Jaroslav Pelikan - The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300)

The Christian Tradition

1. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100—600)

2. The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700)

3. The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300)

4. Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300—1700)

5. Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700)

The Christian TraditionA History of the Development of Doctrine

Jaroslav Pelikan

3 The GrowthofMedieval Theology(600-1300)

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

JAROSLAV PELIKAN is Sterling professor ofhistory and chairman of medieval studies at YaleUniversity and a fellow of the Mediaeval Academyof America. His many publications include FromLuther to Kierkegaard, The Riddle of RomanCatholicism, Development of Doctrine, and HistoricalTheology. He has also been editor of the AmericanEdition of Luther's Works.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London© 1978 by The University of ChicagoAll rights reserved. Published 1978Printed in the United States of America86 85 84 83 82 81 80 5 4 3 2

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan, 1923—The growth of medieval theology (600-1300)

(His The Christian tradition; 3)Bibliography: p.Includes indexes.I. Theology, Doctrinal—History—Middle Ages, 600.

1500. I. Title.

BT2I.2.P42 vol. 3 [BT26] 230S [230'.09'02]

ISBN 0-226-65374-9 (cloth)ISBN 0-226-65375-7 (paper)

Contents

Preface viiPrimary Sources xi

The Middle Ages as "Age of Faith" 1

1. THE INTEGRITY OF THE CATHOLIC TRADITION 9

The Faith and the Creed 11Faith, Hope, and Love 23The Spirit and the Letter 34The City of God 42

2. BEYOND THE AUGUSTINIAN SYNTHESIS 50

The Reconsideration of Dogma 52The Rule of Prayer 66The Sovereignty of Grace 80The Claims of Reason 95

3. THE PLAN OF SALVATION 106

The Paradox of Justice and Mercy 108The Discipline of ]esus 118The Cross as the Redemption of Mankind 129The Lord of History 144

4. THE COMMUNICATION OF GRACE 158

Mary as Mediatrix 160The Communion of Saints 174The Real Presence 184The Grace of the Sacraments 204

V

CONTENTS vi

5. THE ONE TRUE FAITH 215

The Problem of Patristic Consensus 216Schism, Sect, and Heresy 229The Encounter with Other Faiths 242Faith in Search of Understanding 255

6. SUMMA THEOLOGICA 268

The Reintegration of the Catholic Tradition 270Natural Theology and the Scholastic Method 284The Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies 293The Vision of God 303

Selected Secondary Works 308Index: Biblical 323

General 326

Preface

The completion of The Growth of Medieval Theologyhas brought my history of the development of Christiandoctrine well past the halfway point, with the period ofthe Reformation and the modern era reserved for the tworemaining volumes. In the present volume, even morethan in either of the preceding ones, it has been necessaryto adhere strictly to the definition of the work as a wholeset down in the introduction to volume 1. Most historiesof medieval doctrine have been histories of Christianthought, or even histories of philosophical thought, ratherthan histories of what the church believed, taught, andconfessed on the basis of the word of God. For that reasoncertain issues (for example, the question of universals)and certain thinkers (above all, Thomas Aquinas) havebeen far more prominent in such histories than they arehere. Although I was, as my earlier publications indicate,better prepared to write about Thomas than about any ofthe other authors on whom I have drawn in the presentvolume, the limitations I have imposed on the subjectmatter of The Christian Tradition made a detailed exposi-tion of Thomistic thought unjustifiable, despite its ob-vious attractions.

As I have sought to show in the introduction to thisvolume, even the word "theology" is used in the title (asit was often used in the Middle Ages) in a sense differentfrom that in which we generally use it. To us, the wordtends to mean what individual theologians do and howthey develop their systems, but I am employing it almostas a synonym for "church doctrine." Therefore the outlineof The Growth of Medieval Theology is shaped primarily

vii

PREFACE viii

by the evolution of the doctrines and only secondarily bythe controversies or the speculations of the doctors. Likeits two predecessors, this volume is arranged chronologi-cally, even though the titles of the chapters are topicalrather than chronological. The date of the classic formula-tion of a doctrine or the consummation of an importantstage of the development of a doctrine has determinedwhere I have discussed that doctrine, including earlierstages of its development—Anselm's Why God BecameMan for chapter 3, the definition of the real presence andthe establishment of the seven sacraments for chapter 4,Abelard's Sic et non for part of chapter 5, the "five ways"of Thomas for part of chapter 6. Even the discussions ofheresy and of other religions in chapter 5 appear wherethey do in the narrative because of the prominence ofthose questions in the life and teaching of the church ofthe twelfth century.

The setting of this volume within the context of theentire work has helped to give such issues as the doctrineof the Trinity and Christology a prominence that theyoften lack in histories of medieval thought. Above all, ithas been responsible for my attention to the question oftradition. There is, at least since the apostles, no figure inChristian history who has so dominated a millenniumwith his teachings as Augustine did. How he was under-stood (or misunderstood) and how he was transmitted(or superseded) is, therefore, a central element in thestory. I have also made connections between this volumeand the first two in other and more trivial ways. I have, forexample, often rendered the Latin term "verbum" as"Logos" when it was clearly a reference to the secondperson of the Trinity, and have used "Theotokos" totranslate such Latin formulas as "Dei genitrix" or "materDei" or (in two or three texts) "Teothocos." This I havedone not to claim for Latin writers a greater command ofGreek than they possessed, but to facilitate the compari-son and contrast that are so interesting and important afeature of doctrinal development. Cross-references toprevious volumes, as well as cross-references within thisvolume, are also intended to serve that end.

Once again, I am obliged—and delighted—to acknowl-edge the help I have received from others. A series ofdissertations I directed on topics in medieval doctrine,notably that of Patrick Geary on relics and that of E. Ann

Preface ix

Matter on Mary, made me aware of issues and of textsthat I might otherwise have overlooked. Several lectureinvitations gave me the opportunity to try out most ofthese chapters on a living audience and on colleagues inmedieval studies who gave me the benefit of their criticismand advice. The host institutions for those lectures were(in alphabetical order): The University of Calgary; theCatholic University of America; the University of Chi-cago; Princeton University; Saint Mary's College at NotreDame; the University of Toronto (the Centre for Medi-eval Studies and the Pontifical Institute of MediaevalStudies); and Yale University. I have likewise benefitedfrom several distinguished library collections, above allfrom the Sterling Memorial Library and the BeineckeRare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, but also fromthe Library of Congress, the Widener Library at Harvard,and the library of the Medieval Institute of the Universityof Notre Dame. Most of all, of course, I have learned fromthe primary sources listed at the beginning of the bookand from the secondary works listed at the end of thebook, as well as from other writings in both categories notspecifically identified. Nancy Wellins assisted me withverifying citations. The devoted and accurate transcrip-tion of a difficult manuscript into its final form was thework of my secretary, Mrs. Candace Bryce.

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et superbiae}On Grace and Free WillIn Laud of the Virgin MotherSermons on the NativityExposition of Psalm 90On the Purification of Saint MaryOn All Saints' DayLife of Saint MalachyOn the Vigil of the Nativity

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Hymns of the Virginity {Cantiones partheniae)Charlemagne [Carolus Magnus]

EpistlesEpistle to Elipandus of Toledo and the Bishops of Spain

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The Middle Ages as"Age of Faith"

In a passage quoted in the introduction to the first volumeof this work, the most influential twentieth-century his-torian of medieval philosophy has declared that "thegeneral tendency among historians of medieval thoughthas been to imagine the middle ages as peopled by phi-losophers rather than theologians." In part because of thisoveremphasis on medieval philosophy, the complaint ofthe most influential twentieth-century historian of medi-eval theology also continues to be valid: "In the Thomisticmovement . . . the continuity between the patristic periodand the scholastic period has not received adequate at-tention." It is a primary purpose of the present volume toseek to rectify those imbalances by recounting "the growthof medieval theology."

Each of the three terms in that title calls for some clari-fication. It has become a truism that medieval man was notaware of belonging to an age that stood in the "middle"between the ancient and the modern periods. Medievaltheologians themselves spoke of being part of the "mod-ern" era. Thus a ninth-century scholar, in the course of thedebate over the doctrine of predestination, contrasted theage of the church fathers with "the modern time," inwhich he knew himself to be living. In the eleventh cen-tury, "modern" was a term of opprobium, so that, inrefuting the theories about the Eucharist that were current,it was possible to attack "modern dogmaticians" and "theinciters of modern heresy." Writing at the same time,another theologian attacked the tendency of "those whoin the modern era do not shrink from" dangerous opin-ions, and he described "modern" times, as distinguished

1

THE MIDDLE AGES AS "AGE OF FAITH" 2

from "ancient" times, as a period when rational faith hadyielded to "credulity." A twelfth-century canonist andtheologian could speak of "the holy modern fathers" asauthorities on marital legislation, while another writerof that century lamented the lack of "moderns" who couldrefute heresy as the fathers had; and the dominant theo-logical figure of the thirteenth century could assert that"the faith of the ancients and that of the moderns areidentical."

Yet that does not mean that the idea of belonging to"the middle age" was unknown to these centuries. Augus-tine himself had spoken of living "in this age that comesin the middle [in hoc interim saeculo]," but this was areference to the two cities, the city of God and the cityof man, which were intermingled until the Last Judgment.It was a similar view of history when the seventh-centuryarchbishop of Toledo, Julian, spoke of "a middle age[tempus medium]" that came "between the two comingsof Christ, the first in the incarnation and the second injudgment." At the other end of the period covered bythis volume, Albertus Magnus, commenting on the pas-sage "Revive thy work in the midst of the years," de-clared: "He calls it 'the midst of the years' because, as greatworks have been manifested since the beginning of theworld and will be manifested at the end in the condem-nation of the world, so now he prays that in the middle age[in medio tempore], in which the saints are beingtroubled by the wicked, [God} may revive his work inthe destruction of those who are evil." When we speakin this volume of "medieval" theology, of course, we arefollowing the usage of recent times; fot such words werelargely "a product of the artistic and especially the archi-tectural revival of the Middle Ages which animated theearly decades of the Victorian age, and the first examplesrecorded occur invariably in that context."

Whatever connotations the term "medieval" may havein architecture or literature, it suggests certain character-istics of Christian teaching in this period that are distinc-tive. One such characteristic, noted by medieval menthemselves, was that most of them had received the Greekand even the Latin classics through the fathers' use ofancient texts rather than through their own reading andstudy. Some of them also noted another contrast with thepatristic period, the identification of the Eucharist rather


than of baptism as the most important sacrament in thechurch. It was a recognition of this contrast when defend-ers of the doctrine of the real presence felt obliged toaccount for the omission of the Eucharist from the creeds,which did refer to baptism; this was, they said, due to theabsence of attacks on the faith of the church in the realpresence. That neglect was evident above all in the writ-ings of Augustine, so that, for the Eucharist as well as forseveral other doctrines, it is possible to view the medievaldevelopment as "a series of footnotes" to Augustine andat the same time as a series of efforts to amplify and cor-rect the Augustinian legacy. One Augustinian doctrinethat required amplification was the doctrine of redemp-tion through Christ; the Middle Ages may be seen as theperiod when the primary focus of Christian thought aboutChrist shifted from what he was to what he did, from theperson of Christ to the work of Christ.

Recently historians of the Middle Ages have begunemploying the phrase "age of faith" in referring to theperiod. At least two histories of the time intended for thegeneral reader, one of them published in 1950 and theother in 1965, have taken this as their title. As the intro-duction to the second of these has noted, "The thousandmedieval years were not solely an 'age of faith,' nor isfaith a uniquely medieval phenomenon. But the cathe-drals were the most impressive monuments of that era; itsgreatest poem was a description of Hell, Purgatory, andParadise; crusades were the only collective enterpriseswhich temporarily rallied all nations; there were hereticsand infidels but agnosticism was nonexistent or cowedinto silence; the clergy was more numerous and influen-tial in politics, economics, philosophy and other intel-lectual pursuits than it has ever been since." Or, in thewords of another distinguished scholar, "if by that phrase{"age of faith"] we mean that any conception of theworld from which the supernatural was excluded was pro-foundly alien to the minds of that age, that in fact thepicture which they formed of the destinies of man and theuniverse was in almost every case a projection of thepattern traced by a Westernized Christian theology andeschatology, nothing could be more true." As yet anotherinterpreter of medieval thought has put it, "If I were tosum up in two words what I believe is the essential mes-sage of medieval thought, I would say: It is the spirit in


which it restated tradition; and this spirit is Faith andJoy."

It is essential, however, in speaking about the MiddleAges as "age of faith," to note the specific senses inwhich the term "faith" was used in the Middle Ages.Although the technical distinction between "the faith bywhich one believes [fides qua creditur]" and "the faithwhich one believes [fides quae creditur]" was a later one,it expressed what Rupert of Deutz was saying when heasserted the superiority of "believing in Christ," that is,"venerating and loving the Logos," to merely "believingChrist," that is, affirming "that he speaks what is true."Yet when medieval theologians spoke of "the faith," itwas the latter, objective sense of the word that oftenpredominated over the subjective sense. The Christiangospel as "the one true faith" or as "the apostolic faith,which alone is the true faith" or as "the true and catholicfaith" was the object of "faith" as an act or as a virtue.Therefore even an unbelieving priest could administer"the faith" to others, because it was an objectively giventruth, whether the individual himself accepted it or not.The content of this "catholic faith" was summarized in theAthanasian Creed. For our purposes here, "age of faith"refers primarily to faith in the sense of "that which isbelieved."

A synonym for such "faith" would be "doctrine," asdefined at the very beginning of this work. In medievalusage, the word "doctrine [doctrina]" could simply mean"instruction," or it could even be a summary of the entireChristian imperative, as when Robert Pullen stated: "Thedoctrine of a priest consists in two things, namely, purityof faith and honesty of morals." But it also meant "thedoctrine that teaches about heavenly things," "the rightfaith and sound doctrine" whose boundaries had beenset by the catholic fathers from the beginning of thechurch. This was the doctrine that was believed, taught,and confessed on the basis of the word of God. The bibli-cal formula, "I believed, and so I spoke," linked believingthe truth and confessing the truth as inseparable parts ofthe same response to Christ. Thus Augustine was notablefor "the faith of his heart" and for "the confession of hismouth." While for Eastern Christians the conflict withIslam was the occasion for affirming what they believed,taught, and confessed, Western theologians came closest


to such affirmations when they were setting forth theirdoctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist: in theninth century Gottschalk stated what "everyone oughtto believe, know, hold, and confess"; a treatise ascribed toanother ninth-century figure, Haimo of Halberstadt, butprobably written during the tenth or the eleventh century,opened its statement of eucharistic doctrine with thewords "Therefore we believe and faithfully confess andhold"; and Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury in thefinal quarter of the twelfth century, declared his faith inthe reality of the eucharistic miracle by admonishing,"Simply and confidently, firmly and constantly, therefore,let us hold, believe, and confess."

That way of speaking about "faith" or about "doctrine"is likewise central in the medieval use of the term theol-ogy, which has determined how the title of this volumeemploys the word. For "it was only very slowly that'theology' acquired the specific sense of an organized andlearned understanding of the data of revelation." Thepreponderant tendency of the Middle Ages was reflectedin the use of the term "theologize" to describe the evan-gelization of the heathen, or in the decree of the FourthLateran Council in 1215, establishing the office of "theo-logian" as that of "one who is to teach priests andothers about the Sacred Page and above all to informthem of those things that are known to pertain to thecure of souls." There were times when certain medievalwriters deviated from that tendency and came closerto our present-day use of the word. As part of hisprogram of reflection and speculation, John Scotus Eri-gena proposed a fourfold division of wisdom, in which"theology" was to take its part alongside other branchesof knowledge; it dealt, solely or at least chiefly, with"speculation about the divine nature." From Greekthought he had learned that "theology" was, strictly speak-ing, this "contemplation of the divine nature"; it was, inshort, as Dionysius had said, "the reason of God." YetErigena, too, followed the more general practice whenhe spoke of the Old Testament prophets as "theologians"or when he spoke mystically about "the wings of intimatetheology." A later force for innovation in the understand-ing of the term was the thought of Peter Abelard, or atany rate that of some of his followers, who gave histreatises such titles as Christian Theology, Theology of


Scholars, and Theology of the "Summum Bonum." It re-mains true, in any case, that "well into the twelfth centuryand even beyond, the use of 'theology' as a synonym for'the Sacred Page' or 'the Divine Page,' that is, HolyScripture" maintained itself, while such terms as "sacreddoctrine" and "divine science" came to designate the in-tellectual activity to which we now assign the name"theology."

Although, for a modern reader, the medieval signifi-cance of "theology" may be the most problematical issuein the terminology of our title, there would seem to beno doubt that the term growth in that title would be farmore problematical to a medieval reader. The apostolicand catholic faith was "one faith" because it was a faiththat had been delivered once and for all and had beentransmitted by apostolic tradition. Therefore it was un-changing and unchangeable, and the very suggestion thatit had undergone change or development or growthseemed to strike at the foundations of apostolic continu-ity. Heretics could, and did, accuse the orthodox of havingadded such doctrines as transubstantiation to the originaldeposit of the faith, since it was not mentioned in anyof the ancient creeds; to this the orthodox were obligedto reply that the doctrine had indeed been present fromthe beginning, but had not been asserted because it wasaccepted by everyone without question. To be sure, therewere "some matters that are held but are not taught,"open questions on which there was no clear witness ofScripture and tradition. Several such questions appearedin the doctrine of Mary, including the beginning of herlife (whether or not she had been immaculately con-ceived) and the end of her life (whether or not she hadbeen raised from the dead). On such questions "we donot dare to speak," one theologian asserted, while another,refusing to assert the doctrine of the immaculate con-ception or to sanction festivals in its honor, reserved to"the authority of the apostolic see" the right to speakon the matter. Such judgments seemed to assume thatthere could be some sort of development or growth; onthe basis of patristic suggestions about how the doctrineof the Holy Spirit had developed, Thomas Aquinas de-fended the legitimacy of the Filioque by explaining thatit "was contained implicitly in the faith that the Holy


Spirit proceeds from the Father" and that it had now beenmade explicit.

When we speak of "the growth of medieval theology,"therefore, we are at one and the same time attempting, inour use of the term "theology," to replace the modernconnotations of the term with those that were more con-genial to medieval Christians, and yet superimposing themodern conceptions of what was "medieval" and, aboveall, the modern notion of "growth" as change and develop-ment upon the ideas and teachings of the Middle Ages.We are also continuing our practice in the first two vol-umes of paying attention only to the history of doctrine,even at the expense of fascinating and important ques-tions outside the area of doctrine. To mention only a fewexamples, we shall not discuss the role of the conflict ofpersonality in the stormy career of Peter Abelard; nor thethreats of barbarian invasion that were believed to havebeen repulsed by the power of the Virgin Mary; nor thehabit of Berengar of Tours of consistently referring to hisopponent, Humbert of Silva Candida, as "that Burgun-dian"; nor the chilling account given by Hincmar ofReims about the death of Gottschalk, concluding with thewords: "And when his end was approaching, his brethrenwho were present sought to persuade him to recant hiswicked ideas and perverse beliefs and to accept HolyCommunion. He replied that he could not recant hisideas and beliefs and that by authority he could not acceptCommunion. And so he concluded an unworthy life with adeath that was worthy of it, and he departed into his ownplace." Even the Crusades belong to our story only as apart of the confrontation between Western Christianityand the faiths of other men.

Within the scheme of the work as a whole, the presentvolume resumes the history of doctrine in the West withthe seventh century, as the second volume did with theEast in the same century. But in the Western church thiswas perceived to be a time when "the study of letters isdying, and no one is capable of preserving in writing thedoings of the present." Modern scholars, while deploringthe excesses of that characterization, join in asserting thatthe point at which we begin here "was low tide on theContinent of Europe," when "the continent of WesternEurope was withered by a blight of intellectual sterility"


and by "a decadence which is incurable." The volumecloses with the thirteenth century, at which point volume4 will begin. Western developments, therefore, will re-quire two volumes for the same period that has beencovered by a single volume for the East. The Reformationitself would be justification enough for that disparity,which is also made necessary by the complexity of thehistory being recounted here in volume 3. The chrono-logical division is necessarily arbitrary, as is the decisionto include in volume 4 certain doctrinal movements thatbegan in the twelfth or thirteenth century but that bearso close a relation to the history of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries as to warrant treatment there. This is,in short, the history of what we have called "orthodoxCatholicism in the West" from the seventh century untilthe time when both its orthodoxy and its catholicity werefundamentally called into question by protest, by heresy,and ultimately by the Reformation.

1 The Integrityof theCatholic Tradition

In the Latin West, no less than in the Gteek or the SyriacEast, the seventh and eighth centuries were a time whenthe definition of Christian doctrine was set by the author-ity of tradition. "This," said the conclusion of a seventh-century treatise for Christian initiates, "is the true integ-rity of the catholic tradition of the faith; if any single partof it is denied, the power of the faith as a whole will belost." The treatise was a compilation of quotations fromthe church fathers. As the author asserted at the verybeginning, he was "not proposing novelties to our neo-phytes, but either making clear or noting for the futurethe admonitions of the fathers." "The integrity of theapostolic tradition" and "the integrity of the faith" con-tinued to be a matter of concern to all theological parties.A "solicitude for integrity . . . in the truth of the catholicfaith" meant to Alcuin, at the end of the eighth century,an adherence to the teachings of Christian antiquity. Hisimperial patron, following some of Alcuin's very words,urged that "the truth of the catholic faith be investigated,"but such "investigation" meant to him that the faithshould be "supported by the most solid testimonies of theholy fathers" and thus "maintained without any doubting."Later in the same epistle, Charlemagne echoed an Augus-tinian formula when he declared: "This is the catholicfaith, and therefore it is ours."

Underlying such declarations of loyalty to the catholictradition was the assumption that it was a unified whole,resting on the consensus of the orthodox teachers of thechurch. "To agree with the catholic consensus in everyrespect" was a mark of Christian modesty, according to a

9

THE INTEGRITY OF THE CATHOLIC TRADITION 10

seventh-century manual. Bede made an effort to set forth"the meaning of . . . the catholic fathers" in his commen-taries, and he spoke of "the unanimous consensus of allin the catholic faith." By the time of Alcuin it was cus-tomary to refer to "the total unanimity of the catholicchurch" as the criterion of orthodox doctrine. This truedoctrine of the gospel, taught and preached unanimouslyby the church, was "shining brightly through the wholeworld." To his opponents Alcuin set forth the contrastbetween this unanimous consensus and their theologicalisolation; "you alone," he charged, "are opposed to all ofthese, you alone have usurped the. distinctive title of'master.'" He challenged them to produce a single nationor city that agreed with them rather than with the uni-versal church, whose spokesman he was. Other Westernspokesmen in these centuries—whether British or Span-ish, Italian or Frankish—would have agreed.

Yet it would be a mistake to conclude from this thatall the theologians of these centuries were content to dono more than simply to repeat and transmit the patristicconsensus. Isidore of Seville was so devoted to such repeti-tion and transmission of "the ancients" that it has becomealmost obligatory for a modern work on him to identifyhim as a "compiler." Nevertheless, even his theologicalimagination, although skillfully concealed, was operativein the selection and arrangement of his material into an"immense farrago of the ancient world." In the caseof Bede, the creative element was permitted to make itspresence more evident. He styled himself a "compiler"of what had been said by the theological genius of thechurch fathers, but he "knit the whole together in a waywhich raises his theological works well above the level ofmere compilation or catenae." Even amid his disclaimersof originality he "aimed not only at copying the thoughtsof greater men, but at completing them," for he admittedthat he had "added some tokens of his own effort as theAuthor of light revealed them." Ambrose Autpert, aBenedictine of the eighth century, while asserting that hewas "following the faith and the ideas of catholics," alsoacknowledged that he had "added from my own re-sources, or rather from the gift of the grace of God, manythings in which [the church fathers] seem to be deficient"in the interpretation of the Apocalypse of John. Anothercommentary on the Apocalypse included the prayer that

The Faith and the Creed 11

the Holy Spirit would make the author worthy of addingsomething to what his ancestors had said about the book.Alcuin was likewise an industrious and encyclopedic col-lector of ancient authorities, one who followed the con-sensus of the fathers, "introducing nothing novel and ac-cepting nothing but what is to be found in their catholicwritings." Yet it was his "study of earlier authors" that"opened the way for comparison of texts" and for "thereawakening of dialectical exercises in the field of theol-ogy." This combination of adherence to authority (auc-toritas) with independent critical reflection (ratio), inwidely varying proportions, was to characterize Westerntheology throughout the Middle Ages.

The Faith and the Creed

"Whoever wants to be saved, it is necessary above all thathe hold the catholic faith." This opening declaration ofthe Athanasian Creed was restated in the confession offaith adopted by the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633;the authority of the Creed was also affirmed at the SecondSynod of Autun in about 670; and the collection of ser-mons attributed to Boniface the missionary, near themiddle of the next century, paraphrased this openingdeclaration in its own first paragraph. These words meantthat the standard of orthodox doctrine defined by thefathers and councils of the church was the measure ofauthentic Christian believing. To this "rule of catholicfaith and truth" every true believer had to conform. Theintegrity of the catholic tradition was safeguarded by therule of faith.

Whatever the term "rule of faith" may have meant inpatristic usage, it seems that by this time it was usuallyidentified with the several creeds confessed by the church.A common name for creed was "symbol," as in the title ofAugustine's work The Faith and the Creed {De fide etsymbolo), which was frequently quoted in the early Mid-dle Ages. The name was known to have come from theGreek and to mean "sign." As the disciples were about tobe scattered abroad throughout the world, they had beenmoved to formulate this sign for their preaching; it con-tained "the confession of the Trinity, the unity of thechurch, and the entire mystery of Christian dogma." WhatChrist in the days of his flesh had handed on by traditionto his disciples, they had in turn handed on by tradition

THE INTEGRITY OF THE CATHOLIC TRADITION 1 2

to the church in the form of the creedal symbol, and"their successors, apostolic men, in six ecumenical coun-cils . . . and in other catholic synods, confirmed by theholy see," had carried it on. The missionary literature ofthe eighth century commended the symbol together withthe Lord's Prayer (which continued to receive expositionsof its own) as the content of what converts to Christianitywere to learn. In the brief compass of these two texts "theentire breadth of the Scriptures is embraced," so that theysufficed for the children of the church as an epitome ofthe entire law of the gospel. One way to refer to thecreed could therefore be "the symbol of catholic peace,"as it was sung and confessed in the church. The functionof the symbol as something confessed served to give itits status as a doctrinal authority. The psalmist had saidthat "confession and magnificence are [God's] work,"which meant that the ability to make a confession of faithdid not lie within human power, since no one had con-tributed any good work by which to merit receiving theconfession of faith; it must be a gift of divine grace.

What the church confessed and believed was "the faithof all catholics," which was, in turn, what it had beentaught by the apostles. Believing, teaching, and confessingbelonged together. To believe meant to accept that whichone could not see, so that "faith" could be defined as "thatby which we truly believe what we are completely incapa-ble of seeing." From this subjective definition it was easyto move to the use of the word "faith" not for the act ofbelieving, but for its content, the relation between Godand man. The "definition of the Christian faith" pertainedto past things that were narrated in the gospel messageand to future things for which believers hoped. "Thosewho consent to the Christian faith" was a title that couldbe applied even to those members of the church whonegated such consent by their mode of life, and "thosewho do not violate the faith concerning Christ and thechurch" was a term for orthodox believers. Although itwas possible to distinguish between "faith" and "doc-trine," as when Isidore spoke of those who "are Christiansonly in their faith, but in their work dissent from Chris-tian doctrine," the pattern of usage was determined bythe practice of calling Christian doctrine "the faith" or"the catholic faith" in the sense of that with which one'sspeaking and writing had to agree. Alcuin composed a


treatise (now lost) on "the catholic faith," and he identi-fied faith in this dogmatic sense as that of which the NewTestament said: "Without faith it is impossible to please[God}." He spoke of being "inside the walls of the catho-lic faith" as the only assurance of avoiding error. Thesanctity of this catholic faith was to be defended againstheresy.

The relation between "faith" and "doctrine" in Alcuin'slanguage can be seen from such a formula as "catholicdoctrine believes" or from his term for heresy: "anydoctrine that is found outside the walls of the faith of thechurch and the doctrine of the apostles." Even wherethere was no such discrimination of terms, however, "thedoctrine of the apostles," a New Testament concept, wascoordinated with the "decrees and canons of the orthodoxfathers" in the structure of church authority. The apostleswere the wellsprings from which the church was to drinkits doctrine. An important constituent in the definition ofthe term "doctrine" was the distinction between it and"deeds" or "life" or "work." The preacher was to be "ashining example both in doctrine and in life," for theformer without the latter made a man arrogant while thelatter without the former made him useless. The bishopwas to exhibit "in his work" what he taught others "inhis language about doctrine." A discrepancy between theworks of the preacher and the words of his preachingcould cause his hearers to despise his "doctrine." Bedereminded his hearers that in the New Testament the rulewas: "First do, and then teach"; for as earlier theologianshad also said, practice was the basis of theory. To beeffective, doctrine needed the assistance of divine grace,without which it would remain in the ears but neverpenetrate to the heart. But with the help of grace, "divinedogmas" were a means of fostering the spiritual lifeof the children of the church. Thus the word "dogma,"which had been used as a term for philosophical opinions,could now become a synonym for "Christian doctrine,"although it was also customary to speak of the "perversedogmas" of the heretics.

Christian doctrine was handed on from one generationof the church to the next in the form of the orthodoxtradition. The British prelates assembled at the Council ofHatfield in 680 invoked the tradition in support of theposition defined as orthodox over against Monotheletism,


"as our incarnate Lord Jesus Christ handed on by tradi-tion to his disciples, those who saw him in person andheard his sermons, and as the symbol of the holy fathershanded on by tradition, as well as all the holy and uni-versal councils in concert and the chorus of all the eminentteachers of the catholic church." It was this decree thatBede identified as "the unanimous consensus of all in thecatholic faith." When he himself came to the task ofexpounding Scripture, he insisted on presenting the ex-planation that had been "handed on by tradition fromthe fathers." Moreover, he laid it down as a requirementfor anyone sent to preach to Jews or to heathen that he"teach those things that the church has received andlearned through the apostles," for anyone who took itupon himself "on his own initiative" to teach somethingnew and different was not fit to be a teacher and preacherin the church. An orthodox teacher was, by Isidore's defi-nition, "one who believes correctly and who lives as hebelieves." Such a teacher, according to the Greek originof the word "orthodox," was "a man who is correct inhow he gives glory [to God], a name to which someone isnot entitled if he lives otherwise than he believes."

Greek etymology was also the source for Isidore's defi-nition of the word "catholic," which was, he said, synony-mous with "universal or general." A bit later in hisOrigins he elaborated: "Catholic [means} universal, thatis, according to the whole." The difference between thecatholic church and "the conventicles of the heretics" wasthat the church extended through the whole world, whilethe adherents of a particular false doctrine were confinedto a few regions. This distinction was eventually to becited by the defenders of catholic doctrine against Isidore'sSpanish successors, who for their part would declare:"We believe and confess the holy catholic church, spreadthroughout the world by the preaching of the apostles . . .among the catholics, not the heretics." In Bede's England,the conflict between universal and particular, while differ-ent dogmatically from that in Spain, did involve the issueof catholicity, so that "in the Ecclesiastical History hisshort sketches of men and women are concerned mainlywith the two problems: Are they 'Catholici' and do theirworks conform to their belief?" In evaluating a theologianof the past, Ambrose Autpert said, "one should not beprejudiced by the period in which he wrote, but should


seek to discern only whether what he wrote is true andcatholic or false and heretical." For, according to Bede,it was "only in that unity which is called 'catholic' thatthe gate of life is open to all." Bede's spiritual descendant,Alcuin of York, proudly identified himself as "a catholic,born and reared in the catholic church," and he was con-vinced that apart from the "truth of the church" therecould be no salvation.

To Alcuin, as to his predecessors in the seventh andeighth centuries, this "truth of the church" was that whichhad been defined by the fathers of the church. What hasbeen called "the self-effacement of Alcuin in relation tothe fathers" was the dominant theme and method of histheology. In all questions of doctrine, he said, "I wish tofollow the footsteps of the holy fathers, neither adding tonor subtracting from their most sacred writings." Theyhad become the fathers of the church by virtue of theirhaving "begotten us in Christ" through their fidelity toauthentic Christian teaching. Therefore one would not errif one resolved to abide "in the company of such menwithin the camp of the catholic faith," for outside thatcamp were the enemies of the faith. Or, to shift the meta-phor, the testimony of the church fathers was "the publichighway of apostolic doctrine," in fact "the royal road."The pilgrim could travel safely on this road; but if hestrayed "to the right or to the left" away from it, he wouldbe lost in "the detours of one or another sort of nov-elty." The compilation of quotations from the fatherscould be taken as the proper method of theology be-cause of the authoritarian system of doctrinal verificationwithin which they were thought to hold the position ofharmonious and unimpeachable witnesses to orthodoxdoctrine.

A catalog of the specific fathers employed as witnesseswould, if pressed far enough, probably include most ofthe names, if not all of the writings, that appeared insimilar compilations of patristic texts in the East. In viewof the widespread incapacity of East and West to readeach other's languages and to understand each other'swriters, it is not surprising to find that the Latin fatherspredominated in the Western compilations. Thus Cyprian,"the renowned doctor and wonder-working master" ofthe church, was a source to be quoted at considerablelength. When a particular Latin father, such as Jerome,


had expounded a book of the Bible, a commentary on thatbook would draw copiously from his work. Pope Leo I,a Latin author who was also much beloved of the Greektheologians of this period, was hailed as "a man of theutmost fidelity to the catholic faith and of outstandingreputation for his eloquence in speaking of the relationbetween the divine and the human natures in Christ."Despite his polemic against Augustine, Cassian wasquoted, because of his espousal of the consensus of thechurch, as an authority for "the catholic faith." But themost notable characteristic of the appeal to patristic au-thority in these centuries was the pattern by which onegeneration's echo became the next generation's voice:theologians who had wanted to do no more than torepeat the fathers were themselves elevated to the com-pany of the fathers. Gregory the Great, for all his repeti-tion of Augustine, was "the most widely read of theWestern church fathers." He was "outstanding among thewriters of the church," praised for his eloquence and hisfaith. In the controversies of the ninth century over theEucharist Gregory came to be cited as an authority in hisown right, as did the Venerable Bede. Less than twodecades after his death, Isidore of Seville, the docile"compiler" of earlier authorities, was being designated"the most recent ornament of the catholic church" and"the most learned of men now at the end of the ages," andhis theological works were held in "the highest venera-tion" by the centuries that followed.

Although the fathers being cited included the ortho-dox teachers of both East and West, among them forexample Chrysostom, it was principally Augustine, eitherdirectly or indirectly, upon whom the seventh and eighthcenturies—as well as the ninth and those that followed—drew for their understanding of church doctrine, "veryoften without even mentioning his name." When thedoctrine to be discussed was the dogma of the Trinity, itwas natural to cite "the reasons that Father Augustine inhis books on the Holy Trinity regarded as of primaryimportance," or to cite "Augustine and the other orthodoxtheologians" as authorities in trinitarian doctrine. But inthe exegesis of Scripture it was no less necessary, as Bedesaid, to include "testimonies from the blessed Augustine,"as well as from other church fathers. So, for example, oneentire book of Bede's Allegorical Exposition of the Song


of Songs was compiled from the writings of Gregory theGreat, who had, in turn, depended on the writings ofAugustine. Julian of Toledo, "the most competent theo-logian among the Visigothic bishops of Spain," affirmedthe standing of Augustine as "the eminent doctor"; andwhen he came to write his examination of apparent con-tradictions in the Old and New Testaments, he gatheredquotations from Augustine and Gregory. From such quo-tations and from the catalogs of manuscripts in monasticlibraries it is evident how dominant a place Augustineheld in the intellectual and theological life of the earlyMiddle Ages. In the Carolingian era he was hailed byServatus Lupus as "an author of utmost sweetness andreputation," as "a man possessed of a genius that wasdivine," and as "Augustine, of whom I cannot say whetherhe was more admirable for his content or for his style."

The quality that marked Augustine and the other ortho-dox fathers was their loyalty to the received tradition.The apostolic anathema pronounced against anyone, even"an angel from heaven," who preached "a gospel contraryto that which you have received" by tradition was, as inthe East so also in the West, a prohibition of any kindof theological novelty. The Latin text of the New Testa-ment urged that "novelties of terminology [novitatesvocum]" be avoided. One definition of heretics could be"those who now take pleasure in making up new termi-nology for themselves and who are not content with thedogma of the holy fathers." Fathers of the stature of Leohad asserted that "the birth . . . of Christ . . . passes allunderstanding," and therefore "what is it that these newscrutinizers of the secrets of God suppose that they un-derstand" when such secrets had been hidden from "theancient fathers and the catholic doctors?" One who deniedthe consensus of such catholic doctors on the doctrine ofMary was dismissed as "the fabricator of a new error." Buteven those who were eventually denounced as hereticsshared a fidelity to "apostolic doctrine" and "catholicfaith" and an antipathy to "all novelties," and it was pos-sible to appeal to them "to permit nothing new, nothingcontrary to apostolic traditions, to arise."

Etymologically, the word "heresy" had come from theGreek word for "choice," so that the heretics were thosewho chose a "perverse dogma" and for its sake withdrewfrom the fellowship of the orthodox church. Such with-


drawal from catholic unity was also characteristic of"schismatics," and the distinction between schism andheresy was sometimes, but not always, observed; it waseven possible to refer to simony as "heresy." Heresy wasthe second of the storms that had raged against the church,the first having been that of the heathen and the thirdhaving been that of false Christians. As those who vio-lated catholic unity and who therefore "love Christ withan adulterous love," heretics did not deserve a legitimateplace in the Christian family. Like the friends of Job,they were hypocrites and teachers of "perverse dogmas."And while the church "patiently tolerates those in hermidst who lead an evil life," she rejected and excommu-nicated those "who believe an evil faith." Some enemies ofthe church lived without her sacraments and outside herfellowship, some outside her fellowship but within hersacraments. But the most dangerous were those who livedwithin the church and within her sacraments, but wereenemies nonetheless; such were the heretics. They did notstop short of interpolating their doctrines into books byorthodox fathers. Nevertheless, it was important to recog-nize that the rise of heresy had sometimes provoked theorthodox church into clarification of its doctrine thatmight never have been possible had not its enemies madesuch clarification necessary.

Nor was a heretic always consistent in his treatment ofthe catholic faith, for sometimes a theologian who erredgravely on fundamental doctrines could, by mixing"honey" with his "poison," also be a witness to orthodoxy.Writing against a position that he denounced as heretical,Alcuin felt able to use the writings of Origen, but onlywhere he had been in agreement with the orthodoxfathers. Among Spanish theologians, as among orthodoxtheologians generally, such Origenist doctrines as therestoration of all creatures, including the devil, to theiroriginal dignity were rejected as "sacrilegious disputa-tion." But in Spain one could also speak of what "Origen,the doctor, teaches in his dogmas" even in the area ofeschatology. Various theologians could resolve exegeticaldifficulties by quoting what "we find to have been ex-plained in this way by Origen." It would seem that thedefinition of the rule of faith was thought to be so clearand so secure that even a heretic such as Origen could be


studied and quoted without becoming a threat to theintegrity of the catholic tradition.

After affirming that "whoever wants to be saved, it isnecessary above all that he hold the catholic faith," theAthanasian Creed had gone on to specify the two cardinaldogmas that formed the main content of that faith. "Andthe catholic faith is this," it continued, "that we worshipone God in Trinity"; and in a later article it added:"Furthermore it is necessary to eternal salvation that onefaithfully believe the incarnation of our Lord JesusChrist." The mysteries of the Trinity and of the personof the God-man constituted the rule of faith of the churchcatholic, and orthodox adherence to them determined theintegrity of the catholic tradition. The mark of the genu-ine "catholic Christian," then, was that "he preserves thetrue faith of the Trinity with a firm readiness to believe,and that he repudiates the thinking of heretical perver-sion." The church catholic was that society "which remainsfaithful to one Lord as to its legitimate husband.',' A con-cern for the preservation of this trinitarian loyalty—as,for example, when Bede, on the basis of patristic prece-dent, found the doctrine of the Trinity in the first twoverses of the Bible—pervaded Western Latin Christen-dom during the early Middle Ages, partly because of thepersistence of indigenous Arianism among the Visigothsand other Germanic tribes.

Because of this threat, but even more because of Byz-antine theology, Charlemagne commissioned Alcuin toundertake a thorough exposition of the faith of thechurch on this fundamental issue. Except for its presenta-tion of the distinctive Western theologoumenon on theprocession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and theSon rather than from the Father only, Alcuin's summarywas a thoroughly conventional recitation of what theChristians in the East as well as in the West taught aboutthe Trinity. For example, he repeated the standard princi-ple—which had special importance in the polemicalcontext in which he was writing—that "wherever in HolyScripture we read, 'God alone,' this should not be takenas referring to any one person in the Holy Trinity, but tothe entire Holy Trinity." Even when, later in the ninthcentury, the theological discussion turned to the questionof the real presence in the Eucharist, "the footsteps of the


fathers" in the doctrine of the Trinity were a continuingpoint of theological reference; and a typical ordinationvow of the ninth century opened with a trinitarian con-fession of faith.

Underlying the trinitarian dogma now, as in its origins,were certain axioms about the unchangeable nature of thedivine, which continued to be asserted as self-evident longafter their philosophical presuppositions were no longerconsciously affirmed as such. The opening article ofIsidore's Sentences was a discussion of the absoluteness ofGod, who could not be changed; for while the mutablecreature was good, it was not the highest good, which onlythe immutable God could be. As immutable and eternal,God transcended time, having neither past nor future butonly an eternal present within himself, since in his eternalawareness all things were included. The basic passagecited by the fathers in proof of this doctrine of God wasthe word of God to Moses: "I am who I am." This textcontinued to be "a sign of the divine essence" and toserve as proof that in his eternal essence God was "im-mutable." In the Godhead one must not assume that any-thing was "accidental" to the divine essence, since Godwas utterly immutable. Biblical language about such ap-parently mutable divine characteristics as "wrath" wasnot to be understood in an anthropopathic way, since"God is wrathful without any passibility or disturbance ofhis simple nature, nor of course any change." The onto-logical distinction between Creator and creature was to bepreserved even in the most intimate of biblical statementsabout the union of God and man through Christ. Whilethe human soul was immortal, it was not immutable, foronly God was "truly and properly eternal." All of thissuggested what the East called "apophatic theology," theprinciple that one could speak of the divine only in nega-tive terms. "God is known correctly only when we denythat he can be known perfectly" at all. For even as theol-ogy spoke about God, it had to acknowledge that no hu-man language was capable of speaking properly about theineffable mystery of God.

It is, however, important to recognize that all suchaffirmations, whatever their affinities to Eastern theology,were in fact articulated "on the basis of the distinctionsstated by Augustine." So much was this the case that someAugustinian distinctions in the doctrine of the Trinity


were not so much asserted as taken for granted by themain body of Western theology, for example, the crucialdistinction between what was said of God "according tohis essence" and what was said of him "according to therelations among the three persons." As part of his trini-tarian speculations, Augustine had come to view the HolySpirit as "the mutual love by which the Father and theSon love each other reciprocally." This identification hadbecome part of the way Western theologians understoodorthodox trinitarianism, so that "the Holy Spirit is prop-erly called 'love,' probably because by nature he joinsthose from whom he proceeds." Another idiosyncratictheme of Augustine's On the Trinity was its explorationof psychological analogues within human experience forthe transcendent relations between the divine persons.Since the human soul was created in the image not of alonely single God but in that of the Trinity, there had tobe some analogous relation between the soul and theTrinity. This analogous relation was found, on the basis ofAugustine's trinitarian view of the world and of the soul,in "human consciousness," where a human trinity of"mind, intellect, and love" served as a way of acknowledg-ing the divine Trinity.

The most striking, and ecumenically the most fateful,example of the pervasive authority of Augustine in Latintrinitarian theology was the almost automatic manner inwhich Western theologians accepted the idea of theFilioque. It seems clear that if Eastern theology had notchallenged this idea as an unwarranted tampering withthe text of the Nicene Creed and as a unilateral act ofdogmatic legislation by one of the five apostolic patriarchs,the West would have gone on teaching it as a part of theundisputed (and therefore indisputable) heritage of theorthodox faith. Before such challenges from the East, theFilioque was merely stated, not argued. Its place inWestern theology and worship is evident from its re-peated appearance as a commonplace in liturgical anddevotional poetry. In the seventh century it was taughtthat the difference between the Son and the Spirit in theTrinity lay in the former's being eternally begotten onlyby the Father and the latter's proceeding from both theFather and the Son. A creed adopted at Rome in thatcentury and reafirmed by the English church glorified"God the Father . . . and the Son . . . and the Holy Spirit,


who proceeds in an ineffable way from the Father and theSon." Because the Holy Spirit was the Spirit "both ofthe Father and of the Son," the Father and the Son wereone in their possessing the Spirit, who proceeded fromthem both. Soon thereafter, "the catholic faith" was as-serted to be trinitarian in the sense that "the Father hasthe Son, the Son has the Father, and the Holy Spititproceeds from the Father and the Son," since "the Fatheris the principle [principium] of the Godhead." By thetime of the Carolingian disputes with the East, it was al-together natural for Western teachers to assert that theHoly Spirit "proceeds completely from the Father, andcompletely from the Son," or even that "the Holy Spirit. .. proceeds from the Father and the Son according to theessence" of the Godhead. This equation of the Augustin-ian version of the trinitarian dogma with the universalfaith of the church helps to explain the response of theWest to the Greek attacks upon its theory of Filioque.Only much later in the Middle Ages, and then only rarely,was it suggested that the entire issue was merely a disputeover words.

