IN TWELFTH-CENTURY PROLOGUES to Scriptural commentaries, the heading ‘mode of proceeding’ (modus agendi) had usually introduced discussion, conducted with limited interest in literary issues, of the way in which the deep divine meaning of the work had been formulated. The modus was regarded as the property of the Holy Spirit rather than that of the human auctor. In the related sphere of literary construction, commentators had searched the books of the Bible for hidden principles of order and form. According to Honorius ‘of Autun’, ‘each book of sacred Scripture has its special divisions and its special significations of number’1.
The thirteenth century saw a major change of attitude to the concept of form: form came to be regarded as a function of the literal sense of Scripture. According to the Aristotelian theories of causality promulgated by late-medieval thinkers, the form (forma) was the pattern aimed at in a process of generation2. In a literary context, the auctor, the agent responsible for the generation of the text, was believed to have brought the text’s formal cause from potentiality to act. The human auctor, writer of the literal sense, produced the forma of his text.
The commentators who employed the ‘Aristotelian prologue’ spoke of the form of a work as being twofold (duplex). First, a work is composed in a certain form of writing: the auctor uses a certain literary style or technique. Second, the work is organised in accordance with a certain form or structure. The first aspect of form was called the ‘form of treatment’ (forma tractandi); the second was called variously the ‘form of the treatise’ (forma tractatus), the ‘division of the text’ (divisio textus) or the ‘ordering of parts’ (ordinatio partium). Because these two aspects of form are very different—one may compare the two very different aspects or levels of authorship brought together by the heading duplex causa efficiens—they will be discussed separately.
The forma tractandi of a given work was the ‘mode of proceeding’ (modus agendi) which the auctor was supposed to have used, and there were said to be two basic kinds of mode or method, because there were two basic kinds of book: the book of divine science (the Bible) and the books of the human arts and sciences (all other books). The idiom of literary theory employed in considering formae tractandi received its main impetus and its most comprehensive definition in the course of thirteenth-century debate on the stock question (quaestio) ‘is theology a science?’. Because all the major theologians of the day felt obliged to pronounce on the nature of theology they had something to say about the different formae tractandi used in the Bible and in the textbooks of human science, and this discussion proved very propitious for the emergence of literary theory. Scriptural exegetes were thereby provided with a sophisticated and systematic idiom which did justice to the stylistic complexity of each and every sacred text, and with a theoretical justification for their sensitive analysis of literary devices.
The investigation of the nature of theology found in the Summa theologica attributed to Alexander of Hales (c. 1186–1245) was perhaps one of the first and was certainly one of the most influential3. Alexander begins by asking if the Bible can be classed among the books of the human arts and sciences (in this context the terms ars and scientia mean the same thing)4. It would appear that the Bible is not an ‘artificial’ or ‘scientific’ work, Alexander speculates, because human sciences work through the comprehension of truth by human reason, whereas sacred Scripture works through the inculcation of a pious disposition (secundum affectum pietatis) in men. This difficulty is resolved by distinguishing between two kinds of science: human science, which involves ratiocination, and divine science, which has sacred tradition as its basis and which is the science described by St Augustine as consisting of those things which pertain to salvation. Divine science appeals to the affectus, which in this context means the ‘affections’, ‘inclination’ or ‘disposition’ of the mind. On the other hand, human science appeals to the intellect (intellectus), to the rational part of the mind.
Note indeed that there must be one mode of science which has to inform the affections in accord with piety, and another mode of science which has to inform the intellect alone in the learning of truth.
Robert Kilwardby, whose account of the two kinds of science was greatly indebted to Alexander’s, makes the same point by stating that human science has knowledge alone as its end or objective (finis)5. This is philosophy, science considered as science (scientia ut scientia). But theology, science considered as wisdom (scientia ut sapientia), strives towards the love of the good and the reverence of God. Its finis is the inculcation of faith, hope and charity. Within the distinction between the disposition and the intellect, Kilwardby—like Richard Fishacre before him—substituted the term aspectus (denoting the ‘gaze’ or ‘looking’ of the reason) for Alexander’s intellectus6.
This complex theory of two distinct kinds of science may be better understood if the ubiquitous distinction between the disposition and the intellect is explained. It may be traced back to St Augustine, who in his Soliloquia introduced the metaphor of sight to describe the intellectual and rational power of the soul7. The senses of the soul are, as it were, the eyes of the mind, and reason is to the mind what the act of looking (aspectus) is to the eyes. In order that the mind’s eyes may see rightly and perfectly, they must be purified from all corporeal stain and from the desire of mortal things; this may be effected by the cleansing action of faith, hope and charity. Even if the soul should attain the true vision of God, which is the objective of looking (finis aspectus), while she remains in the body she will constantly require the assistance of those cardinal virtues.
Augustine’s opinions were elaborated in the pseudo-Augustinian Liber de spiritu et anima8. Through the rational power, the soul may be illuminated to obtain knowledge of things above itself, near itself, in itself and below itself (i.e. God, angels, the soul itself and earthly creation). Through the powers of concupiscence and irascibility, the soul may be influenced to desire, disdain, love or fear something. From rationality, proceed all the senses of the soul; from the other powers, all the affections. The disposition (affectus) is fittingly fourfold, comprising the affections of delight, misery, love and fear; these four are, as it were, the fount and the common material of all the virtues and vices.
The relative functions of the aspectus and the affectus were more precisely delineated by thirteenth-century thinkers9. Describing Robert Grosseteste’s constant recourse to the distinction, D. A. Callus remarked that ‘he was never tired of bringing it in whenever he could, in season and out of season’10. Callus summarised Grosseteste’s understanding of the terminology in this way:
Gazing (aspectus) gives us the first grasp; next comes a verification of what we have contemplated or known; and when the mind is satisfied about what is attractive or noxious, then our affection (affectus) yearns to embrace what is attractive or withdraws within itself in flight from what is noxious.11
Such precision was probably due to an increase of interest in the relationship between the aspectus and the affectus occasioned by the debate (around 1220) on the powers of the soul12. William of Auxerre, one of the first Parisian schoolmen to make use of the new Aristotelian learning, was also one of the first to argue that the soul’s faculties are distinct both from the soul itself and from each other13. One consequence of this was the opposition of the affectus to the apprehension of the intellect. In the treatise De bono et malo which he composed before he became Bishop of Paris in 1228, William of Auvergne defended the identity of the soul and its faculties, but William of Auxerre’s opinion found favour with, among others, Alexander of Hales and John of Rochelle14.
Alexander of Hales related the intellect and the affectus to human science and divine science, respectively. Human science, which depends on the intellect, pursues knowledge in accordance with truth; divine science works through the affections, seeking to move the affectus to goodness15. Theology perfects the soul according to affection, proceeding from the principles of fear and love; this, properly and principally, is wisdom. Discussing whether the method of sacred Scripture is more certain than those employed in other sciences, Alexander explains that the answer depends on what kind of certitude one is seeking: it is more certain according to the certitude of experience and of the affectus, but not more certain in the area of intellectual speculation16. The science of theology is superior because, ultimately, it is concerned with goodness rather than knowledge.
Similar solutions were put forward by Fishacre and Kilwardby who, by emphasising the differences between divine science and human science, made the gap between faith and reason even wider. In the spirit of Grosseteste, Fishacre made the unusual suggestion that one’s inclination (affectus) ought to be fashioned by good conduct before the gaze of the intellect (the aspectus) should be allowed to range over difficult questions about the faith17. Kilwardby followed both Alexander of Hales and Fishacre in arguing for the primacy of the affectus18. Whereas human science need only illuminate the aspectus, theology must prepare the affections and kindle the disposition both in accordance with ultimate truth and in love of the ultimate good. Mere ratiocination is inadequate for the purposes of theology since this satisfies only the aspectus, whereas precepts, exhortation, prayer and such things are necessary in theology. Therefore, the mode (modus) of sacred Scripture is partly preceptive, partly exhortative, partly orative, and so on, because by such things the affectus is prepared and inflamed.
The basis of the common distinction between the two kinds of science having been described, we can proceed to examine in some detail the two modes of procedure which were supposed to correspond to these two kinds of science. Here is Alexander’s version of the modes appropriate to human science and divine science respectively:
The first mode must be definitive, divisive and collective; and such a mode must exist in human sciences because the apprehension of truth through the human reason is unfolded by divisions, definitions and ratiocinations. The second mode must be preceptive, exemplifying, exhorting, revelatory and orative, because these methods are conducive to a pious disposition; and this mode is in sacred Scripture . . .19
These two modes will now be considered in turn.
The mode of human science, the modus definitivus, divisivus et collectivus, consisted of the procedures characteristic of human science in general20. The auctores of the various human sciences were supposed to have engaged in these procedures in writing their books. Definitio, divisio and collectio are necessary procedures in human science, as Kilwardby says in his commentary on the Sentences:
These sciences which diligently seek the truth by human reason, necessarily have to define, divide and collect. For division and definition are necessary for knowledge of uncomplex things . . . Collection or ratiocination is necessary for knowledge of complex things . . .21
Definitio comes first in the order of things: this is necessary in order that a science be delimited, that its subject-area be known22. No science can define itself, because every definition is from things which are logically prior (in order to define man as a ‘rational animal’, we must first know what ‘animal’ is). Subject comes first in a science, hence the subject of a science must be defined by the science which is logically prior to it. Divisio gives us the parts of the subject23. The subject or genus is divided up into its special differences or parts; these parts of species are defined by reference to ideas that are prior to themselves (the genus ‘animal’ is prior to the species ‘horse’). Collectio means ratiocination, the ‘gathering together’ of propositions so that conclusions may be drawn from them by syllogistic method24. This provides knowledge of complex things, knowledge of the special attributes (passiones) of the parts or species of a subject: men may argue and draw conclusions about what a science really entails.
These three procedures of human science are well summed up in this passage from the renowned logician Peter of Spain (Master of Arts at Paris around 1240):
By definition is given the entire subject. Division is given to the parts of the subject; to collect or prove and disprove is due to the attributes of the parts, because the attributes are rightly proved from their subjects.25
Sometimes the term ‘probative and improbative mode’ (modus probativus et improbativus) was used instead of the term ‘collective mode’ (modus collectives), as, for example, in the prologue to the Priscian-commentary written by ‘Master Jordan’ at Paris about 1245: ‘The form of treatment is the mode of proceeding which is principally definitive, divisive, probative, improbative, and applies examples’26.
