pagan auctores. The new attitudes to authorship which we have been examining helped to create the conditions necessary for their ‘coming together’ on certain definite terms. Pagan authority remained subservient to Scriptural authority, but the comparisons between the two groups of writers had become (at least) as important as the contrasts.
The discussions of the role of the auctor which have been described above have important implications for our understanding of the way in which late-medieval scholars approached their pagan auctores. It has been suggested that the new emphasis on the integrity of the individual auctor produced two main effects, an interest in the auctor in so far as he performed various literary roles, and an interest in the exemplary ‘life of the author’ (vita auctoris). In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, all kind of auctores, whether Christian or pagan, were being examined in terms of both moral and literary activity. The life of a pagan auctor could furnish many moral points which would not discredit the life of a Christian auctor. Evidence collected by F. Ghisalberti suggests that the late Middle Ages saw a great development of the moralistic lives of Ovid which formed part of the prologues to the works of that pagan poet, a trend which Ghisalberti regards as the antecedent of the production of humanistic lives of the poets139. Corresponding to this in the commentaries of the theologians was the new kind of interest in the sins of the auctores which has been illustrated in the previous section.
The literary activities of Christian and pagan auctores were comparable also; a pagan writer could be an auctor, compilator, commentator or whatever. For example, the compiling activity of Virgil and Horace was cited in justifying Christian compilation. In the prologue to his Polychronicon (finished c. 1352), the English Benedictine, Ralph Higden, told a ‘pagan’ tale which Isidore of Seville was supposed to have told of Virgil and which Hugutio of Pisa was supposed to have told of Horace140. Accused of being a mere ‘compiler of old things’, the hero of the story replied that it was a sign of great strength to take the mace from the hand of Hercules141. Obviously, Higden regarded compilatio as a positive and important literary activity, but one which required an elaborate justification. Not all his precedents are pagan; he cites the Scriptural story of Ruth gleaning the ears of corn (Ruth ii). Although she followed after powerful men, the lord Boas ordered them not to despise her. The implication is that the Lord God does not despise the humble compilator who follows in the footsteps of the powerful auctores142. Defending the inclusion of ‘gentile figments and pagan sayings’ in his work, Higden argues that these have been incorporated in order that they may serve the Christian faith. After all, it was lawful for Virgil to seek out the gold of wisdom in the clay of Ennius, and for the children of Israel to despoil the Egyptians.
Once all auctores were regarded as efficient causes, the ways in which they moved and were moved could be compared. The theologians, who provided the most sophisticated discussions of multiple and diverse efficient causality, were most aware of this basis of comparison. The consequence for exegesis seems to have been a more precise calibration of auctoritas.
Pagan and Christian writers differed in degrees of auctoritas. Traditionally, the Christians knew more than the pagans. In the thirteenth century, this distinction was placed on both an epistemological and an historical footing. In twelfth-century divisions of the sciences, the term philosophia could denote the whole spectrum of knowledge and inquiry, including theology, which was classed as theoretical or speculative philosophy (see above, pp. 23–5). However, thirteenth-century schoolmen drove a wedge between theology and philosophy, the latter being regarded as the inferior of the former143. This development was probably due, in part, to the more rigorous definition of subject-areas made possible by the assimilation of Aristotle’s libri naturales (and, later, his Politica, Ethica, Rhetorica and Economica) and, in part, to a desire to dissociate Christian learning from the heresies, blasphemies and errors which could be found in the works of Aristotle and his Arabian commentators144. Roland of Cremona, the first Dominican master at the University of Paris (1229), described philosophy as the handmaid (ancilla) of theology, and theology as ‘the ruler and queen of all the sciences which must wait upon it as servants’145. For Roland, theology was ‘the science of sciences, which is raised above all philosophical speculation and surpasses all others in dignity’. Similar statements were made by St Albert the Great and St Thomas Aquinas146.
One concomitant of this dichotomy was a distinction between the supreme Scriptural authority and the more specialised and limited authorities of the ancillary disciplines. St Albert emphasised that, in theology, an authoritative source is inspired by the spirit of truth, whereas the authorities of the other sciences are much weaker147. Similarly, St Thomas believed that the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest possible, whereas the argument from authority based on human reason is the weakest148. The main principle underlying these statements is that the superior science, theology, is based on revelation, whereas all the other sciences are based on human reasonings.
The ‘philosophers’, who had relied on their natural reason, were mainly pagans. Hence, there was an historical aspect to this distinction between theology and philosophy. Most of the great pagan philosophers had lived before the advent of Christ and, therefore, were ignorant of divine revelation. However, they may have had certain inklings and intimations of the truth to come, as Virgil had in his Eclogues149. Many late-medieval thinkers were interested in pagan forerunners and prophets150.