The other major component in the integrity of thecatholic tradition was the doctrine of the person of Christ.Like the trinitarian dogma, it had come from the councilsof the early church, which were no longer subject todispute. Yet in the Syriac and the Greek East it continuedto be a major issue of theological debate, with significantparticipation also by the Latin West in the outcome of thedisputes. The distinctive achievement of Western theol-ogy in the Middle Ages was to consist in a further de-velopment of the doctrine of the work of Christ ratherthan of the doctrine of the person of Christ, but at thispoint of out narrative it needs only to be noted that forthe seventh and eighth centuries the formal authority ofthe christological dogma stood alongside that of thetrinitarian dogma as part of the catholic rule of faith.Homiletically, one asserted that "by the mercy of theLord, God descended to men, so that men might be ableby obedience to ascend to God." The only-begotten Sonof the Father had become incarnate to lead men to faith.As the entire orthodox church, whether of East or West,declared, the one incarnate Christ was the proper subjectof all christological predications, so that it was not appro-

Faith, Hope, and Love 23

priate to speak of him as "one and another [alius et alius],"but as a single hypostasis, divine and human in one. Theseand similar declarations of dogmatic solidarity betweenthe orthodoxy of the East and that of the West weresufficient to make clear that the West stood with all ofChristendom in its loyalty to the catholic tradition, butthey were not enough to preclude further dogmatic dis-putes about the person of Christ.

Faith, Hope, and Love

A catholic Christian, according to Ambrose Autpert, wasone who "preserves the true faith of the Trinity with afirm readiness to believe." But Priminius, an eighth-cen-tury abbot, was no less accurate when he formulated thisdefinition: "A Christian is one who imitates and followsChrist in all things." Such a definition, with its concen-tration on faith, hope, and love as the content of theChristian way of life and on the life and teachings ofJesus as its norm, had been part of the understanding ofsalvation since the earliest days of the church, and thedefinition of Christianity as faith, hope, and love con-tinued to shape medieval theology. Thanks largely to thepiety and thought of Augustine—whose handbook ofChristian teaching, commonly called Enchiridion bymedieval (and modern) writers, originally bore the titleFaith, Hope, and Love—it had taken deep root in WesternChristendom, where "the lowliness of the sublime, thehistorical humiliation of the godhead" shaped languageand life throughout the Latin Middle Ages. Thus the sameAmbrose Autpert spoke of how Christ "set forth an ex-ample in himself for [our] imitation," and elsewhere headmonished, on the basis of Philippians 2:6—8: "If thedivine majesty lowers itself in such great humility, doeshuman weakness have the right to make boast of any-thing?" In this he was carrying on a way of speakingcharacteristic of his fathers and brethren, who took de-light in the paradox of the incarnation. Christ, the Son ofGod, had undergone humiliation in order to save man-kind, and it was only fitting that his followers shouldimitate his humble suffering.

The summons of the gospel to the imitation of Christand to the Christian way of life took on a special urgencyin this period because the conflict between Christendom


and heathendom was a real and an intense one. Uponbecoming a Christian, a pagan was required to renouncethe devil and all his works, and the interpretation of theChristian message had to be careful to avoid any "offenseto pagan nations." Significantly, much of the material thatwe have been citing was originally produced in the settingof the church's mission to the pagan tribes. Even afterthese tribes had been baptized and formally incorporatedinto the catholic church, pastoral responsibility combinedwith apologetic interest to make the relation betweenChristian and pre-Christian ways of life an insistent issue.This is evident from the penitential collections of theperiod, in which "clauses on superstition form a con-stituent part of most" of the church's legislation, andalso from its teaching. The Dicta of Priminius, for ex-ample, made a point of prohibiting not only idolatry, aswould be expected of almost any manual of Christianbelieving and living, but also the practice of incantation.The sermons bearing the name of Boniface, "the apostleof Germany," repeatedly attacked "the auguries of thepagans" as a capital sin. The casting of lots in Scripturewas not to be taken as a justification for such methods ofmaking choices now. Such prohibitions and denunicationscontinued to be necessary. Thus Alcuin, asking "Whathas Ingeld to do with Christ?" warned that "auguries and[divination through] the songs of birds and [omens by]sneezing and many other such things must be avoidedaltogether." At about the same time Agobard of Lyonsspoke out, citing the authority of Scripture as well as thatof reason, against superstition as "a not insignificant fea-ture of unbelief," and Servatus Lupus expressed his mis-givings about the practice of regarding comets as portents.

Because of this persistent threat, the bond between doc-trinal orthodoxy and moral obedience was seen to be aclose one. Ildefonsus of Toledo, after writing his textbookon the meaning of baptism, followed it with a guidebookentitled Book on the Journey through the Desert onWhich One Continues after Baptism, which was intendedto pick up where the textbook had left off. The verydefinition of salvation was shaped by this bond betweenorthodoxy and morality. "Salvation," according to thesermons of Boniface, meant "obeying the commandmentsof God and always doing singlemindedly the will of Him


who 'desires all men to be saved' and none to perish."The gospel as a way of life was identified as a "new law"or as "the evangelical law," as it had been in the earlycenturies of the church. Christians also recognized thatthey had to come to the Old Testament through the New,so that they had "not learned the gospel through the law,but the law through the holy gospel." So close was theidentification of law and gospel that the statement of theapostle Paul, "Christ is the end of the law," was taken tomean that "those who are without the law come to bewithout Christ." According to Isidore, "the path by whichone goes to Christ is the law, through which those whounderstand it accurately travel to God." Although suchstatements about the gospel as law and about salva-tion as moral obedience were not meant to negate thecharacter of grace as a divine gift rather than as a humanachievement, since it was known that the law was uselesswithout the gospel, they did shift the emphasis in theunderstanding of salvation. Believers were admonished,therefore: "Let us not be without Christ here in thistransient time, lest Christ begin to be without us in thefuture."

Accompanying such moral admonition was a continu-ing definition of salvation as a free gift of unmerited grace.In this, as in his thought generally, Bede showed himselfto be a thoroughgoing disciple of Augustine, "the doctorof grace." It was the motto of Bede's life and of histheology that "grace should be the starting point, graceshould be the consummation, grace should be the crown"of all human existence. The birth by which a human beingentered this world was a good gift of God, but the "graceof new birth" was to be preferred to it. It is noteworthythat Bede wrote only one polemical treatise, a defenseof the Augustinian doctrine of grace against the writingsof the Pelagian theologian Julian of Eclanum, whom heaccused of exaggerating the innate goodness of man insuch a way that grace was assigned only the role of "asupervenient auxiliary" rather than that of "a prevenientinspirer and author of good efforts and merits in us." Butgrace was in fact the source to which the beginning ofevery good action and thought in the human heart was tobe ascribed. "Not this or that good, but all good" hadcome from "the plenitude of our Creator" and from his


unmerited generosity. As the accounts in the Gospelsshowed, the grace of the Holy Spirit sometimes conferredmiraculous powers on the faithful and sometimes with-held them; but for the daily way of life of Christians—the way of faith, of hope, and of love toward God andthe neighbor—the grace of the Holy Spirit was alwayspresent.

In his unequivocal loyalty to the Augustinian doctrineof grace, as in his "numerous and fierce . . . warningsagainst Pelagianism," Bede stood out among the theo-logians of these centuries. Yet even those who were moreambiguous in their interpretation of the gratuitous char-acter of grace retained much of the common property ofAugustinism, for example, the familiar distinction be-tween "nature" and "grace." The relation of God to menby "nature" was expressed in his "both filling and contain-ing all that he has made," his relation to them by "grace"in his "revealing himself by the gratuitous gift of hismercy to those who are to be saved." When applied toChristology, this distinction meant that by "nature" Christwas the only-begotten Son of God, while it was by "grace"that he had assumed humanity in order to save it. ThisAugustinian distinction of nature and grace continued tobe a theological tool in the Carolingian era, and the re-statement of it was to serve as the key to the solution ofvarious theological dilemmas in the thirteenth century.The other component of the Augustinian theology ofgrace that was repeated by every summary of Christiandoctrine in this period was the relation between grace andoriginal sin. Of his own power man was able to "walk inthe way of iniquity," but he could not return to the rightway except by divine grace. Although everything underheaven had been created for man's sake, the fall had puthim under sin and the condemnation of death. So funda-mental was the Augustinian doctrine of original sin that,for example, Julian of Toledo began his work on escha-tology with the words: "Through the sin of the first manit came about that death entered into the world."

For Augustine himself, this-interpretation of the rela-tion between sin and grace had led to a rather equivocalposition on the freedom of the will. The Augustinians ofthe early Middle Ages did not resolve the paradox either."Without the grace of God," according to Ildefonsus, "thefree will is not capable of anything good." The prevenient


grace of God brought it about that an unwilling personcame to desire what was good, and so "grace prevenes freewill." Wherever such a doctrine may have left the freedomof the will and the moral responsibility of man outside thestate of conversion, it did exalt and extol the gift of grace.The salvation of the saints and their membership in thechurch was accomplished "by no . . . preceding merits oftheirs, but by the gracious will of God alone." Grace alone,without human merit, brought men back to God. Anyonewho pondered his true condition must recognize his utterincapacity and his total lack of any merits of his own.He must "put his hope solely in God, who both preparesthe will and grants the ability." God restored men by hisgifts; he did not confer merits on them because of whatthey had deserved. His mercy had to come first, and onlyon that basis would he later crown good works with hisrewards.

Occasionally this idea of "grace alone" could even leadto the corollary of "faith alone," as when Julian of Toledodeclared that "all effort of human argument must be post-poned where faith alone is sufficient." "The righteousnessof faith, by which we are justified" consisted in this, "thatwe believe in him whom we do not see, and that, beingcleansed by faith, we shall eventually see him in whomwe now believe." His predecessor on the episcopal throneof Toledo, Ildefonsus, spoke even more strongly when heprayed: "God, who dost make the unclean clean and whoby taking away sins dost justify the sinner without works."Because this passage sounded so much like the teachingsof the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century, itwas expunged from some manuscripts of Ildefonsus's Onthe Virginity of Mary by "readers who 'were more piousthan learned' [and] who feared that by the misinterpreta-tion of these words Ildefonsus could be accused of theheretical teaching that men could be saved by faith alone."Elsewhere in his writings Ildefonsus did insist that justas a metallic object became beautiful not only by thebeauty of its material but by the craftsmanship of theartisan, so also "faith unadorned with works is not onlylacking in beauty, but is in fact dead." Yet a little later inthe same work he quoted Romans 5:1 to prove that "thebeginning of human salvation comes from faith . . . which,when it is in Christ, is justification for the believer." AndJulian, attempting, as others did, to harmonize the teach-


ings of the Epistle to the Romans with those of theEpistle of James, recognized a sense in which "if someonebelieves in Christ . . . he can be saved by faith alone," butJames was saying that this must not be used as license to"refuse to do good works."

Much more common, also in Spanish theology, wasthe warning against anyone who "flatters himself uselesslyabout faith alone if it is not adorned with good works."It was necessary to warn against those "who presume thatthey can attain eternal bliss solely by the confession offaith, even if they do not have the works of faith." For theword of the Epistle of James about the faith of demonsmeant that "if it were enough for faith alone to save with-out love, the demons, too, could be saved." The collectionof sermons bearing the name of the missionary Bonifacewould appear to be typical of Christian preaching andteaching. The righteousness of the believer, said a sermonon the Beatitudes, was not a state that was reached onceand for all, but a process of growth, "so that we neversuppose that we are righteous enough, but constantlybeseech God to increase our merits." According to thenext sermon, hearers needed to be reminded of what theyhad promised God in their baptism: to believe in him asFather, Son, and Holy Spirit. "But because it is written,'Faith apart from works is dead,' and because he who knowsGod ought to observe his commandments, these are thecommandments of God, which we are announcing to you,for you to keep and observe." There followed an enumer-ation of such commandments. And in a later sermon onthe nature of faith, he asserted its primacy in the Christianlife, "because the comprehension of divinity and theknowledge of truth must be learned through the catholicfaith." While it was true, therefore, that faith withoutgood works was vain, it was no less true that good worksavailed nothing apart from true faith; and true faith wasan assent to the true doctrine taught by the catholic churchin its tradition. Neither faith alone nor works alone couldbe called the basis of salvation, for neither could actuallybe alone; hence the most accurate and complete way todescribe salvation was to say that those who were savedwere "righteous by faith and by action." It was by grace,to be sure; but the term "grace" could be used either forthe gift of God, which was received by faith, or for theeffects of that gift in man, which were expressed by works.


As in earlier centuries, the connection between thedoctrine of grace and the doctrine of the means of gracecontinued to be in need of clarification. Perhaps becauseof the emphasis of many theologians on the primacy offaith, just recounted, the role of the preaching of theword of God as a means of grace assumed considerableimportance. An additional factor accounting for this im-portance was the missionary program of the church duringthe seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. In the missionaryliterature Christ was portrayed as the great preacher, whohad "preached to the Jews and to the Gentiles to forsakeall their evil and diabolical works, to do penance, to acceptbaptism, and to keep his commandments, which are thefour Gospels and the other Sacred Scriptures." The mis-sionary—and, indeed, every pastor—was to follow thisexample; for, according to Bede, "the pastors of thechurch have been ordained primarily for the task ofpreaching the mysteries of the word of God." Thesemysteries included the sacraments but were not simply tobe identified with them. Ordination, then, was not only theconferral of authority to celebrate and administer thesacraments, but also and chiefly the commission to pro-claim the word—an emphasis that continued to appearin the treatment accorded to the reading of the Gospelas part of the celebration of the Mass. "This is your task,my holy lord," wrote Alcuin to a bishop, "this is yourreward, this is your everlasting praise and glory, that youpreach the word of God to all with great confidence."The word was a means of grace.

Despite this stress on the doctrine of the word, mostof the doctrinal development in the understanding of themeans of grace took place in the interpretation of thesacraments, through which the church, as the mother ofall those who lived on earth, was herself born and nour-ished. Sometimes the sacraments and "the proclamation ofthe truth" through the word were coordinated, but eventhis coordination was cast in the Augustinian framework,according to which the word was added to the elements tomake a sacrament. From the sacramental theology ofAugustine there had likewise come the teaching that theobjective efficacy of the sacraments did not depend on thesubjective state of the minister. As in Augustine himself,so in these Augustinians, this theory was formulatedprincipally in relation to baptism; but its eventual appli-


cation to the Eucharist and then to ordination was to de-termine the outcome of various medieval theological con-troversies. It was Christ himself, as one external to thephysical act, who actually did the baptizing, and he did soregardless of the moral or religious condition of thepriest; for "the power of this sacrament is not in theoffice of the minister, but in the power of the Master."As a ninth-century theologian summarized it, this doc-trine taught that the validity of the sacrament did notdepend "on the merit of the consecrator, but on the word. . . of the Creator and on the power of the Holy Spirit."This applied not only to baptism, penance, and the Eu-charist, but to other sacramental or semisacramental ac-tions, for example, to the use of the sign of the cross.Exorcism, which never became a sacrament in its ownright but depended on baptism for its function, was ameans of replacing demonic with divine power. Bede'sformulation of the sacramental significance of the anoint-ing of the sick was sufficiently clear to give it a place inninth-century compilations of proof texts for the develop-ing sacramental doctrine of the West.

The Augustinism of the seventh and eighth centuriesis evident above all in their concentration on the doctrineof baptism as the key to sacramental theology. Followingtheir teacher, the Augustinian theologians of the earlyMiddle Ages based their doctrine of the sacraments prin-cipally on baptism, while later medieval doctrine, begin-ning in the ninth century, went beyond Augustine inassigning to the Eucharist the paradigmatic function ;nsacramental teaching. Like preaching, baptism was in-terpreted in relation to the ministry of Christ himself.The baptism and the passion of Christ had been the meansby which he had opened the gate of the kingdom ofheaven and had restored the eternal life that had been lostin the fall of Adam. Baptism as a means of grace and thesuffering of Christ as the means of redemption were "somutually connected that neither of them can grant ussalvation without the other." Therefore it was impossiblefor anyone to become a member of the church withoutbaptism. Likewise it was only the catholic church that hadthe legitimate sacrament of baptism, although it wasalso true, as Cyprian had insisted, that a baptism adminis-tered by a heretic was valid. If someone had been baptizedin the name of the Trinity, he was not to be rebaptized


when he moved from heresy and schism to the com-munion of the catholic church. But if in the administra-tion of baptism, whether by a catholic or by a heretic, thename of one of the persons of the Trinity were omitted,this would invalidate the baptism; on the other hand, agrammatical or linguistic error in the ceremony was ap-parently not sufficient grounds for invalidating the sacra-ment—a view that continued to prevail in later centuries.

The place of baptism in the plan of salvation was at-tested also by the special miracles that sometimes attendedit. Even though miracles were an important means oftestifying to a sacrament, the most important means wasthe evidence of the benefits conferred by it. Baptismenabled infants to be saved through the faith and con-fession of others, provided that "when they come to theproper age, they preserve the integrity of the faith thathas been confessed for them." The content of the gift ofbaptism could be variously described: it was citizenshipin the eternal homeland given to one who was only aguest in this temporal life; it was adoption as a memberof the body of Christ; it was the forgiveness not only oforiginal sin but also of "actual sins, whether committedby the heart or the mouth, in deed or thought or word."One of the most striking ways of speaking about baptismwas the description of it as a "compact [pactum]" madewith God. A compact, according to commonly acceptedetymology, was an agreement of "peace [pax]" betweentwo parties. The term may also have connoted the newcovenant conveyed by baptism, as a parallel to and afulfillment of the old covenant conveyed by circumcision,and also as a replacement for the old compact with thedevil. Summarizing the compact and the other benefitsof the sacrament, Priminius called upon his readers: "Be-hold, what a compact and promise and confession youhave with God. As a believer, you have been baptized inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the HolySpirit for the forgiveness of all your sins, and you havebeen anointed by the priest with the chrism of salvationfor eternal life. Your body has been clothed in a whitegarment, and Christ has clothed your soul with heavenlygrace. A holy angel has been assigned to protect you; and,having accepted the name of 'Christian,' you have beennumbered in the catholic church and have been made amember of Christ."


The principal lineaments of this cathoiic doctrine ofbaptism had been clearly visible almost from the begin-ning of patristic theology. The doctrine of penance, by con-trast, had followed a zigzag path through the history of theLatin church, as the seemingly contradictory themes of un-limited forgiveness and ascetic discipline had alternated indominance. As infant baptism became the normal proce-dure, except for those converted by the missions, the ideathat baptism forgave actual sins lost much of its practicalsignificance, and penance became the "second form ofcleansing after the sacrament of baptism, so that the evilswe do after the washing of baptism may be healed by themedicines of penance." The tears of penance were "a sec-ond baptism." It was, however, only after this period thatthe sacramental character of penance was clarified. Bede,for example, laid down the requirement that "those whohave withdrawn from the society of the holy church by sin-ning should be reconciled to her by doing penance throughthe official action of the priests." Yet it does seem that "inhis writings . . . the predominant meaning of paenitentiais 'repentance' rather than 'penance.'" It is likewise evi-dent that "Bede does not designate penance by the termsacrament," even though he did include in his discussionsof it most of the elements that eventually qualified it as asacrament. It was the consensus of early medieval theolo-gians that since there was no forgiveness of sins apartfrom the church, the minister of the church had the rightto impose set times of public penance on sinners as ameans of rendering satisfaction to the church. What wasneeded was the conceptual framework of an entire sacra-mental system, within which penance, together with theother rites that conveyed divine grace through earthlymeans, could be defined.

One rite whose doctrinal significance was specifiedmuch more clearly after Augustine than it had been byhim was the offering of masses on behalf of the faithfuldeparted. Because sacrifice for the dead was the practiceof the universal church throughout the world, it wasfitting to conclude that the practice had come down bytradition from the apostles themselves; but the corollaryof such a practice was the belief that the sins of the de-parted could be forgiven, which implied some sort ofintermediate state between heaven and hell. The doctrineof purgatory as the intermediate state had been proposed


tentatively by Augustine and set forth definitely byGregory I. Quoting these two authorities, Julian ofToledo asserted the doctrine as one "defined by the state-ments of many treatises" of the fathers, as well as by suchbiblical passages as Matthew 12:32 and 1 Corinthians3:12-15. The first of these passages meant that "somekinds of guilt are forgiven in this age, but other kinds inthe age to come." The second meant that the fires ofpurgatory could not consume metal, "that is, the greaterand harder sins," but that they could consume wood, hay,and straw, "that is, the lesser and milder sins." Fromthese "milder sins" the elect could eventually be purged,so that "at the end they enjoy the contemplation ofeternal goods." Purgatory was therefore "a transitory fire,"and one over which the church on earth, through itspower to bind sins and to loose them, had authority andjurisdiction.

Exact details concerning the state of the souls of thesaints before the final judgment continued to be a matterof puzzlement and speculation, with some expressingdoubts whether or not "the souls of the holy apostles andmartyrs and of others who were perfect are received intothe heavenly kingdom before the day of judgment." Thewords of Christ to the thief on the cross, "Today you willbe with me in Paradise," were taken to be "unambiguous"proof that the souls of the blest, once they had left theirbodies, were taken up into Paradise "without any intetvalof time." Yet it was clear from the teaching of Gregorythe Great that this was not true of all, for there were somewho needed further purification after death. A specialcase was the condition of the Old Testament patriarchsbefore the descent of Christ to the abode of the dead toopen the gates of Paradise for them. But just as prayerson behalf of the faithful departed belonged to the uni-versal usage of the church, so also it was widely believedthat "the outstanding men of the church who have pre-ceded us to the Lord" acted as "patrons." They prayed forthe salvation of the living, whom they had loved while inthis world, as Dives had prayed even in hell. The schema-tization of the afterlife made possible by the definition ofpurgatory as "the place in which the souls of those who. . . in the hour of death take refuge in penance are ex-amined and chastised" not only became a crucial point ofdifference between East and West, but also helped to


provide the late Middle Ages with the basic frameworkfor their most characteristic and most profound artisticexpression, Dante's Divine Comedy.

In Dante no less than in his predecessors at the be-ginning of the medieval period, purgatory formed part ofa total picture and world view. For "though in itself in-separable from any Christian representation of the Uni-verse, the image of the final catastrophe had seldom im-pinged so strongly on the consciousness of men as at thistime." Near the end of his Sentences Isidore of Sevilledirected his readers away from their quest for a long life,which was a "mortal life," to "that life for whose sakeyou are a Christian, namely, life eternal. . . , the vital life.""The kingdom of the future" had preeminence over "thekingdom of time," and "the heavenly fatherland" over"this present age." The death of a good man was not anend but a beginning, "a migration to a better life." There-fore the hope and happiness of the elect were not to befound anywhere this side of "the future Sabbath" inheaven, where their "remuneration . . . is the vision ofGod." Many of the signs of the end of the world had al-ready been fulfilled, and others were in the process ofcoming true. Yet to come were such signs as the con-version of Israel prophesied by the apostle Paul, but theywould come surely and could come soon. This hope joinedwith faith and love to constitute the three fundamentalcomponents of the Christian way of life.

The Spirit and the Letter

The inclusion of "the faith of the people of Israel" inChrist as a sign of the end of the world was a part not onlyof the continuing Christian effort to come to terms withthe meaning of Romans 9-11 but of the ineluctable de-mand that the church make sense of Judaism and clarifyits relation to the ancient people of God. That demandwas expressed, for example, in the summary of a Jewish-Christian dispute recited by Gregory of Tours, or in thetreatise of Ildefonsus On the Virginity of Mary, whichwas directed "against three unbelievers" but which actu-ally devoted the bulk of its discussion to an argumentwith a Jew. Like their contemporaries in the East duringthese centuries, Western theologians, as the heirs of pa-tristic thought, repeated the standard theological and bib-lical arguments of the earlier disputes with Jewish spokes-

The Spirit and the Letter 35

men. The Pauline distinction between the spirit and theletter had served Augustine, in his oft-quoted treatise Onthe Spirit and the Letter, as the basis for a discussion ofthe contrast between Christianity and Judaism; and itcontinued to be used for this purpose, as well as for thedefense of spiritual against literal exegesis. The prophecyof Jacob about Judah, which had provided the historicalframework within which the church fathers had definedthe place of Judaism in the divine economy as importantbut transitory, was also a standard part of the Easterntheological arsenal against Jewish claims. In Latin theol-ogy, too, this passage was quoted over and over. It wasused to prove to the Jews that the Christ whom they wereawaiting had now come. Its prophecy that the scepterwould not depart from Judah until the coming of the onefor whom it had been prepared meant that the line ofHerod ended at the coming of Christ and that the historicvocation of the people of Israel had now been accom-plished.

Other proof texts and "Christian midrashim" assembledin the "testimonies" of the early fathers against Judaismwere also rehearsed in the medieval treatises. Isidore ofSeville reviewed the life and career of Christ, from hisbirth to his ascension into heaven, and cited proofs fromthe Old Testament for each of the events. Certain individ-ual passages came in for special consideration. The state-ment in the creation story, "Let us make man," which hadlong been used to prove that the Trinity was the Makerof all things and especially of man, could not be taken tomean, as the rabbis maintained, that God had consultedwith the angels when he called humanity into existence.Although the Decalogue, as a part of Christian teaching,was to be obeyed just as it stood, its commandment of theSabbath could not refer to the Jewish observance of Satur-day. The confession of the Shema, "Hear, O Israel: TheLord our God is one Lord," was used by the Jewish criticsof Christian doctrine as a refutation of the dogma of theTrinity; but actually, "all divinely inspired Scripture,Old and New Testament alike, if it is understood in acatholic sense, teaches Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" asone God in Trinity. The writings of the prophets werealso to be understood "in a catholic sense": the statementof Isaiah about the Lord's "going forth" was to be takenas a reference "to the second coming" of Christ; his de-


scription of the suffering servant served to refute theJewish hope of a Messiah who was to come but was notto die; and Daniel's prophecy of the four kingdomsmeant that the fifth kingdom, which would overthrowthem all, would be that of Jesus Christ.

A recurrent theme in these exegetical disputes was thecontrast between Jewish particularism and Christian uni-versalism. To be "understood in a catholic sense," theOld Testament Scriptures must be read as a witness notonly to catholic dogma but to catholicity itself. Of allthe proofs that the Messiah had come, the "truest" was thecalling of the Gentiles and their acceptance of him, whichshowed that he was "the expectation of the nations."For even the nations that did not believe in him "still donot escape the lordship of Christ, so long as there ispressure being put on them from those princes in whosehearts Christ himself is known to dwell by faith," so thatthere was probably "no nation remaining that is ignorantof the name of Christ." This universalism proved thesuperiority of Christianity to Judaism, which remainedconfined to one small nation. Although there was "onechurch in all his saints, the same faith of all the elect, thatis, of those preceding and those following his coming inthe flesh" (which suggested that the Jews had a chrono-logical priority), the Gentiles, by being the first to believein Christ, had taken precedence over the Jews, who hadnow lost the right to be called "Jews," which meant"confessors." The early church had made a gradual transi-tion from Jewish particularity to Christian universality,as the circumcision of Timothy by Paul showed, but itwas clear that all such specifically Jewish observances wereto cease with the coming of Christ. Yet there remainedmany Jews who did not believe in Christ, and their pun-ishment for having rejected him still rested on them.

Although such assertions of Christian universalismeasily became defenses of Christian imperialism, as thereference to "Christian princes" showed, there was alsoa persistent, if less effectual, recognition that the Christiancase in relation to Judaism was not to be carried byprinces and warriors, but by preachers of the gospel. AsIsidore put it, "faith is not in any sense achieved underduress, but by the persuasion of reason and of evidence.In those on whom it is forced by violence it is not perma-nent." He criticized a kind of conversion of Jews that

The Spirit and the Letter . 37

had been brought about "not according to knowledge,because it forced by constraint those whom it shouldhave persuaded by a rational presentation of the faith."Under his chairmanship a council at Toledo decreedin 633 that Jews must not be compelled to join thechurch, but be persuaded to join it of their own freewill. The sword with which the church conquered itsenemies was not physical coercion, but the preaching ofthe word. In keeping with this principle, Isidore's treatiseOn the Catholic Faith against the Jews "is perhaps theablest and most logical of all the early attempts to presentChrist to the Jews." Other attempts, too, claimed to puttheir case "without the prejudice of the Christian faith,"but not always very successfully. Following Isidore andhis patristic sources, Alcuin declared that "faith . . . is avoluntary matter, not a compulsory one," and he "in-veighed tirelessly against compulsory missionary methods[and] . . . the abuse of royal power in the treatment ofconquered nations," including also the Jews.

To the Judaism that had antedated the coming ofChrist, Christian theologians were quite willing to applythe title of "church." The entire congregation of theelect, whether before Christ or after Christ, was called"church," but for the sake of precision it had becomecustomary to use the term "synagogue" for "that portionof the faithful that preceded the time of the Lord's in-carnation" and to reserve the term "church" for that por-tion that followed the incarnation. Applied to pre-Chris-tian believers, "synagogue" was an honorific title. It was away of identifying the congregation of believing Jews as"the mother of the church," which could mean either that"Christ, who deigned to be called the brother of the elect,was born of its flesh" or that "the church is procreated bythe books of the law and the prophets." But "synagogue"could also carry a pejorative connotation, as when Isidoreprophesied that in the age of Antichrist "the synagoguewill rage against the church even more terribly than itpersecuted the Christians at the time of the coming ofthe Savior." Viewed in this light, as the community thathad rejected the Messiah and that had been the implacableenemy of the church ever since, Judaism was seen asheresy and was identified as "the synagogue of Satan,"and the contrast of church and synagogue was taken tobe one not merely of chronology but of opposition. In the


eleventh and twelfth centuries the Christian opposition toJudaism, together with the Christian opposition to Islam,took on a new form, when the commonplaces of conven-tional apologetics had to yield to a deeper theologicalencounter.

It was, however, not chiefly the place of the Jewishreligious community, but rather the meaning of theJewish Bible, that concerned the theologians of theseventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. One of these theolo-gians could declare, concerning the writers of the JewishBible, "Their truth is my faith." But by this he was notin any sense identifying his outlook with that of theJews; he was rather laying claim to the Jewish Bible asthe Christian Old Testament. As in the early church, thisoften implied that the Old Testament held an inferiorplace in comparison with the New. Thus "the newprophecy [of the Book of Revelation] excels the oldprophecies just as the gospel excels the observance of thelaw." It did so because it presented as already fulfilledthose "mysteries regarding Christ and the church which[the old prophecies], seeing them from afar, discernedas yet to come in the future." The correct term for theOld Testament was "figure," but for the New it was"reality." Or one could contrast "the shadow of reality"in the Old with "reality" in the New. In the proper orderof things, "new deeds fulfill ancient promises, realitycasts out the shadow, revelation makes known what wasuncertain and hidden, and the new faith opens up thearcane mysteries of antiquity." The inferiority of the OldTestament to the gospel was especially visible in its ethi-cal standards; it was not legitimate to cite the crueltiesof the Israelites against their enemies as justification forsimilar atrocities, since what was commanded then couldnot be even permitted now, and with the birth of Christ"wars have come to an end throughout the world."

As in the early church the Old Testament, while treatedas obsolete, was nevertheless read as Christian Scripture,so in the Middle Ages it was the latter way of dealingwith the Jewish Bible that dominated the teaching ofthe church: "The Old and the New Testaments are onebook." Statements from the Book of Psalms could taketheir place alongside the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels,because "the Psalmist is speaking affirmatively in the


name of Christ [ex persona Christi], as though this werebeing addressed by the voice of the Son of God to God theFather." The Psalter was principally devoted to the themeof the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. To be sure,this theme was not automatically visible to every reader."When unbelievers read the Scriptures, the place ofChrist there appears to be empty. The reason is that byfailing to review the total context of the Old Testament,they cannot find Him whom a scribe educated in thematters of the kingdom of heaven knows how to find inalmost all the sacred pages." Read in this way, "all divinelyinspired Scripture, Old and New Testament," bore witnessto the catholic and orthodox faith of the church. Every-thing in the Scripture, "even the names and the geog-raphy," was to be understood as "filled with spiritualfigures." Not only such familiar parallels as "Joshua" and"Jesus," which had figured in Christian apologetics sinceearly times, but "all these prophecies find their summa-tion in" the Christian gospel.

To discern the deeper and truer meaning of such pas-sages, it was necessary to understand that biblical wordsand biblical narratives meant more than they said. Re-capitulating the hermeneutics of the church fathers, Isi-dore set down the rule that "anyone who runs through thewords of the law in a carnal way does not understand thelaw at all, but only he who looks at it with the perceptionof his inner understanding, for those who concentrate onthe letter of the law cannot penetrate its secrets." A failureto observe this rule had brought many down the path toheresy and error. In fact, "neither a jew nor a hereticcan understand it, since he is not a disciple of Christ."Against Jews and heretics it was necessary to insist thatthe language of Scripture "is to be understood not onlyhistorically, but also according to its mystical sense, thatis, spiritually." The reliance on the spiritual interpreta-tion of Scripture did not imply a demeaning of the his-torical sense. Bede was particularly insistent on the im-portance of the historical sense, urging that anyone whoundertook to interpret the Bible allegorically take dili-gent care lest "by his allegorizing he desert the explicitfaith based on history." The historical references in Scrip-ture were less in need of explanation than were otherpassages; or if they were not clear, it did not matter as


much. But this did not give the exegete the right to ignoresuch references, for the historical sense continued to bebasic to the task of biblical interpretation.

Although the development of the principles and meth-ods of biblical interpretation is not a matter of direct con-cern to us in this work, they do pertain to our narrative tothe extent that the "fourfold norm of the ecclesiasticaltradition" and the "fourfold structure of the evangelicalnarrative" were thought to provide justification for a four-fold sense of Scripture: historical, allegorical, tropologi-cal, and anagogical. This meant that one should pay at-tention in the study of the Bible to its narrative of events,its intimation of eternal truths, its prescription of moralduties, and its anticipation of future happenings. Some-times the hermeneutical principle could be reduced to athreefold sense—historical, tropological, and mystical—but this difference was more technical than substantive.Eventually it became possible to speak even of a sevenfoldsense of Scripture rather than merely a fourfold sense. Thefundamental issue, however, was the emphasis on thedifference between the letter and the spirit, which impliedthat the literal and historical meaning of a passage didnot exhaust the intention of the word of God beingspoken through it.

The doctrinal importance of these hermeneutical ques-tions lay in their contribution to the authority of Scrip-ture, for it was a Scripture interpreted in this way that wasregarded as authoritative for the teaching of the church.Inspiration by the Holy Spirit was attributed to the Bibleon this basis. The writers of Scripture had not spoken ontheir own authority or from their own knowledge but hadreceived their witness from "the supreme Spirit, whogives life to all, and whose work it is to speak through themouth of all the prophets." To be precise, therefore, onehad to say that the true author of Scripture was the HolySpirit himself, who had dictated to the prophets what theywere to write on his authority, though not necessarily"the physical words in their mouths." This was how theyhad become "the writers of the Sacred Books, speaking bydivine inspiration and dispensing the heavenly command-ments for our instruction." These commandments per-tained not only to the rule of Christian living, but also to"the rule of believing." Authority in the church, there-fore, was to be ascribed to "the apostles of God," for they


had not carried to the nations the results of their ownreflection, but had faithfully transmitted "the disciplinethat they had received from Christ." Thus the apostle Paulwas "the greatest of teachers," as a member of this apos-tolic college.

There could not be any opposition between Paul andother apostles, for there could not be any opposition inScripture anywhere. It was axiomatic that one "shouldunderstand two true statements of the Lord in such a waythat we do not predicate any contradictions of them at all."This did not mean that everything in Scripture was equallyclear. The very cultivation of a multiple sense impliedthat one must go beyond the explicit language of theBible to its deeper intent. Scripture was, then, an ob-scure book to superficial or heretical readers, who usedits obscurity as a cover for their distortion of its true andorthodox interpretation. Some things in Scripture wereadmittedly more obscure than others, as a way of sharpen-ing the understanding of the reader. But the intent ofScripture was clear, so that anyone who understood itscentral message was also in a position to deal with its lesseasily intelligible portions. Thus the authority of the Biblewas the same as the authority of Christ himself, and "ig-norance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ."

Even though it was possible, in the name of this un-derstanding of authority, to set Scripture against patristicantiquity and to dismiss ancient usage as having "noclaim" where it lacked "evident documentation from HolyScripture," the assumption underlying the entire methodof interpreting the Bible was the agreement betweenScripture and tradition. The language of Scripture aboutChrist was quite clear in itself, but the interpretation "ofthe holy fathers and catholic doctors" served to reinforceit. "The brightness of this catholic faith" was the lightthat illumined all of Scripture. The Holy Spirit hadspoken through the prophets and priests of the OldTestament and through "all the doctors of the catholicchurch" of the New Testament. The decrees of the Councilof Ephesus in 431 and the statements of the Gospels wereput on the same level. In making a theological pointagainst heresy, one could refer to "the authority of theHoly Scriptures and the truth of the catholic faith," whichwere in complete harmony. The law and the prophets inthe Old Testament and the Gospels and the apostles in


the New Testament were the inspired authority of thechurch, but it was by "the tradition of the elders" and "themonuments of the fathers" that this authority was en-dorsed for the church. While later centuries were to setthe authority of Scripture and the authority of church andtradition into opposition, it was characteristic of the in-tegrity of the catholic tradition as this was received bythe seventh and eighth centuries in the West that anysuch opposition was regarded a priori as inconceivable.

The City of God

Contradiction between Scripture and church was impos-sible because "the church, as the bride of Christ, the templeof the Most High, and the city of the Most High, andthe city of the great King, flourishes with such greatpower, dignity, and wisdom that it cannot be conqueredby any enemy nor led astray by any friend." Among theseprerogatives and titles of the church, the one most ex-plicitly identified with the Augustinian tradition was"city." Augustine's City of God had developed the ideathat throughout human history there would be two cities,one from God and the other from the devil, the firstfounded by Abel and the second founded by Cain. Theywere both to continue until the resurrection and the lastjudgment. One source for Augustine's conception hadbeen "the holy city, new Jerusalem" in the Book ofRevelation. Early medieval exegesis of Revelation tookit for granted that this "is to be understood as nothingother than the church of the elect," since "the city . . . isthe church of God." If the church was the city of God,its "ramparts are the Holy Scriptutes." Each of the threebooks of the seventh-century Prognostications of theFuture by Julian of Toledo expounded quotations fromAugustine's City of God, which thus continued to exerciseits role as the normative schematization of world historyfrom a Christian perspective.

Another political metaphor for the church, and onewith much more extensive documentation in the Bible,was "kingdom." The term had never lost its eschatologicalconnotations, and these became even more prominentwhen the awareness of the end was aroused. But therewas also the sense that "between the two comings ofChrist, the first in the incarnation, the second in thejudgment, there is a middle age." It was this that the Book

The City of God 43

of Revelation had meant when it spoke of the thousandyears during which Christ and the saints would reign onearth. The millennium referred to "the church of God,which, by the diffusion of its faith and works, is spreadout as a kingdom of faith from the time of the incarna-tion of Christ until the time of the coming judgment."The promise of Christ that he would eat and drink withhis disciples in the kingdom of his Father did not apply tothe millennium nor even to heaven, but to "the presentchurch;" it meant "the kingdom of the Father, that is, thechurch, as often as we either eat or drink him [in theEucharist] worthily." The equation of church and king-dom was such that one could simply speak of "hiskingdom, which is the church." Neither as the kingdomof God nor as the city of God, however, was the empiricalchurch completely free of sin or of sinners. The Augus-tinian doctrine that the holiness of the church did notimply moral perfection was reiterated in the warningthat saints and sinners were mixed together in "the totalbody of the church." Holiness was an appropriate predi-cate for the church because it was in the church, throughsacramental grace, that one received the forgiveness ofsins.

As the city of God and the kingdom of God, in spite ofthe sinfulness of its members, the church was closely iden-tified with Christ. Christ and the church, according toBede, had "one nature." The church had come from theside of Christ, just as Eve had been taken from the sideof Adam. It was important in any such identificationbetween Christ and the church to note the difference be-tween the two as objects of faith: in the Nicene Creed oneaffirmed a faith "in" God and Christ, but only a faith "thathis holy church is." Therefore the glory of the churchwas derived from its relation to Christ. "The church," inBede's phrase, would "never be deserted by Christ," and itssolidity would never be destroyed. As Christ in the daysof his flesh had taught the crowds from the bark of Peter,so now "the bark of Simon is the primitive church" and"to the present day he teaches the nations from the author-ity of the church." This authority was correlated closelywith the authority of Scripture and with that of the dog-matic tradition. The entire authority of the Gospels pro-claimed what all the statements of the apostles affirmed,and this was also what the great broad world believed and


what the Roman church declared. Hincmar of Reimslined up "the authority of the Holy Scriptures" with thatof "the orthodox teachers" and that of the Roman see aswitnesses to the truth of Christ and of his church. Thisalso implied that it was up to the church to decide whichbooks belonged to the canon of Scripture.

The authority of the church was derived from its uni-versality. Lawrence of Canterbury urged the Scots "toobserve the unity of peace and a conformity with thechurch of Christ spread throughout the world." Those whodiffered from this conformity were guilty of preferringtheir own traditions to those of the universal church.There were, of course, "diverse groupings of churchesthroughout the world," but taken together these formed"the one catholic church." All nations participated in thisone church, which was both true and catholic, havingcome from Jerusalem to the nations but having neverthe-less remained "both there and here." What made thechurch catholic was its dissemination throughout theworld and the inclusion of all the nations in its association.The apostles had preached the gospel through all theearth, converting the various peoples of the earth toChrist. Therefore the prophecies of the Old Testamentabout the universality of the dominion exercised by theGod of Israel had not been fulfilled in the history of Israelbut in that of the catholic church, and the prophecy ofChrist about "other sheep" had likewise been fulfilledwhen the entire world had received the opportunity tobelieve in Christ and to come together into the onecatholic church. It was possible to cite the authority ofthe church because it was thought to represent the con-sensus of a single and universal Christian community.

As a result, one could go so far as to charge that "any-one who disturbs the unity of that holy church whichJesus came to bring together is striving as far as he can toundermine Jesus himself." The church was one, made upof Jews and Gentiles, who had been brought togetherinto one faith, one people, and one kingdom. Followingan idea set forth by Cyprian and repeatedly propoundedby theologians, a treatise bearing his name spoke of thechurch as the "seamless robe" of Christ and accusedschismatics of an audacity more overweening than that ofthe soldiers at the crucifixion, who had been unwillingto tear the undivided garment of the Lord. So fundamental

The City of God 45

was the unity of the catholic church to Christian faithand life that apart from its fellowship all faith was vainand all good works were devoid of reward; only within"the unity of the catholic church and the concord of theChristian religion" could either faith or works have anyvalue. Those who set themselves against this unity, notonly in questions of dogma but also in matters of churchdiscipline and practice, were without excuse, even if theyclaimed to adhere to the authority of Old and New Testa-ments and to that of the trinitarian dogma of the church;for "the catholic faith and the concord of fraternal lovemove inseparably along the same path," from which nonecould deviate without threatening catholic unity.

The authority of this one catholic church was guaran-teed and maintained by those who held ecclesiastical office.Christ had ordained offices of varying dignity in thechurch. In Christ, as the one foundation of the church,the twelve foundations of the church, the apostles, wereestablished; and in these twelve, in turn, all the admin-istrators of the church in all ages were joined together.The twelve apostles were the origin of the office ofbishop, and the seventy disciples sent forth by Christrepresented the priests of the church. This identificationof Christian ministers as priests in the Levitical succes-sion, which had begun in the early church, did not obliter-ate the teaching, likewise a part of early Christian doctrine,that by virtue of their baptism all Christian believersparticipated in a priestly ministry. The "royal priesthood"described in the New Testament pertained to all, not onlyto the ordained clergy, for "all those who have beenelected by grace are called priests." Neither functionallynor doctrinal'•• however, did this idea of the universalpriesthood of believers modify the concentration oftheologians and churchmen on the ordained priesthoodand its qualifications for the ministry of preaching andadministering the sacraments.

In their doctrine of the priesthood, as in their doctrineof the church generally, many of the thinkers of this earlymedieval period may aptly be termed "systematic theolo-gians of canon law rather than of dogma." The subject ofsuch ecclesiological predicates as "one" or "catholic" wasthe institutional, hierarchical church, more specifically, thebody of those who acknowledged the authority of the seeof Rome. To be a catholic rather than a schismatic, one


had to follow the well-established authority of the Romanchurch. Those who had separated themselves from thisauthority were accused of supposing that Christ had achurch no broader than their own sect, and hence ofbelieving that power in the church had been taken awayfrom its legitimate incumbents and transferred to thefew who belonged to this "new church." Outside theborders of the true church it was useless to make a boastof one's orthodoxy or of adherence to the catholic faith.Authentic orthodoxy and legitimate church membershipwere inseparable. "For our part," Alcuin announced, "wetake our stand firmly within the borders of the apostolicdoctrine and of the holy Roman church, following theirestablished authority and clinging to their sacred doctrine,introducing nothing new and accepting nothing apartfrom what we find in their catholic writings." This was theonly reliable guarantee of believing correctly and therebyof attaining salvation in the kingdom of heaven.

Standing behind the guarantee was the apostle Peter, towhom the keys of the kingdom of heaven had been en-trusted. He was, in a title originally applied to the Romangod Janus, "the heavenly wielder of the keys, who throwsopen the gate of heaven." In his descriptions of Peter,Bede likewise made use of traditional prerogatives. Hecalled Peter "the patron of the entire church" and "thefirst pastor of the church," as well as "the prince of theapostles." He acknowledged that the command of Christto Peter, "Feed my sheep," had been spoken not only tohim, but to all the disciples. This meant that "the otherapostles were the same as what Peter was, but the primacywas given to Peter for the purpose of commending theunity of the church." All the apostles and their successorswere shepherds, but there was to be only one flock, whoseunity was represented by Peter. Elsewhere Bede couldtake the commission to Peter to mean that "the Lordcommanded Saint Peter to take care of his entire flock, thatis, of the church," adding that Peter had in turn conveyedthis order to the pastors of the church who followed himin the governance of the flock. The charge of Christ toPeter was an argument against the date of Easter ob-served in England, because such an observance conflictedwith "the universal church of Christ throughout theworld." But when he came to identify the "rock" on which

The City of God 47

Christ had promised to build his church, Bede, togetherwith other Latin theologians of the period, seemed tocome closer to the Eastern exegesis of Mathew 16:18-19than to the Western; for he spoke of the church as beingfounded "on the rock of faith, from which [Peter] re-ceived his name," and he stated that "upon this rock"meant "upon the Lord, the Savior, who conferred uponhis knowing and loving confessor a participation in hisname" by calling him "Peter." In this interpretation ofthe "rock," Bede was joined by biblical interpreters ofhis own and of later periods; for "the most astonishingfact" is that "in the specifically exegetical literature ofthe entire Middle Ages one looks in vain for the equation'petra = Peter,' " which was so prominent in the polemicaland canonical literature.