The ‘mode of applying examples’ (modus exemplorum suppositivus) was not a necessary procedure of human science, unlike the very essential modus definitivus, divisivus et collectivus. This is made clear in the commentary on the Barbarismus which Kilwardby wrote at Paris before his entry into the Dominican order:
The necessary mode of proceeding is threefold: namely definitive, divisive and collective, and yet the mode which is collective is not used much by Donatus in this treatise. The mode of proceeding does not necessarily apply examples.27
However, while examples are not absolutely necessary for a science, they are certainly useful, especially in the teaching of a science. Peter of Spain stated that ‘the application of examples is useful for learners, whence Aristotle says, “We employ examples so that whoever learns may perceive by the senses” ’28.
But the ‘mode of applying examples’ was by no means confined to the texts of human science; Scriptural exegetes found that their auctores had often used examples. For instance, the Oxford Franciscan, Thomas Docking (regent master sometime between 1260 and 1265), praised St Paul for his good modus agendi in Galatians, which is said to consist in irrefrangible authority, efficacious reason and the application of examples (suppositio exemplorum)29. In the ‘Commendation of sacred Scripture’ which he delivered as part of his inception as Master of Theology in 1256, Thomas Aquinas provided a detailed analysis of the way in which exempla are utilised in the Apocrypha and the Hagiographia30.
This completes our investigation of the mode of human science; we may now consider the ‘multiple mode’ of holy Scripture, the modus praeceptivus, exemplificativus, etc. This consisted at once of the procedures characteristic of divine science and the different modes of writing or modi agendi employed in the various books of the Bible. No two books of Scripture were believed to be exactly alike. According to Alexander of Hales, the preceptive mode (modus praeceptivus) is found in the Pentateuch, the historical and exemplifying mode (modus historicus et exemplificativus) in the Historiographic Books, the exhorting mode (modus exhortativus) in the Sapiential Books, the revelatory mode (modus revelativus) in the Prophetic Books and the orative mode (modus orativus) in the Psalter31. The books of the New Testament are different again:
Likewise, in the Gospel is the historical mode covering the narration of the life and actions of Christ, and the instructing and advising mode in the teaching of Christ; in the Epistles of Paul and in the canonical writings there is the warning mode; in Acts, the historical mode; in the Apocalypse, the revelatory mode.
Subsequent commentators refined upon Alexander’s list. For example, here is part of the discussion of the Scriptural modes provided by Odo Rigaldi, Alexander’s disciple and successor in the Franciscan chair at Paris (1244–7):
The orative mode is in the Psalter in order that the affections may be moved from within. There are other modes in order that they may be moved by instruction from outside. Certainly, there is the mode that moves because of power, and this mode, the preceptive, is in the Books of the Law and the Evangelists, to which is added the threatening and promising mode corresponding to the prohibitions and precepts. Or there is the mode that moves because of wisdom, and this is the revelatory mode, as in the Prophets and the Apocalypse. There is the mode that moves because of goodness, and this is the warning mode, either by examples as in the Historical Books or by word of mouth as in Solomon’s books or by writings as in the Epistles. To these modes others are reduced and are subordinated.32
One is reminded of Peter Abelard’s synopsis of the different literary techniques employed in both Testaments (see pp. 61–2), but the thirteenth-century discussions are at once more intricate and more systematic.
The emergence of this vast repertory of modes manifests the fact that, in the later Middle Ages, analysis of Scripture involved a considerable amount of literary analysis. As M.-D. Chenu put it,
The mode of sacred doctrine is a literary method, proceeding by analysis of a text where narratives, metaphors, poetic imagery, examples and discourses require an interpretation which has nothing to do with the ‘definitions, divisions and reasonings’ of Aristotelian knowledge.33
The principles behind most of the Biblical modes described by Alexander and his successors may be traced to standard explanations of the methods of oratory. Hence, the bases for the narrative, orative and exemplary modes are found in the two main textbooks used in the medieval teaching of rhetoric, Cicero’s De inventione and the Ad Herennium34. The modes connected with praising and blaming are derived from demonstrative rhetoric; those connected with persuading and dissuading, from deliberative rhetoric35. The theologians could draw on rhetorical lore in this manner because rhetoric was generally regarded as a humble handmaiden of theology and, more precisely, as a subordinate of logic36. The continuing influence of this view may be illustrated by reference to glosses on the recently-introduced Rhetorica of Aristotle. ‘Dialectic is subsequent to rhetoric’, declares the opening sentence of William of Moerbeke’s translation of this work37. In the first Latin commentary thereon, written in the late thirteenth century by the theologian, Giles of Rome († 1316), the relationship between rhetoric and dialectic is explained as follows38. Scientific assent and dialectical assent are purely intellectual acts, while the assent of faith can be called intellectual only in so far as the intellect is open to being moved by an appetite, a desire of the will. The rhetorician generates belief by moving the will, by arousing appetites; his persuasive arguments employ enthymemes and exempla. In his commentary on the Sentences and elsewhere, Giles argued that theology is basically affective39. Clearly, this is of a piece with his attitude to rhetoric. Scriptural texts obtain the assent of faith by moving the reader’s will and appealing to his affectus. The modus sacrae Scripturae is essentially a rhetorical mode.
Similarly, the resources of medieval poetics could be drawn upon in expounding the complex literary effects found in Scripture. The formulation of some of the Biblical modes was probably influenced by the accessus and commentaries on secular auctores produced by medieval grammarians. However, traditional rhetoric and poetics could not provide a vocabulary to cope with all the problems of description presented by divinely-inspired texts (see pp. 33–6). Clearly, the revelatory mode, as employed in the Prophets and the Apocalypse, was far beyond the terms of reference of secular learning. The theologians were concerned to establish the superior status of the Bible; the fact that it employed such a wide diversity of modes indicated its unique qualities.
The repertory of modes outlined in discussions of the nature of theology provided a framework for analysis of the individual characteristics of the different books of the Bible, as is manifested by the way in which Alexander of Hales and St Bonaventure commended the benefits accruing from the ‘multiple mode’ (multiplex modus) of Scripture. Alexander begins by asking if the multiple mode is, in fact, beneficial to the reader of Scripture or not40. Since ‘all that is written is written for our doctrine’ (Romans xv.4), a ‘uniform mode’ (uniformis modus) might convey this doctrine better. The more uniform the mode, the more plain and easy it would be for us to understand. Alexander dismisses this suggestion with a justification of the rich literary variety of the Bible. All that is written is indeed written for our doctrine, and the more varied the writing the better.
Alexander offers three reasons in support of his view: because of the auctor, because of the material, and because of the end (finis). Concerning the first, Alexander quotes Wisdom vii.22 as saying that the Holy Spirit is both single and manifold. Because the Holy Spirit was the first auctor of the Bible, a manifold mode must be used in order that the rich divine teaching be clearly revealed to men. Concerning the second, Alexander states that the material of Scripture is the multiform wisdom of God. Multiform material necessitates a multiform modus. Thirdly, Alexander explains that the finis of the Bible is to instruct men in those things which pertain to salvation. Because many things pertain to salvation, the method of teaching those things should not be uniform. There are many states of men—for instance, men living under the Law, after the Law, in the time of the prophets, in the time of grace. Within any one of these states further diversity may be found. Some men are good, some are bad; they live according to different mores and customs. The instruction which Scripture provides is ordained for the salvation of men, and a multiple mode must be used in order to do justice to the nobility of this finis.
Bonaventure’s conception of the end and means of sacred Scripture is substantially in agreement with Alexander’s. In his Breviloquium (written 1254–7), Bonaventure says that the intention (intentio) of Scriptural doctrine is to make us virtuous and able to attain salvation41. This is achieved not merely by speculation but by a disposition of the will. Hence, the divine Scriptures had to be written in whatever way would dispose us best. Our disposition (affectus) is moved more strongly by examples than by ratiocinative argument, by promised rewards than by reasoning, by devotion than by dogma. The Scriptures make use of their own modes, adapting themselves to the different mental states that make souls reason differently. For instance, were a man to remain unmoved by a command or prohibition, he might be moved by favours; were this again to fail, he might be moved by wise admonitions, trustworthy promises or terrifying threats, and thus be stirred, if not in one way then in another, to devotion and praise of God. Therefore, it is right and fitting that Scripture should employ a varied mode.
The Scriptural mode, Bonaventure continues, cannot proceed to certitude by way of ratiocinative argument, since the particular facts of which it treats cannot be proved formally. Consequently, lest Scripture should appear doubtful and lose some of its power to move, God has given it, in place of the evidence of demonstration through reasoning, the certitude of auctoritas: so absolute is this certainty that it surpasses any certainty attainable by the keenest human mind. No passage of Scripture, he concludes, should be regarded as valueless, rejected as false, or repudiated as evil, for its all-perfect auctor, the Holy Spirit, could inspire nothing untrue, trivial or degraded. It would seem then that, behind the great diversity and range of the styles found in the Bible, lies the singleness and security of divine authority.
Thus far the two types of science and the literary modes appropriate to each have been described, with special attention being paid to theologians’ discussions of the multiple mode of Holy Scripture. Late-medieval accounts of Biblical formae tractandi, far from being inconsequential, or peripheral to the main concerns of the age, were in fact an integral part of a great debate, conducted among many of the greatest thinkers of that period, about the qualities of the highest and most secure form of knowledge known to man.
Indeed, the emphasis which a theologian would place on certain Scriptural modes as opposed to others would be to some extent determined by his personal opinion of the nature of theology. For example, St Thomas Aquinas made few concessions to ‘modes of symbolic thought’42. Disapproving of the disjunction between rational science and affective wisdom advocated by Alexander of Hales and his followers, he sought to emphasise the intellectual and rational facet of the science of theology. Aquinas’s vision of subordinated sciences ruled by theology depends on an acceptance of the similarities between divine science and human science43. This view is reflected in his exegesis: for example, the point is laboured that Job and the Apostle Paul employ the ‘disputative mode’ (modus disputativus)44.