It was generally agreed that pagan auctores and the writers of the Old Testament were similar in several important ways. First, pagan writers and Old Testament writers had lived before the time of Christ; the auctoritas of their work was thereby limited in relation to the great auctoritas of the New Testament151. Old Testament writers had a greater degree of auctoritas than pagan writers, but these two classes of writers were, as it were, close together on the scale of authorities. Pagan and Old Testament auctores were similar in the extent of their limitations.
Secondly, they were similar also in the nature of their limitations, in the basis of the auctoritas they possessed in the eyes of their readers. Both Solomon and Aristotle, for example, had used their natural reason152. Of course, Solomon had sometimes been aided by divine inspiration whereas Aristotle had not but, in other contexts, there often seemed to be very little between them153. When the auctoritas of Solomon consisted in inspirations, Aristotle had to defer to him. But when Solomon’s auctoritas consisted in human reasonings, he was supposed to be operating on the same wavelength as Aristotle, whose auctoritas consisted solely in rationalisation154.
Thirdly, pagan and Old Testament auctores were experts in the same areas of study; they were believed to have been interested in the same things155. The juxtaposition of Solomon and Aristotle in late-medieval exegesis is more understandable if one remembers that Aristotle was considered to possess a considerable auctoritas in many of those matters raised by Solomon156. The assertions of an auctor with a limited degree of auctoritas could be supplemented with the assertions of other auctores with limited degrees of auctoritas. Solomon was supported by the pagan philosophers and poets157.
There was an increasing recourse to secular auctoritates (i.e. extracts) in commentaries on the Sapiential Books of the Bible, what Miss Smalley has called a ‘secularisation of sources’158. The assumed justification for this seems to have been that these books discussed pagan beliefs which had to be clarified from pagan sources, and that they taught philosophy, natural science, politics and ethics, subjects in which pagan writers were held to have auctoritas by reason of their acknowledged experience159. In the twelfth century, pagan writers were read by theologians mainly to be ‘despoliated’160; in later centuries, they were recognised as being the experts in certain areas of study and, hence, they became a source of auctoritas. Not only did the pagans supply material for many of the glosses, they also supplied many of the working assumptions about method. Commentaries on the Sapiential Books were introduced with elaborate extrinsic prologues which discuss wisdom or ‘sapience’ in the Aristotelian sense of the term (see p. 32). It may have seemed appropriate that Scriptural books which pertained to philosophical subjects should be prefaced with descriptions of philosophical principles vouched for by ‘the philosopher’ himself.
The Sapiential Books were susceptible to such treatment because they were believed to possess a limited degree of auctoritas. In his Generalis introitus ad sacram Scripturam, John of Rochelle (master of theology by 1238) divided the books of the Law into works ‘of primary authority’ and works ‘of secondary authority’161. The Sapiential Books were placed in the latter category because they were not among the Hebrew books. This topic of the degree of auctoritas possessed by the Sapiential Books was also related to the issue of whether Solomon had indeed written all or any of the books traditionally ascribed to him. Hugh of St Cher regarded as ‘sapiential’ those books of uncertain authorship which contained sound but limited doctrine:
All books of which the authorship is not certain, or of which the sanctity is not evident, are, when they are read in Church, entitled with the name of ‘Wisdom’, because all truth is from Wisdom.162
Because Solomon occupied this somewhat ambiguous position, medieval commentators felt freer to discuss his personal activity (both moral and literary) than they ever did to discuss, for example, the personal activity of the Four Evangelists. Even in the fourteenth century, commentaries on the Evangelists remained quite conservative, relying heavily on received interpretations derived mainly from the Fathers and Saints163. Hence, it is no accident that most of the major discussions of human literary activity which have been examined in this chapter appear in analyses of Old Testament books, and that many of the very best examples occur in commentaries on the Sapiential Books. Elaborate discussions of authorial role were provided in intrinsic prologues to commentaries on books of limited auctoritas, whereas the extrinsic prologues to those same books provided the rationale for the support of this auctoritas with quotations (auctoritates) from pagan writers, writers who were well aware of the truth that came from sapience164
Our conclusions so far may be summarised as follows. The late-medieval concern for the integrity of the individual auctor produced new principles, both for the analysis of those authorial roles which were being discovered in the literal sense of Scripture, and for the grouping of auctoritates from different types of source. In the eye of the beholder, a rapport existed between the Christian and pagan authorities in certain areas of study. Scholars saw such assorted auctores as Solomon and Aristotle as possessing a comparable degree of auctoritas. Moreover, resemblances were being seen in the literary and moral activities of Scriptural and pagan auctores. Some ‘efficient causes’ appeared to have moved in similar ways. These conclusions may now be substantiated further by an examination of the ‘formal causes’ which the human auctores had implemented, within the literal sense of Scripture, in expressing and organising their divine revelations.