It appears that "in the texts on the powers accorded Peter,Bede nowhere speaks of his particular successors, thoughhe does specify the successors of all the apostles. But inother works there is apparent a special attention to the suc-cession in the Roman see." He customarily referred to Romeas "the holy and apostolic see," and he supported the au-thority of Roman doctrine and practice as catholic againstlocal deviations from it. His countryman and contempo-rary, Aldhelm, used the words of Christ to Peter in Mat-thew 16:18-19 to argue that "if the keys of the kingdomof heaven have been conferred on Peter by Christ..., whocan triumphantly enter into the gates of the heavenlyParadise if he scorns the chief statutes of [Peter's] churchand despises the commandments of its doctrine" aboutthe date of Easter? It was a violation of "the rule of thecatholic faith on the basis of the commandments ofScripture" for English monks not to conform to "thetonsure of Saint Peter, the prince of the apostles." Acentury or so later, another scion of the English churchobjected to the use of salt in the celebration of the Eu-charist on the grounds that "this custom is neither ob-served by the universal church nor validated by theauthority of Rome." The primacy of Peter meant toAmbrose Autpert that there was "a prerogative of ex-cellence in apostolic dignity, not above all the others butwith all the others," and that Peter was "the bearer ofthe person of the church," which had become the coregentof Christ. Although the reluctance of the patristic period


to isolate the primacy of Peter from the authority of theapostolic college as a whole continued in the seventh andeighth centuries, the Western doctrine had already movedunmistakably in the direction of papal monarchy, whichwas to reach its climax in the thirteenth century. In Isi-dore's formula, the pope, as supreme pontiff, was "thechief of priests . . . the highest priest"; it was he who ap-pointed all other priests in the church and who had allecclesiastical offices at his disposal. Therefore even sovigorous a proponent of the special claims and administra-tive autonomy of metropolitans as Hincmar, the arch-bishop of Reims in the ninth century, pointed out, in hisvery defense of these claims, that "solicitude for all thechurches has been committed to the holy Roman church,in Peter, the prince of the apostles." His quarrels werewith individual incumbents of the papacy over particu-lar matters of policy and ecclesiastical administration,never with the status of Rome as the principal see ofChristendom. The church of Rome was "the mother andthe teacher [mater et magistra}," whose authority was tobe consulted on all questions of faith and morals, and herinstructions were to be obeyed. Elaborating on the meta-phor of the church as mother, he characterized "the catho-lic, apostolic, and holy Roman church" as the one whohad "given birth to us in faith, fed us with catholic milk,nourished us with breasts full of heaven until we wereready for solid food, and led us by her orthodox disciplineto perfect manhood." To those who were faithful andpious members of the catholic church, the validity of adoctrine could be established simply by showing what thischurch taught. Not only did the church decide whichbooks belonged in the catholic canon of Scripture; it wasalso the attestation of "the holy see of Rome" that pro-vided credentials for the church fathers, so that "if thereare some who are called doctors [of the church], we donot accept or cite their statements in proof of the purityof the faith unless that same catholic mother church hasdecreed that their statements are sound."

It is likewise on the basis of the writings and thecareer of Hincmar that we may understand how theAugustinian theory of the relation between the city ofGod and the city of man was applied to the relation be-tween the catholic church and the Christian kingdom ofthe Franks. Like the contemporary Byzantine theory of

The City of God 49

church and state, Western political ideology is relevantto our narrative only as it serves to illumine the doctrineof the church. Hincmar's conception of the ideal form ofassociation was "a division of secular and spiritual author-ity, a restriction of each to its own territory, but in such away that they both support each other amicably in theirtasks, and that the church, which stands higher indignity, provides the state with the immutable laws ofreligion and morality as a norm." In expounding thisconception of church and state, he drew for his picture ofthe model secular ruler on the description of the Christianemperor in the fifth book of Augustine's City of God. TheCity of God was also the source for Alcuin's admonitionto Charlemagne that he should, in the words of Vergil,"spare those whom he conquers and vanquish those whoare proud." Apparently from Alcuin's pen came Charle-magne's description of the relative roles of emperor andpope: the former was to defend the church from theattacks of its pagan foes and to foster the catholic faithwithin the church; the latter was to assist the imperialarmies by lifting up his hands to God, as Moses did forthe hosts of Israel, assuring victory for the catholic em-pire over the enemies of God and of his church. God hadgiven him imperial power, Akuin told Charlemagne,chiefly for the protection of the church.

From these and many other statements it is evident that"Alcuin saw in Charlemagne Augustine's ideal Christianemperor, the felix imperator" and from the report ofhis biographer Einhard that Augustine's City of God wasCharlemagne's favorite book it would seem that theemperor accepted this identification. Not only in this rein-terpretation of The City of God, but throughout the defini-tion of what constituted Christian doctrine, the Augustin-ian synthesis of the early Middle Ages articulated "theintegrity of the catholic tradition" in the form that wasto be normative for medieval theology in subsequentcenturies. Nevertheless, it could not be transmitted tothose centuries without further critical examination. Theclarification of what it meant—and of what it did notmean—was an assignment taken up by the theologicalculture that owed its founding to the emperor Charle-magne.

2 Beyond theAugustinian Synthesis

Between the end of the eighth century and the end ofthe ninth, the comfortable assumption of an Augustiniansynthesis that could be accepted by all as the catholictradition was called into question on several basic counts.So dominant were the thought and the vocabulary ofAugustine in defining "the integrity of the catholic tradi-tion" that it has been possible to use titles of his worksas subheads in our first chapter. But when one participantin a controversy could consistently refer to him as "ourAugustine" while another countered that "although hespeaks of 'our Augustine,' he has wandered far away fromhim," it became clear that simply invoking his name oreven quoting proof texts from his writings would notsuffice as a guarantee of catholicity and of orthodoxy. Thegrowing recognition that the Augustinian synthesis mustbe interpreted, and that perhaps it must even be tran-scended, provoked controversy, stimulated research, andnurtured reflection; and out of these three elements wouldbe shaped the distinctive character of medieval theology.

"The error of the modern period" came as a shock tothe spokesmen for the church. Controversy had "suddenlyerupted" after what seemed to have been a period ofdoctrinal tranquility. Was it not true, Alcuin asked hisopponents, that "the entire church of Christ, once theheresies of Eutyches and Nestorius had been condemned,was at peace for a long time, with nothing disturbing it,until this new sect, unheard of in ancient times, arose allat once as a result of your insolence?" "Until the presenttime," according to Paschasius Radbertus, "no one haserred on [the doctrine of the Eucharist] except for those

50

Beyond the Augustinian Synthesis 51

who have also erred on the doctrine of Christ." AndHincmar, attacking what he regarded as heretical innova-tion on the doctrine of predestination, listed the dogmaof the Trinity and the doctrine of the Eucharist as areaswhere his contemporaries were "stirring up idle chatterin opposition to the truth of the catholic faith." In acatalog of christological heretics, an author would enu-merate false teachers from the fourth and fifth centuriesand then move immediately to one who had appeared"just now, during our own times." The fathers anddoctors of Christian antiquity, it was believed, had suc-cessfully routed the various heresies with which the arch-enemy of the faith had sought to subvert the church; but"now," in the ninth century, the devil was "attempting toundermine the fortified walls of the faith with a newengine of war." He was spreading "new poisons of un-belief" in an attempt to destroy the catholic faith. Sowidespread was the devastation caused by this apostasyand controversy that "the study of doctrine, by whichfaith and the knowledge of God ought to be nourished andto grow day by day, is extinct almost everywhere."

Not all of these prophets of doom were on the sameside in the various doctrinal controversies of the age,but all of them were beneficiaries of the spiritual andintellectual revival inaugurated by the emperor Charle-magne; for "on the disintegrated ruins of the ancient*world it built an empire which lacked the strength andthe balance of the old respublica, but which containeddurable spiritual values." With his own interest andcuriosity about theological questions, even the most ab-struse ones, the emperor took up a role as patron of hu-manistic and theological studies. Paraphrasing the wordsof Vergil, his court theologians hailed him as the one "onwhom alone rests the entire welfare of the churches ofChrist"; and they made apostrophes to him a part of theirdogmatic treatises in defense of orthodoxy, thanking himfor having commissioned them to undertake such a de-fense. He himself intervened actively in the disputesbetween East and West over images and over the pro-cession of the Holy Spirit. In response to a warning notto corrupt Charles, Alcuin replied: "It would be impos-sible for him to be corrupted by anyone, for he is a catholicin faith, a king in power, a pontiff in preaching, a judgein equity, a philosopher in liberal studies, a model in

BEYOND THE AUGUSTINIAN SYNTHESIS 52

morals." Whatever may have been the literal accuracy ofsuch panegyrics, Charlemagne did gather together inhis own lifetime and stimulate for the lifetimes of hisimmediate successors an assemblage of scholars andauthors without peer in the Latin West during the sur-rounding centuries. Among these were also many of thethinkers who found it necessary to go beyond the Augus-tinian synthesis.

The Reconsideration of Dogma

The encomium of Charlemagne by Alcuin was evoked bya warning from Elipandus, archbishop of Toledo, who wasaccused, together with Felix of Urgel, of "false doctrine inasserting that there was an adoption of the Son of God."Although it was acknowledged even by his adversariesthat Felix lived an exemplary Christian life and that hehad written much that was consonant with the catholicfaith, he had "diverged from the holy apostolic churchsolely in the use of this one word, 'adoption.' " What hehad confessed and then recanted and then—as becameevident to his opponents in a series of questions and an-swers found among his literary remains after his death—confessed again was a "Spanish error" with which others,including especially Elipandus, were thought to have beeninfected. For while throughout the Middle Ages many of"the seminal ideas . . . came out of Spain," the eighth andninth centuries saw Spain as a seedbed, first of tyrantsand now of schismatics, as well as of apostates; for rumorsof the heresy of adoptionism had spread through all ofSpain and even beyond its borders into the kingdom of theFranks. The Spanish origins of the heresy, particularly itssources in the idiosyncracies of Spanish liturgy (whosevariations from other liturgies continued to interest West-ern theologians), became an issue in the controversy, asdid the relative authority of the see of Rome and the seeof Toledo.

As stated by the principal Spanish opponent of Eli-pandus in the controversy, the issue was that "one partyof [Spanish] bishops says that Jesus Christ is adoptedaccording to his humanity and in no way adopted accord-ing to his divinity," while the other party said that "unlesshe is the proper and only Son of God the Father accord-ing to both natures rather than the adopted Son," onecould not call the crucified one the true Son of God, since

The Reconsideration of Dogma 53

his humanity had been adopted. It was important to notethat neither party was attempting to revive the teachingthat the divine in Christ had been adopted. Elipandusand Felix both believed themselves to be in harmonywith the orthodox catholic faith of the church. Elipandusexplicitly declared that the Son of God had been begottenby the Father "not by adoption but by birth, not by gracebut by nature," and he anathematized as blasphemy theteaching that "the Son of God, begotten outside time,was adopted"; Felix likewise asserted that "we believethat he was adopted by the Father in that [nature] accord-ing to which he was the son of David, but not in thataccording to which he exists as Lord." According to thedivine nature, Felix said, "he must be believed to be trueGod and the true Son of God." But nowhere in theGospels was it said that the Son of God had been "givenover for us" to suffering and death, but only the Son ofman; on the other hand, the attestations of the Son of Godby the voice of God the Father from the cloud or by theconfession of Peter referred only to his divinity as Sonof God, not to his humanity.

The purpose of introducing (or reintroducing) thecategory of adoption into the christological discussion wasto clarify the right of the humanity of Christ to the title"Son of God," the most common and most comprehensivename for Jesus Christ, as a right acquired not by naturebut by adoption. According to Elipandus and Felix, adenial that according to his humanity Christ was theadoptive Son of God would amount to a denial that hewas true man. Once again, the cry of dereliction on thecross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,"served as a touchstone; following a Spanish predecessorof unquestioned orthodoxy, Elipandus attributed it to thehumanity of Christ. The alternative was to relapse intothe docetist heresy of the Gnostics and Manicheans, con-demned by the ancient church. "For if in his flesh, whichhe took upon himself at his very conception from thewomb of the Virgin, our Redeemer is not the adoptive[Son] of the Father but is the true and proper Son, thenhow can you avoid saying that this flesh of his was notcreated and made from the mass of the human race norfrom the flesh of his mother, but was begotten from theessence of his Father, just as his divinity was?" And that,according to Elipandus, was the very heresy into which his


opponents had fallen; they taught "that the Son of Goddid not assume from the Virgin a flesh like ours, exceptfor sin," and even "that he did not take upon himselfa visible form from the Virgin." Thus they taught "thatthe two natures of Christ are mixed together like wineand water." These charges were vigorously denied. Re-jection of the idea of adoption as applied to the humannature of Christ did not amount to a confusion of the twonatures or to a denial of his true humanity. Not confusingthe natures and not dividing them, the opponents ofadoptionism said of the entire person of the God-man:"I confess him to be true man, but I also proclaim him tobe true God and I reverently adore him." But there was agreat difference between confessing him to be true manand calling him an ordinary man, which was the unavoid-able implication of the position that his humanity wasadopted to be the Son of God.

Advocates of that position insisted, on the contrary, thatadoption was the only way to be able to say simultaneouslythat the Father "created all visible things, not through himwho was born of the Virgin but through him who [isSon of God] by being begotten, not by being adopted"and that the Father "redeemed the world through thesame [Son], at once Son of God and Son of man, adoptivein his humanity and not adoptive in his divinity." Ifaccording to his humanity he was the son of David, thishumanity must be the Son of God by adoption, not bynature. For as the Son of man he had not been eternallywith the Father in heaven. Therefore he was "only-begotten by nature" as Son of God, but also, as Son ofman, ' first-born among many brethren," but this "byadoption and grace," not by nature. Adoption was themost appropriate term, for according to the definition ofIsidore an adopted son bore both the name that was his bynature and that which he acquired by adoption. There-fore the title "Son of God" was shared jointly by the hu-manity that had been assumed and by the divinity that hadassumed it. "In other words, they say that 'assumption' and'adoption' are one and the same." This equation of adop-tion with assumption—and sometimes with "conjunction"as well—was identified by the critics of adoptionism asits chief source and was rejected on the grounds that notevery assumption was properly called adoption, eventhough every adoption was some sort of assumption. For


that matter, even "assumption" was not altogether pre-cise, for the Son of God had descended from heaven tobecome incarnate as man, not to assume a man. Adop-tionism had to say either that the humanity of Christhad been adopted in the womb of Mary or that the adop-tion had come later, after he had lived a perfect life asman. Either alternative led to heresy. On the basis of thebiblical parallel between Moses and Christ, Elipandusargued that Christ was the adoptive Son of God; but to hisopponents the adoption of Moses by the daughter ofPharaoh was proof that "one who is adopted is called'son' in an improper and not in an essential sense," andthat therefore the term was not a fitting one for Christ,except, of course, as it applied to his "adoption" by Joseph,who was not his true father.

It was, however, a fitting term for the Christian. Christwas the adopter, not the adoptee, while the believers werethe adoptees. When Elipandus compared the humanChrist as adopted with "the other saints," he overlookedthe fundamental difference between them: "Even thoughthe saints are called 'gods,' they are not worshiped; onlyChrist is called 'God' and is worshiped." The baptism ofChrist by John the Baptist manifested the difference. Forbelievers, baptism was the means by which they werechanged from "children of wrath" to sons of God through"the grace of adoption," but this was not true of Christ.Felix appeared to be teaching that Christ, too, had neededto be baptized in order to become the Son of God. But thebaptism administered by John was not a means of re-generation even for those who needed it, much less forChrist, who did not need it. Indeed, precisely becauseChrist did not need to be adopted but was the Son of Godby nature, he could confer the grace of adoption on hisfaithful adherents. On the basis of the words of Augustinethat "we have not been born of God, as the Only-begottenwas, but have been adopted through his grace," it wasargued that Christ could not have conferred this grace ifhe himself had been in need of it. The adoptionist con-troversy may well have stimulated more careful consider-ation—in this and in subsequent centuries—of the differ-ence between the "natural" sonship of Christ and the"adoptive" sonship of believers. Thus Beams of Liebana,leader of the Spanish opposition to Felix and Elipandus,not only made the polemical point that "adopted" was


the right term not for the one who did the choosing, butfor those who were chosen; he also developed the exegeti-cal point in his commentary on the Apocalypse. Thechurch was "adopted by God as a daughter" and throughits adoption came to share in the humility of Christ. Christwas the firstborn among his brethren because they werethe ones who had been adopted, and the likeness betweenhim and them had to be interpreted in the light of thedifference.

For there was, Beatus wrote against Elipandus, "a greatdifference between Christ as man and the whole multitudeof the saints," a difference that came down to the axiomthat "Christ could exist without them, all by himself, butthey could neither live nor exist without Christ." There-fore such titles as "Christ" and "Lord" were used of him"in a singular sense," to show that when they were appliedto the saints they were intended in a derivative sense. Byhis failure to observe this distinction, Elipandus was, ineffect, making Christ and the Christian the same, nullify-ing the uniqueness of Christ, who alone among all menwas God himself and whom therefore "we segregatefrom other men." No one was really like him becauseeven those who were adopted as sons of God did notthereby "begin to be God by nature." And "how could hebe unique," Alcuin asked, "if he were adopted, just aswe are?" Strictly speaking, the term "servant" did notapply to him, even though "the form of a servant" was abiblical term for his humiliation. For the same reason, theanguish in Gethsemane must mean that he was giving anexample of how to suffer and pray. What the Westerndefenders of orthodoxy did in response to adoptionismwas to assert their equivalent of the Eastern doctrine of"enhypostaton," according to which "the hypostasis ofthe Logos, who previously was simple, becomes com-posite." Because Christ had not first been a mere man andthen one in whom God dwelt, his human nature from itsinception had been "one person with God." By the in-carnation, therefore, "the humanity entered into theunity of the person of the Son of God. . . . In the assump-tion of the flesh by God, what is absent is the person ofa man, but not the nature of a man."

A corollary—or, to be more precise, at least chrono-logically, a presupposition—of the idea of "enhypostaton"was the communication of properties between the two


natures in the one person of Christ. The proponents ofadoptionism were obliged to affirm such a communicationof properties, as when Felix, echoing an earlier Spanishsource, asserted that "because of the singularity of theperson in which the divinity of the Son of God and hishumanity have actions in common, the things that aredivine are sometimes referred to the human and the hu-man things that are done are from time to time ascribedto the divine." As an example he quoted the passage: "Noone has ascended into heaven but he who descended fromheaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven"; for it wasobvious "that the Son of man did not descend from heavenand he was not there before he was born on earth." Felix'sinterpretation seemed to imply, however, that the com-munication of properties was chiefly verbal, since no onein the controversy took such a passage of the New Testa-ment to be saying that the humanity of Christ had existedin heaven before being born of the Virgin. When Felixsaid that "the Son of God in the Son of man is sometimescalled Son of man" and that "the Son of man in theSon of God is titled Son of God," Agobard replied: "Doyou mean 'is called' rather than 'is'?" and "Do you mean'is titled' rather than "is?" As in the case of the Nestoriandoctrine of the person of Christ, so also in the case of theadoptionist doctrine, there was a suspicion that the com-munication of properties was merely an attribution ofproperties but not a genuine exchange.

For Beatus and his allies, there was a real exchange,so that one could say, in accents reminiscent of earlyChristian language, "My God suffered for me, my Godwas crucified for me," but could not say, "The man died,and God raised him up." For all such predicates belongedto "the single person" of the God-man, not to one or theother nature. Thus "the decisive mistake of the Spanishtheologians," according to their opponents, "consists intheir making sonship a predicate of the nature ratherthan of the person." This seemed to lead to two Sons ofGod, perhaps even to two Gods. For although Felixaverred, "I am not dividing the persons, I am merely dis-tinguishing the natures," there seemed in fact to be "noway to avoid saying two persons in Christ," because every-thing that would have been required for a duality of per-sons was found in Felix's writings. If Christ was a naturalSon of God and an adoptive Son of God, he must be


"one person and another person [alter et alter]." Butorthodox dogma taught that "he was born of his Fathernot as another person [alter] than the one born of hismother, but in another manner [aliter]." The alternative,regardless of how one avoided the formula itself, was"duality," the specter of a divided Christ, whom no one"could very well put back together with mere emptywords." As Hincmar summarized the case against adop-tionism, "there are not two Christs, nor two Sons, but oneChrist, one Son, both God and man, because God, theSon of God, assumed a human nature, not a [human]person."

Hincmar's assertion of the unity of Christ was part of atreatise devoted to the unity of God the Trinity. For al-though the primary intent of the adoptionist movementwas to safeguard the integrity of the humanity of Christ,some of its opponents, in their defense of what theydenned as Chalcedonian and Nicene orthodoxy, believedthat the divine in Christ was also at issue in the con-troversy over adoption. The polemical stand against adop-tionism may have been a factor in the official affirma-tion of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spiritfrom the Son as well as from the Father. Paulinus madehis case against Felix a trinitarian as well as a christo-logical one, and Beatus attacked Elipandus first for "thatTrinity of yours, which we do not accept," and then for"that Christ of yours, whom we do not believe to be as youteach." Arius had made the three persons of the Trinityinto three Gods, Sabellius had made the one nature ofthe Trinity into one person, and Elipandus had confusedthe three persons with one another. The opponents ofadoptionism were not sure whether it was descended fromArianism or whether it was guilty of Sabellianism; butthey were convinced that despite its protestations ofNicene orthodoxy and its explicit disclaimers of both theArian and the Sabellian heresies, adoptionism could notpurge itself of the taint of error with which the veryterm "adoption," when applied to Christ, had been markedsince the early church. And therefore adoptionism wascondemned at the Synod of Frankfurt in 794.

At least in the case of Elipandus, the use of this termdid bear some relation to the dogma of the Trinity, forhe himself connected his christological opponents with


the rather bizarre trinitarian doctrine of Migetius, againstwhich he also contended. According to Elipandus, Mige-tius taught a doctrine of the Trinity in which the Fatherwas believed to be David the king and the Holy Spiritwas said to be Paul the apostle. As for the person of theSon of God in the Trinity, Migetius was said to haveidentified him as the descendant of David according to theflesh. In opposition to this version of the dogma of theTrinity, Elipandus recited the orthodox teaching that therewere "three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, spiri-tual, incorporeal, undivided, unconfused, coessential, con-substantial, coeternal in one divinity, power, and majesty,having no beginning and no end, but abiding forever."The person of the Son in this Trinity was not, as Migetiussaid, the same as the son of David, born on earth withinhuman history, but the one born of the Father withoutany beginning and outside time and history. This was thecatholic and orthodox faith "in accordance with the tradi-tions of the fathers," and this had to be defended againstany confusion between the Son of God and the sonof David, whether such confusion be that of Beams, whodenied that the son of David had been adopted in theincarnation, or that of Migetius, who equated the son ofDavid with the Son of God in the Trinity.

A more significant discussion of the dogma of theTrinity than that between Elipandus and Migetius wasthe controversy provoked by the trinitarian doctrines ofGottschalk of Orbais, who seems to have been supportedby Ratramnus. The issue in the controversy was thepropriety of speaking about "trine deity [trina deitas],"as Gottschalk did. The controversy arose, according toGottschalk's opponent, as a question about the appropri-ateness of "a hymn whose author is completely unknown,in which the words appear: 'We entreat thee, O trineand single Deity.' " With the memory of the conflict overadoption still vivid, some theologians appeared to dismissthe matter with a reference to the condemnation of Felixby Alcuin and the Synod of Frankfurt in 794. But whilesome of the polemics developed in that condemnationwere pertinent also here, it was also possible for Gott-schalk to quote the orthodox case against Felix in supportof his position. In addition to the verse from the hymn,as well as similar words in other hymns, another occasion


for the dispute was the statement of Jerome that in theTrinity the Father was "the principal Spirit" and theSon "the right Spirit" and the Holy Spirit "the Spirit ac-cording to the proper name," which seemed to mean thatthere were "three Spirits." Instead, Gottschalk arguedthat Christian monotheism precluded the use of suchterms as "three Spirits" or "three deities" for the threepersons of the Trinity, but that it was not inconsistentwith this monotheism to say that "God, [who is] Lordand Spirit, is trine in person and one in nature."

Even in his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, however, Gott-schalk was concerned with the "essential questions oftrinitarian theology and of the theology of the incarna-tion." In arguing for the notion of trine deity he wasconcerned to find a formula that would avoid the implica-tion "that the humanity was assumed not only by the Son,but at the same time by the Father and the Holy Spirit,since it was evidently the divinity that assumed thehumanity." "Trine deity" was such a formula, for it meantthat "each person of the Trinity has its own deity anddivinity." In the incarnation, therefore, only the deity ofthe second person of the Trinity assumed a human nature.Each person of the Trinity, moreover, was "in itself [perse] a primary power," so that in the Godhead "power,""principle," and "fullness" were all both single and trine.Gottschalk's adversaries attacked this formula as incon-sistent with Scripture and the catholic faith. For Scripturedid not divide the Trinity in this manner, but taught "asingle and identical action of [the Trinity] everywhere";in the story of the annunciation, for example, the angelGabriel prophesied that the incarnation of the Son wasto take place when "the Holy Spirit will come upon[Mary], and the power of the Most High [the Father]will overshadow [her]," thus naming the entire Trinity asparticipant in the action. Ascribing to each person of theTrinity "its own and special deity" instead of saying thatthe deity was common to the three persons and was there-fore single could not avoid tritheism, for it meant thatthere were "three deities," one for each person of theTrinity.

The only alternative to tritheism, if "trine deity" wereto be accepted, was a separation of the divine nature intothree parts, which likewise would be a surrender oftrinitarian monotheism. Arguing that, to the contrary,


"God would not be one, true, and living unless he hadbeen and were a trine God," Gottschalk insisted that hewas introducing "no plurality at all" into God and that histheory would safeguard monotheism. It was, to be sure, aspecial sort of monotheism, fundamentally different from"the poverty-stricken doctrine of the Jews, [who worship]a Majesty singular in loneliness and one in person." Gott-schalk's monotheism was opposed to the teachings of theArians about "three gods" as well as to the ideas of theSabellians about a "God one in person." But the sus-picion of his opponents that Gottschalk, despite thisconventional rejection of both heresies, was closer to theArian than to the Sabellian extreme of trinitarian errorfound some substantiation in his own words; for whilehe repudiated Arianism with the deprecation "Far be itfrom me," his rejection of Sabellianism was accompaniedwith the stronger formula "Farther still be it from me."It was, he maintained, Sabellian to "believe and confessthat the deity is personally one." To the chief opponentof Gottschalk, Hincmar, it was nonsense to speak of thedeity as "personally trine," since "deity" was the same asthe divine essence or nature, which must be single. TheShema, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord,"meant that there could be no plurality and no numberingin the deity. From Boethius he quoted the axiom thatoneness excluded numbering and that the repetition ofoneness without differentiation did not introduce plural-ity. Another word for "Trinity" would be "Triunity, thatis, unity three times but not trine unity [ter unitas, etnon trina unitas]." Hence it would be permissible to speakof "God trine in persons" or of "trine Trinity," but notof "trine deity." Hincmar's case against Gottschalk pre-vailed, and the formula "trine deity" was condemnedat the Synod of Soissons in 853.

Both the teaching that the humanity of Christ was"adopted" and the idea that the deity was "trine" wereaccused of violating the authority of tradition. The accu-sation would, of course, reappear in all the controversiesof the ninth century—and beyond. But in these contro-versies it acquired special significance because it involveddogmas universally accepted throughout the church.Therefore the problem of tradition would appear tomerit more formal consideration here. "I ask, therefore,"Paulinus inquired of Felix, "who was that teacher of error,


one who had never been a disciple of the truth, fromwhom you learned that Christ was 'God by name' and 'anadoptive son?" Alcuin demanded to know where suchterms had been hiding for so long. They certainly hadnot come from Scripture. At no other place in the worldand at no other time in history since apostolic times hadthe church taught any such thing. "The catholic churchhas never believed this, has never taught this, and hasnever yielded her assent to those who believe wrongly,"asserted Pope Hadrian, as had the Synod of Frankfurtbefore him. Gottschalk's version of the dogma of theTrinity was no less an innovation. It was, according toHincmar, Gottschalk's "custom to invent new and unheardof things, which are contrary to the ancient understandingof the orthodox." Therefore one should not be surprised athis teaching, for "ever since childhood he has alwayssought out novel ways of expression and is still alwaystrying to find out how he can say things that no oneelse says." Yet it was not quite accurate to say that theseseveral theories were completely unheard of. To thedefenders of orthodoxy they represented the rise of "anew heresy, or rather the recrudescence of an old one."Gottschalk had been inspired by Arius; Felix, too, wassometimes accused of embracing Arianism, but it wasmuch more common to identify him and Elipandus withthe Nestorian heresy. This implied, of course, that theweight of the orthodox tradition, originally directedagainst these earlier heresies, was now overwhelminglyon the side of the party opposing the modern heresies.

Sometimes the controversy seemed to become a matterof pitting one part of the tradition against another. Felixmaintained that it was customary among Spanish theo-logians to refer to Christ as "adopted," and Elipandusquoted a eucharistic prayer from the liturgy used in Spainthat spoke of "the passion of the adoptive man." Otherpassages from the Mozarabic Rite also appeared to referto the humanity of Christ this way. The counterclaimthat, if "your Ildefonsus in his prayers called Christ'adoptive,' our Gregory, the pontiff of the Roman see andthe brilliant teacher of the whole earth, in his prayersdid not hesitate always to call him 'only-begotten,'"seemed to assume a greater uniformity of liturgical usagethan the language of the Latin fathers or even of the anti-adoptionists themselves would bear out. Although the


term "angel" for Christ had long been under a cloud ofsuspicion, it continued to be used by orthodox theo-logians in Spain, but also elsewhere. It was also possible inSpain to speak of "Christ clothed in a man." Yet similarexpressions could be found in other orthodox writers aswell, including the writers who attacked Felix and Eli-pandus. Although he was writing against Elipandus,Beatus of Liebana was not restrained from saying: "Youknow that the Logos himself assumed a man [assumpsithominem], that is, a rational soul and the flesh of a man,and was made man while yet remaining God." Elsewherehe could refer in one sentence to "the humanity of theassumed flesh" and in the next to "the man who hadbeen taken up" in the incarnation. Also writing againstElipandus, Alcuin employed the title "the assumed man,"which he likewise applied to Christ in his works againstFelix. On the basis of a quotation from Augustine, bothAlcuin and Gottschalk called the humanity of Christ "theman who had been taken up." Similar language appearedin the works of other orthodox theologians as well, andAmbrose Autpert was even able to distinguish between"the assumed man" and "the Son."

Significantly, however, the term "adopted" did not seemto appear in these sources, whether patristic or Carolin-gian, with the possible exception of the Spanish liturgy.Isidore had proliferated titles and metaphors for Christ,but "adoptive" was not among them; on the contrary,Isidore could be quoted in opposition to adoptionism. Socould many other church fathers, including Greeks, suchas Gregory Nazianzus or Cyril of Alexandria in his con-flict with Nestorius. Felix attempted to invoke the author-ity of Athanasius, but this was turned against him, withthe charge that he had omitted some words that wouldhave been embarrassing to his position. Chiefly, of course,it was "the ecclesiastical usage" of the Latin fathers thatwas being contested by the two sides. A passage fromAmbrose, "by our very own usage [in ipso usu nostro}an adoptive son is also a true son," was quoted byElipandus to prove that humanity of Christ had beenadopted; it was charged that Felix quoted it in theform, "by our usage He Himself [ipse usu nostro] is anadoptive son and a true son." Marius Victorinus appearedin the lists of patristic authorities cited in opposition toadoptionism, although he had in fact said of Christ: "He


is not a son in the same way that we are, for we are sonsby adoption, he by nature. Yet Christ, too, is a son by akind of adoption, but only according to the flesh." Therewas a more serious problem in the works of Hilary, whohad written: "The dignity of [Christ's] power is notforfeited when the lowliness of the flesh is adopted[adoptatur]." This served Elipandus as proof for hisdoctrine of the adoption of the flesh. But because theprevious sentence of the quotation read, "God is adored[Deus adoratur]," Alcuin and Hincmar accused the adop-tionists of tampering with the text of Hilary, which ac-cording to them, should have read: "The dignity of[Christ's] power is not forfeited when the lowliness ofthe flesh is adored." As textual critics, the adoptionistswere right and the orthodox were wrong; but when itcame to the interpretation of the text, it was the otherway around: "adopt" was no more than a synonym for"assume" or "take up." Hilary had explicitly rejected theidea that salvation came through the offering of anadopted Son for those who were to be adopted, and inother passages, quoted by the critics of adoptionism, hadattacked the use of "adoption" as a term for Christ.

In the controversy with Gottschalk over "trine deity,"similar claims and counterclaims were exchanged. Indefense of the hymn verse on which his doctrine wasbased, Gottschalk compiled a catena of passages from thefathers where the term "trine" had appeared, includingthe Acts of the Third Council of Constantinople, held in680-81, at which the orthodox teaching of two actionsand two wills in Christ had been defined. In the Latinversion of these Acts Gottschalk found an anathema pro-nounced against the Arians for teaching "three deities,"but also an edict affirming that "the trine deity is to beglorified together." Hincmar replied that the manuscriptof the Acts of the council had been "adulterated" byGottschalk through the addition of "this noun of femininegender and this adjective," namely, "trine deity [trinadeitas]." Later he did allow that because of the complexityof Greek theological vocabulary (which, he admitted, hehimself could not read), someone might have renderedthe Greek text of the Acts this way, "by interpreting wordfor word." But on the basis of his experience with Gott-schalk in the predestinarian controversy, Hincmar wasquite ready to charge his opponent with falsifying patris-


tic texts, as well as with quoting them out of context,distorting their meaning, and failing to identify his quota-tions by title and chapter. This last charge was directedalso at Elipandus by his opponents; "you have," they said,"failed to mention the names of the books and the num-bers of the chapters, so as to make it more difficult toinvestigate your error." Hincmar attacked Gottschalkwith other patristic authorities, too, such as the AthanasianCreed.

Yet Hincmar's primary authority in this as in othertheological matters was Augustine. Alcuin's compilationof passages from Augustine on the dogma of the Trinityserved Hincmar as a polemical resource. It was all themore appropriate to rely on Augustine's interpretationof this dogma because Hincmar's opponents were "muti-lating" and "distorting" Augustine's teachings. Hence thefirst book of On the Trinity seemed almost to have beenwritten to refute those who were misapplying these teach-ings. Augustine had written there that "deity . . . is theincorporeal unity of the Trinity," a formula that Hincmarquoted as: "The unity of the Trinity is the incorporealdeity." Gottschalk claimed that Augustine had frequentlyused the term "trine unity," which meant "neither thesolitary singularity of one person nor the plurality ofthree gods"; and he did have irrefutable support in thewritings of Augustine for this claim. But Hincmar re-torted that his detailed collation of various manuscriptsshowed "trine deity" to be a heretical interpolation intothe text of Augustine, who had never used the term. Infact, Hincmar alleged, the forger who had tampered withthe manuscripts of Augustine had not had the temerity toinsert the phrase "trine and single deity," which wouldhave been too obvious, but had put in the words "trineand single truth" instead.

In the same way, the adoptionists were accused of"feigning that [Augustine] says something that we do notfind among his statements." They "mistakenly count himamong the partisans of [their] sect." This they did,according to Alcuin, by attributing to Augustine entireletters in which the term "adoption" was used, so as togive the impression that he had taught the exact oppositeof his genuine doctrine. Elipandus's confession of faithmade a point of citing several testimonies from "theeloquence of Saint Augustine." "Who is this Augustine,


who is supposed to have said that the voice of the Father[at the baptism of Christ] thundered out over an adoptiveson?" Paulinus asked, adding: "But I will not demean my-self by acknowledging this Augustine with you." Al-though it had to be conceded that many of the adoption-ists' formulas had come from the authentic sermons ofAugustine, "something has been added by heretical per-versity." Where Augustine had referred to the believer as"adopted man," Elipandus quoted him as saying thatChrist "according to his humanity is called an adoptedman"; and where Augustine had said that "he [Christ]is called Son of God together with the man He had as-sumed," Elipandus rendered the passage as: "He is calledSon of God together with the adoptive man, and theadoptive man is called Son of man together with theLogos." Such statements as these, Alcuin retorted, hadnever come from Augustine or from any other catholictheologian. For he had taught "that the man became oneperson with God and is the one Son of God and is God."

Although Western thinkers had been assuming forcenturies that there was complete unanimity among themon the dogma of the Trinity and the dogma of the twonatures in Christ and had been quoting Augustine asthe principal spokesman for that unanimity, it becameevident in the controversy over adoptionism and in thecontroversy over "trine deity" that even these two dogmaswere subject to serious reconsideration. As the basis forthe assumption of unanimity in dogma had been theAugustinian synthesis, so it was also an unconventionalreading of Augustine that underlay the reconsideration.Despite the contemporary anathemas pronounced on theadoptionists and on Gottschalk, the problems raised overthe doctrine of the two natures were not to be resolveduntil the doctrine of the person of Christ was incorporatedinto a comprehensive interpretation of the work of Christ,in which the redemptive function of the human naturereceived its due; and the status of Augustine as a theo-logical authority required for its clarification a morethorough investigation of how the disparate elementsof the patristic tradition, including his writings, could bebrought together into a new orthodox synthesis.

The Rule of Prayer

In his attack on Gottschalk's idea of "trine deity," Hinc-mar cited not only the authority of the church fathers

The Rule of Prayer 67

and Scripture, but also that of the liturgy. He quoted theaxiom of Prosper of Aquitaine, which by now was beingattributed to Pope Celestine I, that "the rule of prayershould lay down the rule of faith." It was a principle thathe found useful in another controversy with Gottschalk.For his part, Gottschalk also relied on the rule of prayeras a doctrinal authority. It was "from the conclusion of ahymn" that the controversial phrase "trine deity" hadcome. From another hymn Gottschalk argued that since"Lord" and "divinity" were used interchangeably, it wasas proper to speak of "trine divinity" as it was of "thetrine Lord." It was equally proper when a hymn spoke ofthe humanity of Christ as "the flesh of God." The lan-guage of the church's worship was proof that the term"trine" did not compromise the oneness of God, for thechurch used the singular number when it prayed: "Blessedbe [Benedicta sit] the Holy Trinity." The Trisagion,whose theological interpretation had been an issue in thechristological controversies of the East, was translated byGottschalk as "trine holiness"; but Hincmar objected thatthis was a mistranslation, since the term really meant"thrice holy." On the basis of the liturgical practice oftrine immersion in what was nevertheless, by apostolicprecedent, called "one baptism," Gottschalk maintainedthat Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were "one in nature andtrine in person." In reply Hincmar pointed out that trineimmersion was by no means a universal observance, for insome provinces a single immersion had become the prac-tice as a witness against Arianism; and such a "differenceof custom does not jeopardize the one faith of the holychurch." Hincmar also sought to restrain the practiceof drawing theological conclusions from the rule ofprayer by ascribing some instances of "trine" in Christianpoetry to the exigencies of Latin meter. But the best ofChristian poetry—notably the hymns of Ambrose—conformed to the principles of trinitarian orthodoxy inshowing "that one God, the Holy Trinity of a singledeity, is always . . . to be understood, believed, andpreached."

Replying to Gottschalk's use of the liturgical formulafrom collects addressed to the Son, "who livest and reign-est with God the Father," Hincmar took the formula asthe exception that proved the rule set down by ancientcanons, "that when one is officiating at the altar, prayershould always be addressed to the Father through the


Son" rather than directly to the Son. These same canonswere also quoted in the controversy over adoptionism.The advocates of adoptionism laid great stress on the useof the terms "adoption" and "adoptive" in the Spanishliturgies, whose rule of prayer seemed to lay down theirrule of faith. But in opposition to such local usage therestood the universal rule of prayer as set down by thechurch of Rome. Its liturgical tradition went back toPeter and Paul themselves, and therefore its usage wasauthoritative. Hence it was appropriate to quote from theRoman liturgy in establishing the orthodoxy of the anti-adoptionist postion. The conclusion appended to mostcollects, in the Roman liturgy but not only there, "throughJesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns as God withthee in the unity of the Holy Spirit," was a reference to"the Jesus Christ who was born of the Virgin," whotherefore was not the adoptive Son of God, but the trueSon. For the fundamental issue between adoptionism andorthodoxy came down to worship. "One has to ask,"Alcuin said, "whether we are to adore or worship any-thing except the true God. If not, the inference mustbe drawn: 'How is it that you worship the Son of theVirgin if he is not true God?' "

The most important liturgical component in the caseagainst adoptionism was the appropriateness of callingthe Virgin Mary "Theotokos," although by now this wasthe usage of both liturgy and dogma. The apparent paral-lels between adoptionism and Nestorianism gave promi-nence to this title. Felix was quoted as having said of Mary:"By nature she is properly the mother of the assumed hu-manity, but by grace and honor she has become the motherof the divinity." This contradicted the practice of the catho-lic church throughout the world, "which does not ceaseconfessing with a free and public voice that the blessedVirgin Mary is Theotokos, that is, God-bearer." In opposi-tion to Felix it was necessary to assert that Mary was theTheotokos; to say, as Elipandus did, that God had notcreated the world through him who was born of theVirgin was to deny the doctrine of Theotokos. The ortho-dox use of this name was proof that the entire incarnateChrist was the one Son of God. Gottschalk was, for once,a spokesman for orthodoxy when he affirmed the titleand declared that "Saint Mary, ever-Virgin, is not only thebearer of the man Christ, but is also, by virtue of the unity


of his person, Theotokos, that is, God-bearer." As a resultof the conflict over adoptionism, the Carolingian periodwas "an epoch in which the doctrine of the Council ofEphesus about the 'God-bearer' was worked out" forWestern theology.

It was such an epoch, however, because during theeighth and ninth centuries the Western doctrine of Mary,which, except for the thought of Jerome and Ambrose,was largely dependent on that of the East, resumed adevelopment of its own. As in the dogmas of the Trinityand the incarnation, so in this doctrine there was a suddeneruption of discussion and debate after centuries of arather static harmony. So thoroughly had the churchfathers beat down those who taught falsely about theVirgin that "from then until the present there has notarisen any revival of error about her"; but "now, by theimprudence of certain brethren," questions were beingraised for the first time concerning the doctrine of Mary.It had been emphasized already in the seventh centurythat this doctrine had to be considered as a unit, so thatsomeone who became confused on any part of it would beconfused about all of it. It is noteworthy that the authorof that judgment, Ildefonsus of Toledo, "not only de-fended the virginity of Mary, but was certainly instru-mental in furthering her cult." For as the very title"Theotokos" suggested, this was a doctrine in which therule of prayer played an even more prominent part thanusual in laying down the rule of faith.

Evidence to support this contention comes from theprayers and hymns that were addressed to Mary. While inthe patristic period in the West "nobody observed theday of the Mother of God . . . [and] everyone prayed toSt. Stephen, but no one turned to Mary," apostrophes toher now become increasingly common in Western de-votion and liturgy. "I pray thee, I pray thee, O holyVirgin," Ildefonsus wrote, "that I may have Jesus by thesame Spirit by whom thou didst give birth to Jesus."Admonishing his brethren to pray to the Virgin, AmbroseAutpert expressed the petition that "through her whatwe have done wrong may be excused, what we offer shemay accept, what we ask she may grant, and what we fearshe may excuse." To this same petition he elsewhere ap-pended the words: "because we cannot find anyone morepowerful in merits than thou art for placating the wrath


of the Judge, thou who didst merit to become the motherof the Redeemer and Judge." Nor was it only individualpiety that directed its prayers to Mary. Although qualifiedwith the condition, "if it so please someone," there were,according to Alcuin, celebrations of "the mass of the holyTheotokos and ever-Virgin Mary on certain days." A half-century or so later, Paschasius Radbertus cited "theauthority of the church and the tradition of the holyfathers" to prove that "the blessed and glorious VirginMary is sung and proclaimed everywhere as the one whohas been exalted in great glory above the choirs of theangels." Only Christ, John the Baptist, and Mary, hesaid, were honored by having their birthdays commem-orated in the calendar of the church, and he used "thefestival [of Mary] that you are celebrating today" as thebasis for an exhortation to humility. Everyone insisted,of course, that such liturgical celebration of Mary didnot detract from, but enhanced, the honor paid to herSon.

Another part of the same process was the invention oftitles and prerogatives for Mary, analogous to those ofEastern liturgy and theology. To Ambrose Autpert she was"higher than heaven, deeper than the abyss, one whodeserves to be called mistress of the angels, terror of hell,and mother of the nations"; again, "the temple of theLord, the shrine of the Holy Spirit," "the promised land,"and "the ladder of heaven on which God descends toearth." From such passages as Isaiah 11:1 came the desig-nation of Mary as "branch [virga]," which, while presentalso in Greek theology, had a special appeal to Latinsbecause it was a homonym for "virgin [virgo]." Thepatristic identification of Mary as the "garden locked"and "fountain sealed" continued to be a way of speakingabout her perpetual virginity. Like the familiar parallelbetween Mary and Eve, most of these titles were based ona typological interpretation of the Old Testament inrelation to Mary, but Mary, in turn, was seen as a type ofthe church. Therefore "the mariological interpretation"of the vision of "a woman clothed with the sun" in theApocalypse, "which we take for granted, occurs only asan exception in the commentaries of the early MiddleAges," since the passage was usually applied to the church.This and other titles could sometimes be taken as referring"specifically to her, although generally to the church."