Much more extreme was the reaction of Henry of Ghent. Henry held that the science of theology was speculative rather than practical or affective; his unusual brand of Neoplatonism drove a wedge between divine ideas and individual reality45. Hence God, the primary auctor of Scripture, is conceived of as having inspired the human auctores of the Bible without seeking their cooperation or asking their leave. Henry seems inclined to deny them any meaningful contribution to sacred Scripture46.
The conviction that there are no divine ideas of individuals, but only of species, informs Henry’s attack on Alexander of Hales’s account of the multiplex modus of Scripture (as paraphrased above)47. There may be multiform materials in the Bible, the divine wisdom may be multiform and there may be multiform states of mankind but, according to Henry, this does not mean that the modus tractandi characteristic of theology is manifold48. Certainly, in some places, the Scriptures admonish, in others, they prohibit, etc., but this diversity exists, not on account of the mode of treatment, but rather because of the diverse materials treated therein: hence, in one place, precepts may be propounded; in another, prohibitions, and so on.
Henry argues that divine science does not have a mode which treats of individual things singularly and distinctly. Instead, within one and the same discourse are contained diverse sententiae concerning diverse materials and diverse beliefs, pertinent to diverse states of men in various ways. Different men may understand this discourse according to their individual capacities: some are content with the literal surface; others look under it for the spiritual understanding. In absolute terms, the Scriptural mode is the very sum of simplicity and uniformity. But what of the objection that, in this science, God spoke in many and multifarious modes? Henry’s answer is that such variety relates not to the mode of treatment or writing but rather to the various ways in which the compositions were revealed to diverse persons. For example, Daniel received his revelation by dream; Moses, by direct speech; and David, by interior inspiration. Therefore, the absolute uniformity of the modus tractandi of theology is unimpeachable.
The contrast with one of Henry’s opponents, Giles of Rome, could hardly be greater. Giles was interested in the supra-rational properties of Biblical texts and in the ways in which inspired Scripture appealed to the individual. Lecturing on the Sentences (1276), he argued that the end (finis) of theology is love, caritas49. As caritas is in the power of the affection—in contradistinction to those speculative and practical questions which concern the intellect—the science of theology is therefore affective rather than intellectual. These ideas permeate the ‘Aristotelian prologue’ to Giles’s magnificent commentary on the Song of Songs, in which the emotive and epithalamic qualities of that text, so well brought out by St Bernard and William of St Thierry, are reassessed in the light of the new Aristotelian learning50. Solomon’s modus agendi, Giles explains, appeals primarily, not to the intellect, but to the will. The inspired auctor expressed his revelation through a modus affectivus, desiderativus et contemplativus:
The mode of procedure in other sciences is by positive proof or refutation: however, in sacred Scripture, and most importantly in the Canon, it is seen to be through inspiration, that is, by revelation, because such a treatise is more substantially based on revelation than on rational proof. Indeed, the mode of proceeding in this book in particular is seen to be affective, desiderative and contemplative.
The persuasive power of this style of writing plays a major part in implementing the ultimate end or final cause of the sacred book, namely love of God. But is this not the end of all sacred doctrine? Giles replies that the finis of the Song of Songs is related to the finis of theology just as the part is related to the whole. In general, the end of all sacred doctrine is the love of God, but in particular Solomon’s song provokes us to the love of God and our neighbours. Solomon employed the ‘affective mode’ (modus affectivus) in this work; the entire science of theology is affective rather than intellectual.
It would seem, therefore, that a theologian’s general approach to the science of theology could influence considerably his particular approach to the individual theological text. We have been concentrating on highly theoretical and abstract discussions of the Biblical mode of procedure: it is time to investigate what was happening in the Scriptural commentaries themselves. Many exegetes seem to have accepted (at least tacitly) Alexander of Hales’s belief in the manifold nature of the Scriptural mode, since their commentaries contain detailed analyses of the various formae tractandi used by the various auctores. The next few pages will illustrate the impressive diversity and range of style being discovered in the Bible considered as a whole, or even within a single book of the Bible.
The beauty of the rhetorical figures and methods of expression with which Scriptural auctores had adorned their works was praised often. In his commentary on Lamentations, John Pecham (who succeeded Kilwardby as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1279), explained the workings of the ‘lamentative mode’ (modus lamentativus) in this way:
It must be known, that this book is adorned in three ways with musical and rhetorical elegance. First, in eloquence, because it is written metrically . . . Moreover, secondly it is adorned with rhetorical divisions in profound sayings . . . Moreover, thirdly this song is adorned with the arranged letters of the alphabet, by which the individual sayings are introduced . . .51
Thomas Aquinas had seen Lamentations in a similar light, believing it to be enveloped with verbal adornment, whence it is both written metrically and coloured with rhetorical ornaments52. In his popular commentary on the same text, the Oxford Franciscan, John Lathbury, quoted St Fulgentius and Gilbert of Poitiers on the emotive power of the ‘song of lamentation’53. In short, late-medieval exegetes believed that their auctores had manipulated their styles with full awareness of the effect of rhetorical figures and (in the case of divine poetry and song) the power of verse.
One mode of procedure in particular, the use of proverbs or parables (the modus parabolicus), had received considerable attention in discussions of the nature of theology. Alexander of Hales raised the problem that, while parables and proverbs are employed in sacred Scripture, it would seem that this mode is neither historical, allegorical, tropological or anagogical54. His answer was that the modus parabolicus may be reduced to the historical sense, since, in speaking of history, one can refer either to real things, as in historical events, or to the similitudes of things, as in parables. The very same problem is found at the beginning of the Summa theologise of St Thomas Aquinas, where a similar solution is offered.
The parabolical sense is contained in the literal sense, for words can signify something properly and something figuratively; in the last case the literal sense is not the figure of speech itself, but the object it figures. When Scripture speaks of the arm of God, the literal sense is not that he has a physical limb, but that he has what it signifies, namely the power of doing and making. This example brings out how nothing false can underlie the literal sense of Scripture.55
The Scriptural exegetes were mainly interested in the efficiency of this mode as a teaching device. The fact that it taught in an apparently fictional manner and through a sort of concealment was frequently remarked upon. Developing Aquinas’s theory of the modus parabolicus, Nicholas Trevet argued that a parable expresses one idea on the surface of the words, which is the sign and outer rind, and another in the inward understanding, which is the thing signified and inner pith. Many psalms, he claims, signify Christ in this way56. In his commentary on Proverbs (c. 1347–8 at Cambridge), the ‘classicising friar’ Thomas Ringstead, having quoted Papias’s definition of parable, explained that this Scriptural text treats of moral sententiae under occult similitudes57.
On the other hand, sometimes a more direct and straightforward style was judged to be well-suited to the matter in hand. Aquinas dismissed the idea that Job had employed the modus parabolicus: his story is actual fact, not signifying anything by corporeal likenesses58. Similarly, according to Aquinas, the mode employed by the prophet Isaiah ‘is plain and open’59. If twelfth-century exegetes had sometimes ignored stylistic considerations in their search for allegorical meanings, their successors placed a premium on the right meaning in the right literary form.
The stylistic range achieved by a single auctor or group of auctores could now be described with considerable precision. A good example is furnished by the explanation of the formal cause of the Twelve Minor Prophets’ work which was put forward by a disciple of Alexander of Hales, William of Middleton, who helped to complete the Summa theologica which Alexander had left unfinished at his death. William’s treatment of the ‘mode of prophetic speculation’ brings out the stylistic similarities and differences between his auctores60. Many exegetes, including Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Docking and Peter of Tarantasia (who became Pope Innocent V in 1276), commented on the wide range of modes of procedure employed by St Paul in his Epistles61.
Solomon also was supposed to have had a mastery of various styles. Nicholas of Lyre postulated a threefold forma tractandi in the Sapiential Books: Proverbs proceeds mainly by admonishing, Ecclesiastes mainly by threatening and the Song of Songs mainly by promising62. In his popular commentary on Ecclesiastes, St Bonaventure asked if a single auctor could possibly have written Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and Proverbs63. The answer is ‘yes’, but these books differ in modus agendi and finis. An auctor is under no obligation to use a particular modus agendi on two occasions. In Proverbs, Solomon introduces himself speaking as a wise man to a disciple, and proceeds by the ‘parabolic mode’ (modus parabolicus). By contrast, Bonaventure claims, in the Song of Songs, a groom is seen speaking to his bride. The role of the auctor is different here, and so is his appropriate mode. Solomon did not want us to read the Song of Songs at the literal level, as his words to his wife, but rather as the words of Christ to the Church. Therefore, he did not give his name in the book-title, as he did in the case of Proverbs: the Song of Songs was deliberately left without a named human auctor. Bonaventure then distinguishes between Ecclesiastes and Proverbs in terms of finis. In Proverbs the wise man speaks; in Ecclesiastes, we hear the penitent man: the finis of the former is sapience; of the latter, contempt of the world.
Stylistic differences could be made the basis of an argument about another literary issue, for example about the authorship of a text. In a commentary on the Apocalypse falsely ascribed to St Albert the Great, the ‘mode or form’ of this text is described as ‘prophetic’ (prophetialis)64. The commentator then asks if the John who wrote this text was St John the Evangelist, as was commonly supposed in the Middle Ages. This discussion provides an interesting record of the differing views on the subject held by unnamed scholars. One of the main arguments used, it is claimed, is that the style of the Apocalypse is quite different from that found in St John’s gospel:
This book [the Apocalypse] is full of obscurities and many figures, in which there is not revelation, but rather obscurity and convolution. Item, they say that John the Apostle wrote useful things, whereas in truth this book has nothing worthy of the apostolic gravity . . . Indeed, others say that this was the book of a certain Saint John who was not the Apostle; and they prove this by the fact that the mode of writing (modus scribendi) in this book does not resemble the style of Saint John the Apostle.
The exegetes’ discussions of their authors’ formae tractandi became more and more literary. For example, the rhetorical figures found in Scriptural works became more complex. In an anonymous Lamentations commentary which has been printed among the works of Albert the Great, Cicero’s aid is enlisted in explaining the ‘lamentative mode’:
The mode is not indeed of dictamen, but of introduced orations taken from the two types of oration which Tully distinguished in The Second Rhetorics, of which one is called ‘complaint’ and the other ‘indignation’.65
The commentator solemnly lists the sixteen modes of conquestio and the fifteen modes of indignatio.
The expertise of authorities on rhetoric, music and poetry was consulted more often. Nicholas Trevet made points about the Psalter by referring to Virgil’s Aeneid66; he also cited the view of Boethius that music has the power to soothe savage passions
. . . by means of touch a musical sound proceeds from the psaltery in which resides a power sedative to passions, as Boethius teaches in the beginning of the De musica. There he tells of a certain youth of Taormina in Sicily who, when he was drunk one night and lusted to break into a certain man’s house in which a courtesan was kept, was driven by such a rage that he could not be restrained even by parents or friends. However, Pythagoras, who nearby was regarding the nocturnal courses of the stars, sent a flutegirl who sounded the Phrygian mode, which is by modern singers called Bemol. Then he advised a change to the spondaic mode, which is heavy and harsh, and is designated among us Bequarre. At once the fury of the youth was soothed and he returned to his right mind.67
Just as, from the psaltery, by means of touch, proceeds a musical sound able to soothe passions, so, from Christ, by means of touch, has come a force capable of healing every infirmity. The touch of His passion healed mankind. Just as, by the lute’s sound, David drove an evil spirit from Saul, so, at the sound of Christ’s name, demons are driven from men.
Boethius’s De musica was drawn on by Giles of Rome also, in a discussion of sacred song which forms part of the prologue to his commentary on the Song of Songs68. Giles suggests that, just as in ‘exterior locutions’ corporeal song results from melody and proportion so also, in ‘interior locutions’ (called by St Augustine the heart’s speeches), a sort of spiritual melody or intelligible song results from that order and proportion which is directed towards God. We should not limit the term ‘song’ (cantus) to denoting a merely sensory thing, for—as Boethius says—musical proportion pertains to the form of every created thing. Since melody and proportion also attend every virtuous action, Giles proposes to describe as ‘songs’ the good thoughts and affections of the human soul. God has, as it were, a good ear for ‘songs’ like the affections, thoughts, orations and desires of devout minds. Therefore, Christ the bridegroom invites his bride (a holy soul or Holy Church) to sing, in this fashion: ‘Let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is comely’ (Song of Songs ii. 14).
These changes of attitude and emphasis may also be illustrated by reference to late-medieval classifications of the books of the Bible. Jerome’s classification had been accepted with little comment by, for example, Hugh of St Victor and Hugh of St Cher69, but their successors sought to introduce new principles of division in accordance with literary criteria. Such refinements are conveniently summarised in the principia, introitus or inaugural lectures which Bachelors and Masters of Theology were required by statute to present70. These lectures were of standard format, containing a commendation of sacred Scripture and a division of its parts. For example, in his Generalis introitus ad sacram Scripturam, John of Rochelle divided the Old Testament into three major parts: the Law, the Prophets and the Psalter71. His subdivision of the Books of the Law entails a literary principle of discrimination. The Law, in the strict sense of the term, is said to comprise the five Mosaic books which are books of precepts. However, in addition, there are law-books which work through exempla (Joshua, Judges, Kings, Paralipomenon, Esther, Judith, Tobit, Job and Machabees) and law-books which work through exhortation (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus).
In the portion of his ‘Commendation of sacred Scripture’ devoted to the Old Testament, Thomas Aquinas embroidered on Jerome’s classification72. The Books of the Prophets may be divided in accordance with the different ways in which they lead the people to observe the Law. Isaiah works mainly by blandishment, Jeremiah mainly by threatening, and Ezechiel mainly by argumentation and vituperation. Because the Apocrypha and the Hagiographia are similar in ‘mode of speaking’ (modus loquendi), Thomas considers them together. Within this group, he says, some books teach by actual deeds in employing exempla, while others teach by verbal means.
By the early fourteenth century, literary form could provide the main basis of classification. Peter Auriol’s Compendium totius Bibliae (1319) popularised the following division of the Old Testament: politica et legislativa (Pentateuch), chronica sive historica (Historical Books), hymnidica vel decantativa (Psalter, Song of Songs, Lamentations), monastica sive ethica (Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus) and prophetica (the Major and Minor Prophets)73. Auriol’s discussion of the third part of the Old Testament, the hymnological or decantative part, is particularly interesting. In describing the ‘mode of sacred poetry’ (modus sacrae poetriae) he distinguishes between carmina, elegia and dramatica:
It should be known that poetic song is divided into three kinds. Into Carmina, which are songs of joy . . . , Elegies, which are songs of sorrow . . . , and Dramatic poems, which are songs of love. And this should be known: the decantative part of divine Scripture with regard to the mode of sacred poetry is divided into the Book of Psalms, which contains poems of joy and sweet pleasure, and the Book of Lamentations, which contains elegies of misery and sadness, and the Song of Songs, which contains dramas of beauty and love.74
Auriol has applied a scheme for classifying secular poetry to the description of sacred poetry. We may compare the list of the different species of poetry (carminis species) provided in the late eleventh century Commentum in Theodulum by Bernard of Utrecht:
There is the epithalamium, so-called because it is sung over the thalamos, that is, over marital beds, as in the Song of Songs. There is the trenos, that is, a lamentation, which is recited at the funerals of the dead . . . There is festive song, and these are called hymns; there is the elegy, which is a song of grief, from elegos meaning ‘miserable’ or Elegia a girl’s name . . .75
Of course, the idea of appealing to the liberal arts for aid in describing a Scriptural text was not new. As has been mentioned already, the identification of the Song of Songs as a great ‘dramatic’ poem goes back to Origen (see p. 58). What was new in the late Middle Ages was the systematic and exhaustive way in which the diverse formae tractandi found in the Bible were being analysed.
Indeed, some exegetes seem to have ‘discovered’ and provided the literary theory for new literary forms, forms for which there was little basis in traditional rhetoric and poetics. For example, certain commentators were so impressed with the literary features which many prophetic writings seemed to possess, that they came to regard the ‘prophetic mode’ (modus prophetialis) as a possible forma tractandi. The most comprehensive discussion known to me of the modus vel forma prophetialis occurs in an anonymous commentary on Daniel which has been printed in the Vivès edition of the works of St Thomas Aquinas76. The anonymous commentator explains that all the Biblical prophets aimed at improving the people through their preaching. In order to make their divine message accessible, they employed a ‘mode of preaching’ appropriate to the people’s capacities. This modus praedicandi was ‘vulgar’ so that everyone could understand it, using only simple words, words which were familiar to ordinary people. It was also popular, making use of parables: the people of Palestine, it is claimed, were accustomed to hearing parables. By their parables, these preachers ‘signified much and persuaded many’—something which, the commentator ruefully remarks, ‘we do not often achieve in preaching’. Moreover, the mode was historical and narrative. Their words were discontinuous, in that they might break off in their narratives, moving from one matter to another and, afterwards, returning to the first matter. Finally, the mode was prophetic and told of the future.
Our anonymous commentator has drawn freely on medieval theory of preaching in order to elucidate the style of those ‘ancient’ preachers who produced the Prophetic Books. For instance, his depiction of the discontinuous nature of the prophets’ words recalls the seminal statement made by St Gregory the Great in the prologue to his Moralia in Job:
He who treats sacred eloquence ought to imitate the way of a stream. A flowing stream, if it meets with open valleys on its side, immediately turns into them, and when it has sufficiently filled them, immediately flows back to its bed.77
This passage is quoted in Robert of Basevorn’s Forma praedicandi (1322), where it is interpreted in terms of the need for orderly procedure in preaching. The preacher, Basevorn claims,
. . . should not dwell too long on the same point nor should he repeat more often than is right. He should hastily progress from one thing to another as the matter allows. An exception may be made when—without deviating too far from the matter—he finds along the way a source of edification into which, as I might say, he turns his stream of language as into a neighbouring valley. When he has sufficiently filled the place of added instruction he turns back into the channel of the intended sermon.78
It would seem that Daniel and his fellow-prophets controlled their streams of language in such a manner. Basevorn’s subsequent definition of preaching as ‘the persuasion of many . . . to meritorious conduct’ recalls the anonymous commentator’s claim that all the Biblical prophets intended to better the people through their preaching, an ambition achieved by means of those successful parables which ‘persuaded many’79.
This brief comparison will serve to remind us that the friars who produced most of the literary theory discussed in this chapter had as their essential vocation and function the preaching of the gospel. Their preaching mission compelled the friars to devote themselves to the study of doctrine, a prerequisite for the fulfilment of their evangelical purpose80. The debate on the nature of theology, which has been outlined above, may seem rather recherché and remote to us, but it was a burning issue for men preparing to be preachers and, as such, had repercussions in their preaching81. Significantly, the theologians’ distinction between the intellect or aspectus and the disposition or affectus was echoed in the De modo componendi sermones of Thomas Waleys:
The preacher’s task is not only to stir the intelligence towards what is true by means of the inevitable conclusions of arguments, but also, by means of narrative and likely persuasion, to stir the emotions to piety.82
Many of the literary analyses of formae tractandi quoted above reflect the overriding priority of preaching. When Alexander of Hales explained that the modus sacrae Scripturae had to be multiform in order to cope with all the different states of men, he was articulating the principle behind the production and collection of ‘sermons for different states’, sermons tailor-made to fit people of all kinds, ranks, classes and callings, from each of the ‘three estates’ in medieval society and every subdivision thereof83. The same principle is behind our anonymous commentator’s statement that the Old Testament prophets suited their modus praedicandi to the capabilities of the people of Palestine84.
Clerks who were at University to become qualified preachers sought in the human auctores of Scripture models which they could imitate: the lecturers’ comments on, for example, the didactic usefulness of parables and the persuasive power of certain styles must to some extent be seen in this light. This connection is made quite clear by the classification of Christ’s preaching-methods supplied in Basevorn’s Forma praedicandi. The Saviour is supposed to have employed promises, threats and examples; sometimes to have spoken openly, sometimes profoundly and obscurely85. These are familiar to us as modi agendi expounded by Scriptural exegetes. In sum, the Scriptural auctor was being regarded in the role of preacher; the literary form in which his doctrine was communicated was being interpreted in accordance with the practical needs of budding preachers. As a result, Daniel and his colleagues became preacher-prophets.