Like Maiy, the church could be called "Theotokos," forthe church was "simultaneously a bride and an immaculatevirgin, as a virgin conceiving us by the Holy Spirit andas a virgin giving birth to us without pain." The "firstgospel," translated into Latin as "she shall crush [ipsaconteret] your head," was part of this typology, for it wasfulfilled when the church destroyed the temptations ofthe devil as soon as they arose; but it was also beginningto be seen as a prophecy of Mary, the woman throughwhose obedience the disobedience of the first womanwould be undone.

Assigning to Mary so prominent a role in salvationmeant that she was in some sense a mediatrix betweenGod and man. "Through her we have merited to receivethe Author of life," Paulinus wrote, and Ambrose Aut-pert spoke of "the world redeemed through her" and of"the life of our race repaired through her." She was hailedas the one who "repairs earthly things and restoresheavenly things." Her mediation obtained the forgivenessof sins and the purification of the sinner, and her inter-cession healed the sick. As one whose humility had"merited the union of God and man" in her Son by"drawing down the Holy Spirit upon her," she had beenthe only woman deemed worthy of receiving into herselfthe divinity of the Son of God and of giving birth to him;for this, but even more for her continuing attendanceupon her Son, she deserved the title "blessed." Her obedi-ence to the Old Testament law of purification after thebirth of Christ was not evidence that she needed suchpurification, but rather that her Son, as he said, had cometo fulfill the law. Yet the same authors who spoke thisway about Mary also represented her as in need of salva-tion herself. Christ had begun his work of redemption byconferring salvation on his mother, who "was not savedfrom iniquity by any of her own preceding merits, butredeemed by the blood of Christ solely through the gratu-itous goodness of God." For it was widely held that Christhad been the only one who was conceived without originalsin. If, then, she had been "born and procreated of theflesh of sin" and yet was hailed in the rule of prayer as"happy [felix]" and "blessed [beata]," this had to meanthat, though conceived in sin, she "was not subject to anytransgressions when she was born and did not contractoriginal sin in the sanctified womb." In these words


"Paschasius makes one of the first efforts among westerntheologians to discover the doctrine of the ImmaculateConception," but he was prevented by "obscure, incom-plete and imperfect terminology" from formulating thisdoctrine. Other writers spoke of a sanctification of thewomb in Mary's giving birth to Christ, not of a sancti-fication in her own conception or birth; and the questionof the immaculate conception of Mary was to lingerthroughout the Middle Ages and to erupt into opencontroversy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with-out achieving definitive formulation until the nineteenthcentury.

There was a similar absence of consensus regardingthe end of Mary's life, on which dogmatic determinationcame only in the twentieth century. It was recognized thatthe principal accounts both of her beginning and of herend were apocryphal and did not enjoy acceptance ascanonical by the church, and that "no catholic historygives an account of the way she ascended to the heavenlyrealm." It was a mistake, Paschasius Radbertus warned,to "accept doubtful things as certain," for on the basisof reliable accounts, as distinguished from apocryphalones, it was certain only that Mary had "left the body," butnot how she had done so. In part, therefore, the case forthe doctrine of the assumption had to be an argumentfrom silence, since there did not exist an explicit theo-logical tradition concerning the death of Mary. The properbasis for an understanding of Mary's end was the liturgicalone, and the feast of her assumption was "a day thatexcels the solemnities in honor of all the [other] saints."By its commemoration of the feast, the church confessedthat Mary had been assumed into heaven, but it did notspecify the manner of her assumption; hence "the correctposition regarding her assumption is shown to be this,that—without knowing 'whether in the body or out of thebody,' as the apostle says—we believe that she was as-sumed higher than the angels."

Yet it was neither the way in which Mary was con-ceived nor the mode in which she was assumed intoheaven but the manner in which she gave birth to Christthat became an issue between Radbertus and his monasticconfrere, Ratramnus. On this issue the patristic traditionwas ambiguous, for "it is clear that the fathers paid atten-


tion to the virginal conception, not to the miraculousbirth" of Christ; but the details of the parturition had tobe part of the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity. Anyalternative to the perpetual virginity was unthinkable. Theformula, "virgin before giving birth, virgin while givingbirth, virgin after giving birth," was universally accepted.Ratramnus took this to mean that "her inviolate virginityconceived as a woman and gave birth as a mother." Themiracle consisted in the preservation of her virginity inconception and in birth, but this did not imply that thephysical act of birth was abnormal in other ways, asRatramnus understood his opponents to be saying. Theirposition was a threat to the true humanity of Christ.Ezekiel 44:2 was a standard proof for the perpetual vir-ginity of Mary, but Ratramnus read the following verse asevidence that Christ had come "into the house of theworld" by the same way as other men: the purification ofMary in the temple proved the same thing. PaschasiusRadbertus, on the other hand, interpreted the purificationonly as a demonstration that Christ was "born of woman,born under the law," thus as an analogy to the circum-cision of Christ. To Radbertus the mode of Christ's birthwas more significant than the manner of his conception.The chief interest in the mode of Christ's birth was toinsist that it had taken place "without sorrow and withoutpain," since these were consequences of the curse pro-nounced on Eve; but Mary gave birth as Eve would haveif she had not fallen. Apparently with Ratramnus in mind,he attacked those who, while not saying that Mary hadlost her virginity in giving birth to Christ, nevertheless"deny the very thing they confess when they say that shegave birth to her Son according to the common law ofnature."

In many ways Ratramnus and Radbertus were arguingpast each other, for the former did not teach that thevirginity of Mary had been violated in the birth of Christand the latter did not deny that Christ had been born in anormal manner. Underlying this exchange, however, wasa basic difference of attitude. Urging that "by naturenothing is shameful," Ratramnus maintained that whatwas "unusual" was "the order of conception, not the lawof birth." A preoccupation with the miraculous aspectsof Christ's nativity beyond "established nature or the


authority of Holy Scripture" was a concession to "heathensuperstition," by which the virgin birth would not havebeen a genuine birth but a "monstrosity." "We do notsay, as they charge, that he was born in a montrous way,"Radbertus answered, only that Mary "gave birth in thesame way that she conceived." As Christ, according tothe Gospel account, had passed through closed doors, soalso he had passed through the closed womb of the Virgin.For the birth of Christ belonged to the order of mysteryrather than to the order of nature; it was "contrary tonature, or rather beyond nature." Laws of nature—eventhe original law of man's creation before the fall, notto speak of the law governing man's sinful condition—did not apply to it. Radbertus discerned in his opponents'position an inversion of the proper relation between Godand nature, for they seemed to forget that "the laws ofGod do not depend on the nature of things, but the lawsabout the nature of things flow from the laws of God."

This basic difference between Ratramnus and Rad-bertus expressed itself also in their conflict over thepresence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.On the basis of a passage from Ambrose about "the orderof nature," which was "the only true 'authority' on whichhis theory is founded," but which was quoted by bothsides in the conflict, Radbertus drew a parallel between"the temerity of certain brethren" regarding the birth ofChrist and their error regarding the eucharistic presence.It was certainly the statement of a consensus whenRatramnus asserted that "we do not think that any of thefaithful doubts that the bread which Christ gave to hisdisciples had been made his body" or when one of hissupporters declared that "everyone ought to believe thatthe body and blood of the Lord [in the Eucharist] is histrue flesh and blood." His opponents "faithfully confessthe body and blood of Christ," Ratramnus acknowledged.But as one "who on nearly all the theological questionsagitating this epoch held to an opinion different fromthat of Radbertus," Ratramnus identified two alternativetheories within this consensus: that which held "that inthe mystery of the body and blood of Christ, daily cele-brated in the church, nothing takes place under a figure,under a hidden symbol, but it is performed with a nakedmanifestation of reality itself"; and his own view, "thatthese elements are contained in the figure of a mystery, and


that it is one thing which appears to the bodily sense andanother which faith beholds."

It was, as he added, "no small divergence." Two ques-tions were involved, and it was characteristic of the con-troversy that Ratramnus was the one who identified themas two questions, not simply two versions of the samequestion. One was the nature of the presence in the Eu-charist, the other the relation of the eucharistic body ofChrist to the historical body of Christ. For Radbertus thetwo questions were closely intertwined, and his answerto the second determined his answer to the first. For theflesh that Christ gave for the life of the world in theEucharist was "obviously none other than the one that wasborn of Mary, suffered on the cross, and rose from thegrave." The relation between the eucharistic body andthe historical body was one of identity, not merely one ofcontinuity. What was created by the words of institutionin the Eucharist was "neither some other blood nor theblood of someone else, but the blood of Jesus Christ."To sharpen the language of identity still more, Radbertuscontinued: "And therefore, O man, whenever you drinkthis cup or eat this bread, you should keep in mind thatyou are not drinking any other blood than the one thatwas poured out for you and for all for the forgiveness ofsins, and that this is no other flesh than the one that wasgiven up for you and for all and that hung on the cross."When challenged, he only repeated this formula, addingwith emphasis that the flesh was Christ's "very own." In-deed, he turned one objection to his position—namely,that Christ had not yet suffered and died when he insti-tuted the Lord's Supper and that therefore it could notbe his historical body—into an argument in favor of hisposition by asserting that if Christ had waited until afterthe resurrection, "the heretics would have said that Christis now incorruptible and located in heaven and thattherefore his flesh cannot be eaten on earth by thefaithful."

Because of this identity between the eucharistic and thehistorical body, it was necessary to distinguish between"figure" and "reality." There could be no question thatthe body and blood of Christ was present "according toreality, even though it is received in the sacrament throughfaith." Christ had not said, "This is the figure of my body,"but, "This is my body," and Radbertus expressed his


amazement that anyone would say that "it is not in factthe reality of the flesh and blood of Christ" present in thesacrament. To be quite precise and complete, one hadto say that the Eucharist was "properly called 'reality' and'figure' at one and the same time," since its appearancewas that of bread and wine but its true reality was that ofthe body and blood of Christ. In the Old Testament erathere had been only "the hope and the figure, in which thepromise of reality was present," but now "we enjoy onlythe reality," namely, "the true flesh and blood of Christ."The color and taste of bread and wine were not changed;but this was merely "the figure of bread and wine,"and what was in fact present after the consecration was"nothing other than the flesh and blood of Christ." Thistook place by the will of God, by which also "the divineJudge covers reality with figures, conceals it under sacra-ments, obscures it by mysteries." The presence of the bodyand blood of Christ was an objective reality, so that evensomeone who received them "in an unworthy manner"was nonetheless receiving the true body and blood. Forthe reality or truth [veritas] of the presence was guaran-teed by "the only-begotten Son of God, who is truth[verkäs] himself, not by grace, but by nature." Therefore"when truth itself says, 'This is my body,'" this was to bebelieved, because "the words of Christ are as efficacious asthey are divine, so that nothing else comes forth thanwhat they command."

Ratramnus based his interpretation of the eucharisticpresence on a different definition of "figure" and "reality"from that of Radbertus. "The most simple and compre-hensive statement that can be made of Ratramnus's Eu-charistic beliefs is that he thought the Eucharist to be inthe real order what a metaphor is in the logical order."To him, "reality" meant empirical reality, a "representa-tion of clear fact, not obscured by any shadowy images,but uttered . . . in natural meanings. . . . Nothing else maybe understood than what is said." "Figure," on the otherhand, referred to "a kind of overshadowing that reveals itsintent under some sort of veil." Now if the question aroseas to which of those categories was the proper one for thepresence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucha-rist, the answer was obviously "figure"; for the Eucharistwas a "mystery," an action which "exhibits one thing out-wardly to the human senses and proclaims another thing


inwardly to the minds of the faithful." To say that "noth-ing is being received here figuratively, but it is all beingviewed in its reality" would be to substitute sense experi-ence for faith. Another term for reality in the vocabularyof Ratramnus was "outward appearance [species]," ac-cording to which bread and wine remained what theywere; but according to their "divine force" or "as far astheir power is concerned," they had become the body andblood of Christ, and it was "not permissible even to think,much less to say" that they had not.

On the basis of this schema Ratramnus proceeded to aconsideration of "the second question," that is, "whetherthat very body which was born of Mary, suffered, died,and was buried, and which sits at the right hand of theFather is what is daily eaten in the church by the mouthof the faithful through the mystery of the sacraments,"and his answer had to be in the negative. The historicalbody of Christ—the one that was born of Mary and thatsuffered on the cross—belonged to the order of empiricalreality, where what was said was what was meant. Butwhat was "called Christ's body and blood" in the Eucharistbore a certain "resemblance" to his historical body andblood and therefore could be so designated, just as EasterSunday each year was called "the day of the Lord's resur-rection" even though he had been raised historically "onlyonce." The historical body was properly called "the realflesh of Christ," the eucharistic body "the sacrament ofthat real flesh." Thus there was truly "a great difference"between the two bodies, and "they are not the same." Thedifference between them was "as great as that which existsbetween a pledge and the thing for which it is pledged,between an image and the thing of which it is an image,appearance and reality." Yet Ratramnus could warn that"it should not be supposed that in the mystery of the sacra-ment either the body of the Lord or his blood is not re-ceived by the faithful"; by "body" and "blood," however,he meant the eucharistic "figure," not the historical andempirical reality.

In his use of the term "figure" for the body in theEucharist and in his refusal to identify it unequivocallywith the body born of Mary, Ratramnus could claim thesupport of a long and distinguished Augustinian tradi-tion, in which the concept "body of Christ" itself and theidea of "eating" it in the Eucharist were part of a broader


and more "spiritual" way of speaking and thinking thatwent far beyond the Eucharist. One of his contemporaries,Amalarius of Metz, set forth the thesis that "the body ofChrist is triform . . . : first, the holy and immaculate[body}, assumed from the Virgin Mary; second, that whichwalks on the earth; third, that which lies in the sepulcher."The first was represented by the eucharistic host when itwas dipped in the chalice, the second by the host when itwas eaten by priest or people, the third by the hostwhen it was reserved on the altar. Although this distinc-tion evoked criticism, from Paschasius Radbertus amongothers, Radbertus also had to recognize that "body ofChrist" could mean the church or the Eucharist or thebody born of Mary. Pointing out "that we who are thebody of Christ eat the body of Christ [ut nos qui sumuscorpus Christi sumamus corpus Christi]," Gottschalk ofOrbais distinguished between a "natural" and a "special"sense of the word. Just as it was impossible to confine"body" to the Eucharist, so also "eating" and "drinking"could be seen as referring in the first instance to faithitself and only then to the Communion. Julian of Toledo,for example, had taken the words of Jesus about "eating"and "drinking" to mean that "we say we drink the bloodof Christ not only in the sacramental rite, but also whenwe receive his saying, in which there is life," and hispredecessor, Ildefonsus, had said that "to eat this foodand to drink this drink is to abide in Christ." Even Rad-bertus had paraphrased these words of Christ in similarfashion: "To eat his flesh and drink his blood means thatone abides in Christ and Christ in him." This way ofspeaking could easily move from the explicit identifica-tion of the Eucharist as "the body of Christ," not onecrumb of which must be permitted to fall for fear ofpunishment, to the equation of "the Eucharist" with thepreaching of the gospel.

Although the language of the "rule of faith" as inter-preted by the theologians was in many ways on the sideof Ratramnus in the dispute, it was eventually the "ruleof prayer" that was to "lay down the rule of faith" in thearea of eucharistic doctrine; and this was working in favorof Radbertus. Not what the fathers had said about theeating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ, butwhat they had said about the sacrifice of the Mass woulddetermine the teaching of the church also about the pres-


ence. The fanciful extremes to which Amalarius took hisprinciple that there was "nothing superfluous" in theliturgy did not deter even his severest critics from com-piling the exegesis of the several steps in the rite of theMass from various sources. Ratramnus, too, found justi-fication in the liturgy for his use of the terms "pledge" and"image," as well as for his use of the distinction between"appearance" and "reality" in speaking about the bodyand blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Nevertheless, thetenor of the rule of prayer was moving in the oppositedirection. For Radbertus, the practice of prayer was asource of authoritative teaching not only about the doc-trine of prayer itself, but also more generally about what"we believe" and what "the entire church in every nation. . . confesses," for example, regarding the Virgin Mary.After citing the daily celebration of the Eucharist as areason for giving attention to its meaning, he went onto quote the words of the canon of the Mass, which hadbeen quoted already by Ambrose: "Command that thesethings be borne by the hands of thy angel to thy sublimealtar in the presence of thy divine majesty." But if whatwas borne was worthy of such an altar, "consider if any-thing corporeal can be more sublime than when thesubstance of bread and wine is efficaciously changedwithin into the flesh and blood of Christ, in such a waythat after the consecration the true flesh and blood ofChrist is truly believed [to be present]."

As this reference to the "sublime altar" in heavensuggests, the most important aspect of the Eucharist forRadbertus was the sacrifice, while Ratramnus, even ac-cording to his modern interpreters, did "not distinguish. . . between the sacramental reality and what we mightcall the sacrificial reality" and "certainly denied that theaction of the Mass is a real, true and proper sacrifice."When the Epistle to the Hebrews said that Christ hadmade his sacrifice "once for all," this proved that "what hedid once for all he does not repeat daily." Alluding to thevery same passages, Radbertus taught that "althoughChrist, having suffered once for all in the flesh, savedthe world once for all through one and the same sufferingunto death, this offering is nevertheless repeated daily."For since there was daily sin, there had to be a dailysacrifice for sin. Elsewhere he suggested that if the "dailybread" sought in the Lord's Prayer referred to "the body


of Christ" in the Eucharist, this could not mean that "weeat him daily," but that "he is sacrificed daily." In ex-hortations to the faithful, attendance at the sacrifice ofthe Mass was urged much more earnestly than the recep-tion of Communion was. Similarly, the sacrificial inter-pretation of the Eucharist was embedded much morefirmly in the church than was the idea of the real presence—so firmly that "even if it were not mentioned anywhereat all in the ancient Scriptures, the authority of the uni-versal church, which is evident in this practice, must notbe regarded lightly." Bede was confident that the "offer-ing" of the Mass availed for the dead and that Christ"daily takes away the sins of the world" for the living inthe eucharistic sacrifice, and therefore that "the Lord hasoffered the sacrifice of his flesh and blood to the Fatherand has commanded us to make our offering in breadand wine." In the Eastern iconoclastic controversy duringthis same century the sacrifice of the Eucharist had beena proof for the reality of the body of Christ. Now in theWest it became necessary to draw the implications of thesacrifice for the doctrine of the real presence, "so that," asIsidore of Seville had said, "the sacrifice that is offered toGod, sanctified by the Spirit, might be conformed to thebody and blood of Christ."

There was still much that remained unresolved. A moreappropriate set of concepts and terms than those availablein the ninth century would have been needed to state thedoctrine of the presence clearly. Nor would clarity bepossible until the doctrine of the Eucharist acquired thecontext of an entire sacramental system, within which itcould take its place. Both these needs reflected the con-fused state of the Augustinian synthesis itself, as the useof Augustine and of Ambrose by both sides showed.When the conflict was resumed in the eleventh century,some of the issues and even some of the names in theninth-century debate had been forgotten. The treatise ofRatramnus was to come out of the shadows even laterthan that, when it became "a sort of shibboleth on thesubject of eucharistic doctrine" during the controversiesof the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

The Sovereignty of Grace

On no Christian doctrine was the Augustinian synthesisinherited by the ninth century as ambiguous as on

The Sovereignty of Grace 81

predestination, and on no doctrine was the theologicalcontroversy as bitter. It was "the most animated contro-versy of the ninth century." What was embarrassing aboutAugustine on the real presence in the Eucharist was hisvagueness; what was embarrassing about him on predes-tination was his clarity. The controversies over his predes-tinarianism during the last years of his life and during thecentury following his death had led, at the Council ofOrange and in the thought of its leading spokesman,Caesarius of Aries, to a position that vindicated Augus-tine's essential teaching on grace but muffled his views onpredestination to punishment. That combination wasdefined as normative Augustinism, and the authority ofCaesarius and of the Council of Orange was so firmly es-tablished that all the various combatants in the predestina-rian controversy of the ninth century had to acknowledgeit. But it was inevitable, in an age when the writings ofthe fathers were being copied and studied more than theyhad been for centuries, that someone would discover in theworks of Augustine, alongside his constant stress onthe centrality of grace, his much less frequent but still un-deniable acceptance of the corollary to this stress onsovereign grace, namely, that God acted "for the damna-tion of those whom he had justly predestined to punish-ment and for the salvation of those whom he had kindlypredestined to grace."

This discovery was the achievement of "the strict con-structionists among the Augustinians," notably of Gott-schalk of Orbais. His implacable adversary, Hincmar ofReims, dismissed "these modern predestinarians" as "notamounting to even ten in number," but soon thereafterhe had to admit that "Gottschalk . . . is said to have manypatrons." One of these was Ratramnus; Servatus Lupus,abbot of Ferneres, also came to his support against thosewhom he sarcastically termed "certain brilliant lights,"meaning Hincmar, Rabanus Maurus, and their party; andFlorus of Lyons, one of the leading scholars of the time,writing on behalf of the church of Lyons, sought to dis-tinguish between Gottschalk's personal failings and "thedivine truth" that Gottschalk had articulated. On thebasis of some such distinction, as restated by a later his-torian of the movement, we may turn to "the matter ofthe doctrine alone." These issues were identified by variousof the participants in different ways; but Hincmar, Florus,


and Servatus Lupus, opponents though they were, allenumerated three questions as the fundamental ones,albeit each in his own order. The three questions were,in the order given by Servatus Lupus: free will, predes-tination, and redemption.

Central in the Augustinian synthesis was the univer-sally accepted principle that "we ought to believe boththe grace of God and the free will of man," neither with-out the other. But Gottschalk, according to Hincmar, "con-fuses grace and free will" and "teaches the doctrine ofgrace without teaching the doctrine of free will, with theresult that, under the pretense of piety, he preaches sheernegligence . . . and produces a vicious complacency."Hincmar in turn, according to Gottschalk, had "givennature preference over grace." But "no one in his rightmind can say that nature is in any way greater than grace,since in fact grace is God" himself. While Hincmarstressed that God had conferred free will on angels (aswell as on men) because otherwise they would have beenmore "like stones" than "like God," Gottschalk madethe point that "every rational creature, not only the humanbut also the angelic, must be acknowledged as always inneed of divine grace in order to be pleasing to God."When the Council of Quiercy in 853, controlled byHincmar, asserted that "God Almighty created him righ-teous, without sin, and endowed with free will," Florusobjected that this assertion of free will was "utterly devoidof any reference to the grace of God." And when thesame council went on to declare that "God, the good andjust, elected, on the basis of his foreknowledge, those fromthe mass of perdition whom he by grace predestined tolife," Florus once more found the definition inadequatebecause it ignored the prior role of grace in election andseemed to make grace a consequence of divine foreknowl-edge; but "election was by grace alone," without respectto any merit that was to come. Such views of free will andof merit threatened to "make of no effect the gift ofdivine grace." No one, of course, was denying the needfor grace; but it does seem clear that Hincmar, even whenextolling grace, stressed its auxiliary function in relation tothe free will, and that the predestinarians stressed itsprimacy as the divine initiative for the beginning of faithand salvation. This stress on grace, they maintained, hadbeen the chief burden of Augustine's theology.


It was likewise on the basis of a passage from Augus-tine, comparing free will without grace to an eye that isblind, that Gottschalk denied to the free will any capacityto do anything good apart from the grace of God. Withoutgrace, Augustine had said, freedom was not truly freedomat all, but rebellion, and Gottschalk agreed. Only afterreceiving the grace of Christ and being made alive byit did a person receive a truly free will. From this Gott-schalk drew the conclusion that "none of us is able touse free will to do good, but only to do evil." This seemedeven to his supporters to be going too far. It was essentialnot to deny free will, lest such a denial provide the un-believers with an excuse. "By some sort of natural good" ahuman being was capable of "certain good works andcertain virtues." Therefore "all men, even those who arealien from Christ, have free will," that is, "a rational andintellectual mind by which they can discern and judge . . .between good and evil." This enabled them to do certaingood acts that were socially beneficial and upright. Failureto perform these acts meant that they could be heldaccountable, and accountability required that there befree will. But if free will referred to what man had pos-sessed before the fall, the ability to cling to God of hisown accord, then that will was dead. Free will in manafter the fall "is sufficient to enable man to do evil."Adam had been born with a free will that was a gift ofgrace, but the fundamental Augustinian doctrine wasthat "we are not born in the condition in which Adamwas created, but as sinners in our origin" and hence with-out his kind of free will. This did not mean a loss of hu-man nature as such, but of "the good of nature." In aset of five theses Florus sought to clarify the issue byshowing in what sense "the holy fathers do not deny thatfree will is present in men." Hincmar described free willafter the fall as "sluggish and weak as far as anythinggood is concerned" rather than as dead; and although hespoke of men as having "our affection captive withoutthe grace of Christ," what he meant by this was madeclear at the Council of Quiercy, which equated the freewill lost in Adam with the free will regained in Christ,clearly implying, he insisted, that it was solely "this freewill, not any other" that had been lost.

Otherwise, Hincmar maintained, it would be not onlyhuman accountability, but divine justice that would be


undercut. If "these modern predestinarians" were right,then "the necessity of salvation has been imposed on thosewho are saved and the necessity of damnation has beenimposed on those who perish." Gottschalk was teachingthat God "constrains every man" in such a way that itwas "vain and useless" for him, by his free will, to do anyworks of his own for salvation. Writing to Hincmar inrebuttal, Servatus Lupus objected to the insinuation that"there is a fatalistic necessity imposed by the truth of thedoctrine of predestination . . . to the exclusion of thefreedom of the will." Augustine had rejected any suchinsinuation. Ratramnus, who had said that the will of Godacted in the hearts of men to produce in them the "move-ment of the will" that he wanted, expressed his surprisethat "some people" concluded that this took place "bysome sort of necessity and that this necessity cannot bechanged in any way." But "the predestination [of God]does not compel anyone." What did it mean then forChrist to say, in a text quoted by Gottschalk, "I, when Iam lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself"?This "drawing" put the impulse for human action in God,so that "we run in a way that befits our salvation whenwe are drawn by God." And when Christ said, "No onecan come to me unless the Father who sent me has drawnhim," this was to be understood as meaning that "hedraws, not by necessity, but by his delightful will andlove." This was not fatalism, for "not only could [men]have been otherwise, but they have been." As a test caseit was possible to cite Judas, as Augustine had, but moreattention was given to Pharaoh, whose heart had beenhardened by God. There seems to have arisen a treatise,since lost, bearing the name of Jerome and entitled TheHardening of the Heart of Pharaoh. It maintained that"every vessel makes itself a vessel of honor or of shameby the freedom of the will in accordance with the reasonwith which we have been created." Hincmar repeatedlyquoted the treatise as authentic; but Florus was unwillingto accept its authority sight unseen, and Ratramnus deniedthat it was a genuine work of Jerome's.

Yet it was difficult to evade the words of the apostle,that God "has mercy upon whomever he desires, and hehardens the heart of whomever he desires," which seemedto say that both those whom God hardened and those on


whom he had mercy had been predestined to their even-tual condition. Any other interpretation, according toGottschalk, amounted to a denial of the grace and theomnipotence of God. Although the term "predestination"had sometimes been used loosely as a synonym for "provi-dence," it referred here to "what has been predetermined,decreed, preestablished, foreordained," so that "the pre-destination of the acts of God is the arrangement of hiseternal counsel." While they differed with the authors ofthis definition about whether predestination was singleor double, Hincmar and his party shared the definitionitself with them. In setting forth his doctrine of predes-tination, Gottschalk believed that he was confessing thecatholic faith and that it was not he, but his opponents,who were the heretics. Speaking for the church of Lyons,Florus agreed that Gottschalk's doctrine was the trulycatholic one and that Hincmar's doctrine "is very clearlycontrary to the faith." Prudentius recited a catalog oforthodox fathers supporting double predestination. Gott-schalk attempted to base his idea of "double predestina-tion" on his doctrine of "trine deity," but the foundationof his distinctive teaching lay in other aspects of hisdoctrine of God, above all in his doctrine of divine im-mutability.

"I believe and confess that God, omnipotent and un-changeable, has foreknown and predestined": so Gott-schalk opened a confession of his faith. The conclusionof another statement of faith was an apostrophe extollingthe transcendence of God beyond time and beyond change.If God had not foreordained the damnation of the devilsand of the wicked, they could not be damned; for "if hedoes something that he has not done by predestination,he will simply have to change," which was blasphemous.There was in God no new counsel, no new decision, con-sequently also no new judgment; therefore his judgmentwas predestined. The words of the New Testament, that"with [God] there is no variation or shadow due tochange," ruled out the possibility that God could havedecided on hell only after the devil had fallen. The sametext from the New Testament provided a gloss on thepassages where the Old Testament said that God had"changed his will":"not that by his just severity he haddecreed that he would relax [his judgment]." Such pas-


sages were not proof of divine mutability, but an accom-modation to human mutability. For when Scripture saidthat God "swore," this oath was "nothing other than theeternal and unchangeable predestination of the immov-able counsel of God." As in the christological controversiesof the early church, so here both sides unequivocally af-firmed the absoluteness and unchangeability of God—Hincmar, too, opened a confession of faith with a state-ment of this tenet—but it was the predestinarians whobased their doctrine on it.

Hincmar's doctrine of predestination was based ratheron the distinction between predestination and foreknowl-edge: "If [Gottschalk] had had the knowledge and thewill to distinguish between foreknowledge and predesti-nation on the basis of the teachings of Holy Scripture andthe catholic fathers, he need not have fallen into error."God had foreknown that "some, through the freedomof the will assisted by grace, would be good," and these hehad predestined to salvation; he had foreknown thatothers would remain in their sins, but these "were notpredestined to be wicked . . . or to remain in theiriniquity." Therefore foreknowledge and predestinationmust be distinguished. A chief source of the distinctionwas a pseudo-Augustinian treatise from the sixth century,the Memorandum against the Pelagians and Celestians,which taught: "Not everything that [God] foreknew didhe predestine. What is evil he only foreknew, but whatis good he both foreknew and predestined." Quoting thetreatise as "Saint Augustine's book on predestination,"Hincmar accused Gottschalk of misinterpreting Augus-tine. Apparently Gottschalk himself had no difficulty inascribing the work to Augustine, but there were otherswho denied its Augustinian authorship. Because of itsabsence from the catalog of Augustine's writings discussedin his Retractations and on the basis of a careful compari-son with the literary style as well as with the theologicalcontent of the genuine works, Florus of Lyons demon-strated that the treatise could not have been written byAugustine.

The reason for Hincmar's insistence upon the distinc-tion between foreknowledge and predestination, accord-ing to his opponents, was that "he does not want predes-tination to be understood as applying to any but the elect


and wants only foreknowledge to apply to the damned."They themselves did make use of the distinction whenthey, in turn, accused some of Gottschalk's enemies ofconfusing foreknowledge and predestination, and whenthey identified God's foreknowledge of sin as the basis forpredestination to damnation; but in keeping with earliertheologians they would not make God's foreknowledgeof human merit a basis for predestination to salvation, forthis was by grace. Strictly speaking, it was not accurateto refer to "foreknowledge" in God, with whom therewas no before or after and therefore no "interval" oftime between foreknowledge and predestination, as Hinc-mar also had to agree. In the most careful and thoroughanalysis of foreknowledge and predestination to havecome from any of the participants in the controversy,Florus set down "seven rules of faith": "The foreknowl-edge and predestination [of God] is eternal and un-changeable"; "There is nothing . . . in the acts of God . . .that he himself . . . has not foreknown and immovablyforeordained"; "In the works of God Almighty there arenot some that are foreknown and others that are pre-destined"; "Good works belong to the creature itself insuch a way that they are altogether . . . the works of theCreator, but the evil works of that same creature . . . canbe said to be foreknown by God, but not predestined";"By his foreknowledge and predestination God . . . hasnot imposed necessity on anyone"; "Wherever the idea offoreknowledge and of predestination appears [in Scrip-ture, even though the words themselves are not used],foreknowledge and predestination are meant"; "We be-lieve that none of the elect can perish, and we maintainthat none of the damned can ever be saved."

The possible consequences of blurring the distinctionbetween foreknowledge and predestination became evi-dent when, for example, Ratramnus wrote: "Nothing thathappens to men in this world takes place apart from thesecret counsel of God Almighty. For God, foreknowingall things that are to follow, decreed before the ages howthey are to be arranged through the ages." It was easy forsuch a doctrine of divine omnipotence to become athoroughgoing determinism, according to which God didall things, both evil and good. The crux of interpretationwas the passage: "He has done the things that are to be."


It had been cited by Augustine in his explanation of pre-destination, and it recurred throughout the writings ofthe predestinarians. Gottschalk used it as a proof textin his detailed confession of faith; Ratramnus took it tomean that "the things that are to be done by God throughintervals of time have already been done in the counselof [his] predestination," so that "those whom he is goingto condemn to punishment he has already condemned inpredestination"; Prudentius paraphrased it to say that Godhad "created, ordained, disposed, dispensed, destined, andpredestined" all his deeds; Servatus Lupus, on the basis ofthese words, argued that, for God, "predestined" and"perfected" were identical, since what God had decreedcould not be changed; and Florus quoted the passage todemonstrate that all the actions of God already existed"eternally and immovably in his eternal and unchangeablecounsel." From the words "He has done the things thatare to be" came also the way out of the difficulty, thethesis that it was the actions of God himself that werepredestined, not the actions of his creatures, as it waswritten in the prophet: "I the Lord have spoken, and Ihave done it." God was "the author and orderer" of good,and the orderer but not the author of evil.

If God's "ordering" of evil included the actions that hewas going to take in history but had already taken ineternity, his eternal act of predestination must pertain tothe evil as well as to the good and must therefore be dual,not single. The classic statement of dual predestinationhad not come from Augustine directly, but had beenformulated by Isidore on the basis of Augustine: "Thereis a double predestination, whether of the elect to rest orof the damned to death. Both are caused by divine judg-ment." Nor was this statement an isolated lapse in Isidore'swritings. Not only did he speak, in Augustinian fashion,of "those who now seem to be elect and holy" but whowould be damned on the Day of Judgment; but he con-fined the gift of grace "solely to the elect," and taught thatthe others had been "predestined to punishment and hadbeen damned," so that, being forsaken by God, "they couldnot deplore their evils even if they wanted to." Such was"the hidden order of predestination," which surpassed hu-man understanding. It was not surprising, therefore, when,as Hincmar reported with dismay, his opponents quoted"as an authority Isidore, the Spanish bishop, a learned


man and one who is in many ways beneficial to those whoread him, who in his book of Sentences says that pre-destination is double." Gottschalk quoted these words ofIsidore at length and often, and so did his supporters.Hincmar's defense against the barrage of patristic testi-mony was to disengage the language of Isidore from thatof others, including especially Gregory the Great; and,since Isidore's statements still stood, he explained thatthe term "double predestination" could be taken in acatholic sense if it were understood to mean that God'sgrace granted to the elect what they did not merit andthat his justice granted to the damned what they diddeserve.

Although "double predestination" thus had a certainpatristic legitimacy, it was, according to Hincmar and hisparty (and, for that matter, according to Gottschalk andhis party also) preferable to speak of "one predestinationof God, which pertains either to the gift of grace or tothe retribution of justice." This still left the question ofhow to deal with "predestination to punishment." Theanswer came from Pseudo-Augustine, who set down "thisrule of argument made clear in the divine testimonies:that the sinners who have been foreknown in their ownsins before they were in the world have not been pre-destined, but their punishment has been predestined forthem on the basis of their having been foreknown."Hincmar made this answer his own, declaring that "Godhas predestined what divine equity was going to render,not what human iniquity was going to commit." There-fore punishment had been predestined for the devil andfor all those who, by their own free will, would jointhemselves to him. This was opposed to the teaching ofthe predestinarians, whom Hincmar understood to besaying that some "had been predestined to punishmentand had been created so that they might go to eternalfire." Gottschalk and his supporters maintained that theydid not teach this, but that Hincmar's distinction betweenpredestination to punishment and predestination of pun-ishment was an evasion; for "just as [God] has predes-tined certain punishments for those who deserve them,so most certainly he has predestined for those punish-ments those same ones who deserve them." Those whowere predestined to punishment could not be saved, notbecause they could not be converted but because they


refused to be. Their damnation—and their predestinationto damnation—was just. God had not predestined evilthings, but only good things, one of which, however, washis justice, which did not leave sin unpunished. He did notpredestine anyone to sin, but to the punishment meritedby sin. It was better even for the wicked that they becondemned than that they be permitted to go on sinning;indeed, it was good for everyone, "so that the boastingof the proud might be put down, the devotion of thehumble might grow, and the praise of God by both mightbe increased."

For these latter-day Augustinians, as for their master,the most serious crux of interpretation raised by such aview of predestination was the statement of the apostlePaul that God "desires all men to be saved and to cometo the knowledge of the truth," which had been explainedby Augustine's apologist, Prosper, and was now beingexplained by such theologians as Hincmar on the basis ofProsper, to mean that "because no one is saved withouthis own will . . . [God] desires that we desire the goodand, when we desire it, he desires to fulfill in us his plan."This statement of Paul's, the predestinarians had to admit,was "extremely perplexing and much discussed in thewritings of the holy fathers and explained in many differ-ent ways." Therefore its interpretation was "not to besettled precipitately, but very cautiously." They rehearsedAugustine's various attempts to circumvent the text'saffirmation of the universal salvific will of God. From theuse of the identical word "desires" in 1 Timothy 2:4,"who desires all men to be saved," and in Romans 9:18,"He has mercy upon whomever he desires," Gottschalkstrove to demonstrate that "truly God has not in any waydesired to save with eternal salvation those whom, asScripture testifies, he hardens." The "all men" in the textmust mean "all men who are saved" rather than "all men"in general.

Logically, such a line of argumentation had to lead tothe even larger question: Did it imply that "not all menare redeemed" by the death of Christ, as well as that "notall men are saved" eventually? Hincmar cited as one ofGottschalk's errors "that the suffering of Christ was notoffered up for the salvation of the whole world and thatoriginal sin is not washed away through the grace ofbaptism for the nonpredestined." In opposition to this


restriction of the death of Christ to the elect, the Councilof Quiercy in 853, and Hincmar in support of Quiercy,declared that "just as there is not, has not been, and willnot be any human being whose nature was not assumed inour Lord Jesus Christ, so there is not, has not been, andwill not be any human being for whom He has not suf-fered, even though not all are redeemed by the mysteryof His suffering." Although Gottschalk's supporters re-torted that such sharing of their human nature by Christwas of no avail to unbelievers, they, too, had to accept achristological basis for the doctrine of predestination.Partly as a consequence of the controversy over the "adop-tion" of the human nature of Christ, the statement of theapostle Paul that Christ had been "predestined to bethe Son of God" was interpreted by both Gottschalk andHincmar as a reference to the human nature of Christ,predestined for the work of redemption.

Both of them likewise agreed that this "redemption"in the strict sense of the word was not shared by all menand that therefore Christ could not be said to have re-deemed all men. But it was quite another matter to saythat Christ had not suffered for all men. If someone whoaccepted the gift of redemption, and then rejected itand perished, could be called by the New Testament one"for whom Christ died," Hincmar maintained, thenChrist had suffered and died also for those who refusedever to accept the gift. "As far as the kindness of theRedeemer, the greatness and power of the price [he paid],and the richness of the redemption are concerned, Christdied for all men." For if Christ had died only for theelect, God could be accused of injustice. Turning thisargument about the richness of the redemption againstHincmar, the predestinarians charged that by his viewit would have to be concluded that the blood of Christ,shed also for those who refused it, had been wasted. Butit had not been wasted, because "the body of Christ wassacrificed for the body of Christ," that is, for the church,made up of "all believers in Christ who have been or areor ever will be." The sins of those outside the churchwere not weighed in the balance of the death of Christ.All those whom God desired to save were saved throughredemption by the blood of Christ, and none of themwould perish. For the saving will of God always ac-complished its ends. To say that Christ had suffered for


all men, including even Antichrist, was an unheard-ofnovelty and presumption. Even Origen's universalismwas preferable to the idea that Christ had died for thosewho were damned, for at least it did not say that thedeath of Christ had gone to waste.

Any answer to the question of whether Christ had suf-fered for all men or only for the elect had to be squared,even by those who contended that Scripture dealt onlywith the predestined, with the various statements ofScripture about redemption. On the basis of a concordancestudy, Gottschalk listed ten senses in which the word"redemption" was used in the Bible, and he put his argu-ment into that context; Florus devised a different set ofcategories for his argument. In this framework it waspossible to argue that such New Testament phraseologyas "reconciling the world" and "expiation for the sins ofthe whole world" referred only to the elect rather thanto all men, since God had "elected a world from out of theworld." The frequently discussed words of Christ, "I willdraw all men to myself," must be understood to be using"all men" to mean only the elect, "gathered together fromall classes of men." The statement of the apostle Paul thatChrist "gave himself as a ransom for all" was speakingof all who were truly regenerate. It had to be interpretedin the light of the parallel statement of Christ himselfabout "a ransom for many." By saying that he was shed-ding his blood "for many," Christ showed that "all men"identified "those many for whom the Lord . . . says thathis blood was shed." In instituting the sacrament, Christhad explicitly said "not 'for all' but 'for many,' not 'forothers' but 'for you.' " The most that Hincmar could replyto this sacramental argument, as stated several times byGottschalk, was to claim that since Judas had been pres-ent when the words "for many" and "for you" had beenspoken, they did include someone who was not a truebeliever.

A more serious sacramental argument against Gott-schalk's position was based on the historic Augustiniandefense of the objective efficacy of the sacraments re-gardless of the moral and religious condition of either theminister or the recipient. Amolo of Lyons stated his dis-pleasure at Gottschalk's idea that no one who had beenredeemed by the blood of Christ could perish. "All thosewho faithfully come to the baptism of Christ," he wroteto Gottschalk, "have been redeemed by no other price than


the blood of Christ. But when some of them make thisgrace to be of no effect in them and thus perish forever,in what way is it true that no one can perish who has beenredeemed by the blood of Christ?" The same was trueof the other sacraments, which Gottschalk's doctrine made"perfunctory and useless" in those who believed and thenfell away. This was, Hincmar charged, a negation of thecross of Christ and of the sacrament of baptism. Heaccused Gottschalk of teaching that "the grace of baptismdoes not take away original sin from those who have notbeen predestined to life." Consideration of this difficultyrequired a refinement of the predestinarian doctrine. Forwhile it was true that the death of Christ was of noavail for those who were baptized and then fell away,there was a sense in which one was obliged to speak of "aredemption that is common to the elect and to thedamned," namely, "the redemption that takes placethrough the grace of baptism," "which washes away pastsins, but does not redeem from future sins." In this senseChrist could be said to have been crucified for the re-demption also of those who temporarily became "partici-pants in his redemption" but later forsook the state ofgrace. The sacrifice of the Mass was offered up for "noone except the one who has been reborn by the grace ofbaptism." As an Augustinian, Gottschalk urged that he,not his opponents, was the champion of the doctrine ofbaptism by his stress on the sovereignty of grace and thedivine initiative carried out in infant baptism. It wasalso consistent with Augustinian sacramentalism whenunbaptized infants were denied salvation and when hea-then who had not heard the gospel were said to bedamned—both of these because of original sin.

Like the ninth-century controversy over the Eucharist,the ninth-century debate over predestination "lackedmany later distinctions and theological definitions" andcould not be settled at this time. In 853 at Quiercy Hinc-mar convoked a synod of his supporters, who decreed adoctrine of predestination based on the distinction be-tween foreknowledge and predestination and on a pre-destination of punishment but not a predestination topunishment. Two years later a synod at Valence con-demned the actions of Quiercy and decreed "a predestina-tion of the elect to life and of the damned to death." Thiswas confirmed in 859 at a synod held in Langres. In thatsame year, according to The Annals of Saint-Bertin,


"Nicholas, the Roman pontiff, issues a faithful confirma-tion and catholic determination about the grace of Godand free will, about the truth of double predestination,and about the doctrine that the blood of Christ was shed[only] for all believers." Hincmar attributed this entry inthe chronicle to Prudentius and, writing in 866, claimedthat he had not heard or read of the pope's action from anyother source. Although theologians and historians havedebated the question since, there seems to be no otherdefinite evidence regarding the action of Pope Nicholasin 859. Gottschalk's refusal to be reconciled even on hisdeathbed and Hincmar's prosecution of the case againstGottschalk even after the death of "the miserable monk"suggest not only the role of personal factors in the con-troversy, but also the unresolved character of the theo-logical issues themselves.

At least two of these issues had to be clarified in thecenturies that followed. One issue was the doctrine ofthe atonement, which was, in Gottschalk's theology, acorollary of predestination. Yet all the parties to the de-bate maintained that the doctrine of redemption wasfundamental to it, so that there could be no answer tothe question of whether Christ had suffered for all menor only for the elect until the prior question had been ad-dressed: What was redemptive about the suffering anddeath of Christ? Gottschalk's doctrine of predestinationwas an attempt to harmonize the "kindness" and the"judgment" of God; and Florus formulated the paradoxof justice and mercy even more sharply when he notedthat in biblical passages where God was said to havechanged his mind, "he decreed one thing by his justiceand did another thing by his goodness, and yet he, beingboth just and merciful, did not do anything that wasself-contradictory." The relation of the justice of God tothe mercy of God, and of both to redemption through thedeath of Christ, was to be the theme of Anselm's work,in which the doctrine of predestination, precisely becauseit was not the main point, could be dealt with as part ofthe total doctrine of redemption.

The other issue raised by Gottschalk was the oneimplicit in all the debates of the ninth century, namely,the authority of the fathers and especially of Augustine.Was the attack on Gottschalk, Florus asked, "a hidden wayof charging Augustine with heresy"? And were Gott-

The Claims of Reason 95

schalk's critics claiming, Prudentius asked, that "no onebut you has either read or understood the books of the cel-ebrated Augustine"? Gottschalk's opponents were unan-imous in attacking him for distorting Augustine; but hewas able to counter with many quotations from Augus-tine in defense of his doctrine, and his supporters pro-vided more of the same. It was, according to Florus, easyfor "the devoted and simple reader" to become confusedby "the great and multiple arguments" of Augustine andto weary of the question. Even Hincmar had to admitthat it was "superfluous" to enumerate patristic quota-tions, since his opponents, too, "collect and accumulatemany testimonies from many sources." Rather one mustrecognize that "it is not the number of the testimoniesbut their authority that counts." Determining this author-ity, he said elsewhere, called for historical scholarship andinterpretive skill. But it was only when the status ofpatristic authority was moved to the center of theologicalinquiry that such scholarship and such skill became avail-able to the theological enterprise. This was to be thework of the twelfth century.