The significance of our discussion so far may be summarised as follows. Medieval theologians were not interested in making theoretical distinctions between rhetoric and poetics. Their main concern was to define the nature of theology, and one by-product of this was the creation, from a diversity of sources, of an idiom of literary theory sophisticated enough to do justice to the many rhetorical and poetic effects believed to be part of the literal sense of Scripture. Different Biblical auctores, it was recognised, could express themselves in different ways. A single auctor might express himself in different ways in different places: sometimes he might speak plainly; sometimes he might speak in a metaphorical or figurative way. Preachers with practical experience of the art of polished and persuasive expression were disposed to find precedent for their stylistic stratagems in Holy Writ; Scriptural formae tractandi could be identified and imitated by the modern evangelist. The relationship between scholastic literary theory and actual preaching practice was, therefore, a reciprocal one, as certain passages in the artes praedicandi indicate.
One aspect of the increase of interest in stylistic analysis is particularly significant for the history of literary theory. Late-medieval theologians were, in effect, establishing a common ground on which sacred poetry and profane poetry could meet. The manner in which this area of possible agreement emerged will now be investigated.
The statements of such twelfth-century exegetes as Gilbert of Poitiers and William of St Thierry about the profitable and commendable affective quality of sacred poetry may be regarded in some measure as a reply to the ancient charges brought against poetry, namely, that it inflames the passions of men, that poets are liars and that poetic writings are full of falsehoods (see above, pp. 49–52). In the thirteenth century, many thinkers went much further, by claiming that theology in its entirety, and not just some books of the Bible, worked in a kinetic way by appealing to the affectus. The debate on the nature of theology brought many literary issues from the periphery to a point much nearer the centre of academic attention. Exegetes were thereby encouraged to analyse in detail the affective and intellectual qualities of the various formae tractandi in the Bible.
In discussing the modus of Scripture, St Albert the Great raised the second major criticism mentioned above, that poetic writings are full of falsehoods. Because the ‘poetic mode’ (modus poeticus) employs fables (fabulae), things which are not true but fictitious, it would appear to be the weakest of the philosophical modes:
Certainly, the poetic mode is the weakest among the modes of philosophy, because it consists of fables, which are composed of marvellous elements, as ‘the Philosopher’ says in the first book of The First Philosophy. For the marvellous elements of fables are not true, but fictitious.86
Albert resolves the problem by distinguishing between human poetry, which employs the fabrications of men, and sacred poetry, which communicates indubitable truths in a figurative way. St Thomas Aquinas made a similar distinction: poetry employs metaphors for the sake of representations, in which we are naturally inclined to take delight, whereas holy teaching adopts them for their indubitable usefulness87. Scripture rightly puts forward spiritual things under bodily likenesses, in order that the uneducated may lay hold of them the more easily. Holy Scripture cannot contain anything that is false.
In this way, Albert and Aquinas made a sharp contrast between secular poetry and sacred poetry. It was one thing for Scriptural auctores to communicate truths in the literal sense by various kinds of figurative language: it was quite another for the pagan poets to communicate their half-truths and lies by apparently similar means. But, in the minds of later thinkers, the gap between these two kinds of poetry narrowed considerably.
This may be demonstrated by reference to the way in which Albert’s views on poetry were developed by one of his pupils, Ulrich of Strassburg, whom Albert taught in the studium generale at Cologne which he had left Paris in 1248 to inaugurate. Ulrich’s Liber de summo bono, written between 1262 and 1272, begins with a discussion of the nature of theology in which it is concluded that the end of this science is ‘affective knowledge’88. This includes an analysis of the following modi agendi used in Scripture: the historical, the poetic, the moral, the legal, the scientific (in the widest sense), and the sapiential89. Into his treatment of the poetic mode, Ulrich introduces the theory of integumentum, the fictional garment in which (according to twelfth-century accessus ad auctores) secular poets had clothed their truths concerning natural science or morality.
Whereas Albert, in the passage quoted above, had stressed that the modus poeticus is the weakest of the philosophical modes, his pupil was intrigued by the fact that it is indeed a philosophical mode. Albert had claimed the authority of Aristotle in the first book of the Metaphysica: Ulrich cites another part of this text and the recently-established Rhetorica as well:
It [Scripture] has as its second mode the poetic mode, when it represents truth under fictional garments, as in the parables of holy Scripture, and this mode is appropriate to this science because, as is said in the first book of the Metaphysics, the philomites, i.e. the poet loving to feign fables, is a philosopher in that the poet feigns a fable in such a way that he excites to wonder, and by wonder subsequently excites to inquiry; and thus science takes shape, as ‘the Philosopher’ says in his Rhetoric.90
It is clear, Ulrich continues, that the poetic mode is included within the mode of science by virtue of this wonder, whereas the other parts of logic are included therein by virtue of argumentation. With regard to intention, poetry is a part of logic, although with regard to the measure of metre it is classified under grammar.
Ulrich then assures his reader that Scripture does not contain anything fabulous in the sense of being false91. As Augustine says, in the case of a parable a thing is signified, and the truth or falsity of the passage in question depends on this thing and not on the words; it suffices for this ‘second sense’ to be true. Then Ulrich displays the knowledge of the mystical theology of Pseudo-Dionysius which he had acquired from his master Albert92. In the integuments employed in Scripture for representing divine things, not only are the more noble creatures used (which, in so far as they are closer to God, participate in and represent His goodness) but also the inferior and more ignoble: because of their great distance from God, He is more likely to be named symbolically, as opposed to aptly, by their names. Hence, a lamb or a stone is less likely to be understood as God than is an angel or the sun. Indeed, Ulrich continues, since God participates in diverse things in diverse ways, certain aspects of Him are more expressly represented by inferior things than they could be by noble things. For example, the perfection of the divine nature is well represented by noble things, while the fecundity of the divine nature and certain of its works are well represented by things which are born and die. Pseudo-Dionysius could be used in the commendation or denigration of poetry, depending on one’s point of view. Ulrich certainly seems to have been on the side of the Muses.
Various factors may have informed the changing attitude to poetry in general, including the impact of Pseudo-Dionysius, and the influence of Aristotle’s Poetica as interpreted by its Arabian commentators. The Arabs were champions of the view that poetry is essentially image-making; in their theories of epistemology and moral psychology, the imagination was afforded a more elevated status than it had occupied in, for example, Augustinian systems of thought93. The translation of Averroes’ ‘Middle Commentary’ on the Poetica, which Hermann the German made in 1256, was certainly known to such schoolmen as Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas—indeed, it may be the source of St Thomas’s statement, as quoted above, that men are born to take delight in representations94. But, in general, it would seem that the Poetica was disseminated mainly through excerpt-literature, in the form of fragments; it was chopped up into sententious gobbets rather than assimilated in toto95.
What is perfectly clear is that, by the early fourteenth century, pagan and Scriptural auctores had come together in terms of style. This development is indicated by the great popularity of Peter Auriol’s Compendium totius Bibliae. Auriol was inclined to regard poetry, whether sacred or profane, generically; the obvious implication of his discussion of the ‘mode of sacred poetry’ (as quoted above) is that the two kinds of poetry had many modes of procedure in common. Something of the prestige, the new authority, which had been afforded to Scriptural poetry in particular, and to the poetic and rhetorical modes employed throughout Scripture in general, seems to have ‘rubbed off’ on secular poetry. Scriptural auctores were read literally, with close attention being paid to those poetic methods which were part of the literal sense; pagan poetae were read allegorically or ‘moralised’—and thus the twain could meet.
For example, in his Fulgentius metaforalis, John Ridevall claimed that the intention of Fulgentius was to describe, under the covering (integumentum) of fables feigned by the poets, the various vices and the virtues opposed to them96. Unless poetic fables pertain to ethics, like those in the Mythologiae, theologians must not concern themselves with them, but must avoid them as being vain and foolish. This type of special pleading had, of course, been well established in the twelfth century (see pp. 11, 21): what is interesting is Ridevall’s assumption that theologians should concern themselves with moral fables. Ridevall was one of the English ‘classicising friars’ brought to our attention in Miss Smalley’s English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century. In their exegesis of Scripture, all the members of this talented group (which included Holcot, D’Eyncourt, Hopeman, Ringstead and Lathbury) made extensive use of lore derived from the poetae97.
The belief that the Bible often communicated profound truths in a poetic way came to provide the precedent for mythographers to argue that various profane poets had communicated profound truths in the same way. In the moralised Metamorphoses which constitutes book xv of his Reductorium morale (second recension, 1350–62) Pierre Bersuire explained his intention of giving a moral and allegorical exposition of the fabulae found in Ovid’s work, only very rarely touching on their literal sense98. Bersuire daringly justifies his procedure by the argument that, in many passages of sacred Scripture, fables are used. At Judges ix.8, we are told that the trees set out to elect a king; at Ezechiel xvii.3, we read how the eagle with great wings carried away the branch of the cedar. The poetae, the inventors of fables, composed in a similar way: by figments of this kind they wished truths to be understood. Bersuire takes this alleged similarity between the uses of fables by both sacred and profane auctores as his justification for having moralised Ovid’s fables in accordance with Christian teaching. The source of his account of Scriptural fabulae is St Augustine’s Contra mendacium; the relevant passage had been included in the section on fable in a popular reference-book, Thomas of Ireland’s Manipulus florum99. But Bersuire has, as it were, twisted the waxen nose of his authority in a different direction100: Augustine was defending the truth of Holy Scripture, and certainly not interested in justifying pagan fables.
This ‘coming together’ of pagan and Scriptural auctores is also indicated by the way in which, on occasion, the methods for explicating the different types of auctor developed along parallel lines. Within Scriptural exegesis, Aristotelian learning seems to have contributed to an increase of interest in the literal or historical sense of Scripture and the concomitant decline in extensive allegorical exposition. A similar literalism pervades what may be loosely termed the ‘Aristotelian’ commentaries on the De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius, notably those by William of Aragon, Nicholas Trevet and Pseudo-Aquinas101. To take the case of Trevet, although his expositions of the pagan fables alluded to by Boethius are heavily indebted to the glosses of William of Conches102, there is a considerable difference in their attitudes to the material. Trevet was more interested in historical exposition than was his predecessor: he consistently reduced the amount of interpretation ‘by integument’ and augmented the historical information provided by William of Conches103. For example, in explaining the labours of Hercules, Trevet claims that the second and eleventh labours pertain to ‘bare history’ (nuda historia) alone, the second and third can be regarded only as ‘fictional garments’, while all the others can be expounded either historically or per integumentum104.
Moreover, in these Boethius-commentaries, an historical perspective operates, in which the lives and works of the pagans are often seen in terms of an enlightened philosophy that, in many respects, anticipated Christianity, the religion from which they were barred by having been born too soon. To take one example among many, William of Aragon’s Socrates is put to death because he is a monotheist who refuses to worship mere created things105. He dies as a pagan martyr and a ‘friend of God’. This is humanism of a kind.
But, of course, not all late-medieval thinkers approved of these new developments. When, in his De veritate sacrae Scripturae (composed 1378), John Wyclif came to catalogue the errors of his opponents, he included several literary issues with dangerous theological implications: for example, that certain parts of Scripture are false, that the Bible does not have equal authority in all its parts, that Christ often spoke in a merely figurative way (as when he called himself ‘the Lamb of God’), that Christ and his prophets often told lies, etc106. Wyclif reacted by arguing that the Bible was written in a unique and consistently true ‘divine style’, that the Book of Life was entirely different in nature from all other literary works. On a different level, the Lollard criticisms of fables being used in sermons are well known107. But one did not have to be a Lollard to object to the new attitude towards fables108. In his postill on St Matthew’s Gospel (c. 1336), the English Carmelite John Baconthorpe bitterly attacked those who use falsehoods to teach truth109. He carefully distinguished between a fabula, which is a falsehood, and a parable, which is an example signifying truth. Obviously, this is a thrust at those who justified their interest in the fables of the poets by appealing to Scriptural precedent.
Such opposition may be taken as a testimony to the strength of the trends outlined here, and to the way in which certain literary questions were in the very van of controversy in late-medieval scholasticism.
The substantial corpus of literary theory described in this chapter, and indeed in this book as a whole, calls for a qualification of E. R. Curtius’s view that ‘Scholasticism is not interested in evaluating poetry. It produced no poetics and no theory of art’110. In fact, thirteenth-century theologians produced a vocabulary which enabled the literary features of Scriptural texts to be analysed thoroughly and systematically, and which encouraged the emergence, in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, of a more liberal attitude to classical poetry. Once the suggestion had been made that theology might be basically affective, no theologian could avoid considering those aspects of rhetoric and poetics which Alexander of Hales and his successors had deemed appropriate to the subject.
To this extent, medieval theologians were ‘interested in evaluating poetry’. They provided, at least, the foundation on which later writers could build their poetics and theories of art. In the Epistle to Can Grande della Scala, the modes employed in the Divina Commedia are listed as follows:
The form or mode of treatment is poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive and transumptive; and moreover it is definitive, divisive, probative, refutative and exemplificative.111
Dante—if indeed this passage is by him—is saying that his poem combines two kinds of mode, the ‘definitive, divisive and collective’ mode of human science and those literary modes which were the stockin-trade of poets both sacred and profane. Behind this statement lies a rich tradition of discussion of formae tractandi by medieval theologians.
Like form regarded as style, form regarded as structure was considered by late-medieval exegetes to be a facet of the literal sense of Scripture. This new attitude is succinctly expressed by a commentator on Lamentations: ‘we are accustomed not to care about divisions which cannot be drawn from the letter’112. The ‘form of the treatise’ (the forma tractatus, ordinatio partium or divisio textus) had become a product of the work of the human auctor.
Whereas the exegetes’ interest in the forma tractandi seems to have been stimulated by academic debate on the nature and appropriate procedures of theology, their interest in the forma tractatus must be seen in the light of less cerebral and altogether more pragmatic concerns. Thirteenth-century clerks, building on techniques well advanced in the twelfth century, applied high standards of textual organisation in many spheres of literary activity and creation: for example, in dividing and subdividing the works of the auctores to facilitate reference, in excerpting materials from auctores and rearranging them in convenient compilations, in supplying the preacher with numerous tools to assist him in writing his sermons, and in the orderly construction of the sermons themselves113.
However, for the historian of today, knowledge of how men conceived of their actions must be as important as what, when the physical evidence is examined, they appear to have done. When late-medieval scholars thought about their methods for arranging books both ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’, when they came to rationalise their own practice in this area, naturally, their concepts and their idioms were, to some extent, determined by the same basic influences behind the vocabulary used in discussing the forma tractandi. The present section has as its subject a few of these concepts and idioms.
As our examples of discussions of the modus of human science reveal, thirteenth-century scholars applied a rigorously logical definition of science, and this definition put a premium on orderly procedure. Before collectio or ratiocination could take place, one had to engage in definitio and divisio: only then could conclusions follow logically from propositions, and points of doctrine be proved or disproved (see above pp. 122–3). Corresponding to this hierarchy of scientific activities was a hierarchy of the sciences in which the lesser science was believed to serve the greater, an idea summed up in the very influential theory of ‘subordination’114.
In his commentary on the Sentences, St Bonaventure argued that the Lombard’s work was ‘subordinate’ to the Bible and should serve it115. There is a great difference in degree of certainty between these two texts, the Bible having greater certainty of its truth than has the Sentences. When a lesser science fails to reach certainty, it seeks help from the certainty of its superior science. Therefore, Peter Lombard often reverted to Scriptural auctoritates. Reason is ‘subordinate’ to faith: it enables us to understand those things which, by faith, we believe to be most certain. St Thomas Aquinas regarded theology as the queen of the sciences, and the ‘subordinate’ sciences as her handmaidens. In his Summa theologiae, he argues that theology takes its principles directly from God through revelation, and not from the other sciences116. On that account, it does not rely on them as if they were in control, for their role is subsidiary and ancillary, just as an architect makes use of tradesmen or a statesman employs soldiers.
Bonaventure, Aquinas and their contemporaries derived their theories of the ‘subordination of the sciences’ from Aristotle. In his Metaphysica, Aristotle had explained that a superior science comes nearer to wisdom than a ‘subordinate’ science. A wise man gives orders but does not receive them; he must not obey a less wise man but must himself be obeyed. Aquinas, commenting on this passage, explained how a ‘subordinate’ art or science is directed to the end of a superior art or science117. For example, the art of horsemanship is directed to the end of the military art. It is not fitting that a wise man should be directed by somebody else, but that he should direct others:
Subordinate sciences are directed to superior sciences. For subordinate arts are directed to the end of a superior art, as the art of horsemanship to the end of the military art. But in the opinion of all it is not fitting that a wise man should be ordered by someone else, but that he should order others.
‘It is the function of the wise man to order’ (sapientis est ordinare) became a catch-phrase of St Thomas’s. It is used to good effect at the beginning of his commentary on the Ethica, where Aquinas distinguishes between the various kinds of order which he found described by Aristotle118. One kind of order is that which the parts of a whole have among themselves. For example, the parts of a house are mutually ordered to each other. Another kind of order is that of things to an end. Aquinas explains that this order is of greater importance than the first because, as Aristotle says in the eleventh book of the Metaphysica, the order of the parts of an army among themselves exists because of the order of the whole army to the commander.
With these concepts of order and ordering in mind, we may attempt to understand how a thirteenth-century commentator might have thought of ordinatio in a literary sense. Around 1245, a Paris master named Jordan divided the formal cause of the Priscianus minor into its style and its order, termed the forma tractandi and forma tractatus respectively:
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, 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.119
The same idiom was used by Robert Kilwardby, who made an early reputation by lecturing in the Arts Faculty at the University of Paris, c. 1237–c. 1245120. But Kilwardby substituted ordinatio partium for modus tractatus, for example, in his commentary on the Barbarismus of Donatus: ‘the formal cause of the work consists in the mode of proceeding and the ordering of parts’121. Kilwardby was consistent in his use of the term ordinatio partium in this literary sense122. A generation later, Nicholas of Paris, in the prologue to his commentary on Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias, spoke of the formal cause of this treatise as the ‘organisation of the books in parts and chapters’123.
In Kilwardby and his successors, the organisation of an author’s material into books and chapters—how the text is divided up into its constituent parts, how the material is collected together—appears to be regarded as the physical manifestation and consequence of the mode of procedure relevant to the science in the text, the ‘definitive, divisive and collective mode’. In the light of Aquinas’s excursus, literary ordinatio may also be described as the disposition and arrangement of material to an end or objective (finis). Applying his explanation of Aristotle’s two kinds of order, one can say that the parts of a text are mutually ordered to each other, but this order of the parts among themselves exists because of the order of the whole text to the finis intended by its auctor. Literary ordinatio involves ‘subordination’: the parts of doctrine are ‘subordinated’ to chapters, chapters are ‘subordinated’ to books, and individual books are ‘subordinated’ to the complete work. A text can be thought of as a hierarchy of superior and ‘subordinate’ parts.
The idiom employed in the grammatical and logical commentaries gradually crept into the works of theologians. In the Alphabetum in artem sermocinandi which he completed probably between 1220 and 1225, Peter of Capua explained the modus tractandi and the ordo tractatus of this collection of distinctiones124. Introducing his commentary on Proverbs (1230–1235), Hugh of St Cher distinguished between the modus agendi and the ordo tractandi125. In neither of these cases is the discussion of textual arrangement placed within the scheme of the four causes. However, St Bonaventure described the formal cause of St Luke’s gospel as ‘the ordering of the parts and the chapters (ordinacio parcium et capitulorum) and the mode of proceeding in following the Scriptures’126. The term divisio libri is used instead of ordinacio in the prologue to Bonaventure’s commentary on St John, but the idea of the ‘twofold form’ is definitely there:
The formal cause or the mode of proceeding, although it is by the mode of narration, is however possessed of certitude; the formal cause which is the division of the book will be manifest below, because it proceeds in a very orderly fashion . . .127
The distinction between the forma tractandi and the forma tractatus occurs in the prologue to Giles of Rome’s commentary on the Song of Songs:
A twofold form is wont to be distinguished, namely the form of treatment, which is the mode of proceeding, and the form of the treatise, which is the ordering of the chapters in relation to each other.128
Henry of Ghent remarked that, because in the sciences form is twofold, namely forma tractandi and forma tractatus, therefore his quaestio on the mode of teaching appropriate to theology must likewise be twofold129. By the early fourteenth century, this distinction was well established in commentaries on the Bible. It appears frequently in Nicholas of Lyre’s Postilla litteralis, the most intricate application being to those auctores with the greatest degree of auctoritas, the Four Evangelists130. Similar vocabulary occurs in the Sentences commentaries of some of Lyre’s contemporaries, including those by Durand of St Pourçain (third version, written between 1317 and 1327) and Thomas of Strassburg (c. 1337)131.