The Claims of Reason

The Augustinian synthesis contained, at least inchoately,another way out of the dilemma posed by the doctrine ofpredestination, and, for that matter, out of the paradoxof the eucharistic presence. It was to transpose the entirestructure of nature and grace into an "exemplaristic mon-ism" in which these theological tenets, and ultimately allChristian theological tenets, could be seen as little morethan particular instances of certain universal ontologicalprinciples. Even the most orthodox of ninth-centurytheologians spoke of "the principles of dialectic" by whichsuch doctrines as the Trinity could be "explained." Theycalled dialectic "the discipline of disciplines," and theycriticized Gottschalk and his ilk for failing to understandthat "Augustine and the other doctors, in their conflictsagainst the heretics, were speaking dialectically." Now atheological system arose in which dialectic, as "the motherof the arts," was applied to Christian thought in a fashionthat seemed to the orthodox to be a presumptuous denialof Scripture and tradition. This was the system of JohnScotus Erigena. To him "that art which is called dialecticis not the product of human invention, but has been

BEYOND THE AUGUSTJNIAN SYNTHESIS 96

established in the nature of things by the Author ofall the arts."

Applying the techniques of dialectical analysis to theEucharist, Erigena composed a treatise in which he taught,according to Hincmar, "that the Sacrament of the Altaris not the true body and the true blood of the Lord, butonly a memorial of his true body and blood." The treatiseitself has been lost, but from his other writings it is evi-dent that the framework for his thinking about the Eu-charist was an interpretation of the universe accordingto which "there is nothing among visible and corporealthings that does not signify something incorporeal andintelligible." Hence "this visible Eucharist, which thepriests of the church confect daily on the altar from thesensible material of bread and wine . . . is a type and ananalogy of spiritual participation in Jesus." He taughtthat the church—unlike the heavenly powers, whichneeded no such mediation—was formed by the sacra-ments of blood and water, the Eucharist and baptism, towhich elsewhere he added chrism as the third of "thesymbols of the New Testament." Sometimes he seemedto be saying that the historical content of the Eucharistmade the term "symbol" inappropriate for it, but else-where he was also quite willing to use the term for theEucharist and the other sacraments of the New Testament.Yet it was not a "mere symbol" for Erigena; nothingreally was. For what it symbolized and memorialized wasthe reality of a presence of Christ, through the communi-cation of properties, "according to the flesh . . . always andeverywhere, yet neither local nor temporal," in both hisnatures. Of this "unity of the human and the divine sub-stance" the Eucharist was a "truth-bearing sign," in which,beyond all that was physical, believers "spiritually sacri-fice [Christ] and eat him not dentally but mentally[mente non dente]." Thus to some of his contemporariesand to some later interpreters, "it is chiefly in his con-ception of the Eucharist that Erigena's unorthodoxyappears."

Because his treatise on the Eucharist was destroyedwhile his treatise on predestination was preserved, to-gether with some responses to it, it is much less difficult toreconstruct Erigena's role in the predestinarian contro-versy than in the eucharistic controversy. At the behestof bishops Hincmar and Pardulus, he undertook to replyto Gottschalk's doctrine, even though "the doctrine of


election has no place in Erigena's world of thought."Predestination for him was synonymous with God's fore-knowledge of his own works, the "primordial causes" orprototypes of all existing things. There was then nodistinction between "providence" and "cause," for bothreferred to God. "He has done the things that are to be"meant that God had done all things at the same time.Hence "predestination" was not a completely precise termto use of God, for whom preparing an action and carryingit out were identical. "For him it is not one thing to beand another to will, but being and willing are the same,"and so was "predestinating." Indeed, all such terms as"wisdom" or "power," although none of them was com-pletely precise, referred to "the single immutable essenceof God"; and because this essence was single, it was"wicked" to speak of two wills or of two powers or of twopredestinations. There could be only one predestination,that to eternal salvation.

As for damnation, it had to be acknowledged that insome of his works Augustine had spoken of a predestina-tion to punishment. But such statements could be ex-plained away, and it would be clear that "he did not inany way teach two predestinations." It was likewise theusage of Scripture, when speaking about punishment, tospeak of foreknowledge, not of predestination. Even theforeknowledge of God, however, pertained only to exist-ing things, not to things that did not exist. Sin and evil,as "nothing," did not exist and therefore were neitherpredestined nor even foreknown by God. For if "noone is elected to punishment, how can the punishment bepredestined"? It was axiomatic that no nature could bepunished by another nature, and therefore no punishmentcould come from God or be predestined or foreknown byhim. When Scripture or Augustine spoke about the pre-destination of the wicked to punishment, this was to betaken to mean that God "has circumscribed them with hisimmutable laws, which their wickedness is not permittedto evade." God, who was both "just and merciful," had,"by a single predestination," determined to give eternalsalvation to the blessed, so that "all divine predestinationis a preparation of his gifts." Gottschalk, with his doctrineof a double predestination, was a heretic, to be repudiatedin the name of "true reason and the authority of the holyfathers."

All of this was intended to be a statement of "the royal


road" of orthodoxy, which did not stray "either to the rightor to the left." It was written "as a testimony to the ortho-dox confession" of the faith of the catholic church againstGottschalk. But those who thought Gottschalk's doctrine"noxious" or "pestiferous" soon found such an antidoteworse than the disease. It was a denial of the apostolicfaith of the church. Its author was utterly devoid of anyofficial standing in the church and had proved himselfto be "a master of error" who discussed "the truth of Godand the integrity of the faith . . . without a knowledge ofthe true faith, without the utterly faithful authority ofHoly Scripure, without a thorough instruction in thedoctrine of the fathers." He had relied solely on "humanand, as he himself boasts, philosophical arguments." Thesame synod that condemned Hincmar and his colleaguesfor going too far in their opposition to Gottschalk alsoanathematized "the silly questions and old wives' tales . . . ,which are abhorrent to the purity of the faith." In thehistory of philosophy, "Erigena was not so much the firstmedieval as the last ancient philosopher"; but he wasnevertheless the theologian who decisively raised, for thefirst time in the Middle Ages, the theological question ofthe claims of reason in the formulation of Christian doc-trine, especially in the interpretation of the relation ofGod and the world. As such, he merits attention here,together with his opponents.

The error of double predestination, according to Eri-gena, was that it was contrary to reason as well as to Scrip-ture and tradition. The "path" to true understanding lay in"the cooperation of divine grace and the power of reasonin the hearts of wise believers"; to sit at the feet of Christthe Logos was to learn from these two, reason and revela-tion. Other thinkers of the time stressed the superiority offaith to reason in the understanding of such mysteries asthe incarnation, as well as the need for both faith andknowledge. But Erigena saw evidence for the harmonybetween the two in the violation of both by sinners andheretics, since "there is nothing that fits better with soundreason than the unshakable and proven authority of theholy fathers." This was because "true authority is nothingother than the truth that has been discovered by the powerof reason and committed to writing by the holy fathers."Discovering the truth depended on reason and authority,which could not contradict each other, having a single


source in common. Faith was the "beginning" from whichthe church ascended to "theological reasons." The wordsof the prophet, "Unless you believe, you will not under-stand," which were to provide the motto for "faith insearch of understanding" in later medieval theology,proved the chronological priority of faith but the theo-logical superiority of understanding. Revelation or "the-ophany," however, was not confined to Scripture, but waspresent in every creature in which God disclosed himself.

Erigena was unique in his assertion that true philosophywas true religion, and vice versa. His opponents, echoingearlier writers, reminded him that it has not been throughphilosophers and orators but through fishermen thatChrist had conquered his enemies. They cited the exampleof Jerome's repudiation of Cicero as a cautionary tale toErigena. The admonition of Sirach, "Seek not what is toodifficult for you, nor investigate what is beyond yourpower," was embedded in the tradition of medievalthought; Erigena quoted it, too, but took it (as hadMaximus Confessor, his spiritual master) also as a com-mand that justified "human investigations" of the deepthings of God. Other thinkers of the time discussed theseven liberal arts, and in a letter to Charlemagne Alcuinhailed their rebirth and transformation through the seven-fold gift of the Holy Spirit; but Erigena declared them in-dispensable to the Christian philosopher in his under-standing of God and the world, and, much to the distressof his critics, he attributed Gottschalk's heresy to hisneglect of the liberal arts. "We do not deal with Vergil's'Arms and the man,' finding our condiment in the Greeksalt of fables," Radbertus boasted, although he did attrib-ute the Fourth Eclogue to the Holy Spirit; and AmbroseAutpert, exclaiming, "Plato is nothing to me, nor Cicero,nor Homer, nor Vergil," pointed out that the differencebetween his age and the patristic age was that the fathershad absorbed the classics directly, while he had to "admitthat if I by chance seem to have any of this, I have receivedit from the granary of the Lord's preaching." In oppositionto Erigena's identification of philosophy as the way ofsalvation, the defenders of orthodoxy, while concedingthat God was the source of all truth, insisted that "thephilosophers of the world did not have the Holy Spirit"and that therefore they could not be indispensable totheology.


Usually such disparagement of classical philosophy andrhetoric was intended to emphasize, by means of contrast,the authority of the apostolic Scripture. Erigena's oppo-nents attacked him for not supporting his statements with"the testimonies of the divine oracles" but substituting hisown "petty ratiocinations." Erigena himself, who spokeof Plato as "the greatest of those who philosophized aboutthe world" and of Aristotle as "the shrewdest among theGreeks," could assert, after quoting Plato, that "what wecannot prove by the authority of Holy Scripture and of theholy fathers . . . we ought not accept" and, after quotingAristotle, that "when it comes to theology, that is, to theinvestigation of the divine essence," the categorial systemof Aristotle did not apply. It was necessary to follow theauthority of Scripture, where "the mysteries [of Christ]are safeguarded"; for "the words of the prophets andapostles are the words of God, because they spoke thewords of God, and the Holy Spirit spoke in them." Whenhe undertook to discuss the relation between Creator andcreature, he did so by instituting a lengthy exegesis ofthe creation story in the Book of Genesis. It was essentialto take account of the multiplicity of biblical language andof the several levels at which Scripture spoke. One of theselevels was the historical. The heights of theoretical specu-lation must not obliterate "the truth of history," also called"the truth of the things that have been done" or "the faithof the things that have happened." But the only way tokeep the authority of Scripture was to remember that noteverything in Scripture was meant to be taken at thishistorical level. While being careful "not to contradictthe simplicity of those who take this passage of divineScripture [the creation story} historically," one had torecognize that there were passages where "nothing is tobe understood historically."

The proof for this version of biblical authority camefrom the fathers of the church. At the time that he wrotehis treatise on predestination, Erigena was working onthe basis only of the Latin fathers, above all of Augustine,whom he defended against the "heretical" distortions ofGottschalk; but "the Augustinian ideas and texts are veryoften subordinate to the dialectical procedures, to reason-ings that lead to conclusions which are quite alien to thethought of the master of Hippo." Erigena's critics chargedhim with failing to heed Augustine's "caution" and with


using him as an excuse for his own heresy by attributingto him ideas that he had never had. When Erigena wasfaced with an apparent contradiction between Augustineand Basil, he disclaimed the right "to adjudicate betweenthe interpretations of the holy fathers"; but by the time hesaid this, he was already discovering his deep affinity withthe Greek fathers (although he had been chided all alongfor his Hellenizing tendencies and continued to, try toexplain them). Like other Latin theologians, he identifiedGregory of Nazianzus with Gregory of Nyssa, althoughhe had translated a work of the latter from Greek intoLatin. It was, however, another translation from theGreek that made him influential, that of "the supremetheologian, Dionysius the Areopagite, the celebratedbishop of Athens," correcting an earlier version byHilduin of Saint-Denis. This translation as well as hiscommentaries made Erigena "without any doubt the onewho really introduced the Dionysian writings in theWest." His opponents too, quoted these writings as au-thoritative. To Dionysius must be added another Greektheologian, "the venerable Maximus," who provided thestarting point for many of "the principal and centralelements of [Erigena's] teaching."

Of all these elements, the most important was the doc-trine of God. Dionysius and Maximus, his Greek masters,taught Erigena to distinguish between two parts of theol-ogy: the apophatic or negative, which "denies that thedivine essence or substance is any of the things that are,"and the cataphatic or positive, which "predicates of [thedivine essence] all the things that are." Of the two, thenegative was "the more appropriate and more valid," foreven the angels were unable to know God in his truenature. By this way of negation, on which reason andrevelation agreed, one came to the recognition that Godwas "not any kind of essence nor any kind of goodness,since he is superessential and is more than goodness andis exalted above all that can be spoken or understood."Calling God "superessential" did not say "what he is, butwhat he is not." Such terms as "foreknowledge" and"predestination" applied temporal notions to a God whotranscended time as well as every other category. For "hisnature is simple, and more than simple; absolute beyondall accidents, and more than absolute," and therefore ofcourse "utterly impassible." But then, as Erigena himself


asked, "if he neither acts nor suffers, how is he said tolove all things and to be loved by all the things that havebeen made by him?" The answer was that "God is called'love' by a metaphor." If love was defined as "a laudabledesire for that immateriality which surpasses all reasonand understanding," then God as love could only be "love-in-himself," just as he was "both motion and stability,stable motion and mobile stability."

Because this conception of a transcendence beyond allexistence and even beyond love seemed to make the veryname "God" meaningless, it was necessary to emphasizethe other half of the same truth: that God was not only"nothing," but also "everything." "All things are in him,since he himself is all things," and therefore "in all thingsthat are, whatever is, he himself is." Thus the obverse sideof absolute transcendence was absolute immanence. Butthis, in turn, opened up at least two questions. First, "ifthis is the way it is [that God is the beginning and theend of all things], who would not immediately burst outin speech and declare: 'Then God is all things, and allthings are God'?" It was this perspective on the relationbetween God and the world that underlay his generalizeddefinition of predestination: "The things that [God] willsto be are, and they are just because he has willed thatthey come into being." In its more refined form, it be-came the principle that "everything that is said to existdoes not exist in itself, but by participation in that naturewhich truly exists." In addition to the question of panthe-ism, Erigena's ontology also raised the problem of diver-sity among creatures. For if "he who alone truly is, is theessence of all things," why should there be differencesamong them? Erigena's answer, based on Dionysius, wasthat "if God had made the universe to be created equal,without any differentiation of various orders [of being],. . . there would be no order in the republic of natures. Ifthere were no order, there would be no harmony. And ifthere were no harmony, there would be no beauty."

There was another question about this cosmology, fororthodox Christianity at any rate: What did it imply forthe plan of salvation? The function of the Logos was to be"the simple and multiple and most principal reason ofall things." All things had their "most general causes" inthe Logos, and they "exist in him causally" before existingin themselves. In this sense creatures "were before they


are, that is, they existed in the providence of God beforethey came to be in the act of creation." The doctrine ofthe Logos made it possible to say that the primordialcauses of all things, the Platonic "forms," were coeternalwith the eternal generation of the Logos, who, as the"beginning" spoken of in the first verse of the Bible, couldbe seen as "the form of all forms." It was less clear whatthe relation of the preexistent Logos was to the incarnateperson of Jesus Christ and to the redemption wroughtby him. "The light of men," Erigena wrote, "is our LordJesus Christ, who in his human nature has manifestedhimself to every rational and intellectual creature." Thisincluded men as the "rational creatures" and angels asthe "intellectual creatures," the former because theirnature needed to be set free "from death, from servitudeto the devil, and from ignorance of the truth," the latterbecause they needed "to recognize their Cause, of whomthey were ignorant before." To describe this reconcilia-tion, Erigena made use of various metaphors from thehistory of the doctrine of the atonement: Christ was asacrifice; he was the one who had fulfilled the law for allmen by his suffering and death; he was the one whomdeath could not hold captive and who, by his resurrection,had restored all of human nature to its "pristine state";he was the universal man beyond all gender, "in whomthere is neither male nor female," who rose from thedead "without physical sexuality but simply as a humanbeing," since, according to Erigena and his sources, "thedivision of nature into two sexes . . . is a punishment ofsin" in the fall of Adam.

Christ was all of this, and more, as incarnate Logosand Savior. Yet Erigena's definition of reason and revela-tion had as its necessary corollary a schematization of therelation between nature and grace that was bound tocast doubt on his doctrine of salvation. The distinctionbetween nature and grace was based on the text: "Everygood endowment [nature] and every perfect gift [grace]is from above." "Nature" in Erigena's metaphysicalthought was the universal category, embracing "all thethings that are and that are not." In his theologicalthought, as applied to the doctrine of man, "nature"meant that created endowment by which man was capableof participating in the wisdom of God and by which, infact, he did participate in the Summum Bonum even after


the fall. For "there is truly no rational nature that is utterlylacking in any gift of grace"; even the damned retained intheir nature a notion of eternal beatitude and a desire forit. Such an "assertion of the natural" seemed to his criticsto be the very antithesis of "the faith of the church,[which} makes a sharp distinction between the gifts ofnature and the gifts of grace." For he equated "the gifts ofdivine grace" with "all the good things that are distributedto us in this life."

These were, Erigena added, "small when compared withthe gifts of divine beatitude." But then, as he himself putit elsewhere, "what are we to say? Will the consequenceof this not be that there remains no eternal death ofmisery, no punishment of the wicked," but universal sal-vation? His opponent Prudentius detected suspicious par-allels between his eschatology and Origen's doctrine of"the restoration of all things." Erigena did not flinch fromacknowledging this lineage, even to the point of stating apreference for Origen over Ambrose. Nothing less thanthe entire human race had been restored in the salvationbrought by Christ. Confronted by the dilemma betweenthe eternity of punishment and the universality of divinegoodness, he did not hesitate: "If evil and death and itssting, which is sin, and all misery, as well as the last enemy,that is, the malice of the devil and all wickedness, will beabolished from the nature of things, what remains exceptthat the whole of creation will remain alone, purged ofall the filth of evil and wickedness, liberated from all thedeath of corruption, and set completely free?" Only thenwould the word of the apostle be fulfilled, that God wouldbe "all in all," and that would include "not only all men,but the entire sensible creation." While his opponentsinsisted on the eternity of damnation as a counterpart tothe eternity of bliss, Erigena looked for a resurrection inwhich evil, since it did not exist, would not be, and only"nature" in its goodness would abide forever. This meantthat "God alone will be, but the world which is under thesun and which took its rise from the eternal causes willhave returned to those causes" in God.

This vision of "theology as a kind of poetry," in whichthe data of revelation and the teachings of the fatherscould be manipulated as symbols by the claims of reason,was indeed "an isolated phenomenon in the history ofmedieval learning, the most extravagant fruit of Caro-


lingian culture," but it does not follow from this that"Scotus can be ignored in the history of medieval theol-ogy." For the congeries of issues to which his speculationshad led Erigena would have to be dealt with also bymore conventional theologians before the history ofmedieval theology was concluded. Even though mostscholars would perhaps agree "that, generally speaking,Erigena's contemporary critics saw his position cor-rectly," the condemnation of his answers in his own andin later times did not mean that his so-called "silly ques-tions" had been eliminated. He was writing, Erigena said,especially with those in mind "who demand from catho-lics a rational account of the Christian religion," and hediscussed the question of whether "an argument based oncreatures" was sufficient to show what God was. Such ademand for a rational account was to be addressed tocatholics again before very long, and with greater vigor.While most of his contemporaries drew their knowledgeof classical philosophy "from the granary of the Lord'spreaching" in the church rather than from the philoso-phers themselves, he was reading the texts, just as hismore orthodox successors would have to do. On the otherhand, his passing references to Islam would give way tothe theological debate over the Muslim interpretation ofAristotle and its significance for Christian thought. Whenthis happened, the very problematic on which his philoso-phy had come to grief—the relation between the eternityof God and the world—demanded the attention of theo-logians again. And by laying claim, however tenuously,to at least some share of the heritage of the fathers, hejoined with his contemporaries of the Carolingian periodin demonstrating for the periods that followed the neces-sity of going beyond the Augustinian synthesis.

3 The Planof Salvation

The tenth century produced no such flurry of theologicaland intellectual excitement as had the ninth, and "in thetext-books it disputes with the seventh the bad eminence,the nadir of the human intellect." A monk who was borna decade or so after the close of the tenth century spokeof "seeing and hearing everywhere the destruction of theChristian religion." Even allowing for rhetorical exag-geration, which echoed similar jeremiads voiced in earliercenturies, we may see in this lament a recognition thatscholarship and speculation were not flourishing as theyhad been during the Carolingian period. But scholarshipand speculation, important as they have been in the devel-opment of Christian doctrine, are not the only index, andoften not even the primary index, to that development.In the tenth and eleventh centuries there was being de-veloped and articulated the characteristically Westernunderstanding of Christ, so that "the monastic periodfrom 900 to A.D. 1100" has been identified as "the un-compromisingly christocentric period of Western civiliza-tion"; it was christocentric for the very reason that it wasmonastic. The Rule of Benedict of Nursia had prescribedthat one should "put nothing ahead of the love of Christ,"and monastic writers vied with one another in extollingChrist as the source of all good.

Eventually, scientific theology would catch up withBenedictine piety. At the very close of the "christocentricperiod," in 1098, Anselm, the exiled archbishop of Can-terbury, who was a Benedictine, composed his "remark-able book," Why God Became Man, on the purpose ofthe incarnation of Christ. Read as an essay in speculative

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divinity, the treatise was a virtuoso performance with fewrivals in the history of Christian thought, Eastern orWestern; for it proposed to show, "without paying atten-tion to Christ [remoto Christo]," that salvation was im-possible except through someone who was simultaneouslytrue God and true man. But in writing it he was "movedby his love of the Christian faith"; the origin, and there-fore the goal, of his speculation was "what we believe andconfess" in the catholic and orthodox "faith in redemp-tion." Read as a reflective study of church doctrine, there-fore, Why God Became Man was an effort to bring to-gether a rational view of the person and work of Christthat was conformable to "the greater authority" of Scrip-ture and dogma. That view, which Anselm set forth in abrief and nonspeculative epitome entitled Meditation onHuman Redemption, was by no means his alone. It was,for example, summarized in the treatise On the Incarna-tion of the Lord and His Burial ascribed to his contempo-rary, Bruno of Segni, in a disputation against the Jews byAnselm's disciple, Gilbert of Crispin, and in other worksof the time.

Another contemporary, Peter Damian, even though hissermonic works were not intended "exclusively to impartdoctrine," used his writings to expound a christocentricdevotion in which Christ would be the sole object oflanguage and thought, of love and meditation. A youngercontemporary and protege, Guibert of Nogent, arguedfor the incarnation on the basis of a picture of the atone-ment that strongly resembled Anselm's. Similarly, Odoof Cambrai developed the doctrine of original sin as wellas the doctrine of satisfaction through the sacrificial deathof Christ in a manner that was decidedly "Anselmic." Onthe other hand, the analysis of the doctrine of the atone-ment in Peter Abelard's Exposition of the Epistle to theRomans, with its attack on the notion that "the death ofhis innocent Son was so pleasing to God the Father thatthrough it he would be reconciled to us," was not intendedto be "a comprehensive statement of a particular theoryof the atonement, [but] an outline suggesting the motivefor God's redemptive activity, the reasons for rejectionof certain untenable soteriological interpretations, and thebenefits and consequences of Christ's work." Therefore itwould be a mistake to treat either Anselm's achievementor Abelard's critique, brilliant as they both are, in isola-

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tion from the many other witnesses of the tenth, eleventh,and twelfth centuries, or to concentrate on the differencesbetween Anselm and Abelard at the expense of theexegetical and liturgical theology that went into thedefinition of the plan of salvation.

Already in the ninth century, a didactic poem on thethemes of paradise lost and paradise regained spoke ofChrist as "undergoing the cross, as was required by theplan of salvation [ordo salutis]." Similarly, Peter Damianreferred to "the plan [ordo] of human restoration" andto "the plan required by human weakness," and Guibertof Nogent spoke of "the plan of the resurrection"; An-selm also used the term "plan," as did his successor asarchbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin, in speaking of theevents of salvation. Although "plan of salvation [ordosalutis]" did not yet have the technical significance thatit was to acquire in the dogmatics of post-ReformationProtestantism, it did suggest a distinctive interpretationof the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as savingevents. The relation between life, death, and resurrection—or the analogous, but not identical, relation betweenChrist as prophet, as priest, and as king—had not beenformulated definitively in the dogmas of the church coun-cils and creeds, but now Western theologians sought tomake explicit what they took to have been implicit in thosedogmas. Only in this sense would a "reconsideration ofdogma" be seen as permissible in the tenth and eleventhcenturies, not by a reopening of the question of the per-son of Christ, as "the Spanish heresy" of the ninth centuryhad tried to do, but by an opening of the question of thesalvific work of Christ the God-man.

The Paradox of Justice and Mercy

"God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself,not imputing their trespasses unto them": this locusclassicus on the salvific work of Christ had become anissue in the controversies of the ninth century, when Gott-schalk, following the lead of Augustine, maintained thatthe term "world" in the passage referred only to thepredestined, not to all men. Gottschalk's identificationof the "many" for whom Christ had shed his blood withthe elect alone continued to find support in this period;others took the word "many" to mean that the shedding

The Paradox of Justice and Mercy 109

of the blood of Christ was sufficient for all, but was ef-ficacious only for those who were predestined. Augustine'slanguage about "the fixed number of the predestined" wascited as orthodox teaching, but it was qualified by thestandard distinction between predestination and fore-knowledge. Similarly, it was maintained that Christ'sprophecy that Judas would be the one to betray him didnot constrain or predestine the act of betrayal. In thesense that an almighty God permitted evil to happen anddid not prevent it, he could be said to have done it andtherefore to have predestined evil as well as good; butin a stricter sense, since God could not will evil, he couldnot do evil either, not because something was impossiblefor God but because of his goodness. The paradox offree will and predestination—that "if predestination re-mains, free will amounts to nothing, but if we assert freewill in some, predestination disappears in them"—carriedover into the ethical realm, where God commanded thepredestined to labor for the attainment of that whichhe had given them gratis.

The consideration of the paradox of free will and pre-destination led once again to the even more fundamentalparadox of justice and mercy. To carry out the salvationthat his mercy had predestined, God had to undergo adeath of which his divine nature was incapable. Mankindneeded to produce both a high priest who was free of thesin that beset all men and a sacrifice that would atone forthe sin. "What, then, was our high priest to do? Wherewas he to turn? What plan was he to find for our redemp-tion? Where was the Mediator between God and men toobtain a sacrifice of propitiation by which to establishpeace between God and man?" From the words of theprophet about an "alien work" of God there came a dis-tinction between "the proper work of God," the work ofsalvation, which was appropriate to his nature, and the"alien work" of suffering and death, which was the neces-sary means to that end. The dilemma of the atonementlay in the need to face the contradiction between these two"works," that is, to describe "the mercy of God . . . as sogreat and so in keeping with [his justice]" that the para-dox would be resolved.

Sometimes it seemed possible to explain the paradox bysuggesting that justice was found in the Old Testament


and grace in the New, but it was recognized that such aformula was too simplistic. For in the Old Testament itwas said of God that even in his wrath he would not with-hold his mercy. Elsewhere in the Psalter the task of com-paring mercy and justice was enjoined by the words: "Iwill sing of mercy and judgment unto thee." What wasneeded was a way of defining the grace of God that wouldnot nullify the justice of God, a way of stating his"benignity" without impairing his "dignity." The judg-ments of God as well as the mercies of God were too pro-found for the human mind to plumb. His goodness couldnot be exhausted, his mercy could not be consumed, hisknowledge could not be incomplete, his power could notfail of its purpose. Mercy and justice both participated inthe mystery of predestination and salvation, because thewicked who were to be saved could not be converted togood except by mercy, and the wicked who were to perishwould not abide in their sins except by justice. Statementsabout consolation and statements about terror appearedtogether in Scripture "as a contradiction," so that menwould prefer being saved by the kindness of God to beingpunished by his severity; "for God's clemency is so greatthat he exercises all his severity, which in our human wayof speaking is called the wrath of God, against sinners inthis world in such a way that in the world to come he mayhave mercy on them after they have been set straightfrom their wickedness." Justice and mercy came togetherin "the reconciliation of the human race," but how didthis come about?

The answer could not be found in any way of speakingor thinking about God that ascribed either necessity ormutability to the divine nature. God was "that beingwhich can subsist without the assistance of any other,"by contrast with creatures, "whose total being consists inthe power of Another." There was nothing that could existat any time or at any place without the presence of God.The transcendence of God over nature and its lawsmeant that "the very nature of things has its ownnature, namely, the will of God." What was called "ne-cessity" and what was called "impossibility" were sub-ject to that will and were denned by it. The "speaking"of God, as in the creation, was the same as his "willing.""I am that I am," the word from the burning bush, con-tinued to serve as the proof text for the ontological abso-


luteness of the divine nature, as it had since patristic times.Of all the Old Testament, this text alone spoke "essen-tially," that is, unmetaphorically, about the nature of God.It taught that God "exists immutably, since only what isimmutable has true being; for wherever a change takesplace, being and nonbeing come together." The statementof the New Testament that there was in God "no variationor shadow due to change" meant that his immutability,abiding in itself, "disposes all things that are mutable."Those biblical passages in which God appeared to bemutable were a condescension to human mutability, in-tended to instruct and to inform. The transcendence ofGod "cannot in any way be brought down from itssublime height, nor does it labor in what it willsto do."

In the moral sphere, the transcendence of God was hisjustice; for "when we say that God is better than man, wemean nothing other than that He transcends all men."Therefore man had to confess not only that "He is mosthigh and I am weak," but also that "He is most just and Iam wicked," thus expressing not only the awe of the finitecreature in the presence of the infinite Creator, but also theguilt of the sinner in the presence of the holy Judge. Sojust was God that the very presence of punishment wasevidence of sin in the one being punished, since Godcould not condemn anyone unjustly. Even though "theabsence of righteousness [justitia]" was not a positivereality but only the privation of a positive reality andtherefore "nothing," it did not follow that when Godpunished sinners for the absence of righteousness, hewas punishing them for nothing and hence unjustly. Inshort, "God cannot in any way do anything unjust." Al-though, in the eyes of men, infants who died beforebaptism had committed no sin and should not be con-demned, God judged differently and condemned themjustly, "not for Adam's sin but for their own." Nor was itlegitimate automatically to "promise impunity to all whohave been baptized," for the justice of God was not an-nulled even by baptism. There was no escape from hisjustice and his will: one who ran away from his "com-manding will" came under his "punishing will" instead.The transcendence of God meant that no creature couldadd to the honor of God or detract from it "intrinsically,"but such a term as "dishonoring God" was a way of


describing what happened when "a creature denies to theCreator the honor that is due him." In requiring eitherpunishment or the restoration of that honor, God wasnot acting in a bloodthirsty manner, as some charged, butin a manner appropriate to his nature and consistent withhis justice.

It was the intention of this just God in the act of crea-tion "to make a just and blessed rational nature that wouldenjoy Him." The task of the proclamation of the Christianmessage, therefore, was to induce in the hearer an ac-curate self-knowledge; for through the knowledge of selfone came to the knowledge of God. Self-knowledge re-vealed to man that "he cannot be turned back from sinand from its servitude except through another, that hecannot be turned away from Tightness except throughhimself, and that he cannot be deprived of his freedom[of will] at all—either through another or through him-self." Human nature was "divided": it continued to be thenature that God himself had created and that he did notdespise; but on account of "the stains of marriage," "thesin that is committed in the hour of conception," everyonewho was conceived in the usual way—even the VirginMary—was "conceived in iniquities and in sins," so that"the unclean seed" that gave him his existence also im-posed on him the inevitability of sin. If nature had re-mained sinless, "as Adam was before his offense," it wouldhave propagated itself without sin; but having becomesinful in the fall, it now propagated itself in a sinful way.Sin could be defined simply as "not rendering to God whatis due him"; original sin was the sin that was "present inthe infant as soon as it has a rational soul," the term"original" referring not to the origin of the human race,which was pure, but to the origin of each individualperson. The continuing goodness of God's creation, inspite of sin and the fall, implied that "evil of whateverkind . . . , even though it seems to exist, does not exist,because it does not come from God."

Although evil did not have an existence of its ownbut was only "the ptivation of good," there was nothingillusory about the fall of Adam and Eve into evil. It waspossible to say that the transgression of Adam was not asgrave as that of a later Christian, who sinned against thebetter knowledge that came through the law, the prophets,and the gospel; or one could treat the fall as a cautionary


tale, warning against the sin of presumption. But it wasevident to all that it was much more. The idea of man asmicrocosm, which had figured in the christological dis-cussions of the East, meant that the fall of man involvedall the other creatures in man's fate. Created as the repre-sentative of all of humanity, Adam entered into battleagainst the enemy of mankind, the devil, and "he fell,conquered in the very first encounter of the battle." Thedevil, whose own fall had been caused by pride and bya desire to be God, indeed, to be more than God, per-suaded Adam to despise the commandment of God. Andthus "the devil and one's own will" were responsible forsin. Having sought to be free of the rule of God, Adamended up instead placing himself, and all his posteritywith him, into subjection to the rule of sin and temptation.As the poet lamented, "O unhappy father, the begetterand the curse of your progeny!" While it was sometimessuggested that if Eve alone had sinned and not Adam,this sin would not have been transmitted to later genera-tions, since God could have created another woman as hehad created Eve, later generations were said to "havesinned in Adam" even though they had not yet been inexistence, because "we were all in Adam" and "we weregoing to come from him."

Such, then, was the predicament of fallen man as hestood before the justice of God. He owed God an obliga-tion not to sin, which was "the righteousness or Tightnessthat makes men righteous"; but in refusing obedience,man "dishonored" God by his sin, and therefore he owedGod a "satisfaction" that was greater than the honortaken away by his sin. Man bore not only "the obligationof perfect righteousness," but also "the obligation ofrendering satisfaction." Moses, David, and all the greatmen of God were "entangled in their own offenses" andcould not take upon themselves the sins of others: "bywhat satisfaction, therefore, can anyone obtain releaseunless he has as his own faithful advocate the very onewhom he has offended?" Most—but not quite all—theo-logians taught that for God to forgive man his sin withoutsuch satisfaction, by a simple fiat, was impossible, notbecause there was something that the Almighty waspowerless to do, but because such an act of forgivenesswould be a violation of the very justice it would be in-tended to uphold. This requirement of a satisfaction that


exceeded the original obligation was supported by "theunchangeable truth" of revelation as well as by "the evi-dent reason" of natural knowledge. And it was "just"to demand that the requirement be met by one who be-longed to the same species that had committed the sin.

Such a description of the transcendence and the justiceof God in relation to human sin, if carried to its logicalconclusion, could seem to preclude any plan of salvation.What have been called the "seemingly Manichaean ex-pressions" of Peter Damian could be taken to imply thathuman life as now constituted was beyond redemption."Man could be saved either through Christ or in someother way or in no way," Anselm said, and went on toshow that it would not be "in some other way." Thus itwas either through Christ or not at all. Salvation must bepossible as well as necessary; and as the discussion ofdivine justice had as its purpose to show that salvation wasnecessary, so the discussion of divine grace and mercywas directed to showing that salvation was possiblethrough Christ. "Nothing was beyond the reach of hiswisdom, nothing was too difficult for his power.... Therewas no way that the mystery [of the incarnation] couldbe ineffectual." Although the omnipotence and transcen-dence of God were expressed through his justice, it wasalso possible to argue that "he was not omnipotent ifhe could not be led by his faithfulness to redeem man,whom he had created well." The term "necessity," which,when applied to the relation between God and man,usually referred to the iron law of God's justice, could alsobecome a synonym for grace and mercy, so that "it wasnecessary that [God] bring to perfection that in humannature which he had begun."

It was the accomplishment of "the gratuitous grace ofGod alone" that he inspired and made perfect anythingon which he had mercy. The forgiveness that God grantedin his mercy was extended to the sinner "whether I wantit or not." No one could live and work in a manner thatwas truly the service of God "unless he has been led bythe grace of God," in fact, "by the grace of God alone."All who were saved were saved "by the kindness of hisgrace alone," which transcended human thought andcomprehension. So prominent was this theme of grace inScripture that one could get the impression "that free

The Paradox of justice and Mercy 115

will does not contribute anything to salvation, but gracealone"; moreover, there were many who "assert that onthe basis of experience they can prove that man is not sus-tained by any free will at all." The contradiction betweenthe apostle Paul and the apostle James on faith and workscould be resolved by noting that if faith without workswas dead, a dead faith was no faith at all, and that if therighteous man lived by faith, someone without faith wasdead; for "faith is the foundation of the entire goodwork." Similarly, the contradiction between "grace alone"and free will was resolved by showing that in the caseof infants it was truly "by grace alone, with no action bythe free will" that salvation came, while in more maturepersons "the natural free will always assists" the gift ofdivine grace. Nevertheless, grace received the credit evenhere, for without it free will could not attain to salvation.

Therefore John Cassian, despite his contribution tomonasticism, was to be censured for teaching "that thereare some whom God saves through grace and others whomnature justifies through free will," and the answer toCassian by Prosper of Aquitaine was to be commendedas "a catholic book." "Who is converted to God," asked amanual of discipline for monks, "unless, having laid asidethe blackness of his sins, he is made white through thegrace of forgiveness?" According to another monasticwriter, it was impossible for anyone to raise himself up tothe divine heights by his own powers, "unless he is liftedup to them by the grace of him who for our sakes camedown." Yet the same writer could also say that "heavenlygifts come only to those who, with the cooperation of thegrace of God, have by their industrious action merited toattain to them." And elsewhere he warned that "althoughyou cannot even will anything good, much less do it,without [the grace of God}, still you must not believe thatyou will be saved regardless of your own effort." Failurewas not due to being deserted by "the anticipating graceof God," but to being held back by "our own slothfulness."One could go so far as to say that human salvation hadtwo causes, divine grace and human will, but even thisstatement was based on the principle that all human goodwas moved and inspired by grace, which conferred, alsoupon the free will, the capacity to do the good.

The relative roles of grace and free will in salvation


had been an issue in the fifth and sixth centuries, andagain in the ninth century; and in the form of the con-troversy over justification by faith, the question was todominate the debates of the sixteenth century. But here inthis "uncompromisingly christocentric period" it was thedoctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ, ratherthan the doctrine of justification or even the doctrineof grace, that became the principal vehicle for affirmingthe character of salvation as a free and utterly unearnedgift of God; and in the period of the Reformation, thismedieval understanding of the person and work of Christwas to be a presupposition shared, at least in principle,by both sides in the dispute over justification by faithversus justification by faith and works, with each claimingthat its idea of justification was the only one consistentwith the doctrine of redemption through Christ.

The presupposition for the doctrine of redemption inour period was the orthodox christological dogma. Socompletely was this taken for granted that the formulaof the decree of the Council of Chalcedon, that "the dis-tinctive character of each nature [is] preserved" in theincarnation of the Logos, could be quoted, for exampleby Peter Damian or by Anselm, without the source of thequotation being cited by either author (or, for that matter,by the modern editor of either author). It was a repetitionof the condemnation of "Apollinarism" when a tenth-century commentary on the Gospel of Matthew made apoint of explaining that the incarnation involved a totalhuman nature, consisting of soul as well as of flesh, orwhen a twelfth-century theologian repeated the Easternmotto that what Christ did not assume in the incarnationhe did not save. The notion of "enhypostaton," as evolvedin later christological controversies, served to answer thosewho maintained that because the Logos "was a hypostasis[persona] even before the assumption of a man . . . andthe assumed man was a hypostasis, since every individualhuman being is acknowledged to be a hypostasis," it wouldbe appropriate to speak of the incarnate one as "two hypos-tases"; this claim was erroneous because "in the term'man' [as applied to Christ] only the [human] nature ismeant," not a human hypostasis. Western theologiansseem to have been somewhat less successful in appropri-ating the results of the Eastern controversies over one ortwo wills in Christ, as is evident in Anselm's statement


that "Christ came to do not his own will but that of theFather, because the righteous will that he had did notcome from [his] humanity but from [his} divinity." Yetthis did not imply the absence of a distinct human will inChrist.

It would be a mistake to conclude from the formal toneof such statements of adherence to christological ortho-doxy that the content of the dogma had not entered intowhat was being believed, taught, and confessed. Latintheologians of this period reveled in the paradox of theincarnation, that "a woman conceived the Lord, so that acreature might give birth to the Creator," that "the pure[virgin] is purified, God is offered up, the Redeemer isredeemed," that "he whom the immensity of heaven can-not contain is confined to the narrowness of the manger,"and that "he who is lying in the cradle sends a star fromthe constellations" to guide the Magi. Through his birthfrom Mary, "our God has become our brother," humblytaking upon himself everything that belonged to human-ity. In his flesh, as now in the bread of the Eucharist, Godhimself lay hidden. He had been urged by his love todescend to earth, and "he who is consubstantial with theFather has through his love deigned to come to us." Thevery name "Jesus" was a title for "Savior," and those whowere rescued from hell were "converted on account of thename of Jesus." The incarnate one was "the Wisdom thatwith the all-ruling God did shape the whole creation."When, according to the Vulgate text, Jesus said to Nico-demus that "the Son of man is in heaven," this provedthat the Logos-made-flesh was present in heaven accordingto both natures while he was on earth. The hypostaticunion of the divine and human natures in him made theatonement and satisfaction possible, in that "whateverwas necessary to be done for the restoration of men, thedivine nature did it if the human could not, and the humannature did it if it was not fitting for the divine."

Such was "Christ, the lover of humanity." The christo-centric piety of this period multiplied titles and epithetsfor him, saluting him as "sacrifice, king, hero, judge,leader, altar, priest." Christmas Night, the feast of hisnativity, was "that night in which peace was given backto angels and men." But his nativity was only the begin-ning of a chain of events that together made up the planof salvation. "For Christ was born in order to suffer; he


died in order to rise again; he rose again in order to ele-vate to heaven the flesh that he had assumed from us for us;he took it with him there in order to make it immortal andhappy forever." The economy of salvation included theincarnation, passion, and resurrection, which were to betaken together. The "seven seals" of the Apocalypse werethe saving events of the life and death of Christ. A favoritemetaphor for this chain of events in the economy ofsalvation, derived from Ambrose, was the idea of a seriesof "leaps." "He shall save the world," said the Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf, "and all that dwell therein by thatnoble leap. The first leap was when he came to the Maid."The list of further leaps varied from one theologian toanother, but birth, crucifixion, and burial were in all ofthem. Significantly, Cynewulf included a graphic descrip-tion of Christ's descent into hell as one of the leaps.

The birth and life of Christ, the crucifixion and deathof Christ, the burial and resurrection of Christ—thesethree "leaps" provided the points of focus for the consider-ation of the atonement. Sometimes it was his humility andhis summons to discipleship that served as the basis forhis saving work; sometimes it was "the series of eventsin the Lord's passion" on the cross, and sometimes it washis restoration to glory as Lord of history and of theuniverse. As in patristic thought, so in the tenth andeleventh centuries, these "leaps" were not isolated fromone another, but differences of emphasis did appear. Itwas recognized, moreover, that even as Redeemer andLord, Christ had "retained the fullness of grace in himself"and had remained transcendent. But as this period set outto deal with "the question of what that redemption of oursthrough the death of Christ may be and in what way theapostle declares that we are justified by his blood," itworked within the presuppositions of its heritage aboutthe being of God, about the nature of man, and about themystery of the incarnation of the God-man. Each ofthese presuppositions had acquired definite form by thistime, so that while there was no dogma of the atonementas such, no theory of redemption that overlooked any ofthese presuppositions, or appeared to slight one or an-other of them, would be deemed acceptable.

The Discipline of Jesus

The plan of salvation, as defined and refined in this period,did not restrict itself to the theory of redemption in the

The Discipline of Jesus 119

narrow sense of that word. The "picture of Christ" under-lying it included not only the narrative of his suffering,death, and resurrection, but the entire account of his lifeand work, his miracles and parables as well as his cruci-fixion. The picture of man presupposed by the doctrineof salvation likewise required a comprehensive under-standing of what the coming of Christ had accomplished."Man did not need only to be redeemed," according tothis understanding of Christ's coming in search of thelost, "but also to be instructed about how he ought tolive after redemption." Acceptance of such instruction wasthe hallmark of true discipleship. "To be truly a discipleof Jesus and one to whom Jesus speaks, one must lovethe discipline of Jesus." Discipleship and discipline wereinseparable in the Christian life, as were discipline andredemption in the delineation of the work of Christ. "Thediscipline of Jesus" included the total span of humanexperience as this was to be brought into conformitywith the divine will that had been revealed through theincarnation of the Son of God in a fully human life, allof which was pertinent to the human lives that it wasintended to redeem and renew.

Before the incarnation, there were many aspects ofauthentic human existence that had never been seen in aconcrete person but "could be demonstrated only by rea-son, apart from experience." But now the very one "whowas to redeem men and to lead them back from the way ofdeath and perdition to the way of life and eternal blessed-ness" would at the same time be the one who lived as aman among men and who, "in this association with them,as he was teaching them by word how they ought to live,would provide himself as an example for them." The dis-cipline of Jesus gave instruction to his followers "byteaching and by example." When the Son of God camein the flesh to receive all those who would take refugewith him, "he gave them instruction in the precepts oflife and set forth an incorruptible and utterly sound pat-tern of new life." For example, the imperative of bearingwith the weaknesses of others was inculcated "not onlyby precept but also by many examples," above all by thatof "the humble Jesus." The combination of precept andexample in the discipline of Jesus had its prototype inthe story of Mary and Martha. The two sisters representedthe two commandments of that discipline, because "noth-ing else has been commanded us except that we either


minister to Christ in his members," as Martha did, "orthat we pay close attention to him in contemplating hiswill," as Mary did. Such hearing and such doing were thecontent of the Christian life. Thus it was said of onesaint that "by day, with Martha, he ministered to the Lordin his members, but by night, with Mary, he sat at thefeet of Jesus and listened to his word."

Listening to the word of Jesus was a way of describing"the sweetness of the contemplative life" symbolized byMary. "He was," said the poet, "the bringer of laws, thegiver of precepts." The conception of the gospel as anew law, which had come from the early church, con-tinued to be a way to describe the commandments of Jesusas a fulfillment or an amendment of the old law. Althoughhe was not merely a prophet, Christ as teacher of the newlaw could be identified as a prophet, too, and this in atreatise addressed to Jews. When Christ had said of him-self, "I am the truth," this pertained not only to "theconfession of Christ" as such, but to "the truth of justice"as it affected one's neighbor. It followed that anyone whodenied the truth in the case of his neighbor for fear ofoffending those in power was "undoubtedly denyingChrist" as truth incarnate. The author of these sentimentswas himself identified as "the soldier of Christ," and in anaccount of someone who was literally a soldier as well asa soldier of Christ he saw the influence of "the love ofChrist" on the battlefield, where the soldier "had no wishto assail the persons of the enemy, but only to check theiraudacity." The demands "of Christ, of peace, and of thecommon good" were uppermost in his mind, even as asoldier. Obedience to those demands was a defining char-acteristic of a Christian. Although it was said that "aChristian is one who does not oppose Christ in any way,while one who does not obey the sacred canons [of thechurch] is a rebel against Christ," the fundamental defi-nition of a Christian was: "one who obeys the will ofChrist."

Another way to put the same definition was to identifya Christian as one who read the Bible: "he who wishes tobe with God always, must pray frequently and must readfrequently; for when we pray, we speak with God, butwhen we read, God is speaking with us." The one resourcethat could preserve the equanimity of the wise man amidall the troubles of this world was meditation on Scripture,


which contained everything that there was to know aboutGod and about the self. There was no weapon more effec-tive against the wiles of the devil than citing Scripture.By this method those who read Scripture and meditatedon it were able to put him to flight. When the psalmistsaid, "Thou preparest a table before me in the presenceof my enemies," this was a reference to "the table of HolyScripture . . . filled with various doctrines." But when theapostle said, "Whatever was written in former days waswritten for our instruction," these words "pertain espe-cially to those who, being literate, can constantly recognizehow they should govern themselves and those who havebeen entrusted to them"; therefore "it is incumbent espe-cially on the clergy to pay supreme attention to what hasbeen written." This duty could be identified as the mostimportant thing that the clergy did. The "sacrifices ofpraise" that truly honored God in worship were the read-ing and teaching of the words of the divine law. Sinceit was the purpose of all of Scripture to act as a restraintagainst the evils of this present life, it addressed itself tothe human condition in two ways, "either by consoling usor by warning us, for every divine pronouncement is setforth in this twofold fashion." The proclamation of theword of God consisted in the application of its consolingand warning message to the hearer.

As consolation and as warning, Scripture carried aunique authority, since it was the word of Christ. If any-one refused to heed this word, he showed that he was noton God's side. For those who were on God's side, it wasenough that one "show proof from the divine Scriptures,and we believe him." It was said of Anselm, for example,that he reposed such trust in Scripture that everything init was unquestionably true for him and he made it hissupreme goal to conform his faith and thought to theauthority of Scripture. He himself labeled as "false" anduntenable whatever contradicted Scripture; and he ex-plicitly put this as a check upon his speculation in such away that if any conclusion of human reason was contra-dicted by Scripture it was not to be believed, while it ifdid not contradict Scripture it was to be accepted. Athinker must not bring his own philosophical preconcep-tions to the study of Scripture, but must "approach thequestions of the Sacred Page with the utmost caution,"something that "the dialecticians of our time, or rather


the heretics of dialectic" failed to do. What made Anselm"the master of the entire Latin world" was his "strictnessin the assertion of the Scriptures and of the faith" in oppo-sition to these and other "heretics of this time."

The authority of Scripture was supreme over that ofreason; it was supreme over other authorities as well. Godhad so generously endowed the Old and New Testamentswith his grace that "there is no need for us to add anythingof doctrine to them nor to propound anything except whatwe have been taught by reading them." Although such aformulation of the authority of Scripture sounded asthough it were isolated from the authority of the churchand of the fathers, no such isolation was intended. The"doctrine of authority in Ratherius of Verona may beregarded as typical. On the one hand, he could describeScripture as a "labyrinth, utterly impenetrable to me" andopen to access only through the writings of the fathers.Yet he could also, at least for the sake of argument, dis-pense with citations from the fathers, in favor of "themore eminent authority" of Scripture. He even put thedifference between the fathers and Scripture in the lan-guage of a distinction between "modern teachers" and"ancient ones," and admitted that he had "used them in-discriminately," since it had been through the "modernteachers" that God had made the ancient Scripture fruit-ful for him.

As the inspired word of God, Scripture was true andwas consistent throughout. If something in one book ofthe Bible appeared to diverge from what was said inanother, "they must all be understood as setting forth asingle message, through the unity of him who is speakingin all of them, the Holy Spirit." This unity brought to-gether the New Testament and the Old Testament asthe word of Christ. The very first verse of the very firstpsalm spoke "about the blessedness and the holiness" ofChrist, as did many other portions of the Old Testament.It was suggested that originally the readings at the Chris-tian liturgy had consisted only of the epistles of theapostle Paul, but that eventually other lessons were added,not only from the New Testament but also from the Old.So central was the witness to Christ in the Old Testamentthat "Isaiah, as Saint Jerome says, should be called not somuch a prophet as an evangelist and an apostle." The Songof Songs became "the book which was most read, and


most frequently commented in the medieval cloister" be-cause it, as "a nuptial song," was suitable to the celebrationof Christ and of his saints. Sometimes, it seems, thedevotion in the medieval cloister to the Book of Psalmsand related books was so intense that when the monksheard the reading of the Gospels, they exclaimed, "Stopit, and go back to the Psalms!" Despite their christologicalinterpretation of the Old Testament, Christians sometimesargued, especially in their polemics against Judaism, thatthe law of Moses and the Old Testament promised onlymaterial blessings to the faithful, blessings such as wealth,children, and long life, but that "there is silence abouteternal matters, and nothing is said about the rewards ofheaven or the torments of hell." They recognized, more-over, that the christological interpretation of the OldTestament depended on the authority of Christ, and notvice versa, so that "even if you disbelieve something fromall the proofs that have been adduced from the HolyScriptures, either because they have been spoken in theshadow of the [Old Testament] law or by mere men,you will surely have to believe what has been said by theLord Jesus Christ, who is God and man."

What had been said by Christ himself was, in a specialand strict sense, what was contained in the Gospels. "Lawand prophecy are recapitulated in the one gospel," be-cause the words and deeds of Christ in the Gospels gavemeaning to Moses and Isaiah. A prophet was not onlyone who predicted the coming of Christ as something inthe future, but one who interpreted Scripture properly.Therefore John the Baptist was a prophet because hepredicted what was to come, but "more than a prophetbecause with his finger he pointed at Him whom the otherprophets had predicted as yet to come, and he said: 'Be-hold, the Lamb of God.'" This explicit recognition of theChrist whom the Old Testament had only adumbratedput the Gospels into a special category. "Gospel [evan-gelium], translated into Latin, means 'good news.' Andwhat is better news than . .. the things that are said in theGospel about the incarnation of the Son of God, about hismiracles, his preaching, and his resurrection and ascen-sion?" These events in the life of Christ, in fact "all thedeeds of our Savior," were deserving of reflection andveneration, for "none of what is said or done in [theGospels} is devoid of very beneficial mysteries." Although


the Gospel of Matthew was the first and the Gospel ofJohn the last, "nevertheless the holy evangelists are allone in authority and one in faith, not diverging fromone another in any way."

The unique position of the Gospels within the Biblewas shown also by their special place within the liturgy,where they were "the most important of all the thingsthat are said in the office of the Mass." The order ofservice at the Mass did not begin with the reading of thelessons, but with songs and prayers, whose "sweetnessand pleasantness would first soften the hearts of thehearers, so that the people, after hearing the melody of apleasant song and having had their attention focused onspiritual things through the repentance of their minds,will take up the saving words of the Gospel with ardentinterest." The reading of the Gospel was "more important"than the rest of the liturgy. According to a rite in use inthe tenth century, the deacon at the Mass would kiss theGospel, then take it in his hand, and proceed to the ap-pointed place to read it; upon the announcement of theGospel lesson, the clergy and all the faithful would turnto the east. It had been the custom even earlier to accom-pany the reading of the Gospel with incense and candlesand with other signs of its central importance. It wasfitting that the Gospel be read only by someone of therank of deacon or higher, and from "a position of greaterexcellence" before the altar as an indication of "the pre-eminent doctrine proclaimed in the Gospel and its out-standing authority." Even the reading of the Epistle lessonhad to yield to the Gospel, going before it not because of agreater worth but only in the way that the apostles walkedahead of Christ while he was on earth. The Gospel wassupreme not only in the liturgy, but for the liturgy, deter-mining liturgical practice even on such questions asomitting the Gloria during Lent.

As the word of Christ, the Gospels presented not onlywhat he had said, but what he had been and done. In aChristmas sermon, for example, the recitation of formulasabout the incarnation reminiscent of the creed of theCouncil of Chalcedon led direcly to a "common discussionabout the humility of our Redeemer and what he accom-plished for our salvation already in his very nativity."At his baptism, the Holy Spirit came in the form of adove, because "the Lord who was coming in meekness


wanted to have himself made manifest to men through ameek sign." He came to save the world from its pride, and"this he especially teaches by all the things that he does inutmost humility, saying, 'I am meek, all of you learn thisfrom me.' " When Judas sought to betray him with a kiss,Jesus showed himself to be "meek and innocent." As theprince of peace, he was determined to exercise his reignthrough moderation and to change harsh actions intogentle ones. He who wanted to reign with Christ, there-fore, must "first strive to suffer for him in humility." Thehumility of Christ was the nobility of his followers. Theywere truly worthy of him if they, like him, had groundsfor pride and attained the height of power, but neverthe-less remained humble. This was true even of Mary her-self, "the unique, the incomparable Virgin, [who], if shehad not followed the humility of Christ, would never haveattained to the exaltation of Christ."

Like Mary, believers were to follow Christ, "who shouldbe imitated in all respects, as far as possibility allows." Ifthey claimed to abide in him, they must walk as he walked.For it was a basic rule of the Christian life that "he whowants to imitate Christ must continually go on learning."Following him today did not mean walking in his steps,but imitating his deeds. Since Christ was the head of thechurch, the eyes of all the faithful were to be intent onhim, just as human eyes paid attention to the head ofanother person. When two of his disciples had been guiltyof excessive ambition and the remaining ten had beenguilty of resentment, Christ had not reproved eithergroup, but had instead set himself forth to both as anexample of the principle that "he who is the servant ofall is truly the Lord." If the Virgin Mary herself was animitator of the humility of Christ, then the imitation ofthe saints by believers was, in turn, an imitation of Christ;yet it was possible also to cite "the actions of our LordJesus" as a model for those "who object to" the examplesof the saints. He had become a man so that human beingscould imitate his human life and could not dismiss hisvirtues as something beyond the realm of possibility; "thatwas why he did not give them an archangel, but himselfas a model." He was above all the model of how to bearthe contempt of men as a reward for a life of righteousness.

In inviting men to follow his example, "he has lifted upthe sign of the cross before the nations, and he declares:


'He who does not take his cross daily and follow me isnot worthy of me.'" The summons to "take up the crossof the Redeemer" was the core of the Christian life ofself-mortification, in which one died to the world. Thiswas the call to "follow him as your leader in the midst ofthe battle of temptations, as your guardian in the midst ofpeace and prosperity." Yet this call to follow Christ asleader was addressed to those who were in their "time ofinitiation" as recruits to the monastic life, rather than tolay Christians. Among lay Christians, moreover, "thosewho set themselves a higher standard than the ordinarylooked to the monasteries for their examples." The ex-hortation to imitate "the example of the Lord" pertainedto all who were his "followers." Nevertheless, when alayman gave evidence of a special "devotion to Christ,"this was proof that "if one considers his desire [votum},"he was actually manifesting a "faithfulness to the mon-astic profession" even though his own circumstancesprevented him from becoming a monk; and some lay-men of this disposition did eventually enter the religiouslife.

The term "desire [votum]" in that description wasapparently not yet being used in its technical sense of"monastic vow," but the three component elements of thedoctrine of vows—poverty, chastity, and obedience—wereclearly present in the specific ways in which Christ servedas example. One who received the poor received Christ"in them," and one who heard their cries actually heard"Christ in the poor"; but those who renounced power andwealth to "take on a monastic habit" were said to havebecome "subject to Christ the pauper," and the ideal theyfollowed was that of living "in the simplicity of ChristJesus, the pauper and the crucified." "As a pauper and apauper in spirit," an abbot exhorted a monk, "follow yourPauper-Lord." The ideal of chastity was likewise a part offollowing the example of Christ, the Son of the Virgin,who taught that "the one who takes up his cross is chastein heart and in body and has never made provision forthe flesh, to gratify its desires." As the Son of the Virgin,Christ not only rescued a Mary Magdalene "from thedepths of the abyss" of her lusts; but he "imbued with thelove of chastity" a lay believer, so that "he would notallow himself to be diverted from it even by the prospectof an excellent marriage." Such obedience to Christ de-


served to be called "bearing the yoke of Christ," but this"yoke" usually referred to monastic obedience. By contrastwith Moses, who had coerced the Jews into obedience byusing the rod of the law, Benedict of Nursia had "sub-jected the company of the monks to the sweet yoke ofChrist." And the monk would say of himself that, in vow-ing obedience, he had promised Christ to bear "the mo-nastic yoke."

The supreme vehicle of divine instruction and revela-tion through the discipline of Jesus, as the phrase "bearingthe cross" indicated, was the passion and death of Christ.As the founder of the Camaldolese Order, Romuald, said,"If you bear the cross of Christ, it follows that you mustnot forsake the obedience of Christ." To obey and followChrist implied that one hearken to his word and imitatehis actions, but above all it meant that one "follow in thefootsteps of his passion." If, for example, someone foundit difficult to forgive his brother, he was to call up thememory of the sufferings of Christ, who prayed for hisenemies even though he was dying an innocent death attheir hands. An act of penance, such as fasting or flagel-lation, was, according to Peter Damian, "truly a sharingin the passion of the Redeemer," for by it the penitent wascrucifying the allurements of the flesh in imitation ofChrist on the cross. "Christ has given himself over todeath for us," he admonished elsewhere, "and thereforelet us, for the sake of his love, also mortify in ourselvesevery desire for earthly pleasure. By his willingness toundergo the suffering of the cross, he has shown us theroad by which we can return to our fatherland." WhatChrist had suffered in himself as the head of the church,he continued to suffer in his members. The five woundsof Christ (two in his hands, two in his feet, and one inhis side) corresponded to the five senses, each of whichhad its own special pleasures and needed to be cured ofthese. Anselm of Canterbury, in a treatise devoted tothe doctrine of satisfaction by the death of Christ, alsoemphasized that "the injuries and insults and the deathon the cross" served as "an example to men" of how theyought to bear their own sufferings.

This view of the cross as example received its classicformulation in the theology of Peter Abelard, "whoseinfallible instinct leads straight to dangerous questionsand provoking replies." "In order to persevere bravely


in the battle against our passions," he urged in a sermonfor Palm Sunday, "we should always hold him before oureyes, and his passion should always serve as an example tous, lest we fall away." The words of the Gospel, "Greaterlove has no man than this, that a man lay down his lifefor his friends," served him as a locus classicus for theunderstanding of the significance of the cross. They meantthat "by the faith which we have concerning Christ loveis increased in us, through the conviction that God inChrist has united our nature to himself and that by suffer-ing in that nature he has demonstrated to us the supremelove of which he speaks"; through this love "we clingto him and to our neighbor in an indissoluble bond oflove for his sake." Again, these words meant that Christhad "persevered to the death for the doctrine of thepreaching of the gospel and by dying had shown whathe could not have shown by being born." In yet anothercontext he quoted these words to prove that Christ had"instructed and taught us perfectly" by his death andresurrection, "proposing an example" through the mannerof his dying, "exhibiting a life of immortality" by hisrising from the dead, and by his ascension "teaching us"about eternal life in heaven. And on the basis of thesewords of Christ he could even define redemption itself as"that supreme love in us through the passion of Christ,"replacing the fear of God with love for him.

This locus classicus provided Abelard with an inter-pretation for various traditional themes and pictures ofsalvation through the death of Christ He was able tosay, in a letter, that Christ "has purchased and redeemedyou with his own blood.... The very Creator of the worldhas become the price for you." Christ was properly called"the highest King and the supreme Priest and the trueSavior." When challenged to vindicate the orthodoxy ofhis doctrine, Abelard declared: "I confess that the only Sonof God became incarnate to liberate us from the servitudeof sin and the yoke of the devil, and thus by his death toopen for us the door of eternal life." A fairly extensivestatement of his position appeared in a sermon bearingthe title "The Cross." Here the cross was set forth as agift of "grace, by which we have been redeemed, sinceit is not of our own power to share in the passion of Jesusby our suffering and to follow him by carrying our owncross." On the cross Christ had been "physically cursed byGod through punishment," which was "why he is said

The Cross as the Redemption of Mankind 129

to have taken upon himself or to have borne our sins,that is, to have accepted the punishment of our sins andthus in some way to have shared in our curse." Yet allof this language was put into the service of an interpreta-tion of the cross as the means for God "to reveal his loveto us or to convince us how much we ought to love him'who spared not even his own Son' for us."

To Abelard's opponents such a view of reconciliationthrough Christ was inadequate. Abelard was following"the Pelagian heresy" rather than "the Christian faith" bybelittling the need for redemption. They took him to besaying that the significance of "human righteousness inthe blood of the Redeemer" and the achievement of all theevents of Christ's birth, life, death, and resurrection couldbe reduced to this, "that by his living and teaching, hissuffering and dying he might impart to men a pattern oflife and show to what limits love can go." If this werethe entire purpose of his coming, then "he taught righ-teousness, but he did not grant it; he demonstrated love,but he did not infuse it." This was itself an inadequateand an unjust reading of Abelard's thought, one that hasbeen perpetuated also by many modern scholars, but itdid express the widely held "intuition" that, while Christhad taught righteousness, he had also granted it, and thathe had infused love and had not merely exhibited it.Christ as teacher and pattern, even Christ crucified asexample, needed to be related to the larger definition ofChrist as Redeemer. He who provided the example ofvirtue must also provide the assistance of grace. "It would,"according to Anselm, "be useless for men to be imitatorsof him if they were not participants in his merit."

The Cross as the Redemption of Mankind

Discipline, even "the discipline of Jesus," was a term forthe effects of Christ upon the life and behavior of be-lievers. There were, said Bernard of Clairvaux in refuta-tion of Abelard, "three chief parts of our salvation: theform of humility, in which God 'emptied himself; themeasure of love, which extends to death, even death on across; and the mystery of redemption, for which he sus-tained the death that he bore." Humility and love wereabsolutely necessary, and the example of Christ was es-sential; but none of this "has a foundation nor even anyreality if redemption is missing." Salvation must be morethan discipline, more even than humility and love; it


could not be less than all of these, but by itself the revela-tion of humility and love in Christ was not enough.Whether one called it reconciliation or the remission ofsins or justification or redemption, what Christ had donehad been accomplished "through his blood [per san-guinem]," not merely "through his word [per sermonem].""We did not receive reconciliation in any other wayexcept through the blood of Christ," one writer said.Perhaps nowhere was this intuition more movingly por-trayed than in the anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem TheDream of the Rood. Here Christ was portrayed as "theHero young—he was Almighty God," who, when "hewanted to redeem mankind," ascended to "the loftygallows" of the cross. As another Anglo-Saxon poem putit, "the King redeemed them with his body." His intentwas the redemption of mankind—not merely a redemp-tion for humility and love, but a redemption from thepower of the devil and the wrath of God. It was, more-over, a redemption of mankind as a whole, even thoughmost men would reject it and perish. As a medievalproverb had it, "The cross and death of Christ constitutethe restoration of the world." Only on that basis couldthe redemption be applied to believers, so that The Dreamof the Rood could go on to say that by his suffering on thecross Christ had "ransomed us and given us life." It wasthis objective character of the redeeming work of Christthat Abelard's critics, rightly or wrongly, found to bemissing in his answer to his own "question of what thatredemption of ours through the death of Christ may be."

The doctrine of redemption had to be objective becauseredemption involved "a transaction between these threeparties: mankind, God, and the devil." Although thatparticular statement was written about one-third of acentury after the work of Anselm on the atonement, itwas an apt summary of the perspective from which thetheologians of the tenth and eleventh centuries viewedthe saving work of Christ on the cross. Within the limitsof the presuppositions summarized earlier in this chapter,the doctrine of redemption was based on an examinationof how the relation of mankind to God and to the devilwas changed by the death of Christ. What came out ofthe examination was a series of more careful formulationsof the doctrine of redemption than had been worked outby patristic theology, together with a critique of meta-


phors for the redemption that had come down from thefathers. The most comprehensive of these formulations,that of Anselm in Why God Became Man, was describedby an early historian of doctrine as "almost the only pointat which scholasticism brought about a truly healthydevelopment." In it Anselm related the three parties toone another by means of a theory of "satisfaction" throughthe cross, giving systematic form to the biblical and litur-gical identification of the work of Christ as sacrifice andproducing "a doctrine of the atonement fully consonantwith the matured sacramental system of the church."

Whatever metaphor or theory of the atonement onepropounded, the death of Christ on the cross must becentral to it. In the Latin text of the Nicene Creed, theincarnation of the Logos and all the events that followedit were said to have been "for the sake of us men and forthe purpose of our salvation [propter nos homines etpropter nostram salutem]," but the crucifixion was "forus [pro nobis]" in a more specific way. Whether thispreposition "for [pro]" meant only "on our behalf" orwhether it meant "in our stead," the creedal phrase did putthe crucifixion into a special place within the economyof salvation through Christ. "For this he came into theworld and for this he was born, that he might set us freeby his passion," Peter Damian said. Christ was the Medi-ator and the Reconciler, but he was "the Mediator in hisbirth and the Reconciler in his death." Among all thingsunder heaven, the sepulcher of Christ was second in im-portance only to the Virgin Mary. For "it was not by hisnativity, but by the passion and the blood of Christ thatoriginal sin was removed." The theme of a twelfth-centuryChristmas sermon was: "Christ appeared [for the sake of]the redemption, cleansing, and satisfaction of the humanrace." Describing the birth and the life of Christ as "with-out guile," Othlo of Sankt Emmeram identified their pur-pose as that of perfecting what Christ had come to ac-complish, which was to "suffer for the guilt of the world."Christ's "giving himself for us" was defined as "discharg-the debt of our guilty death by his own death" and grant-ing salvation. By the plan of the Father and with thecooperation of the Holy Spirit, Christ had redeemed theworld from sin and eternal death by his voluntary dying.

The centrality of the crucifixion and death of Christto the doctrine of redemption was betokened and con-


firmed by the cult of the cross. Among the Byzantineinconoclasts, the cross was the one exception to the rulethat there were to be no images or symbols in the church.In the West also, the most vigorous attack on the use ofimages, The Caroline Books attributed to Charlemagne,nevertheless insisted that "it was through [the cross], notthrough [images], that the human race was redeemed,"and that therefore only the cross, "not some image oranother," was deserving of "servile supplication." Forwhen the worshiper "prostrates himself bodily before thecross, he does so mentally before the Lord, venerating thecross through which we have been redeemed." Althoughthe critics of the church, especially the Jews, accused theChristians of idolatry for adoring the cross, the defendersof the faith responded that such acts of adoration werenot addressed to the material of the cross as such, but"only to the figure of the Lord's body that is placed onthe cross." It was generally agreed that "adoration," in itstechnical sense as distinguished from "veneration," didbelong to the cross; and Anselm was expressing thisgeneral agreement when he addressed a prayer to thecross: "O holy cross . . . , I adore, venerate, and glorify inthee that cross which thou dost represent to us, and in itour merciful Lord and what he has mercifully accom-plished through it."

A widely used hymn by the sixth-century poet Venan-tius Fortunatus hailed "the royal banners" of the cross inprocession and saluted the cross as the place where theprice of the world's salvation was suspended; the hymnalso made use of the Christian addition to the text ofPsalm 96:10, "The Lord reigned from the tree." From thishymn the idea of the cross as a banner spread to medievalliterature. Novices to the monastic vocation were to knowthat victory in the conflicts of their life would certainlybe theirs, because the banner of the cross was leading theway. Hell would lament because it had been "conqueredby thy banners," said a later hymn addressed to "thecross, the sole hope of mankind." Elsewhere, the poetspoke of the cross as "life to me and death to you, Oenemy," and again as a "balance" on which the price ofthe world's redemption was weighed out. He also spokeof having frequently had a vision of Christ on the crossand of being transported by the vision to "the light ofeternity." The mystery of the cross brought Old and New


Testaments together into "one doctrine," for "the crossis the harmony of the Scriptures." But the use of the crossin worship was not confined to the Lenten season or tosuch festivals of the church year as the Invention of theHoly Cross, which was the occasion for some of thesestatements. The sign of the cross was an essential partof the liturgy of the Mass, coming as it did at all theimportant steps in the consecration and eucharistic sacri-fice. At baptism, too, the several impositions of the signof the cross were "sacraments" in their own right. Noless essential was its function in popular piety, where itsuse was said to "repress the demons." When a Christianmissionary came to a sacred spring dedicated to paganworship, he adjured the demons by the name of Christand made the sign of the cross; then the demons departed,and the spring was restored to its proper purpose of pro-viding water for human use. Demons and lusts weredriven away by the sign of the cross. Such works of litera-ture as The Dream of the Rood were an expression in thevernacular of the cult of the cross.

In all these ways the cross and the crucifixion came tooccupy a unique place in the life of Christ as the oneevent in which the plan of salvation achieved its fulfill-ment. The cross was the "tribunal" that Christ ascendedon behalf of all, thus establishing "the reign of thechurch." Among the events in the Gospels, his passionand death clearly made the decisive difference; for beforeit happened, not even Abraham had been able to enterheaven, while after it happened, even the thief on the crosswas able to gain entry. Not even the resurrection of Christoccupied this same place in the plan. Although the pas-sion, the resurrection, and the ascension corresponded tofaith, hope, and love, it was the cross that was the instru-ment of the victory of Christ over the devil. It wouldseem that one reason for rejecting what was taken to beAbelard's notion of the cross as primarily the decisiverevelation of the love of God and the announcement,rather than the achievement, of redemption was that theresurrection of Christ performed this function of makingknown that the plan of salvation had been carried out inthe crucifixion. Explaining why Good Friday was kept asa day of mourning, the liturgical theologian Rupert ofDeutz asserted that "the joy of such a great salvation andof such a necessary redemption, of such a price by whose


value the captivity of the world has been redeemed. . . . isto be deferred until the third day," namely, Easter Sunday;for by his resurrection "the Victor has announced hisvictory to us, has shown us in himself what we are tohope for about ourselves."

Within the framework of this assumption about thecross even such a metaphor for the atonement as victoryover the devil, in which crucifixion and resurrection werecombined more successfully than in most others, could beinterpreted almost exclusively on the basis of the sufferingand death of Christ. The metaphor of victory had the greatadvantage that, by describing the "arena" into which Godsent his Son to achieve the conquest of Satan, it was ableto take seriously the role of the devil as the third partyto the transaction that took place between God and manin the redemption of mankind. While the problem ofthe atonement was the reestablishment of the relationestablished in the creation of man and disrupted by hisfall, nevertheless the devil, as the perpetrator of the dis-ruption, must also belong in any complete account of theplan of salvation. He was the proud spirit, "always proudin relation to God and always malevolent in relation tous," who, being "more eminent" in his nature, believedthat it was "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven[malles misere praeesse, quam feliciter subesse]" and whosuccessfully tempted man into sharing his fate. Becauseman had "permitted himself to be so easily vanquishedby him through sinning," he owed the devil something,namely, "to vanquish him in turn."

The suggestion that Christ had vanquished the devil onman's behalf by deceiving him had come down from thechurch fathers. On the basis of Job 41:1, the eleventhcentury could still see the redemption as a process bywhich God the Father caught the devil on a fishhook,with Christ as the bait, "in whom the passible flesh couldbe seen and the impassible divinity could not be seen,"so that the devil was impaled on the hook. Shifting themetaphor from angling to snaring, an earlier medievaltheologian could also say that "the devil was deceived bythe death of the Lord, as a bird is." Vivid and homileticallyuseful though such analogies may have been, they couldnot withstand closer scrutiny. Did Christ carry out thework of redemption "so as to deceive the devil, who bydeceiving man had cast him out of Paradise? But surely


the Truth does not deceive anyone." Any amount ofcritical reflection on the notion of salvation by deceptionhad to lead to its rejection as unworthy of a just and holyGod. In spite of the impressive array of theologians whocould be cited in its support, the idea was self-contra-dictory and hence self-defeating; for it was not only "afundamental principle of [Anselm's] whole argumenta-tion," but an axiom of the church's teaching as a whole,that "where anything is proposed as unfitting to God as byfaith we know Him to be, we must conclude that it isimpossible."

The strong point of the theory of deception lay in itsability to take seriously the role of the devil, but this rolereceived what theologians found to be a more acceptabletreatment in the image of Christ as victor, which hadspecial association with the liturgical theology of theEast, but which continued to enjoy wide support in theWest. In this image, "the drama of Redemption has adualistic background; God in Christ combats and prevailsover the 'tyrants' which hold mankind in bondage." ThusThe Dream of the Rood described Christ as resting in thegrave, "feeble after his great strife." Christ was the greatking who went forth into "the war of the passion againstthe devil, the prince of this world." In his true humanityhe "destroyed death by dying, and he overcame the devil,who had the power of death." The work of Christ on thecross was a "battle," according to one of the sermons ofPeter Damian; in a later sermon he described at somelength the unique strategy of this warrior: "When ourRedeemer entered the battlefield of this world to do bat-tle," he wrote, "he equipped himself with a new kind ofweapon, namely, that he brandished what was weak andconcealed what was strong." Although this version of theimage of Christ as victor still carried some overtones ofthe idea of deception, the theme of conflict between Christand the devil predominated. Anselm himself could saythat "he who was to assume humanity was to come to dobattle against the devil." Yet it was, significantly, in poetrythat the image found its most fitting expression. Accord-ing to Odo of Cluny, "the One who died killed death andattacked hell." If he had yielded to the cries of his tor-mentors to come down from his cross, he would neverhave become "the victor, who arms" his followers againstdeath. According to The Dream of the Rood, his cross


was a "tree of victory," and even as he was being laid inthe sepulcher his proper title was "the God of victory."The sequence hymn for Easter, "Lauds to the PaschalVictim," described a "wondrous duel" between life anddeath, after which "the leader of life who died nowreigns alive."

Yet even in that hymn, as its very title indicates, theinterpretation of Christ on the cross as the victor overman's enemies had to yield to the identification of Christin his suffering and death as a sacrificial victim. Otherhymns echoed the identification. The figure on the crosswas "the victim who has drawn all to himself," "the victimwho by his immolation purges the guilt of the world."The victim was a "paschal" victim "because he is immo-lated for us. Why immolated? So that he might die forus." The purpose of his immolation was "so that he him-self might become our means of passing over to him, andmight himself become our only joy." Because Christ, theAlmighty, had become the sacrifice for the sins of all, hispresence supported their own sacrifices in reparation fortheir sins. As sacrifice, Christ was the achievement of whathad been perceived, however dimly, in the sacrifices of theGentiles. The sacrifice of Christ was also the reason whyChristians did not regard the ceremonial laws of the OldTestament as binding on them, for "whatever was carriedout typologically in those sacrifices is completely fulfilledin the immolation of the Lamb that takes away the sins ofthe world"; Christ was "the unique sacrifice." Of suchtypological sacrifices in the Old Testament, the "bindingof Isaac" was especially meaningful: Abraham symbolizedGod the Father, who sacrificed his only Son; but the deathof Christ on behalf of a disobedient humanity was asthough Isaac had been sacrificed to save Ishmael.

Another Old Testament "type" of the sacrifice of Christwas Melchizedek, who "offered bread and wine; he waspriest of God Most High." Since early times this incidenthad been interpreted as a prefiguration of the Eucharist,and it continued to be seen this way. It was also a proofthat "the true priesthood of Christ is older than the priest-hood of the law." The sacrificial interpretation of theEucharist, whose implication for the definition of thepresence of the body and blood of Christ in the sacramentwas soon to become a center of theological discussion, andthe sacrificial view of the atonement, whose bearing on


alternate views of redemption was now an issue, weremutually reinforcing; in the words of Anselm, "just asthere is one Christ who sacrificed himself for us, so thereis one offering and one sacrifice that we offer in the breadand wine." More precisely, it was Christ the Redeemerhimself who "every day without interruption . . . sacri-fices the burnt offering of his body and blood for us."Christ himself was the true priest, whose sacrificialministry was carried out through "the visible priest" ashis agent. All the forms of priesthood in the church werederived from his sacerdotal office, which he exercisedwhen, as priest, he "entered into heaven itself," offering upthe sacrifice of his own body and blood. In that ultimate actof sacrifice, Christ was the priest and the offering and thealtar, all at the same time, as an early medieval eucharistichymn had said.

The eucharistic prayer in a Frankish liturgy offered upthe sacrifice of the Mass in continuity with the sacrifices ofAbel, of Abraham, and of Melchizedek, in union with thetrue "immaculate sacrifice," which was Christ himself.The communicant who approached "the holy and terriblesacrifice" of the Mass without first being reconciled withhis brother was to remind himself of the sacrifice of Christon the cross, which had been intended for the reconcili-ation of all. Proceeding as he did from the identification ofChrist as priest, the liturgical theologian saw in the mix-ture of wine and water in the chalice a symbol of theatoning sacrifice. The wine represented Christ, the waterrepresented the people; "and if wine is offered withoutwater, it seems to signify that the passion of Christ wasof no benefit to the human race, while if water is offeredwithout wine, it seems to signify that the people couldhave been saved without the passion of Christ." Bothwere needed to represent the full significance of the re-demption. As the central act of Christian worship, thesacrifice of the Mass gave meaning to, and derived mean-ing from, the image of the suffering and death of Christon the cross as atoning sacrifice.

If a theory of the atonement was to satisfy the demandsof orthodoxy, it needed to be founded on the essentialcontent of this image, which stood at the very center ofthe celebration of the Mass. According to Bernard's replyto Abelard, the answer to the question, "Where is the for-giveness of sins?" was given in the words of institution


of the Eucharist: "This is the cup of the new covenant inmy blood, which will be shed for you for the forgivenessof sins." This meant that the blood of Christ was indis-pensable to the redemption, which "we obtain throughthe intercession of the death of the Only-begotten, beingjustified freely in his blood." Although he did not under-stand the reason why this was so, Bernard stated, he didknow as a fact that it was so: redemption and forgivenesscame "through his blood." Also in a rebuttal of Abelard,William of Saint-Thierry, who stressed elsewhere thatsalvation had come "in the shedding of blood and themystery of the paschal Lamb," ascribed to the blood ofChrist such a value that "through his temporal death,which he did not owe, those who cling to Christ by faithwill escape eternal death, which they do owe." The twosteps of redemption were that Christ had taken the sinsof mankind on himself and that he had made expiationfor them. This expiation consisted in "the sacrifice of hisflesh," whose effects were then applied to the sins ofthose who believed in him. Redemption, then, must in-volve some sort of "quid pro quo," in which, as philo-sophical theology had also recognized, Christ was givenas "a general sacrifice for the sin of the wholeworld," as an offering in exchange for the salvation ofmankind.

But "to whom did he make this offering? Was it per-haps to the one who had led men away captive and whoheld them in captivity? For to whom is a ransom forredemption usually offered except to the one who holdsin captivity those who are to be redeemed?" The meta-phors of redemption and ransom appeared to imply thatthe death of Christ was offered to the devil as the pricefor the release of the captives. If Christ was hanged onthe cross "for the sins of mankind" and "with the ransomof his body purchased life for mankind," setting mankindfree, the conclusion could easily be drawn that the ransomwas paid to the devil, especially when the same sourcewent on to say that Christ had shed his blood "so thatthrough it you might be set free from the power of thedevils." Such a conception of the exchange involved inthe redemption did protect the doctrine of the immuta-bility of God, which would be compromised if the ran-soming death of Christ were thought of as changingGod's mind or as appeasing his bloodthirsty demand forrevenge. Abelard's confession "that the only Son of God


became incarnate to liberate us from the servitude ofsin and the yoke of the devil" gave his critics the opportu-nity for the unwarranted accusation that he was making"that sacred blood the price of redemption given to thedevil." The notion that the death of Christ was a ransompaid to the devil was unacceptable for at least two reasons.Although the devil did exercise great de facto power overmen, he had no claim de jure over them; and thereforeneither God nor even man owed him anything. The ideaalso conflicted with the sacrificial interpretation of thecross. Offering a sacrifice to a creature rather than to theCreator would have been idolatry, and the only one towhom Christ could "offer the sacrifice of his passion wasthe One whom he was obeying by his suffering." Thesacrifice pertained to God alone, to whom, then, the ran-som was paid. Thus the definition of redemption and ofransom was determined by the image of sacrifice.

It was one of the historic achievements of Anselm'sdoctrine of the atonement to have translated the funda-mental significance of the biblical and liturgical imageof sacrifice—that the redemption of mankind by Christwas an act addressed to God, not to man or to the devil—into a form that was compatible with the immutability ofGod. The translation became possible by the interpositionof the concept of "rightness [rectitudo]," which "lurks inthe background of all Anselm's theology." In its basicreligious and moral sense, "rightness of will, which makesmen righteous or right in heart, that is, in will," was aquality of the creature in its relation to the Creator. Therightness of a physical creature "can be discerned by phys-ical vision," but there was also a "rightness that is per-ceptible only by the mind." The biblical statement that thedevil "did not abide in the truth" meant that "he forsookrightness and truth when he desired what he ought notto have desired." For this reason, "truth, rightness, andrighteousness define one another." The rightness of aperson or thing was synonymous with the "truth [veritas]"or reality of that person or thing. While rightness asjustice was an attribute of persons as it pertained to theirwill, it was also an attribute that belonged to "the essenceof things, because they are what they are in supremetruth." It was ultimately an aspect of reality, so that itwould be possible to translate the term into English as"the moral order of the universe." And as only God couldrestore rightness to the disordered will, so also any restora-


tion of man to the Tightness for which he was created hadto conform to the Tightness that stood at the center of themoral order itself.

The first disruption of the "rightness" of the creationhad come with the fall of the devil and the other evilangels. As rational beings, they had received free will asa means for preserving their rightness. So firmly estab-lished was this rightness that while God, as the one whohad created all things out of nothing, could annihilatethem, he could not take away their rightness—unless theywillingly surrendered it themselves. That is what hap-pened in the disobedience of Satan. To "restore the num-ber that had been diminished by the fall of Satan," the Godof rightness and moral order created man. It was a long-established teaching, apparently based on the statementof the Septuagint (which was neither derived from theHebrew nor carried over into the Latin) that "he fixed thebounds of the peoples according to the number of theangels of God," that "the number of the good angels,which was diminished after the fall of the evil angels, willbe completed by the number of elect human beings, anumber that is known only to God." Although there weresome who maintained that God would have created maneven if the devil and his angels had not disobeyed, it wasa widespread belief among theologians that God had madethe human race because the rightness of the moral orderrequired that the number of the blessed ordained by himbe completed. He "created men so that through themthe empty places would be filled and the ruins of Jeru-salem restored." When man, too, fell into sin, God couldnot simply restore him to bliss alongside the angels whohad not sinned at all. Yet the angels needed the salvationof man as much as man himself did, for it was onlythrough the salvation of the human race that the numberof the angels could be brought to perfection.

Nevertheless, it would not have been fitting for any buta human being to have rendered satisfaction for what thehuman race had committed in the fall. Although it wascustomary in the language of the church to say that God"has redeemed us from sins and from His wrath and fromhell and from the power of the devil," this needed to beunderstood in relation to the concept of "rightness." Goddid not require satisfaction as a means of appeasing hiswrath, for he was impassible and therefore could not be


wrathful as men are. Instead of speaking of the "wrath"of God, therefore, Anselm spoke of his justice: the justiceof God had been violated by the failure of man to renderto God what he owed Him; the justice of God also made itimpossible for God to forgive this sin by mere fiat, for thiswould have been a violation of the very order in the uni-verse that God had to uphold to be consistent with himselfand with his justice. Any scheme of human salvation,therefore, had to be one that would render "satisfaction"to divine justice and leave the "rightness" and moral orderintact.

The choice lay between satisfaction and punishment:either man had to obey the violated honor of God by beingpunished eternally, or another way had to be found tovindicate divine justice. This was the fundamental di-lemma to which the Anselmic doctrine of atonement bysatisfaction addressed itself. For "without satisfaction, thatis, without a spontaneous settlement of the debt, it is im-possible for God to forgive a sin that has remained un-punished or for the sinner to attain to a beatitude suchas the one he had before he sinned." If there were to besalvation, it was "necessary" that God should provide it.Yet the word "necessary" must not be taken to meanthat "God had need of saving man in this fashion, butthat human nature had need of rendering satisfactionto God in this fashion." God did not need to sufferon the cross, but man needed to be reconciled throughsuch suffering. God was free of any "necessity." Whatthe justice of God demanded, the mercy of God sup-plied: Because "the sinner has nothing . . . with whichto make satisfaction," it was necessary that "the goodnessof God come to its rescue, and the Son of God assume itinto his own person" in order to provide the satisfactionthat man needed to render and could not. The idea of"right order" implicit in the creation meant that it was notappropriate for God simply to replace fallen men by cre-ating new ones, even through the miracle of virgin birth;for this would amount to writing off the creation of man-kind in Adam as a total loss.

What was appropriate for God was the incarnation ofthe Son of God as man. It was impossible for a sinner toprovide justification for another sinner. Therefore, "be-cause no one owed satisfaction for guilt except man andbecause no one could render it except a merciful God,


God became man, who, because he did not owe anythingin his own name, discharged our debt by dying for us."Only man was liable for satisfaction, only God was capableof total satisfaction; therefore "it is necessary that a God-man render it." Because of the virgin birth, Jesus the manwould have been sinless even without the incarnation.But if the one who offered the satisfaction had not beenGod but merely man, even a sinless man, he would stillhave had to be like the first man; and his obedience wouldhave availed for himself alone. Yet if he had been onlyGod and not man, he would not have been able to achievesalvation through satisfaction, since the divine nature wasincapable of suffering or being humiliated, not to speakof dying. "Clearly," therefore, "the man we are looking formust be such that he dies neither of necessity (since hewill be almighty) nor by obligation (since he will neverhave been a sinner), one who can die of his own freewill because it will be necessary." The orthodox doctrineof the two natures in Christ came to the service of thedoctrine of the atonement by describing one who wasfully God and fully man, each of these for the sake of itscontribution to salvation. Although the term "man," evenafter the adoptionist controversy, remained an appropriateone for the human nature of Christ, this nature was funda-mentally different from that of all other men, because byhis virgin birth Christ was the only one who had not beenimplicated in the fall of Adam. The theology of pre-existence, kenosis, and exaltation, based on Philippians2:6-11, was taken as an assertion that the Son of God"together with the Father and the Holy Spirit determinedthat he would not manifest the sublimity of his omnipo-tence to the world in any other way than through death."

Because Christ did not have to die unless he willed todo so and because he was free of all sin, his voluntaryacceptance of death and of the punishment that men haddeserved was the means by which salvation was accom-plished. He was capable of suffering simply because hewanted to be, not because he was under any obligation tosuffer; and that made his suffering redemptive. The bloodof the suffering God-man possessed infinite worth, farbeyond that of any of the bloody sacrifices of the OldTestament. What gave it such worth was the utterly volun-tary and spontaneous character of Christ's suffering, whichwas motivated not by any debt but by the honor of the


Father and the plight of mankind. The Father did notforce him to undergo such suffering and death, but Christtook it upon himself. His "obedience" in doing so wasaddressed to the justice of God, which could not prevailwithout his dying, not to any necessity imposed upon him.When theologians celebrated the gift of salvation inChrist as exceeding what had been lost in the fall of Adam,this was an adaptation of the liturgical affirmation thatwhat God had marvelously created, he had even moremarvelously redeemed. But in Anselm's doctrine of theatonement this doxology became the basis for the assertionthat the worth of the death of Christ far exceeded whatman owed, because his "life is more deserving of love thansins are deserving of hate." As the God-man and as theone who died voluntarily, "he was offered because he him-self wanted to be," which meant that "he was offerednot because he needed to be or because he was subject tothe edict of the law, but because he chose to be."

Although historians have looked for the origins of thisidea of satisfaction in Germanic customs such as "wer-gild," whereby a crime against a person must be atonedfor in accordance with the station of that person, or infeudal law, the most obvious and immediate source of theidea would appear to be the penitential system of thechurch, which was developing just at this time. The earli-est of Latin theologians had already spoken of penanceas a way of "making satisfaction to the Lord," and theterm "satisfaction" had become standard. When Anselmcame to speak of what was required as a consequence ofhuman sin, the satisfaction offered in penance was anatural analogy, but one that was inadequate because,even in rendering such satisfaction, man was giving Godonly what he owed him. But the satisfaction offered by thedeath of Christ possessed infinite worth, and thus theredemption on the cross could be seen as the one supremeact of penitential satisfaction. "Satisfaction," then, wasanother term for "sacrifice," and Christ's sacrificial actof penance made even human acts of satisfaction worthy,since of themselves they were not. It also gave authorityto the pronouncement of absolution by a "visible priest,"for Christ as the true priest had earned such absolution forall sinners. It was fitting, then, that the act by which "ourChrist has redeemed us through the cross" should be ap-propriated by the individual through penance.