This new vocabulary was one result of a desire to conceptualise about the current techniques of meticulously dividing and subdividing a text for teaching purposes. (It should, however, be noted that in this case the development, and indeed the sophistication, of the descriptive vocabulary lagged far behind that of the techniques to which it referred.) A master would proceed from a general division by chapters or parts; these components would in their turn be subdivided into smaller sense-units. Thereby, an elaborate framework was provided for precise explication de texte. Students were invited to follow the twists and turns of their author’s argument.
As Miss Smalley says, this procedure ‘was well chosen for application to Aristotelian books: the master could combine “minute penetrating analysis with an astonishing breadth of accurate synthesis” ’132. A good example of a penetrating divisio textus is provided by Kilwardby’s outline of the structure of Aristotle’s Praedicamenta, in which the author’s clear ‘disposition of parts’ is commended:
Since we only know a composite from our knowledge of its parts, and of their nature, and since that book is composed of parts, therefore we must not be ignorant of what parts, and what sort of parts, it is composed. So it is first of all divided into three parts. In the first of these he determines the first principles of the predicable, or those things which precede the predicable. In the second . . . he determines the predicable itself. In the third . . . he determines those things which follow on the predicable. And the adequacy and the rationale of the order appear in this, that any given thing is known sufficiently only when its antecedents are known, together with its parts or species and the dispositions which are consequent upon it. That is the proper mode of understanding a thing. The disposition of parts is therefore evident.
Indeed, the first of them is divided in two: in the first he determines . . . ; in the second. . . . And the first of these is divided in three. . . . Indeed, the second of these is also divided in three: in the first . . . ; in the second . . . ; in the third . . .133
Holy Scripture may have ‘lent itself less easily to feeding into a verbal mincing machine’134, but at least lecturers on theology were enabled to provide their pupils with a firm literal framework for the location of doctrinal points. Careful summarising of the literal structures of the Bible became the normal preliminary to detailed exegesis. Sometimes alternative structures were outlined, as is the case in Hugh of St Cher’s discussion of the ordo tractandi of Proverbs135. This book, Hugh explains, can be said to be in either three, four or five parts. According to the tripartite division, in chapters i–x Solomon disputes about the various aspects of good and evil, in chapters x–xxv he treats of good and evil acts in alternate verses, while in the final section he deliberates on truth in general. On the other hand, Hugh continues, the Jews uphold a five-part division, which reflects different stages of composition. According to their opinion, Solomon’s parables are compiled in the first part, those of King Ezechiah’s men in the second, and those of King Ezechiah himself in the third. The fourth part contains a few things which Solomon was taught by his mother, while the fifth part contains instruction about the good woman. Hugh then declares his personal preference for the four-part division. A prologue is followed by a section on the things from which one ought to abstain; then Solomon teaches those things to which we ought to adhere, and finally he treats of the good woman.
For Hugh it was axiomatic that inspired writing should be proved to be orderly in one way or another: if he could not find a principle of order at the literal or historical level he looked for one on the allegorical level. Hence, the apparent disorder of Isaiah is explained by the fact that it does not follow the order of history but the order in which it was revealed by the Holy Spirit:
The mode of proceeding will be made clear from the succession of the book. For he writes the history not in orderly fashion, or by sequence, but in random fashion according to the revelation of the Spirit . . .136
Rather amusingly, Hugh then cites the Song of Songs ii.8 in defence of the somewhat jerky movement of the text: ‘see how he comes leaping on the mountains, bounding over the hills’.
The contrast with St Thomas Aquinas’s exposition of the same work is striking. Whereas Hugh had invoked the Holy Spirit to support his belief in a mystical principle of literary order, Aquinas chose as his opening text a passage which, in his interpretation, summarily described the express clarity of Isaiah’s writing: ‘Write the vision; make it plain upon tablets . . .’ (Habakkuk ii.2)137. The modus of this prophet, claims Aquinas, is plain and open. Isaiah employed beautiful similitudes to make his teaching more appealing; Pseudo-Dionysius is quoted on the usefulness of sensible figures in Scripture. To this clear modus agendi corresponds an intricate but logical divisio textus:
This book is divided in two parts, the prohemium and the treatise. The second begins here, ‘Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth’. The prohemium is brought in like a title, in order to make manifest the following work. It is made manifest by four things. The first is the type of the work, the second is the author, the third is the material, the fourth is the time . . . Here begins the treatise of this book, whence a division may be adopted according to the requirement of the material. For it is said that his intention is mainly to do with the advent of Christ and the vocation of the race . . . This book is therefore divided in two parts. In the first is placed the threat of divine justice for the removal of sins; in the second, the consolation of the divine mercy . . . The first is divided in three parts . . . In the first part . . . In the second . . . In the third . . .138
The way in which the new techniques of divisio textus actually fostered a sort of ‘structuralist’ exegesis may be illustrated by contrasting representative expositions from different periods of a work which, by its very nature, was not susceptible of division into successive parts or chapters. Use of number-symbolism to resolve the apparent disorder of the Psalter had been a common feature of the twelfth-century exegesis of that text. It was regarded as a mosaic of mysteries arranged in three large groups of fifty psalms each; these three groups were believed to form a sequence in accordance with what they taught allegorically about three related aspects of the Christian religion. For Rupert of Deutz, the first fifty psalms defined those things in which the Christian should have faith, the second fifty confirmed Christian hope, while the third fifty nourished charity139. Peter Lombard argued that by these three groups of psalms are signified respectively penitence, justice and praise of the eternal life140. The Lombard concluded an elaborate discussion of the mystical significance of the constituent numbers seventy and eighty with praise for such a significantly-organised work: ‘therefore, this book is well edited in this number of psalms’.
By contrast, after a discussion of numerology, Nicholas Trevet turned to the arts of music and poetry for principles with which to justify the lack of logical order in the Psalter141. A musician does not pluck the strings of a psaltery one after the other: that is not how music is obtained. Likewise, the spiritual psaltery or Book of Psalms does not follow consecutive order:
Just as in making melody on the strings of a psaltery, the strings are not touched according to their natural order but diversely and in interspersed fashion, now here now there, so likewise psalms to God’s praise are not placed in the Psalter according to the continuous order of history but diversely, by interspersing what deals with later events, or alternatively according to what the devotion of the psalmist will rise to in the praise of God.
It would seem that the ‘mode of praise’ characteristic of the Psalter is well obtained by the eclectic order of its parts. Trevet also tackles the problem of the absence of historical sequence by appealing to the principle of ‘artificial’ order. To write in a selective manner is, he explains, the proper mode of writers of songs. Hence, after starting in the middle of his historia, Virgil returned to its beginning in book iii of the Aeneid. The implication is that historical order need not be required of sacred poets either.
Nicholas of Lyre’s discussion of the forma tractatus of the Psalter is more rigorously literal142. An impressive attempt was made to explain the process in which the psalms were brought together. Lyre shared Jerome’s view that the psalms were collected together over a long period of time. A psalm was included in the collection as it was acquired, not necessarily as it was written. Therefore, a psalm composed before another psalm in point of time may occur after it in the Psalter, simply because it was incorporated at a later date.
Lyre was at pains to explain why the psalms cannot be rearranged or, to put it in the idiom of his day, why scholars cannot impose ordinatio on this work. Rearrangement would be difficult, he argues, because some psalms lack ascriptions to auctores in their titles. The psalms of any given auctor are scattered throughout the book. Among the psalms of David are interspersed those of other auctores, and vice versa. In the Hebrew Psalter, Lyre continues, a rubric indicating the end of the psalms by David occurs after Psalm lxxi but beyond this point can be found many psalm-titles which cite David as auctor. The present order of the psalms is simply the order in which they were collected together. The collector Esdras added items as he obtained them, mixing the old with the recent. The psalms of a particular auctor were not assimilated en bloc into the collection, in the order in which they were written: several psalms written by one auctor could be incorporated together with several psalms which were the work of someone else.
Therefore, Lyre concludes, the Psalter cannot be reorganised ‘according to the order of authors’ or ‘according to the order of times’. Reorganisation according to materials is impossible also because, often, a single matter is touched on in diverse psalms which are by diverse auctores and far apart in composition while, conversely, diverse matters are treated sometimes in a single psalm. Apparently, one must accept the Psalter as it is, while recognising the difficulties. The psalms cannot be reorganised according to individual auctores, or various periods of composition, or diverse materiae. However, the fact that these possibilities have been envisaged is a point of considerable substance. The concept of ordinatio has informed Lyre’s analysis of his text.
This near-obsession with textual construction is also manifested by the ways in which scholars wished to improve on the organisation of the texts of the auctores. It is a ‘truism of palaeography’ that ‘most works copied in and before the twelfth century were better organised in copies produced in the thirteenth century, and even better organised in those produced in the fourteenth’143. Earlier divisions of material (like the chapter-headings or Breviculi to the De civitate Dei and De trinitate of St Augustine) were resurrected; new divisiones were introduced into old books144. A chapter division of the books of the Bible (traditionally attributed to Stephen Langton) had been generally accepted at the University of Paris by the 1230’s; the St Jacques Bible-concordance (associated with Hugh of St Cher) went a stage further, by subdividing the chapters into sections indicated by letters of the alphabet, a practice which enabled more precise reference to the Scriptural text145. Peter Lombard had employed chapter-headings (tituli) to facilitate the location of topics in his Sentences; this divisio textus was supplemented by a new division into distinctiones, perhaps the work of Alexander of Hales146. Along with this literary divisio of authoritative texts went ‘collection’ (collectio). A greater emphasis was being placed on consultation of originalia (the works of the auctores in complete form)147. Hence, as many works as possible of a major auctor like Augustine would be collected together in a single fat volume148.