Although it is technically accurate to say that "neveronce does Anselm explain Christ's death as substitution-ary," the treatise Why God Became Man was in fact aneffort "to discover the reason why Jesus' death could justlybe counted by God as vicarious." It was standard practiceto speak of "the vicarious suffering of the Lord." Sum-marizing his argument, Anselm asserted that he had shownthe necessity for the completion of the heavenly citythrough the salvation of men and the impossibility ofsuch salvation except through one who was both Godand man; "therefore we have clearly come to Christ, whomwe confess to be both God and man and to have died onour behalf." Although the style of his argument was hisand his alone, its doctrinal content was shared with thetradition in which he stood. In a remarkable passage of anEaster sermon on the "judiciary game [ludus judiciarius]"that had been played on the cross, Peter Damian describedthe cross as the tribunal where Christ, "our Advocate,"confronted the devil, who claimed possession of the hu-man race as a consequence of sin. But Christ contested thisclaim on the grounds that he had created humanity andwas now reclaiming his heritage. This he did in his crossand resurrection, bringing the claims of the devil tonaught and restoring mankind to its place under God. Be-yond his own speculative achievement, Anselm was aboveall giving voice to the common conviction that the crosswas the redemption of mankind.

The Lord of History

The climax of "the uncompromisingly christocentric pe-riod" of reflection on the work of Christ was the celebra-tion of "the Logos as king" in the theology of Bernard ofClairvaux, just as the climax of "the plan of salvation" it-self was the reign of Christ within and beyond the agesof human history. While the title "king before all ages"could, of course, be applied also to God, "king" was usuallya way of speaking about Christ. As in other places andperiods, the royal office of Christ was joined to his priestlyoffice or to his prophetic office. The name "Christ" meant"the anointed one," identifying him as the true king andpriest. As king, he was descended from the royal line ofDavid; as priest, he offered up the sacrifice of himself formankind. The first of these offices was the theme of the

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Gospel of Matthew, the second was that of the Gospel ofLuke. But it was as king that Christ exercised his rule alsoover the priests of the church. It was likewise Christ theking who exercised the prophetic office.

Although Christ, too, was "king before all ages," thehistorical character of his incarnation meant that theprimary locus of his reign was human history. He was"Christ, the Lord of history [dispositor saeculorum]." Byhis guidance the entire arrangement of events and timesin human history had been directed to the one end of thesalvation of mankind. The kings of the earth were subjectto his sovereignty, as the Magi acknowledged and asHerod should have acknowledged. He was "King Jesus,"the king of the angels, "Christ the evangelical king," and"the king of eternal peace." The ages of history over whichChrist was sovereign were, for Bernard, three: creation,reconciliation, and "the reparation of heaven and earth."During the present age of history, a time of pilgrimage,the church "looks to the past and to the future," to theconsummation and beatitude of heaven in the future andto "the memory of the passion of Christ" in the past. Thatmemory was the source of consolation from generationto generation, for it sustained the elect in their hope of theglory to come and provided a key to the understanding ofthe history through which they were passing. On theother hand, "the end of all things depends on the stateand consummation of the church," and therefore thepatriarchs and prophets and even the angels and the saintscould not attain their perfection until the final age ofhuman history, since "apart from us they should not bemade perfect." In this way the memory of Christ as theLord of history also helped to make sense of the Christianhope, and the meaning of history depended on the mys-tery of the incarnation.

The content of the mystery was defined for Bernard bythe orthodox dogmas of the Trinity and the person ofChrist. These dogmas were the unquestioned—and un-questionable—premise for everything said about Christand about salvation. "My God," he said, "is what thecatholic faith confesses him to be." The trinitarian con-fession was fundamental not only to Christian faith, butalso to Christian life, for each person of the Trinity bore aspecial relation to the disciple of Christ. With apologies


for the inadequacy of any such language, Bernard couldsay that "the entire Trinity loves" the child of God. Thenecessary condition for genuine Christian love was a re-fusal to allow any deviation, whether by heretics or bydemons, "from the purity of what the church believes."When some of his contemporaries were raising dialecticalquestions in relation to the dogma of the Trinity thatappeared to cast doubt on the orthodox faith, Bernardvigorously reaffirmed the teachings of the Nicene Creed,including the Western elaboration of those teachings, theidea that the Holy Spirit "is the strong bond, the indivisi-ble love, and the indissoluble unity between the Father andthe Son." Not only the creeds and confessions of thechurch, but also its liturgies and hymns served as an ex-pression of this orthodox and catholic faith.

Only an impeccably orthodox doctrine of the Trinitycould guarantee that the Savior was God in a completeand unequivocal way. Conversely, it was only through theSavior that one had the right to speak of God; "as a man, Ispeak of him as a Man to men." In his essence God wasimmutable and absolute, beyond time and suffering; be-cause of the incarnation it was possible to know that "al-though God is not capable of passion, he is capable ofcompassion." The word to Moses, "I am who I am," provedthat God was "the first principle" of all creatures; thesame passage provided support for the complete equalityof Christ, as Son of God and Logos, with the Father.Christ was the image of God by his essence, while menwere the image of God by their creation. By becoming theSon of man as well as the Son of God, he was able to serveas the Mediator between God and man. This did notimply that the being of God had been changed throughthe incarnation; that would be unthinkable. Rather, itwas through Christ that God had shown himself to bepresent and participating in his creatures in such a waythat "one need not fear to say that he is one with our spirit,although he is not one with our person, nor one with oursubstance." The doctrine of the Trinity was not a specula-tive construct, or an exercise in dialectical subtlety, but asoteriological necessity.

This applied particularly to the doctrine of the twonatures in Christ. Although "the entire Trinity loves"and the Holy Spirit could be identified as "the indivisible


love between the Father and the Son," it was neverthelessin the Son of God, incarnate as a man, that saving lovehad come. He was the source of love for the believingsoul. As the Logos assuming humanity, he bestoweddivine love on behalf of God; as humanity being assumedby the Logos, he accepted it on behalf of man. In theunity of his person he "has two natures, one by which hehas always existed and the other by which he begins toexist." As a consequence, he could be "lower than theangels" according to his human nature, while at the sametime, according to his divine nature, he remained sover-eign over the angels. Such a distinction between the twonatures must not be permitted to jeopardize the union ofthe natures in the single person of the God-man, a unionso intimate and indissoluble that one could and should,"in a true and catholic sense," predicate of his one personthe properties belonging to each nature and "call Godman and call man God." Although it had been workedout in greater detail by Eastern than by Western theo-logians, the idea of "the communication of properties,"according to which each nature imparted its own char-acteristic properties to the person of the incarnate Lo-gos, so that the New Testament could properly speakof the blood of the Son of God, was here put into theservice of the Western effort to understand the plan ofsalvation.

The status accorded to the humanity of Christ throughthe incarnation imparted a unique force not only to hislife and work, but also to his teachings. He was "thisgreat prophet, mighty in deed and in word," but he wasdifferent from all the other prophets because he alone had"descended from heaven." For all of his insistence, in hispolemics against Abelard, that it was heretical to reducethe work of Christ to that of a teacher and example,Bernard was able to say that "our Lord and Savior JesusChrist, wanting to teach us how to ascend into heaven,himself became what he taught, that is, he ascended intoheaven." He had, moreover, assumed human nature inorder to be able to teach this lesson and to "show us theway by which we, too, may ascend." As the teacher whohad come from heaven and who showed the way toheaven, Christ spoke words that were "living and power-ful" and that imparted "the revelation of secrets," far


surpassing in their power any vision or dream. The wordsof Christ were "spirit and life" to those who were his truefollowers, while to others they seemed to be "a hardsaying" from which they could not derive any consolation.True believers were those who clung to the teachings ofChrist and accepted his word as the guide and norm oftheir lives. They learned their lessons in "the lecture hallof Christ."

"We are in the school of Christ," Bernard would say.The school of Christ was on earth, and his lecture plat-form was in heaven; his disciples came to him as to theirteacher, and those who were ill came to him as to theirphysician, but he was the physician who healed "by theword alone." Even as physician, then, he was the teacher.As the one who from eternity had been the teacher ofthe angels "in silence," he had through his incarnationbecome the teacher of his disciples when "he opened hismouth on the mountain" and taught them in the Sermonon the Mount. In the Old Testament the revelation of thewill of God had come through Moses on Mount Sinai;so likewise in the New Testament it was on a mountainthat the new and complete revelation had been given.Therefore Christ the teacher, like Moses the teacher, couldbe called "the lawgiver." Yet he stood apart from all thelawgivers and teachers of history; for while they taughttheir followers how to live and how "to preserve the lifeof the soul in the body," he taught his disciples how "tolose this life," as he himself would lay down his life forthem as not only their teacher but their "Savior." Thedisciples of Christ were those who heard his teachings incontemplation and heeded them in action; thus bothMary and Martha were examples for the disciple to imi-tate, belonging together in the full life of devotion toChrist the teacher.

Christ the teacher had, however, himself been a pupilfirst. The paradox of the incarnation meant that the eventsof the human life of Christ became a source of knowledgefor him. For not only did he "learn obedience"; he also"learned mercy. Not that he did not know how to bemerciful already, he whose mercy is from everlasting toeverlasting, but what he had known by nature frometernity, he learned through temporal experience." Sincehe was, according to the prophet, "one who knows in-firmity," he must have used his human feelings and sense


experiences as a means of access to the human condition,becoming compassionate through personal acquaintancewith the misery and weakness of man; and so, as man, "helearned that which he already knew," as God. It was asGod that he was able to cure human infirmities, but itwas as man that he had experienced them himself; "Iwould not say that he has been made wiser through thisexperience, but he does seem to be nearer" to the childrenof Adam. He only "seemed" to be nearer because, asGod, he was omnipresent in his holiness and in his com-passion and thus could not come any nearer. Similarly,while the holiness of Christ was "spread abroad by thyconception as well as by thy life," this, too, was only inthe eye of the beholder. For the persistent crux of inter-pretation in orthodox Christology, the statement of theGospel that "Jesus increased" in wisdom and in grace,must be understood to refer "not to what he was, but towhat he seemed to be," since he was, as the Son of God,already perfect in wisdom and in grace.

Although such "increasing" was in this sense an illusionrather than a reality, that did not in any way make thehuman life of Christ an illusion, as it had been in ancientheresy. A "principal cause" of the incarnation was theneed of man to have, in concrete historical form, the em-bodiment of the invisible God in the real events of ahuman life, "either in his birth or in his infancy, either inhis teaching or in his death, either in his resurrection or inhis ascension." These events, "collected from all theanxieties and bitter experiences" of the life of Christ,were a source of instruction and of consolation to thebeliever, who was sustained by "the example of ourSavior" in his sufferings and in his life. Each event had aspecial message: his virgin birth was a disclosure of purity,his life revealed "the sinlessness of his character," histeaching conveyed "unalloyed truth," his miracles taughtpurity, his sacraments manifested "the hidden power ofhis faithfulness," his suffering proved his willingness toundergo the cross, his death made it clear that he sufferedvoluntarily, his resurrection inspired the martyrs withfortitude, and his ascension vindicated his promises. Thechronological sequence of events in his life also servedthe purpose of his "passing through every stage" of humanlife, so that every age from infancy to maturity mighthave access to him.


It was through such a "discipline" of Christ that onelearned to be a "disciple" of Christ. To reveal "the law oflife and of discipline," God had sent Christ as "the leaderand guide" who would train others as he had trained him-self in "the way of wisdom." Christ set himself forth toothers as the example of humility and as the model ofgentleness, so that by following him they might find"the way that leads to truth." The discipline of followingChrist consisted in taking one's cross. Those who "tookthe cross," for example, by entering the religious life, butfailed to follow the humility of Christ were betraying thevery ideal to which they had committed themselves; thesame would also be true of those who "took the cross" inthe sense of embarking on a crusade, but who did not imi-tate the example of Christ. For "this can serve as a defini-tion of humility: Humility is that virtue by which,through a knowledge of himself, a person becomes worth-less in his own estimation." The doctrine of the twonatures in the God-man lent a special poignancy to theimitation of Christ. Not only did "Jesus, as a boy, setforth to saintly boys a pattern of how to obey," but hedid so as the incarnate Son of God, which meant that hewho was the Logos and wisdom of God followed a carpen-ter and his wife and that he who was the Master obeyedthose who were in fact his disciples. His unique standinggave a divine authority to the example he set forth, but italso endowed it with this paradoxical character.

Example though he was, also and especially in his suf-fering, Christ was always more than an example—espe-cially in his suffering. Christ had come "not only to us[ad nos], but for our sakes [propter nos]." In doing so,"what is there that he should have done that he has notdone?" Without separating any of these from the others,it was possible to distinguish three basic purposes of theincarnation: "the pattern of humility, the proof of[divine] love, and the mystery of redemption." Thepattern of humility, since it was provided by "the Media-tor between God and men," was not like the humility ofan ordinary man, who became worthless in his own esti-mation because that was his true condition. The humilityof Christ came about through "the condescension of Godto men, proceeding completely from the fountain ofdivine goodness," so that it was more appropriately called"humiliation" than merely "humility." Those who imi-


tated his humility as "a man of sorrows" and who took hisyoke upon them and learned from him would therebyfollow him through humiliation to glory. They followedthe example of his death on earth and would hereafterreign with him in eternal life. It would be "ridiculous" if,while the Lord was suffering for the servant, the servantwould surrender himself to the pleasures of the flesh; forthe Lord had "suffered on the cross so that through themystery of the cross the virtue of patience might be con-firmed in us." As man and God in one person, he was anexample according to his humanity and a source of assis-tance according to his divinity, to be imitated in his gentle-ness and depended upon in his power. The admonitionwas therefore to "learn his humility, imitate his gentleness,embrace his love, have communion with his sufferings, be

. washed in his blood, and offer him up as the propitiationfor our sins." "The pattern of a holy life" was inseparablefrom "the price of satisfaction"; both were the gift of thecross of Christ.

At the same time Christ was the proof of divine love.Being himself "the Lord of virtues," he was the one whoimparted every virtue and every kind of knowledge; beinghimself the wisdom of God, he was the one through whomtrue wisdom about God and man came to men. Aboveall this was the wisdom about the love of God for man-kind, which showed that "there is no greater compassionthan this, that one should lay down his life for those whohad been sentenced and condemned." True believers knewhow much they needed the cross of Christ when they "ad-mired and embraced transcendent love in him." This wasthe effect of the redemption, that men had learned to love.But because they were sluggish in their love, it was neces-sary to set forth to them the picture of Christ the crucified,who seemed to be saying from the cross: "When I lovedyou, I loved you to the end." Some were drawn by theirdesire for wisdom, some by their need for forgiveness,some by the example of his life, and some by the remem-brance of his passion; so it was that Christ was made "forus wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption."But for each of these groups and for all levels of men, itwas the crucifixion that served as the revelation of theway and will of God, even for those who were not ableto penetrate the mysteries of that will. Anyone who re-viewed the events of the passion story one by one and


considered "what he underwent, who it was that under-went it, and how," would be filled with love, even towardhis enemies. Christ, who had been "love itself" frometernity, would always be the subject of love, but throughhis incarnation and crucifixion he became the object oflove.

Yet what "makes thee, O good Jesus, lovable to me"both as an example of humility and as proof of divinelove was "the work of our redemption. . . . It is this thatcharmingly attracts and rightly demands our devotion."This work of redemption was "the chief and the greatestof his benefits." Through it God showed himself to benot only the generous benefactor, faithful comforter, andloving ruler of all, but above all the Redeemer and Savior.His redeeming work was "abounding," universal in itssaving will and comprehensive in its results. Christ gavehimself to provide merit for those who had been captives.Their captivity to the devil was, according to Bernard,a just one, and the power of the devil had a valid claim,"not one that had been legitimately acquired, but onethat had been wickedly usurped, nevertheless one that hadbeen justly permitted" by God; therefore when Christcame "to set men free," he freed them from a genuinecaptivity. His death was the means of "rendering satis-faction to the Father," it was "the price of our redemp-tion," and it was the device "by which he deceived thetyrant." All these various metaphors for redemption couldbe used together to describe the mystery of salvationthrough the cross. What made it possible was "the self-emptying of God"; what it made possible was "the oppor-tunity to fill ourselves with him." To be filled with Godthrough redemption was "to be deified." The definitionof salvation as deification, although more familiar in East-ern than in Western thought, did appear in Latin theologyalso, as did the term "deified man" for the humanity ofChrist, so that, quoting 2 Peter 1:4, one could say thatChrist "ascended in order to make us participants in hisdivinity."

The resurrection and the ascension of Christ had anessential part in the plan of salvation. In fact, Easter couldbe called "that happy day on which [Christ] redeemedall the ages," a festival with a special "prerogative," andit could even be said that "the victory of Christ wasachieved in the resurrection." What Christ as the Re-


deemer had signaled during the period of the Old Testa-ment and had accomplished in his cross and passion, "hesuddenly made known only in the glory of his resurrectionand ascension." The whole life of Christ had been "anaurora, and even that somewhat indistinct," until the fulllight dawned in his resurrection. "After drinking the cupof death, the Lord arose in his mighty power, a succor tomankind." The paradox of Good Friday—that the impas-sible God suffered on the cross and that the immortal Sonof God died and was buried—was resolved on EasterDay, when "he who had been a lamb in his passion becamea lion in his resurrection." Because both "power" and"mercy" were said to belong to God, the death of Christand his resurrection were proof of these two divine attri-butes, of mercy in his "dying for our sins" and of powerin his "being raised for our justification," but of both inthe life of believers and of the church. The gift and powerof the resurrection of Christ could be seen in the joyfulrenewal not only of human nature, but of all nature—flowers, birds, and all creatures—in the new life conferredby his conquest of death. In similar fashion, the flowersand fruits of the new life of believers were the conse-quence of "the glory of his resurrection."

As the enumeration of the "leaps" in the life of Christsuggested, it was characteristic of the piety and theologyof this period that the resurrection of Christ was insepa-rable from his ascension into heaven. For "if my LordJesus had indeed risen from the dead, but had not ascendedinto heaven, it could not be said of him that he had'passed through,' but only that he had passed away." Eventhe passion of Christ and even his resurrection could besubordinated to his ascension, and it could be said that"he has granted salvation to us at his ascension to be ourhope, when he dispelled that woe which we had enduredbefore and when the only-begotten King appeased, onbehalf of mankind, that great feud with his dear Father"—all this through the ascension. It was such a feast ofcelebration because "today our flesh has ascended intoheaven together with Christ," so that "our soul can followit with its desire." Although the crucifixion was sometimesviewed as the victory of Christ over the devil and otherenemies—and the descent into hell and the resurrectioneven more—the ascension was especially suited to thistheme. Having carried out his mission on earth, Christ


now ascended triumphantly into heaven, and he tookwith him the spoils of his conflict with hell and death.As he had made the earth bright by his incarnation andbirth, so now he also "adorns the heavens" by his ascension.

Standing in close relation to the resurrection and theascension was the descent into hell, which was part of thetext of the Apostles' Creed and therefore had to be dealtwith by Western theologians as a part of the plan ofsalvation. Because it stood in the creed between the burialof Christ and the resurrection, they ascribed it to the soulof Christ, since his body was in the grave and his deitywas in heaven. Its purpose was "to open a way of returnto heaven for those who were being detained [in hell]for other reasons than punishment," that is, for the patri-archs of the Old Testament who had been awaiting thecoming of Christ to be set free. From this body of Westernteaching about the descent into hell came the theme of"the harrowing of hell," which, long before the late medi-eval dramatic poem of that title, caught the imaginationof poets and attists. Christ, "the holy one, has nowharrowed hell of its tribute, of all that it had of old swal-lowed up unjustly into that house of torment." In responseto his invasion, "hell, the avenger of sin, perceived thatthe Creator, the all-wielding God had come." While hissuffering was "for the sake of our salvation," the descentinto hell burst "the infernal chains" and set the captives atliberty. Then he rose "with victory from hell." The Christof the Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf was a celebration ofthat victory, opening with the prayer, "Vouchsafe victoryto us," and paraphrasing the ancient prayer, "Our Lord,come," to read: "Come, thou Victor-Lord, shaper of man."The Dream of the Rood described the heavenward journeyof the "triumphant" Son of God, accompanied by theangels and liberated saints. Bernard described how thechurch "sees death dead and the author of death defeated.It sees captivity led captive from hell to earth and fromearth to heaven," and he prayed that the triumph of Christover hell and death would set men free from sin anddamnation and grant them liberty and salvation.

The intense subjectivity of these poems and prayers, inwhich Bernard shared, would seem to suggest that, de-spite his attack on Abelard's teaching about redemptionfor its neglect of the objective element, Bernard's own


view of the work of Christ expressed itself in a piety thathad a thoroughly personal and profoundly mystical cast."What," he could ask, "is so effective for the healing ofthe wounds of conscience and for the purification of theintention of the soul as constant meditation on the woundsof Christ?" The "wounds of the Savior" were the onlyrefuge of the weak and weary, his passion "the last refugeand the only remedy." The faithful soul could enjoy thepresence of Christ and could look forward in hope to thevision of the glory of God by glorying in the ignominyof the cross. Of this exchange of glory for ignominy, thecrucified and risen Christ said to the sinner: "I suffered. . . so that you might acquire a winsome beauty like mine.""And so instead of the Paradise that we had lost, Christthe Savior has been regained." Together with the cross,it was the name "Jesus" that became the object of mysticalcontemplation. God himself had changed his name fromone that connoted his "majesty and power" to one thatrepresented his "kindness and grace," that is, the name"Immanuel." From such language as this it has been con-cluded that "Bernard and Abelard, in their doctrine ofreconciliation, ultimately came to very similar forms ofsubjectivism."

Such a conclusion, however, fails to do justice to therelation between objective and subjective factors in theecclesiastical doctrine of reconciliation, including Ber-nard's version of that doctrine. Even when he spoke ofthe experience of the heart, he emphasized the necessityof "a proper distinction between what comes from Godand what comes from ourselves"; this he did in oppositionto those whom he called "the enemies of grace," whooverlooked the objectivity of divine action and spoke onlyof the subjectivity of human action. The merits thatGod required of men were those that he, by his prevenientgrace, had already given to them. "The soul," said Ber-nard, "seeks the Logos, but it had previously been soughtby the Logos." What seemed to be "our merits" were infact "nurseries of hope, incentives for love, signs of ahidden predestination, and foretokens of future bliss," butnot a ground for the divine act of justification, whosebasis lay in God, not in man. Therefore "my merit consistsin the mercy of the Lord." Justification meant that "thouart not only righteous, but art called 'righteousness,' a


righteousness that justifies." The relation between therighteousness (or justice) that was an attribute of Godand the act of justification which conferred righteousnesscould be summarized in the axiom: "The righteousness ofGod consists in his not sinning, but the righteousness ofman consists in his being forgiven by God." A baptizedinfant already possessed merits, but they were the meritsof Christ. And so if one asked what free will contributedto salvation, the answer was: "It is saved. Take away freewill, and there is nothing that needs to be saved; take awaygrace, and there is no way to save it."

A further guarantee of the objectivity of salvation wasthe reality of the Last Judgment. At his return to judg-ment, Christ would "appear in that form in which he wasborn," but by his return to judgment he would transformthe very basis of knowledge and experience that had pre-vailed before. Even the souls of the blessed departed,wrapped in the light of eternity, could not attain theperfection for which they were intended until death wasswallowed up in victory and history had passed over intothe kingdom of God. As for the godless, they were givingthemselves over to "consumption" and enjoyment, whenwhat was awaiting them was "consummation" and judg-ment. For both the blessed and the wicked, then, subjectiveexperience must be corrected by the eschatological ob-jectivity of the final and eternal order. This was true evenof one's experience of oneself; for what the apostle saidabout the believer's knowledge of Christ, that "thoughwe have known Christ after the flesh, we know him so nolonger," applied to self-knowledge as well: a knowledgebased on the flesh and its necessities had to yield to thetrue knowledge of the spirit, when "the love of the fleshis absorbed by the love of the spirit." Such a way ofcontrasting history and eschatology was consistent withwidespread usage. After the Last Judgment the "form ofthe servant" in which Christ would appear would be"totally transformed into a divine form." The knowledgeof God vouchsafed to believers would likewise be trans-formed from the mediated knowledge granted to themnow "to the contemplation of the Divinity" itself. Christwould be seen as "the Victor-Judge," as "the King ofVictory," as "the warden of victory." The "mass" of thosewho had refused to acknowledge him on earth wouldhave to suffer "an endless hell," and they would not be


granted any "time for repentance" any more. The Lord ofhistory, "the kind Judge," would establish a new earthon which the resurrected saints would dwell.

Although it was ultimately true that "Thou art mercifulbecause thou art supremely just," still only the Last Judg-ment would bring a resolution of the paradox of justiceand mercy, for it was ultimately resolved only in Christ."He whose name is called 'Savior,' . . . he himself is theJudge, in whose hands I tremble for fear. . . . O sinner,hope in him of whom you are afraid, flee to him fromwhom you have fled." Only because Christ was bothJudge and Savior, both just and merciful, could he betruly either one. Only a mercy that was just was a genuinevirtue, in God as well as in man. Mercy without justicewould make the sinner presumptuous, justice withoutmercy would make him despondent. Seen in the light ofChrist, "mercy and judgnent are the two feet of God,"both of which had to leave their print in the soul if it wasto be saved. Throughout human history, they would beequally familiar to Christ the Judge, who would dispensethem both equitably. History would contain evidences of"the vengeance, most severe and most secret, of God thejust Judge, who is terrible in his counsels regarding thechildren of men," hardening the reprobate who defiedhis will. Only rarely and only briefly could the eyes offaith discern within history the God who was "tranquiland in repose," whose essential attribute was mercy. Andso it would be throughout time, with "thy two justifica-tions," mercy and judgment, side by side, "until mercyhaving been exalted high above judgment, my miserablestate shall cease" at the end. For "in the time of judgment[he] will exalt mercy above judgment." Once mercy hadaccomplished this end, its mission would be completed."Only the justice of God will be remembered, and therewill be no place for misery and no time for mercy," be-cause the paradox would be resolved.

4 The Communicationof Grace

During the century that followed the writing of Anselm'sWhy God Became Man in 1098, the social, political, andintellectual situation of Latin Christendom altered signifi-cantly. In a series of changes, which, taken together, con-stitute "the most remarkable fact in medieval history,"Christian Europe made the transition that was to take itinto the High Middle Ages. Doctrinally, too, the twelfthcentury may be seen as a time of accelerating movement,as our quotations from that period in the preceding chap-ter have already suggested. It was a time when questionsthat had been either neglected or left unanswered in the"Augustinian synthesis" and that had been raised butnot resolved in the "Carolingian renaissance" came oncemore to theological attention, and in such a way that thistime they had to be faced.

The clarification and codification of what WesternChristian doctrine meant by salvation through Christserved to make a consideration of these questions neces-sary. What has been said of the development of doctrinein the early centuries would apply even more accuratelyto the twelfth century: "The Incarnation is the antecedentof the doctrine of Mediation, and the archetype both ofthe Sacramental principle and of the merits of Saints.From the doctrine of Mediation follow the Atonement,the Mass, the merits of Martyrs and Saints, their invoca-tion and cultus." The declaration of the Council of Niceathat the Son of God was homoousios with the Father wasfollowed a century later by the declaration of the Councilof Ephesus that his mother was Theotokos, the Mother ofGod. In the early centuries the doctrine of the means of

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grace had developed much more rapidly than the doctrineof grace itself, with consequences that fundamentallyshaped the history of Augustinian theology. Now it wasto be the achievement of a definitive doctrine of graceand salvation, in the christological and soteriologicalteachings of such theologians as Anselm, that would helpto bring about a more decisive view of the communicationof grace, as formulated in the teachings of such churchmenas Baldwin of Canterbury, Anselm's successor in that see.In a treatise devoted to the doctrine of Mary, Baldwinspoke of God incarnate in Christ as one "who participatesin our nature and is a communicator of his grace [com-municans naturae nostrae, et communicator gratiae suae]."The communication of grace was, as he and his contempo-raries saw it, the chief content of the doctrine of Maryand the other saints. It was also, according to Lanfranc(Anselm's immediate predecessor as archbishop of Can-terbury) and his followers, the chief issue in the debatesover the Eucharist and the other sacraments.

The doctrine of Mary and the doctrine of the Eucharist,with their corollaries, had been brought to the center oftheological attention through the writings of PaschasiusRadbertus, which had so worked their way into the litera-ture that a quotation from Radbertus on the Eucharistwas regularly attributed to Augustine. Both these doctrineswere, moreover, closely tied to worship and devotion,where the ancient principle obtained that "the rule ofprayer should lay down the rule of faith." And so thestock argument in the consideration of these doctrineswould be the implication of the rule of prayer as docu-mented in the liturgy, often introduced with some suchformula as: "Lest anyone suppose that I have thought upthis idea on my own, I have cited the preface that is usedon every Lord's Day throughout almost the entire Latinworld, between Epiphany and Septuagesima." The formallanguage of the prescribed liturgy simultaneously reflectedand shaped the piety of the worshipers, above all in theirattitude toward the communication of grace through thesaints, especially Mary, and through the sacraments, espe-cially the Eucharist; and the theologians of the church"yielded, out of deference to the devotion that came froma simple heart and from a love for the Virgin." Even thosewho were advancing the current trends in devotion recog-nized that the forms of popular interest in miracles some-

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times served to cast doubt on miracle stories; the moremoderate among those who attacked these trends urgedthat at least the clergy should rebuke the dangerous ex-cesses of folk piety; and the more extreme of the criticsrepudiated the authority of the lives of the saints andidentified as their "adversaries the common people andthose who share the madness of the common people,Paschasius, Lanfranc, and whoever else may interpret thematter this way." For both proponents and opponents,then, saints and sacraments developed together in thechurch's teaching, since it was "in the community andunity" of the saints that "we perform these mysteries" ofthe sacraments.

Mary as Mediatrix

The connection between the doctrine of salvation and thedoctrine of Mary was direct and explicit. As Anselmhimself pointed out, his treatise on the atonement hadhelped to provoke the question of "how it was that Godassumed a man from the sinful mass of the human racewithout sin." In Christian iconography as well as inChristian literature, there was a new attention to thesignificance of Mary: a painting of Ildefonsus, celebratedfor his devotion to her, constitutes "one of the oldest ex-pressions of the cult of the Virgin, which was then be-ginning to pervade Christian piety." Why it was begin-ning to do so just at this time, is not clear, and many of theanswers probably lie beyond the scope of this work. Thuswhen it is suggested that in the mariology of Bernard ofClairvaux, "as through an opened sluice, the fertility cultof the earliest ages flows once again into the speculationof the Christian West," this is an explanation that is atleast as much psychological as it is historical. Contempo-raries were aware of the parallels between the cult of theVirgin and "the fertility cult of the earliest ages." Therewas, for example, the legend of an ancient temple "dedi-cated to a woman not yet born, who was to give birth toone that would be both God and man. It was thereforedevoted to the future Mother of God, yet to be born."Such parallels were seen as an anticipation of the VirginMary, analogous to anticipation of the true God repre-sented by the Athenian statue to the unknown god.But Mary was not only the fulfillment of ancient intui-

Mary as Mediatrix 161

tions and legends; she was also the woman who conqueredworldly wisdom through the miracle of the virgin birth, aswell as the one who conquered the false teachings of theheretics and resisted the incursions of the barbarians.

Considerations of this kind were part of a process thatstrove to identify the place of the Virgin in the economyof salvation. As one scholar has noted, somewhat ruefully,"scientific Mariology. . . . , enjoying the status of a dis-tinct and quasi-autonomous tract within theology, withits several theses systematically organized and connectedunder the control of one master principle and varioussecondary principles, did not exist in the Middle Ages."Therefore the detailed classification of her "merits,""privileges," and "prerogatives" had not yet developed,but the beginnings of the process were evident in thisperiod. It was an anticipation of later language about herwhen Peter Damian referred to her "singular privilege ofmerits, so that as thou dost not know a peer among humanbeings, thou dost also surpass the dignity of the angels."Elsewhere, too, he praised her "merits" for granting re-lease from "our debts." Speaking of the relation betweenher maternity and her virginity, another writer concededthat "a privilege is to be ascribed to her as mother," yet insuch a way that her virginity also shared in the honorpaid to her. The relation between maternity and virginitywas likewise the basis for partisans on both sides of theeucharistic controversy to speak about her "privilege" orabout her "singular prerogative," namely, that she gavebirth as other mothers do, yet without pain and withoutthe loss of her virginity. Merits, privileges, and preroga-tives were all a way of affirming that, as the Mother ofGod, she was unique not only among human beings, butamong all creatures.

Her uniqueness was the subject of the titles that werebestowed on her, and it was in these, more than in a sys-tematic delineation of "marian prerogatives," that thisperiod expressed its estimate of her importance. As in theEast so in the West, poets and theologians vied with oneanother in elaborating distinctive appellations for theVirgin. For she was "the standard-bearer of piety," whoselife of prayer the faithful imitated in their own. She servedas a model to them because she was "courageous in herresolution, temperate in her silence, prudent in her ques-


tioning, and righteous in her confession." As "the Queenof angels, the ruling Lady of the world, and the mother ofhim who purifies the world," she could acquire such namesas these: "mother of truth"; "mother and daughter ofhumility"; "mother of Christians"; "mother of peace";"my most merciful Lady." She was also called, in a termreminiscent of Augustine, "the city of God." The paradoxthat a creature had become the mother of her Creatorjustified such terms as "the fountain from which theliving fountain flows, the origin of the beginning." There-fore she was "the woman who uniquely deserves to bevenerated, the one to be admired more than all otherwomen," in fact, "the radiant glory of the world, the purestmaid of earth." Thus she excelled all others, "more beauti-ful than all of them, more lovable than all of them, super-splendid, supergracious, superglorious." The glory of hername had filled the entire world.

Two of the titles often used for Mary in this period in-volved metaphors that depended at least in part on tricksof language. One was the identification of the Virgin as"Mary, the star of the sea [Maria maris Stella]," a namethat was said to have been given her from on high. Thename was thought to have been prophesied in the oracle,"A star shall come forth out of Jacob." Because "this classof [nautical] metaphor is extraordinarily widespreadthroughout the Middle Ages," the image of Mary as thestar guiding the ship of faith was an especially attractiveone. Its origins seem to lie in Jerome's etymology forthe name "Mary" as "a drop of water from the sea [stillamaris]," which he preferred to other explanations. Thisetymology was taken over by Isidore of Seville, but in theprocess "drop [stilla]" had become "star [stella]." On thatbasis, apparently in the ninth century, an unknown poetcomposed an influential hymn, hailing Mary as "the starof the sea." Soon the title became a part of the homileticallanguage about the Virgin, as well as of theological litera-ture; but it was especially in poetry that the symbol ofMary as the lodestar of voyagers through life found ex-pression. The other such title was based on the assonanceof the words "virgin [virgo]" and "rod [virga]." Themiracle by which the rod of Aaron had sprouted was atype of the miracle of the virgin birth, and the prophecythat "a rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and aflower shall arise from his root" was fulfilled, as Isaiah


himself had said, in the Virgin, who was the rod and theflower. Although the title was present also in Greek theol-ogy, where the play on words was not present, the parono-masia in Latin made it especially attractive, as whenBernard of Clairvaux, with his ear for language, calledChrist "a virgin born of a rod that was a virgin [virgovirga virgine generatus]."

By far the most important language about Mary was,of course, that which referred to her virginity and to hermaternity, and to the two together. It was in the combina-tion of these two titles, as "Virgin Mother," that heruniqueness was to be found. She was the only one in whomthe fertility of motherhood and the purity of virginity hadever come together. As "virgin, mother, and bearer," allat the same time, she was miraculous not only in the wayshe conceived, but also in the way she believed. "A virginbelieves, a virgin conceives by faith, a virgin gives birthand remains a virgin. Who would not be amazed?" Thusshe was "a fertile virgin and a chaste childbearer." Anyquestioning of the virgin birth was an act of blasphemyagainst the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the virgin birthhad long since included not only the teaching that the con-ception of Christ was different from that of other men,but also the idea that in the act of being born Christhad been unique, since he had left his mother's virginityintact. For "not only was her conception without shameand her giving birth without pain, but she is a motherwithout corruption." Her perpetual virginity was not in-consistent with the biblical identification of Jesus as her"firstborn," since this did not necessarily imply that therewere any children after him. The prophecy that "thisgate shall remain shut, for the Lord, the God of Israel,has entered by it" was unanimously accepted as proofthat Mary had remained a virgin after the birth ofChrist. For he had been born of a womb that remainedclosed in the act of giving birth. Yet this was not to betaken to mean that Mary had conceived "though her ear,"as some patristic theories had evidently suggested, eventhough theologians did insist that her "hearing remainedutterly inviolable."

One obvious corollary of the doctrine of the virginbirth was the emphasis on virginity and on clerical celi-bacy. "Because the Lord's body grew together in thetemple of the Virgin's womb, he now requires of his


ministers the purity of sexual continence." Christ had notonly remained a virgin himself and chosen to be born of avirgin, but he had even selected as his guardian and puta-tive father one who was also a virgin; "by whom then, Iask you, does he want his body to be governed" on earthexcept also by virgins? Christian virgins shared in Mary'sreversal of the victory that "the ancient foe" had achievedover Eve in the fall. Her virginity served as a model andan incentive for anyone who was "wavering in his resolveto preserve his own virginity" and who, by contemplating"the sublime dignity of the way she gave birth," wouldbe moved to follow in her footsteps. As his birth from avirgin was the only fitting way for Christ to assume humannature, since it was the purest and the most excellent way,so he also urged on his followers, though he did notrequire it, a life of virginity and continence in imitation.Another title for Mary, consequently, was "Queen ofvirgins," since she was the one in whose purity otherChristian virgins shared and in whose dignity they partici-pated to such an extent that the angels venerated themtogether with her. Even such encomia of Mary's virginity,however, were usually counterbalanced by the recogni-tion that it was above all her maternal office, not hervirginal state, that gave her a special place in the economyof salvation.

The same recognition underlay the assertion that whenMary was called "full of grace" by the angel of the an-nuciation, this was because of her humility, not simplybecause of her virginity; "for virginity without humilitymay perhaps 'have something to boast about, but not be-fore God.'" One could, after all, be saved without vir-ginity, but not without humility. Mary was "the standardof humility," in fact, "the Queen of the humble," so thatthe poor and oppressed of the world could be called "thefamily of Saint Mary." The humility of Mary was part ofher holy and sinless life. As earlier medieval theologianshad maintained also, the Gospel account of her purifica-tion did not imply that she needed to be purified in ac-cordance with the Mosaic law, but was evidence of her"humility and obedience," as well as a means of protectingher reputation among those who were not aware of thespecial circumstances. The question of whether, and inwhat sense, she was free of original sin was an issue onwhich Augustine had not come to a definite conclusion;


and there was no unanimity on it during the twelfthcentury, or even later. It was, however, widely held, evenby those who did not accept the idea of her immaculateconception, that "it was fitting for the Queen of virgins, bya singular privilege of sanctity, to lead a life that was freeof all sin." It was therefore "the pious thing to believethat Mary did not have any sin of her own." Sometimesit was suggested that since she was "full of grace" andgrace was synonymous with the forgiveness of sins, shemust have had sins that needed to be forgiven. But thisinterpretation was not able to stand up against the domi-nant belief that a special "immunity" had been conferredon her and that this was what made her "full of grace"and "blessed among women."

Most of this could have been—and had been—saidcenturies earlier. What sets the devotion and thought ofthis period apart from the development leading up to itwas the growing emphasis on the office of Mary as "medi-atrix." The title itself seems to have appeared for the firsttime in Eastern theology, where she was addressed as"the mediatrix of law and of grace." Whether from suchEastern sources or from Western reflection itself, theterm then came into Latin usage, apparently near the endof the eighth century. It was, however, in the eleventh andtwelfth centuries that it achieved widespread acceptance.It was a means of summarizing what had come to be seenas her twofold function: she was "the way by which theSavior came" to mankind in the incarnation and the re-demption, and she was also the one "through whom weascend to him who descended through her to us . . . ,through [whom] we have access to the Son . . . , so thatthrough [her] he who through [her] was given to usmight take us up to himself." The term "mediatrix" re-ferred to both of these aspects of her mediatorial position.

In the first instance, it was a way of speaking abouther active role in the incarnation and the redemption.There seemed to be a direct and irrefutable inferencefrom the universally accepted thesis that "it would havebeen impossible for the redemption of the human race totake place unless the Son of God had been born of a Vir-gin" to the corollary thesis that "it was likewise necessarythat the Virgin, of whom the Logos was to be made flesh,should herself have been born." Thus she had become"the gate of Paradise, which restored God to the world


and opened heaven to us." By her participation in re-demption she had filled heaven with the saved and hademptied hell of those who would have been condemnedexcept for her. It was her assent to the word and will ofGod that had made the incarnation and therefore the re-demption possible. "O woman marvelously unique anduniquely marvelous," Anselm prayed, "through whom theelements are renewed, hell is redeemed, the demons aretrampled under foot, men are saved, and angels are re-stored!" The reference to the restoration of the angelswas an allusion to the idea that the number of electwould make up for the number of the angels who hadfallen; Mary was seen as the one through whom "notonly a life once lost is returned to men, but also the beati-tude of angelic sublimity is increased," because throughher participation in salvation the hosts of angels regainedtheir full strength. In the same sense she wrought repara-tion for what man's first parents had done, and she broughtlife to all their posterity. Through her, then, the "royalpriesthood" spoken of by the apostle had truly come intobeing in the Christian church. All of this made her "theminister and cooperator of this dispensation, who gaveus the salvation of the world."

Mary's cooperation in the plan of salvation helped toexplain the puzzling circumstance in the Gospel narra-tives, that after his resurrection Christ had not appearedfirst to his mother: "Why should he have appeared toher when she undoubtedly knew about the resurrectioneven before he suffered and rose?" An index of the in-creasingly important part being assigned to her in theplan of redemption was the ease with which the wordsof God to the tempter that "she [ipsa] shall crush yourhead," which had not been taken in this sense by mostearlier exegetes, came to be applied to the Virgin; for"to whom is this victory to be attributed, if not to Mary?Without a doubt it was she who crushed the venomoushead." She was the virginal human being of whom wasborn the divine human being who was to save the sinfulhuman being. She was "the sanctuary of the universalpropitiation, the cause of the general reconciliation, thevessel and the temple of the life and the salvation of allmen." Such praises as these by Anselm of the Virgin'splace in the history of salvation, voiced in the setting ofprayers, as so much of the language about her was, could


only mean, in the words of Bernard, that "she is ourmediatrix, she is the one through whom we have receivedthy mercy, O God, she is the one through whom we, too,have welcomed the Lord Jesus into our homes."

As mediatrix, Mary was also the Second Eve, just asChrist was the Second Adam. As it had been through awoman that the earth had come under the curse of sin anddeath, so it would be through a woman that blessing wouldbe restored to the earth. The curse of Eve had been aconsequence of her pride and disobedience, the blessingof Mary a consequence of her humility and obedience.The status of Mary as the Second Eve could even be saidto confer a special eminence on her namesake, Mary Mag-dalene; for "just as through Saint Mary the Virgin, whois the only hope of the world, the gates of Paradise havebeen opened to us and the curse of Eve has been canceled,so through Saint Mary Magdalene the shame of the femalesex has been undone, and the splendor of our resurrection,which arose in the Lord's resurrection, has been granted tous by her." Mary Magdalene was celebrated as "the blessedbride of God" and as a type of the church that had beendrawn from the paganism of the heathen to the sourceof grace. The canceling of the curse of Eve through theVirgin Mary was especially evident in the birth of Christ,which took place without the pain that was the result ofthat curse. Mary, the daughter, had taken away the shameand guilt of Eve, the mother, by being obedient ratherthan disobedient in her response to the word of God.Mary, "David's beloved kinsmaid," cast out the curseof Eve and elevated the status of woman. Eve had beenthe instrument through which folly had been mediated toher descendants, but through Mary wisdom had oncemore been mediated to the human race.

The title "mediatrix," however, applied not only toMary's place in the history of salvation, but also to hercontinuing position as intercessor between Christ andmankind, as the one whose "virginity we praise and whosehumility we admire; but thy mercy tastes even sweeter,and it is thy mercy that we embrace even more fondly,think of even more often, and invoke even more fre-quently." It was the remembrance of Mary's "ancientmercies" that aroused in a believer the hope and con-fidence to "return to thee [Mary], and through thee toGod the Father and to thy only Son," so that it was possi-


ble to "demand salvation of thee [Mary]." The consumma-tion of the believer's glory was the awareness that Marystood as the mediatrix between him and her Son; in fact,she had been chosen by God for the specific task of plead-ing the cause of men before her Son. And so she was"the Mother of the kingdom of heaven, Mary, the Motherof God, my only refuge in every need." Mary was ad-dressed as the one who could bring cleansing and healingto the sinner and as the one who would give succor againstthe temptations of the devil; but she did this by mediatingbetween Christ and humanity. "By thy pious prayer, makethy Son propitious to us," one could plead; or again:"Our lady, our mediatrix, our advocate, reconcile us tothy Son, commend us to thy Son, represent us to thy Son.Do this, O blessed one, through the grace that thou hastfound [before God], through the prerogative that thouhast merited, through the mercy to which thou hast givenbirth."

Such terms for Mary as "the only hope of the world,""the one who crushed the venomous head" of the serpent,the one through whom death was conquered, and "myonly refuge in every need" raised the question of therelation of Christ and Mary. "As we make a practice ofrejoicing at the nativity of Christ," one preacher exhorted,"so we should rejoice no less at the nativity of the motherof Christ." For it was a basic rule that "whatever we setforth in praise of the Mother pertains to the Son, and onthe other hand when we honor the Son we are not drawingback from our glory to the Mother." Christ was pleasedwhen praise was offered to the Virgin Mary; conversely,an offense against either the Son or the Mother was anoffense against the other one as well. It was particularly theintercessory implication of the title "mediatrix" thatcould be interpreted as taking something away fromChrist, who was "the High Priest so that he might offerthe vows of the people to God." The countervailing forceagainst what could be construed as "Mariolatry" was therecognition that she had been "exalted through thy om-nipotent Son, for the sake of thy glorious Son, by thyblessed Son." The portrayal of "the coronation of theVirgin," which became a standard part of the iconographyof Mary during the twelfth century, regularly depicted heras sitting at Christ's right hand, and it was a continuationof this understanding when later painters showed Christ


or God the Father or the entire Trinity investing her withthe crown. It was, moreover, a consensus that Mary hadbeen saved by Christ, so that, while she lamented hisdeath because he was her Son, she welcomed it becausehe was her Savior. Extravagances of devotion and rhetoricwere curbed by the principle that "the royal Virgin hasno need of any false honor."