One justification for such literary division and collection seems to have been that the intentions of the auctores were thereby clarified: precise and complete presentation enabled an author’s argument to emerge with greater ease. Exceptional scholars, like Nicholas Trevet and Thomas Waleys, would criticise a divisio textus which, in their opinion, obscured instead of clarified the intentio auctoris149. For example, in the prologue to his commentary on Seneca’s Declamationes, Trevet wonders aloud if the present divisio is contrary to the mind of the author (mens auctoris)150. Six or eight books are the usual divisions found in medieval copies, but Trevet argues in favour of ten. In his commentary on De civitate Dei, Waleys goes to Augustine’s Retractationes to discover his author’s final word on the divisio of the work151.
In their commentaries on De civitate Dei, both Trevet and Waleys made use of Robert Kilwardby’s Intentiones or chapter-summaries for that text152. As Trevet tells us elsewhere, Kilwardby contributed to the study of originalia by summarising almost all of Augustine’s writings and those of other auctores as well153. These summaries draw on the traditional prologue-vocabulary, as the beginning of Kilwardby’s Intentio Augustini de libro primo de trinitate will illustrate:
In the first book of On the trinity Augustine provides a preamble about certain essentials, namely about the errors of man concerning the divine nature, and about the mode used in holy Scripture in speaking of that, about the cause of the work undertaken and its mode of procedure, about the diverse capacities of man . . .
The Chapters of the first book of Augustine, De trinitate.
1. Of the threefold error of men who hold false opinions about God. That holy Scripture in speaking of God more often uses words signifying creatures, and rarely words signifying things which are properly in God and not in creatures . . .154
In these chapter-summaries, the most comprehensive of their kind, the principle of ordinatio is at work: the subordinate parts of a text (the chapters) are seen to serve the superior parts (the books).
Scholars also wished to improve on the organisation of auctoritates, extracts culled from the originalia. In his Speculum historiale (1254), Vincent of Beauvais followed historical order, beginning with the creation; in his Speculum naturale, he took the third, fourth and fifth days of creation as the basis for a summary of authoritative opinion on minerals, vegetables and animals155. Subordinate to these superior or more general divisiones are the divisiones into books and chapters. As M. B. Parkes puts it:
By dividing his work into books and chapters he is able to include as many as 171 chapters on herbs, 134 chapters on seeds and grains, 161 chapters on birds and 46 chapters on fishes. In the Speculum historiale by the same process of redeployment into discrete units he includes such material as the account of the ancient gods, and the ‘biographies of leading authors’ of antiquity accompanied by extracts from their works—all subordinated within the framework of universal history.156
In this way, Vincent provided the ordinatio partium for a considerable corpus of material: he is estimated to have drawn upon some two thousand writings and 450 auctores157.
Vincent was one among many compilers who arranged their material according to topics, indicated the topics by tituli, and organised the whole in accordance with a structure which, because it was logical, could easily be grasped by the reader158. In his De proprietatibus rerum (begun between 1225 and 1231 at Oxford), Bartholomew the Englishman took the logical principle (vouched for by ‘the noble and expert opinion of wise and learned philosophers’) that the properties of things follow their substance, and made it the principle of his arrangement159. In this compilatio, the basic organisation of material follows the order and distinction of substances; further subdivision of material follows the order and distinction of things (which are subordinate to substances).
This structure found favour with Pierre Bersuire, who adopted it in his Reductorium morale160. Another logical principle, namely the division and order of the sciences, was followed by Brunetto Latini in his Trésor (written c. 1260), which is organised in accordance with Aristotle’s distinction between the three parts of philosophy, theory, practice and logic161. The Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilibus, which Stephen of Bourbon compiled not later than 1261, is elaborately hierarchical in structure162. The Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost provide the basis of the division of material. Each of the seven books is then subdivided by tituli which indicate the different topics (materiae), and each materia is subdivided on the principle of ‘cause and effect’. The seven-part structure of the whole work is reflected by the seven-part structure of each chapter, each part of which is indicated by a letter of the alphabet. Moreover, at the beginning of each materia et titulus, verse-summaries of the important points are provided. Never in the twelfth century had writers professed such concern for the organisation of their works.
Most, if not all, of this organisation of auctores and auctoritates had as its professed aim a single goal and ideal—the preaching of the gospel. Richard of Bury († 1345) praised both major orders of friars, ‘who devoted themselves with unwearied zeal to the correction, exposition, tabulation and compilation of various volumes’163. These projects must be seen in the light of the friars’ evangelical activity as a whole. They needed such originalia, expositions, indices and compilations to equip themselves with the auctoritates which Humbert of Romans (Master General of the Dominican Order, 1254–63) described as the ‘arms of preachers’, the ‘weapons whereby we defend ourselves and attack the foe’164. Reginald of Piperno, who completed the Summa theologiae after St Thomas’s death, discussed the relationship between the composition and compilation of writings and the preaching and teaching of the faith, concluding that such literary activity was a form of teaching (quidam modus docendi)165.
But this ‘aggressive’ approach to authoritative material did not herald a decline in the respect afforded to the auctores or auctoritates. Rather, the converse is true—or, better, the traditional respect assumed new shapes. The new meaning of the term originalia is very revealing. It had once referred to the sealed documents issued by officials but, in the late twelfth century, Ralph Niger and Stephen Langton were using it to designate the whole work of an auctor, as opposed to extracts from his work166. In the next century, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas spoke of the originalia as authoritative works in their entirety, in the course of discussions which intimate their acceptance of a related idea: the difficulties raised by a problem-passage may be resolved if the passage is studied in the full context of the work in which it appears167.
When Niger and Langton employed the term originalia, they were favourably comparing the authoritative texts in toto with the inadequate extracts provided in the Glossa ordinaria. The great twelfth-century collections of auctoritates seem to have been the cause of many problems and complaints. Herbert of Bosham, a pupil of Peter Lombard’s, put the blame on his master’s Magna glosatura for the currency of a legend about St Anne which he found untenable168. When the Lombard gave an account of this legend in his commentary on Galatians, the name of Jerome was placed alongside, in the margin. Readers of the Lombard’s text, Herbert complains, were thereby led to believe that the truth of the legend was attested by the great authority of St Jerome.
Likewise, Gerhoh of Reichersberg roundly condemned those ‘new documents inserted in the glosses’169. He thought that Gilbert of Poitiers, commenting on the Pauline Epistles, had introduced a falsehood concerning Christ as man, and was also aware that Anselm of Laon had quoted the same passage, wrongly attributing it to Ambrose.
The Sentences occasioned similar misunderstandings. For example, Peter Lombard had followed a quotation from Augustine with a statement to the effect that first movements of the flesh are venial sins even when the lower reason is not conscious of them170. Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure and Albert the Great all accepted this opinion on the authority of Augustine. But when Albert discovered that the statement on which he relied was not Augustine’s but the Lombard’s, he promptly changed his point of view on the issue involved.
It was in order to avoid such problems that thirteenth-century scholars applied higher standards of textual organisation both in the originalia and in their compilations of auctoritates. In the prologue to his Speculum maius, Vincent of Beauvais complained that many manuscripts he had read were written so badly that one could not understand the sententiae or work out which auctores were being cited171. A saying of Augustine or Jerome might be ascribed to Ambrose, Gregory or Isidore. Moreover, the words might be changed and the ‘sense of the author’ (sensus auctoris) obscured. This is, he continues, as common in texts of philosophers, poets and historians as it is in theological texts. For these reasons, Vincent determined on clear methods of ordinatio which would reduce the chances of textual corruption. The names of the auctores are placed in the text (inter lineas ipsas), as in copies of Gratian, and not in the margins, where they could easily be displaced, as in the Lombard’s Magna glosatura and Sentences172. Vincent also explains that, whenever he includes opinions of his own or of the ‘modern doctors’, they are introduced with the word actor, a term obviously chosen to contrast with the term auctor. As a result, magisterial statements cannot be misread as authorial statements in copies of the Speculum173.
Vincent provided sufficient information about his sources to direct the reader from the excerpts to the originalia. In the prologue to his Communiloquium, the prolific Franciscan compiler, John of Wales (regent master at Oxford around 1260), actually urged his readers to consult the originalia, a task he had facilitated by precise sourcereferences174. Auctoritates are more reliable, John declares, if the books and chapters from which they came are distinctly named. Anyone who wishes to consider carefully his elementary and basic points is invited to locate them in their full contexts. According to John, the solidity of auctoritates consists in the certain knowledge of the books from which they are excerpted. Conversely, unattached auctoritates seem less solid and effective against those who resist or contradict.
In sum, one may point to an emerging conviction that the thought of an auctor is best understood in the context of his work as a whole. This thought may be brought out by clear explanation of the forma tractatus or divisio textus and the physical manifestation of this structure in manuscript layout. Indeed, the work to be considered as a whole may be the author’s total literary output. Kilwardby’s Intentiones for most of Augustine’s works stand as the vast skeleton of the saint’s thought in its entirety175. This impression of an author’s thought being regarded as an integrated whole is also substantiated by the way in which scholars like Holcot and Waleys had recourse to Augustine’s Retractiones for his final word on certain matters176. Here, one may detect the recognition that the thought of an auctor can culminate, develop and alter—he can even change his mind.
Peter Abelard and Gratian sought the reconciliation or concordance of auctoritates177. Vincent of Beauvais and his contemporaries attempted a concordance, not of opinion, but of arrangement. Vincent explained that the auctoritates included in his Speculum are not on a par: Scripture has the greatest degree of auctoritas, then come the decretals and canons which have received papal approval, with the writings of the saints and fathers, then the catholic doctors and, finally, the works of the pagan philosophers and poets178. If twelfth-century thinkers were interested in a continuum of auctoritas, their successors were interested in a hierarchical calibration of auctoritas.
Vincent did not attempt to make his auctores agree with one another, to make them all speak with one voice. They differ fundamentally; the pagans need not agree with each other or with the revealed truth of Christianity. Therefore, Vincent was content to ‘repeat’ or ‘report’, and not to ‘assert’ as true, the views expressed in different philosophical texts and in the Apocrypha, leaving the reader to judge for himself179. There are many regions of the earth, he remarks; men differ in complexion and in environment180. For instance, medical books say that the black poppy is poisonous yet, in our region, the poppy is edible. The implication seems to be that one man’s auctor is another’s aversion, and that the reader should choose his own poison.
The human auctor has arrived—still lacking in personality, but possessing his individual authority and his limitations, his sins and his style. He has been met by a discriminating and sophisticated reader.