It was perceived as an appropriate honor and an authen-tic expression of her position in the divine order whenMary was acclaimed as second in dignity only to God him-self, who had taken up habitation in her. The ground ofthis dignity was the part she had taken in the redemption,more important than that of any other ordinary humanbeing. Through her Son she had been exalted "above allcreatures" and was worthy of their veneration. This ap-plied to all earthly creatures, but it included all othercreatures as well, so that "there is nothing in heaven thatis not subject to the Virgin through her Son." Echoingthe language of the Te Deum about the praise of God, asother Marian hymns were to do later in the Middle Ages,a poem of Peter Damian proclaimed: "The blessed chorusof angels, the order of prophets and apostles affirm theeto be exalted over them and second only to the Deity."For none of them—"neither the chorus of the patriarchsfor all their excellence, nor the company of the prophetsfor all their powers of foretelling the future, nor thesenate of the apostles for all their judicial authority"—deserved to be compared with the Virgin. Since she wasthe one who held first place among the entire celestialhost, whether human or angelic, she, next to God himself,should receive the praises of the whole world. There was,in short, "nothing equal to Mary and nothing but Godgreater than Mary." As the greatness of God could bedefined as "that than which nothing greater can beimagined," so the purity of the Virgin could be dennedas "that than which, under God, nothing greater can bethought." Among all that could be called holy, save God,Mary possessed a holiness that was unique.

Therefore it was also fitting that veneration and prayershould be addressed to her. Although there had long beensuch worship of the Virgin, various leaders of the churchduring these centuries systematically encouraged andnourished her cult. In a revealing autobiographical mem-oir, one Benedictine abbot described how, when his


mother was in great pain at his birth, "this vow was made. . . that if a male child should be born, he would be givenover to the service of God and . . . offered to her who isQueen of all next to God." Another Benedictine abbotmade it a practice to refer to himself as "the slave of theMother of God." And yet another Benedictine abbot ofthis period, who went on to higher things, had thepractice of addressing prayers simultaneously to "my goodLord and my good Lady," saying to them: "I appeal toyou both, devoted Son and devoted Mother." What hasbeen called "the glowing reverence for Mary" of one ofthese Benedictines was characteristic of them all. Prayersto Mary were cited as support for admonitions and argu-ments on behalf of her cult, and it was urged that suchprayers would gain the succor of "the Mother of theJudge in the day of need." The very day of the Sabbathwas said to have been dedicated to Mary, and those whoappealed to her as "the gate of heaven, the window ofParadise" when they were plagued by the guilt of theirsins received full absolution.

It was no exaggeration of the importance of Mary inthe devotion and worship of the church when the festivalof her nativity, announced by an angel, was celebrated andwas asserted to be "the beginning of all the festivals of theNew Testament . . . , the origin of all the other festivals."As was inevitable with any saint, and a fortiori with her,it became a standard expression of piety to attribute toMary the performance of various miracles. A few of thesemay have taken place during her earthly life, but otherswere continuing to take place long afterward, up to thevery present. A special form of the devotion to her mir-acles was the cultivation of her relics. At Chartres, for ex-ample, according to one writer, "the name and the relics ofthe Mother of God [above all, her "sacred tunic"] arevenerated throughout almost all the Latin world." Yetwhen a particular church claimed to possess such relics,that claim was met by the same writer with the responsethat if "she, through the same Spirit by whom she con-ceived, knew that he to whom she gave birth by faith wasto fill the entire world," she would not have kept suchmementos of his childhood as her own mother's milk. Amore appropriate way of celebrating her memory was thecommemoration of her nativity or the recitation of theAve Maria, whose cultic repetition became characteristicof piety during this period and whose exposition eventu-


ally provided a basis for the articulation of her specialplace in the history of salvation.

The doctrinal authority derived from the practice ofaddressing worship to the Virgin had as its counterparta certain caution about those expressions of devotion toher for which there was no basis in the received forms ofthe church's worship, especially because certain hereticswere propounding the theory "that the Blessed Virginwas created in heaven, and of a heavenly nature, and thattherefore Christ assumed a heavenly flesh from the BlessedVirgin." One such devotional expression was the com-memoration of her immaculate conception, which did nothave a fixed place in the liturgical calendar. Therefore,Bernard argued, "if it is appropriate to say what the churchbelieves and if what she believes is true, then I say that theglorious [Virgin] conceived by the Holy Spirit, but wasnot also herself conceived this way. I say that she gavebirth as a virgin, but not that she was born of a virgin.For otherwise what would be the prerogative of theMother of God?" It was widely believed that the "specialnovelty of grace" by which Mary had given birth to Christdid not affect in any way the manner by which she herselfhad been born, which did not differ from the usual methodof conception and birth. On the other hand, the virginbirth of Christ from one who had herself been conceivedand born in sin did not seem to resolve the question ofhow he could be sinless in his birth if his mother was not.Such argumentation seemed to lead to the notion of aninfinite regress of sinless ancestors, going back presumablyto Adam and Eve, all of whom had been preserved free ofsin in order to guarantee the sinlessness of Christ and ofMary. A certain kind of "superflous curiosity" could thenbegin to inquire into Mary's parentage as a means of ex-plaining how she had given birth through how she her-self had been born. For if, as was universally assumed,those who were conceived and born in the normal waywere infected by original sin, then Mary must have beenunique in some way. It remained to be determined "howit was that the Virgin was purified before the conception"of Christ; this could not have been "otherwise than byhim" to whom she gave birth, since he was pure and shewas not. A feast devoted to the commemoration of herconception, therefore, was not appropriate, since it wasnot how she had been conceived, but how she herself hadconceived, that set her apart.


If the immaculate conception of Mary (which did notbecome dogma until 1854) was not yet an establishedpart of the worship and teaching of the church, her as-sumption (which did not become dogma until 1950) hada much firmer hold on faith and practice; and there was aspecific feast in the church year, fixed by this time atAugust 15, that commemorated "the day when she wasassumed from the world and entered into heaven." Thestory of Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, served asthe Gospel pericope for that feast, apparently because itsclosing words, "Mary has chosen the good portion, whichshall not be taken away from her," seemed to fit the motherof Jesus even better than they did the sister of Lazarus.By a similar transposition of reference, a text such as"When he ascended on high . . . he gave gifts to men,"which had been applied to the ascension of Christ, alsoseemed to suit the assumption of Mary, through whichgifts had been distributed to mankind. Or when Christpromised, "If any one serves me, he must follow me, andwhere I am there shall my servant be also," there was noone among mortals who had served him in so special a wayas Mary had, and therefore, in accordance with his promiseto her before his ascension, she had also followed himinto heaven. By her presence not only the entire world, buteven "the heavenly fatherland shines more brightly be-cause it is illuminated by the glow of her virginal lamp."Her assumption had elevated her above all the angelsand archangels, and even all the merits of all the saintswere surpassed by those of this one woman. Thus theassumption of the Virgin meant that human nature hadbeen raised to a position superior to that of all the im-mortal spirits.

One question raised by the doctrine of the assumptionwas whether Mary had ever died or had, like Enoch andElijah, been taken up alive into heaven. The prophecyof Simeon to her, "And a sword will pierce your own soulalso," seemed to imply that she would die. As it stood,the prophecy spoke only of "sorrow, not the martyrdomof death." But this was not an adequate ground to "arousedoubt concerning her death," since she was by naturemortal. The prophecy did, moreover, appear to disprovethe pious feeling of some that she who had given birthwithout pain should also have died without pain; for "bywhat authority can one suppose that she did not suffer


pain in her body? . . . But whether at her death she didnot feel pain, which God could grant, or whether she didfeel it, which God could permit," the conclusion seemedto be that "the Blessed Virgin did undergo the vexationof the flesh by dying." Mitigating this conclusion was thewidely held belief of "Christian piety" that her death hadbeen followed immediately by a resurrection, which wasfollowed in turn by her assumption; for she was "thefirstfruits of [human} incorruptibility." Yet it was recog-nized at the same time that "we do not dare to affirm thatthe resurrection of her body has already taken place, sincewe know that this has not been declared by the holyfathers." Although it was "wicked to believe that thechosen vessel" of Mary's body had been subject to corrup-tion, still "we do not dare to say that she was raised, forno other reason than that we cannot assert it on the basisof evident proof."

The special place of Mary in the history of salvationserved to enhance the place of all the saints, but at thesame time it called attention to her uniqueness amongthem. For while her prerogative of being "full of grace"was matched by that of Stephen, the first martyr, who wasalso said to be "full of grace," she was the only saint towhom the words originally spoken of Christ, "In him thewhole fulness of deity dwells bodily," could be literallyapplied. Because it was through her that all believers, in-cluding all other saints, had been accounted worthy ofreceiving the Author of life, she occupied the first place inany commemoration of the saints. Yet her worthiness wasso much more than theirs—and so much more than that ofthe heavenly host—that she was utterly unique. The apos-tles, patriarchs, martyrs, and fathers did not deserve to becompared with the Virgin. She exceeded the angels in pur-ity and surpassed the saints in piety. Although other saints,by preaching the word of God and composing the booksof the Bible, had served as gates to heaven, neverthelessthis title, too, belonged to Mary in a distinctive sense,since it had been only through her that the Logos, theWord of God in person, had become flesh. Similarly, thewords, "He who created me rested in my tabernacle,"applied to all the righteous, but Mary had a special rightto appropriate them for herself. And when the psalm saidthat "God is marvelous in his saints," this, too, applied afortiori to her.


Only of Mary could It be said that she had never, evenfor a moment, suffered an interruption in her beatificvision of God. Other saints had had the grace to over-come their lusts, but she, perhaps alone among them all,had been spared the lusts themselves. For to other saintsgrace had been given, bountifully and yet in measure, butto Mary it had been granted without measure or limit. Inshort, while God was present in all his creatures, and moreparticularly in his rational creatures, and most particularlyof all in those who were good and holy, he was presentin Mary as in no other; for only of her could it be saidthat Christ had been formed "of [God's] substance andof hers." When she was said to be "more precious than any,more holy than all," or when she was hailed as an examplefor all the saints, this made it necessary to clarify not onlyher unmatched eminence in the divine plan, but also thegeneral category of sainthood, to which she belonged evenwhen she transcended it. That clarification, too, was atheological task to which this period set its hand.

The Communion of Saints

The Virgin Mary was mentioned in the Apostles' Creed(as was Pontius Pilate), but only as an actor in the dramaof salvation: Jesus Christ was "born of the Virgin Mary,suffered under Pontius Pilate." But as an object of faith shewas simply included with all the other saints in the con-fession: "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholicchurch, the communion of saints." The precise meaning ofthe phrase, "the communion of saints [communio sanc-torum]," had not been specified in the patristic era andremained ambiguous in medieval theology. Because thesubstantively used adjective "saints" could be either mas-culine or neuter both in the Greek and in the Latinversion, "we may take the word "saints [sanctorum]' as aneuter, that is, as a reference to the sanctified bread andwine in the Sacrament of the Altar"; but it could alsorefer to "that communion by which saints are made or areconfirmed in their sanctity (that is, by participation in thedivine Sacrament), or to the common faith of the church,or to a union in love." In the latter sense it meant "the com-munion and society of the saints" in which the sacrifice ofthe Mass was offered, "the communion of saints [which] wehave received" in joining the church. Sometimes it took aspecifically eschatological connotation when "saints" were

The Communion of Saints 175

defined as "those who, in the faith that we have received,have migrated from this present world to God" and withwhom believers had "an association and a communion ofhope." These various significations were not contradictory,but complementary, as when "the communion of saints"was defined as "the reality of the sacraments of the church,in which the saints who have migrated from this life in theunity of the faith have had communion."

The "communion," too, had a many-layered meaning.Its metaphysical ground lay in the inner nature of God,who, as Trinity, was "neither singular nor solitary," buthad "a common essence" and "a common life," whose veryexistence as Three in One was an existence in com-munion. Through the incarnation of the Second Personof the Trinity, this communion was extended to a humannature, and through it to human nature as such. The per-son of Christ was the link between the divine communionof the hypostases in the Trinity and the human com-munion of the saints in the church, for in a theology whose"central point" was "communion with God" Christ was"the common prize" of the saints, as he had been "thecommon price" of their redemption. That communionhad now become the characteristic of the church, extend-ing even to a communion of goods, which was "the formof the primitive church." The true saints were endowedwith "such a communion, such a harmony of love, that inspiritual things their heart and mind are one and even inphysical things nothing is private property but all thingsare common property." Even now, when the communionof goods was being practiced only by those in the monasticlife, all Christians could still "have communion" not onlywith one another but with the sufferings of Christ, al-though it remained true that the martyrs "have had com-munion with the death and the blood of Christ" in aspecial way.

The communion of the saints and the communion withthe saints meant that believers were "fellow citizens andcomrades of the blessed spirits." As such, they were unitedwith the saints in the society of faith, and the saints servedthem as "a mirror and an example, and indeed as a season-ing of human life on earth." Their footsteps were there tobe imitated and followed. A saint was a hero of the faithand "an athlete of Christ." Such a hero could be describedas "utterly pure in thought, helpful and discreet in speech,"


dedicated wholeheartedly both to the active and to thecontemplative life, and again as "angelic in his appearance,steady in his gait, holy in his activity, sound in his body,smart in his mind, circumspect in his work, outstanding inhis genius, great in his counsel, catholic in his faith,patient in his hope, and universal in his love." The saintin his virtues was a reflection of the virtues of Christ, asthe stars were a reflection of the light of the sun. "Theperfection of the saints, the splendor of the church"worshiped Christ in his glory. Already now, even beforethe general resurrection, they shared his bliss in theirspirits, as they would eventually share it in their bodies aswell.

The close identification between Christ and his saintsmade it possible, and even mandatory, for believers whoprayed to God to invoke the saints also, since the saintsprayed for them in turn. The opening verse of the Latinversion of the last of the psalms read: "Praise the Lord inhis saints"; this was a favorite text about the saints. Itmeant that "if I discern something in the saints that isworthy of praise and admiration, I find, when I examine itin the clear light of truth, that though they appear to beadmirable and praiseworthy, it is Another than they whois really so, and I praise God in his saints." On this basis itwas possible, for example, to dedicate a monastery "toGod and to his saints." Conversely, sin was an offense notonly against God, but against all the saints, and the peni-tent sinner appealed to God and to the apostle Peter: "OGod and thou, the greatest of his apostles, how greatwould be my misery if the immensity of the mercy of bothof you did not prevail against it!" Similar prayers couldbe addressed to "both of you," meaning Christ and Paul,and to Christ and the apostle John together. Such invoca-tion and veneration of the saints was "not for their bene-fit, but for ours," since "the saints have no need of ourhonors, nor do they gain anything as a result of ourdevotion." The potential threat of such a practice to theintegrity of monotheistic worship, though not a prominentelement in the hagiographic literature, did not go un-noticed. The cult of the martyrs did not imply that "thechurch offers sacrifices to the martyrs, but only to the oneGod, the God of the martyrs and our God. . . . The sacri-fice is the body of Christ, which is not offered to them."The possible excesses of devotion to a particular saint


were also counteracted by the observation that the virtuespertaining to one saint were in fact less significant thanthe glory of all the saints together, and by the reminderthat these virtues had their origin in God, not in thesaints themselves.

It was nevertheless to individual and special saints thata cultus would come to be attached. While the develop-ment of such a cultus for this or that particular saint isnot our business here, we do need to take note of thephenomenon as such. It was based on the belief that therewere differences between one saint and another, differ-ences not so much in the quantity of holiness or sainthoodas in its quality. For example, Matthew, as the writer ofthe first Gospel on whom the other three evangelists weredependent, had a position of such preeminence that therewas "no one after Christ to whom the holy universalchurch owes more than to him." Yet some nonbiblicalsaints, too, could stand out more than others. Martin ofTours, patron saint of France, was "a peer of the apostles,"one to whom more churches were dedicated than to anyother saint with the exceptions of Mary and Peter. As thefounding father of Western monasticism, Benedict ofNursia was the object of special devotion, particularlyamong members of his order, who revered him as "theadvocate of monks" and "the holy discoverer of oursecond regeneration." He had been chosen by God to be"among the supreme and elect fathers of the holy church,"one whose Rule was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Not onlythose who had "vowed to live in accordance with theRule" and "not only the rustics, but even city people"honored Benedict, "the new Joshua" who had led thepeople of God into the Promised Land. Other saints, too,had their special devotees, and often their cultus wasconfined to only one locality, at least initially.

No locality could be in the same class with Rome, be-cause Rome was the seat of so many Christian martyrs andsaints. Ulrich of Augsburg—the first, as far as is known,to become a saint through formal canonization, in 993—had himself gone to Rome "in order to be able tocommend himself more attentively to the prayers of [themartyrs] and of the other saints" there. The graves ofmartyrs became special shrines. What made the martyrsspecial was that they had been put to death for Christ asChrist had first been put to death for them, "the Lord for


the servant and the servant for the Lord." Through theEucharist all believers had communion with the body andblood of Christ and with his death, but the martyrs "havehad communion with the death and the blood of Christat much greater cost." Their martyrdom was "a gloriouslikeness of the death" of Christ, from whose wounds therecame "the endurance of martyrdom [and} the utter con-fidence" that enabled the martyr to face death. The wordsof the Beatitudes, a lesson for All Saints' Day, "Blessedare those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, fortheirs is the kingdom of heaven," applied with uniqueforce to the martyrs, though not exclusively to them. Forwhile it was a great thing to die for Christ, it was no lessglorious to live for him. Besides, the heretics and schis-matics had also had their martyrs, as had to be pointed outeven in a recital of the lives of orthodox bishops whohad been martyred by the barbarians.

Because the definition of sainthood had to a consider-able degree been shaped by the veneration of the martyrs,it was necessary to broaden the definition by remindingbelievers that "even we, who cannot die in defense of thefaith, obtain the consummation of victory if we strive tolive a life of saintly virtues, so that we may be directlytranslated to that kingdom whence they merited theirmartyrdom." In addition to the martyrs, apostles, andother saints venerated by the church, there was anothercategory of saint, "but a hidden one. For there are saintswho are still battling, still fighting," but the final outcomeof whose lives was known only to God; they were saintsaccording to the mystery of divine predestination. Evenamong one's personal acquaintances, therefore, it waspossible to have had a genuine saint as one's "specialfriend." "In my own lifetime," Bernard of Clairvaux saidof Malachy, the Irish saint, whose death he had attended,"I have had the privilege of seeing this man. I have beenrefreshed by his appearance and by his words, and I havetaken delight in them as in all his riches." Yet the veryrecollection of this contemporary saint gave him theopportunity to contrast the golden age of the martyrs andsaints with the present, when "the best man today is onewho is not excessively evil."

The growing devotion to saints and martyrs did notmeet with completely unanimous approval from theo-logians. Everyone continued to be opposed to "excesses"


in the commemoration of the saints and to "the super-stitions of sacrilegious observances" such as auguries andincantations, and everyone would have agreed that itwas a distortion when "what is beautiful is admired morethan what is holy is venerated" in the images of the saints;but for most Christian thinkers the veneration of thesaints itself did not merit rebuke, but praise. Nevertheless,there were some who "make it a cause of ridicule againstus that we baptize infants, that we pray for the dead, andthat we entreat the help of the saints." Thus Berengar ofTours, best known for his views on the Eucharist, also re-fused to accept the authority of saints' lives as historicalarguments for a doctrine, especially of course for a eucha-ristic doctrine. Above all, it was Guibert of Nogent, thecritic of the superstitions and abuses connected withthe traffic in the relics of the saints, who also protestedagainst certain other aspects of their cultus. "If you prayto someone whom you do not know to be a saint," he in-sisted, "you are thereby sinning." For loyalty to the truthwas an essential component of the true worship of God,and anything that was said in praise of God but in contra-diction of the truth was an act of dishonor to God. Some-times the people gave their devotion to so-called saintsthe outcome of whose life was evil or at best obscure.When that happened, it was the responsibility of theirpriests to set them straight.

As the hagiographic literature made amply evident,there were many believers for whom the most importantevents in the lives of the saints were the miracles that thesaints had performed. "Praise be to the true and livingGod," a hymn said, "for the miracles of his glorioussaint." In fact, miracles seemed to be the touchstone fordistinguishing between who was a saint and who wasnot; as Scripture said in speaking of the "saint [beatus],""He has done miraculous things [mirabilia] in his life."But the very writers on the saints who quoted this passagein connection with miracles could also use it to remindtheir readers that one should not "seek signs" and that"those who do miraculous things in their life are thosewho live in Christ miraculously." What has been saidof the first of these writers could be said of much of theliterature, that "in one sentence Odo seems to repudiatemiracles as a witness to sanctity and in the next to appealto them." Elsewhere, too, he denounced "inquisitors of


miracles, who judge every one of the holy fathers aspowerful or powerless" on the basis of the number ofmiracles he had performed, and he contrasted "those whoare always looking for miracles" with the apostle Paul,who did not think of them as very important. Yet he alsoargued that "if God, who did miraculous things for thefathers, even in our time deigns to work miracles in orderto revive enthusiasm for downtrodden religion, . . . itought not to seem incredible."

Such references to the "fathers" indicated that a funda-mental issue in the consideration of miracles was the con-trast between the early centuries of the church and thepresent, when miracles had become "unfruitful and super-fluous." The apostles, as "new ministers" of a "new mes-sage," also had to perform "new signs." So great had beenthe miraculous power of those times that even those whowere morally unworthy of acting as revealers of divinepower had performed miracles. The promise of Christ tothe apostles that they would do marvelous deeds had beenfulfilled in them in a physical manner, as the churchaverred against the heretics, but during later periods ofthe church "the ones who drive out demons in the nameof Christ are those who by his power drive away fromtheir hearts the vices that the demons suggest." In a literalsense, therefore, that promise did not pertain to allbelievers in all times, but specifically "to those to whom itwas granted in the beginning, while the church was beingborn, to perform miracles." By the age of Benedict, thispower was waning, but this did not necessarily implythat "his power or his piety is any less than if he hadabounded in miracles." It did not necessarily imply sucha contrast, but one could also blame the decline of miracleson "the neglect of the service of God" and "the incor-rigible malice" of the people. The prophecy that "before[Leviathan's] face there will be destitution" had longbeen taken to mean that before the coming of Antichristthe gift of performing miracles would be taken awayfrom the church. This continued to serve as an explanationof the contrast. But a corollary of this line of thought wasthat whenever it was necessary to produce miracles again,God would grant the power to his church for a time. Inhis narrative of the miracles of a contemporary saint,therefore, the biographer could insist that "in the present,too, there are many signs occurring in our midst," no lessthan in the past.


Even amid such a narrative, however, would come thereminder that "in my judgment his first and greatestmiracle was he himself." The grace of converting menfrom evil to good was far superior to the power of per-forming miracles, even of raising the dead. The ambiguityof the word "power [virtus]" as simultaneously one ofthe technical terms for "miracle" and the term for "virtue"allowed a biographer to disparage "the people famous formiracles [virtutibus}" and then to praise his subject as"the exemplar of all virtues [virtutum]." One could alsospeak of "miracles" and "merits," sometimes citing theformer as evidence for the presence of the latter, but some-times pointing out that doing something great in "mir-acles" was not the same as being something great in"merits." As the Gospel noted, John the Baptist did notperform any overt miracles; neither, for that matter, didthe Virgin Mary. Yet both of these saints merited thehighest praise. Gregory the Great had reminded hisreaders that those who excelled in virtue were not in anyway inferior to those who were noted for their miracles,and this reminder served as an explanation for the rela-tive brevity of miracle accounts in certain saints' lives. Inthe words of the proverb, "the proof of those who are truemembers of the family of God is not miracles, but truelove." While miracles supported the preaching of thegospel and thus supported faith, faith itself was the great-est miracle of all. A miracle without faith was empty; buteven if the miracle should prove to be inauthentic, Guibertasserted, faith would obtain the object of its hope.

As Guibert's attitude indicated, a special class of mir-acles performed by saints consisted of those that wereattributed to their relics. Although he was highly sensitiveto the dangers of gullibility and superstition in the questfor miracles and extremely critical of the abuses to whichthe cult of relics was subject—tendencies that increasedthrough the Crusades—even he felt obliged to admit thatwhen relics were carried from one place to another, "thegracious Judge who comforts with his pity [in heaven}those whom he reproved [on earth] showed many mir-acles where they went." The arrival of a relic in a newsite would be the occasion for miracles of healing andother signs to take place. Similarly, the construction of abasilica in which the bodies of saints were enshrinedwould set off a series of miracles that continued long afterthe building had been completed. The "translation of a


holy body" was an occasion for joy, because through it"the things that happened a long time ago . . . somehowseem recent and new." Therefore the relics of the saintshad to be protected against violation by hostile and paganforces, for through the relics of his body the saint actedas "patron" of the place where they reposed. If the powerof God had manifested itself in the life of a saint throughthe miracles that he executed, the relatively unimportantevent that was his death did not mean a cessation of thatpower, which now worked through the remains of hisbody rather than through his personal presence. In fact,it was the purpose of such miracles done by the relicsof a saint "to give testimony that he is alive with theLord."

The power of the relic, then, was, strictly speaking, thepower of the saint—or, to be even more correct, the powerof God granted to the saint during his earthly life and stillcontinuing now that his earthly life was over. In answerto the question, "What is the point of honoring lifelesscorpses?" one could reply that it was to pay respect tothe body, which had been the servant of God, and thatit was an expression of faith in the resurrection of thatbody. The relics in the altar had as their counterpart "therelics in the heart," that is, the honoring of the memoryof the saint by cherishing his words and imitating hisexample. When the issue arose whether miracles ofhealing were to be ascribed to relics or to the merits ofGerald of Aurillac, the saint who had employed the relicsin performing the miracles, his biographer, Odo of Cluny,replied that, in his opinion, "the benefits of health are con-ferred through the holy relics in such a way as not todeny the cooperating virtue of Saint Gerald." That replysuggests that in many ways Odo's Lije of Saint Geraldwas not typical of the hagiographic genre: both its liter-ary quality and the distinctiveness of its subject (whowas a layman, albeit a celibate layman) set it apart. Forthat very reason, however, its treatment of relics may betaken as indicative of the common faith. As the count ofhis region, Gerald took many official journeys, but notwithout being accompanied by relics of the saints. He alsocollected relics for the churches under his guardianship,and so avidly that there was a surplus, which could be soldoff. When he was about to die, Gerald "foresaw all thatwould be necessary for the future inhabitants [of the


monastery he had established] and took care to providefor them in relics of the saints, in ornaments and vest-ments for the church, and in the produce of the fields," allof these being necessary for their welfare.

The zeal for collecting relics did not content itself withthose of the saints, but extended itself to relics associatedwith Christ. One group of such relics consisted of thosethat had, in one way or another, been involved in thehistory of his life. Among these were the cords that hadbound him after his capture, as well as such items as thesponge that was lifted to his mouth on the cross. Thesewere affirmed to be authentic even by critics whose gen-eral attitude to relics was somewhat skeptical. But whensome overzealous preachers claimed that "within this vialis contained a portion of the bread that the Lord chewedwith his very own teeth," the skepticism became muchmore pronounced. It became most vigorous when therelic of Christ being advertised was not merely somethingthat had come into some sort of contact with him duringhis earthly life, but an actual portion of his body itself.Thus one community of monks maintained that they hadone of the milk teeth of Christ, which he had shed inthe course of growing up. There were others who had intheir possession what they professed to be the foreskinof Christ after his circumcision or other relics of his verybody, thus fulfilling the warning of "the great Origen"against those who "are not ashamed to write books evenabout the Lord's circumcision."

When it came to such relics as these, the basic issue wasno longer merely the question of credulity or even ofsuperstition. For if there was somewhere an authenticrelic of the historical body of Jesus Christ, this wouldconstitute a threat to the belief that in the consecratedbread and wine of the Eucharist the church possessedthe true (and historical) body of Christ. Hence "Christcould not have left behind any corporeal mementos forus." Or, to put it the other way, if Christ had establishedthe mystery of the Lord's Supper as a means of providingthe consolation of his presence to the church, such relicshad to be regarded as "superfluous portions of his body."For what was the need of these additional relics when onehad in the body and blood of the Eucharist the true pres-ence of Christ himself? The vision of the seer of theApocalypse, who "saw under the altar the souls of those


who had been slain for the word of God and for the wit-ness they had borne," could be used to associate the relicsof the bodies of the saints with the body of the Lord onthe altar. But there was also a tradition, repeated by variousauthors, according to which relics of the bodies of saintshad sometimes been in rivalry with the body of Christ inthe Eucharist. In a church where miracles had repeatedlytaken place, the relics of the patron saint had been placedon the altar, with the result that "suddenly the miraclesceased." The explanation of this phenomenon came in thewords of the patron saint, that "my relics are lying on thealtar of the Lord, where the majesty of the divine mysteryshould be celebrated all by itself." When the offendingrelics were removed, "the miracles of faith resumed."Apparently the presence in the Eucharist was "the princi-pal reality," with which relics, even and especially so-called relics of the body of Christ, could not be allowed tocompete. But this raised again the question that had beenasked, but not answered, in the ninth century, whether thebody present on the altar for the sacrifice of the Mass andpresent for the communicant in the liturgy was substan-tially identical with the body born of the Virgin Mary andsacrificed on the cross. To this question, inevitably, theol-ogy had to return.

The Real Presence

Although the communion of saints and communion withthe saints, above all with the Virgin Mary, held a promi-nent place in the developing views of the communicationof grace during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, thespecial sense of the words "communion" and "communi-cate" came from their application to the Eucharist,through which, as through the other sacraments, gracewas believed to be communicated. "To communicate"meant to receive the Eucharist. There were some whoargued that Scripture did not use the term "communion"for the Eucharist, only the term "communication," butthe general usage of the church supported the legitimacyof both terms. The words of Scripture about eating theflesh of Christ and drinking his blood, according toBernard of Clairvaux, referred to "communicating withhis sufferings" through the Eucharist.

Except for certain heretics, there was general agreement

The Real Presence 185

that the proper celebration of the Eucharist and the properunderstanding of it lay at the center of the Christian faith.Among all the actions of the church, the Mass was "thesupreme sacrament." Nothing else, not even the epis-copacy or the sacrament of chrism, could be comparedwith the body and blood of the Savior in importance.Although certain sacramental actions, such as ordinationand confirmation, were reserved to the bishop, neverthe-less "that sacrament which is the most excellent of them all,namely, the body and blood of Christ, is consecrated dailyby priests as well as by bishops, and it is no holier whendone by the latter than when done by the former." "Theholy mystery of the Lord's body" was the greatest of allthe benefits granted to mankind, "because the entiresalvation of the world consists in this mystery." To besure, it was only in this life that the Sacrament wasneeded, but it was needed desperately. There were, ac-cordingly, three necessities in life: the Trinity (includingthe incarnation), baptism, and the Eucharist; for "thesum total of our faith is this, to know Christ in the Father,Christ in the flesh, and Christ in the participation of thealtar." Consequently, a correct interpretation of the Eu-charist was essential to the integrity of the Christianfaith itself, and without such an interpretation "the entirediscipline of the Christian confession will perish."

That ominous warning about what was at stake in thedoctrine of the Eucharist came in response to the reopen-ing in the eleventh century of the controversy about thenature of the eucharistic presence that had originallyerupted in the ninth century. In the interim the two prin-cipal figures in the discussion during the Carolingian erahad been treated in two quite different ways by subsequentgenerations of theologians. Odo of Cluny, who was bornabout two decades after the death of Radbertus, drewextensively from his treatise on the Eucharist in his ownexposition of the meaning of the Sacrament, concludingwith the observation that "if anyone reads these things,even though he may be a smatterer, he will learn much."Odo's younger contemporary, Ratherius of Verona, incor-porated "some excerpts from the works of a certainPaschasius Radbertus on this subject" (apparently thewhole of Radbertus's treatise) into his writings. Anothertenth-century theologian, Gezo of Tortona, also took over"almost the entire book of Paschasius," making Radbertus's


ideas his own. And yet another theologian of the tenthcentury, in his treatise on the Eucharist (if indeed it isactually his), also came to the support of Radbertus.Radbertus came to be celebrated as "the most diligent ofinvestigators of the divine Sacrament and its catholicexpositor," and he went on being cited as a standardauthority on eucharistic theory and practice. The nameof Ratramnus, on the other hand, had largely passed intooblivion. He was said to have "written a book for KingCharles" against Radbertus; but when the controversybroke out again, it seems that his book, which was ac-cused as the source of false doctrine about the Eucharist,was being attributed to John Scotus Erigena by its cham-pions as well as by its detractors, who eventually had itcondemned and destroyed at a synod held in Vercelli in1050.

The occasion for the synod and for the condemnationof Ratramnus under the name of Erigena was the doc-trine of the Eucharist set forth by Berengar of Tours. Hisopponents claimed that everything had been peaceful untilhe and his adherents came along with their theories, these"inciters of modern heresy." As one of these opponentssummarized the situation, there were "some who say thatwhat is eaten from the altar is the same as what was bornof the Virgin, while others deny this and say that it issomething else." "Using the language of [your oppo-nents}," a contemporary wrote to Berengar, "you areaccused of saying that [the Eucharist] is not the truebody of Christ nor his true blood, but some sort of figureand likeness." As this statement indicates, "for his con-temporaries the question comes down to an expressionof doubt about Berengar with regard to the real presence. . . , not transubstantiation." According to the defendersof the real presence, Scripture left "no room for ambiguityon the reality of the flesh and blood" in the Eucharist.According to Berengar, however, the alternatives werefalse, since "whatever is said to be the case spiritually istruly the case." Nor was he alone in his espousal of thisposition; he had "his supporters," in fact "many of them,"so that "the whole church everywhere has been infected. . . with this poisonous leaven," even though there wasgreat variety among them.

We cannot (and need not) settle the chronological,psychological, and political problems still remaining in


the historical understanding of the controversy. Berengarhimself complained that his adversaries had been harass-ing him "for a hundred years," and they claimed, nearthe end of his life, that he had been condemned by variouscouncils and synods (fourteen in all) "for almost fortyyears." Among his opponents, the ones mentioned mostoften were "Lanfranc, Guitmond, and Alger," althoughmodern scholars regard it as "very doubtful" that the lastof these was writing against Berengar. It has largely beenfrom quotations supplied by his opponents that laterscholars have been obliged to reconstruct Berengar'sthought; for he himself consigned his books to the flames,and when, some time later, he wrote another treatisesetting forth his views, Lanfranc destroyed that in turn.But in the process of replying to it, Lanfranc excerpted itso copiously that the main lines of Berengar's doctrine dobecome evident; Lanfranc also reproduced other docu-ments from the controversy, notably Berengar's recanta-tion of 1059 at Rome (subsequently repudiated by Ber-engar), which was incorporated into other treatisesagainst Berengar as well. And then, after "remaininghidden from the sight of mankind for seven centuries,"Berengar's book On the Holy Supper was discovered byGotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1770 and eventually pub-lished in 1834. There are also letters and, if one acceptsit as authentic, an apologia written for the Roman councilof 1079.

In his recantation of 1059 Berengar was coerced intoaffirming that "the bread and wine which are placed onthe altar are, after the consecration, not only a sacrament,but the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ."Just what it meant for something to be "only a sacrament,"or a sacrament at all, was still quite unclear from theAugustinian tradition; and the twelfth century was to bethe time when the definition, as well as the number, of thesacraments achieved final specification. Whatever it wasthat made matrimony a sacrament and the Lord's Prayernot a sacrament, there apparently had to be even moreto the Eucharist than this; it had to be "not only a sacra-ment, but the true body and blood of our Lord JesusChrist." The "more" in the Eucharist was identified invarious ways. Sometimes theologians had followed Augus-tine in distinguishing between the sacrament and its"power [virtus]," but this did not permit an adequate


distinction between the Eucharist and the other "sacra-ments," all of which were, as Cyprian had already said,"spiritually abundant in power [in virtute]." A potentiallymore precise Augustinian formula for specifying the"more" was the distinction between the sacrament and"the matter of the sacrament [res sacramenti]," as whenBernard of Clairvaux described someone who "presumedto say that in the Eucharist there is only the sacrament andnot the matter of the sacrament, that is, only sanctificationand not the reality of the body."

The "reality of the body" of Christ offered up as asacrifice in the Mass set it apart from all the other sacra-ments. All the sacraments, including the Eucharist, weremeans of grace to the recipient; the Eucharist alone wasnot only a sacrament, but also a sacrifice. "Although thissacrifice is also a sacrament," explained one prominentcanonist, "it is evident that it differs in many ways fromthe remaining sacraments, for it alone . . . is repeated everyday." Berengar's opponents charged him with "teachingotherwise than the catholic faith holds concerning thebody and blood of the Lord, which is sacrificed dailythroughout the world," but they recognized that he, too,affirmed that Christ "is immolated every day in theSacrament." Indeed, the sacrificial understanding of theMass was so dominant over all other aspects of the Eu-charist that a theologian of the late twelfth century feltobliged to say: "This sacrifice was instituted by the Lordnot only to be offered, but also to be eaten." Later hecombined the sacrifice of Christ, the eating of Christ, andthe imitation of Christ as the themes of the eucharisticcelebration. Because the Mass was "the new and truesacrifice that the holy church offers," what it offered was"not only bread and wine." For if it were, "if it consistedonly in the sacrament, that is, in bread and wine thathas been consecrated but not changed, there would be noreason why the sacrifice of the New Testament wouldbe superior to that of the Old Testament."

The superiority of the Eucharist, as the distinctivesacrifice of the New Testament, to the entire system ofLevitical sacrifices in the Old Testament served to rein-force the idea that there was not only a new ritual, but anew reality, in Christian worship. The Eucharist was "theend of the Old Testament and the beginning of the NewTestament." There was still a priesthood, as there had


been in the Old Testament, and therefore still a sacrificefor which the priest had primary responsibility. The re-sponsibility implied that "the priest [sacerdos], whosetask it is to give over that which is sacred [sacrum dare],that is, to offer the sacrifice to God," ought to pay attentionto his own relation to God. The moral and cultic impera-tives addressed to the Old Testament priest now pertainedto the priest who offered the sacrifice of the Mass. The true"holy of holies" was "the sacrifice of the body and blood ofour Lord Jesus Christ" on the cross, in which the sacrificeof the Mass participated directly but the sacrifices of theOld Testament had participated only by anticipation. TheOld Testament believers who shared in the manna andthe New Testament believers who shared in the Eucharistwere the same in what they received with their hearts,but they were different in what they received with theirmouths. Among all the "types" of the Eucharist set forthin the Old Testament, it was the offering of Melchizedek,who "offered bread and wine" to Abraham, and thus was"the first who celebrated this Sacrament," that helpedto fix the content of the eucharistic sacrifice. Even though"Berengar and his disciples were able to make use of theargument from the comparison between Christ and Mel-chizedek" as proof that bread and wine remained in thesacrifice also after the consecration, since that was whatthe Book of Genesis called them, most interpreters re-garded Melchizedek's sacrifice as a "prefiguration" of theNew Testament sacrifice of the body and blood of Christin the Eucharist.

Perhaps the most influential such prefiguration, how-ever, was provided by the references in the cultic portionsof the Old Testament to sacrifice, burnt offering, and thelike. Although some of these references pertained inparticular to the total offering of oneself to God, spe-cifically as this was characteristic of the monks, the sacri-ficial interpretation of the Mass meant that the words ofthe Psalmist, "I will offer in his tabernacle sacrifices ofjoy," were fulfilled when "the holy catholic church offersthe true Logos of God, the true Son of God, to her Creator,and at the same time offers bread and wine." Those closingwords suggest that the relation of the "body" sacrificed inthe Mass to the elements of bread and wine and its relationto the body sacrificed on the cross continued to be the twochief problems. The sacrifices that had preceded Calvary


were an anticipation of it, but were the sacrifices thatfollowed Calvary an extension of it, a repetition of it, orsimply a reminder of it?

The offering of the Mass on behalf of the faithful de-parted, although rejected by certain heretics, appearedto assume that "the precious blood that was shed for manyfor the forgiveness of sins avails not only for the salvationof the living, but also for the salvation of the dead." There-fore the identity between the sacrifice of the Mass and thesacrifice of Calvary could seem to be obvious, since "ouraltar is the altar of Christ, on which we celebrate hissacrifice, in fact, on which we offer him up to the Fatherin the Sacrament of his very own body and blood." Forif the daily sacrifice of the church were other than thesacrifice offered once and for all on the cross, "it wouldnot be true but superfluous," since the only sacrifice thattruly availed was that offered on Calvary and an effectivesacrifice in the Mass had to be identical with it. The twosacrifices were one sacrifice, and both were the body "takenfrom the Virgin." It was helpful, but not really correct,to relate the incarnation and the atonement to each otherby saying that "as he is being sacrificed daily, so long as weannounce his death, thus also he appears to be born, solong as we faithfully re-present his nativity." It was cor-rect, but not particularly helpful, to observe that on thecross Christ had been sacrificed by unbelievers, while inthe Mass he was sacrificed "by believers with piety." Or,because of the chronology of the Passion story in theGospels, it was likewise correct to note that Christ hadbeen "sacrificed for the life of the world first in the Sacra-ment" and then in the crucifixion, when "the Son of Godascended the gallows of the cross and offered himself, asboth priest and victim, to his Father as a sacrifice." Yetthere remained the statement of the New Testament thatthe sacrifice of the cross had been "once and for all."From it there appeared to follow the thesis that the cruci-fixion of Christ could not be repeated "as a punishment,"but only as a re-presentation of the mystery. The notionof "sacrifice," therefore, while it was the basis for a defini-tion of the real presence, could not of itself yield such adefinition, which had to come from a consideration ofthe meaning of the word "body" as it was applied to theEucharist and to the historical Christ.

Consideration of that issue was complex because the


term "body of Christ" in Scripture and in patristic usagehad "multiple" meanings. The fathers had spoken "invarious, though not in contradictory ways on this matter.. . . Therefore, since the body of Christ in human form, thebody of Christ in the Sacrament, and the body of Christ inthe church are three different ways [of using the term"body of Christ"], those who are unable to distinguishamong these ways in the Holy Scriptures fall into greatconfusion, so that what is said about one 'body of Christ'is taken to refer to another." The problem of distinguish-ing between the latter two of these three ways of usingthe term lay in the language of Scripture itself, as whenthe apostle Paul wrote: "The bread which we break, is itnot the communion of the body of Christ? For we beingmany are one bread and one body, for we are all partakersof that one bread." Christian exegetes of all periods in thehistory of the church, including the modern period, havehad difficulty deciding whether "the communion of [or:participation in] the body of Christ" referred to theEucharist or to the church or to both. Even when he wasdistinguishing between the sacrament and the "matterof the sacrament," Augustine defined the latter as "theunity of the body and blood of Christ," which he appearedto equate with "the society of his body and members,which is the holy church in those who have been pre-destined and called." The presence of this difficulty in thewritings of the fathers continued to be a source of per-plexity in the controversy over the Eucharist during theeleventh and twelfth centuries.

A far deeper perplexity in this controversy, however,was the relation between the first and the second of themeanings of "body of Christ," that is, "the body of Christin human form" and "the body of Christ in the Sacra-ment." Even before the controversy had broken out, theline of thought that had come down from Radbertus andthat relied on his ideas was urging that when, in thedistribution of communion, the recipient heard the phrase"the body of Christ," he was "to consider what is beingspoken of, and about whom, and to whom. What is beingspoken of? The same body of the Lord. If you ask aboutwhich Lord it is being spoken, why, it is about the onewho, in the flesh that he assumed for you, the flesh inwhich he suffered much for you, was crucified, died,buried and raised, the flesh that he elevated to heaven—


who in that flesh now enters you, to whom this is beingspoken." The solution of the perplexity that eventuallywon out in the debate was the insistence that "there arenot two bodies, that which is received from the altar andthat which was received from the womb of the Virgin,. . . [but] one and the same body" in both. It was "no otherflesh than that which he took to heaven for us, no otherblood . . . than that which flowed from his side." Thisidentification of the human, physical body of Christ withthe body in the Eucharist was the issue in the debate.

It was this identification that Berengar attacked. In oneof his earliest public statements he argued that "thefathers proclaim that the body and blood are one thingand the sacraments of the body and blood are somethingelse." In his major work, the treatise On the Holy Supper,his campaign against the identification of the bread andwine in the Eucharist with the historical body and bloodof Christ became central. His locus classicus, which wassomething of an embarrassment to his adversaries, was theword of the apostle: "Even if we have known Christ ac-cording to the flesh, henceforth we know him no more."The passage was combined several times with the state-ment of Ambrose that the resurrected and ascended Christcould not be wounded any more and therefore was im-mune to any change. The words of the apostle stood as arefutation "of anyone who says: 'The empirical [sensualis]bread consecrated on the altar is, after the consecration,truly the body of Christ that exists above.' " Because theheavens had received the historical body of Christ "untilthe time of the restitution of all things," what the priestheld in his hand and the communicant chewed with histeeth in the Eucharist could not be that body; for even ifChrist had been known according to the flesh, he wouldbe known so no longer. These words meant, furthermore,that it was an error to suppose that "a portion of the flesh[of Christ] that never existed before the celebration ofthe Lord's Table begins to exist in the celebration of theLord's Table, and that it comes from the body of Christ,of which no part at all can be denied to have been inexistence already for a thousand years and more." To"know Christ according to the flesh" was to know himas subject to time and change; but the exalted Christ wasno longer temporal or mutable, nor could his body comeinto being anymore.


Although Berengar sought to reinforce his argumentwith the quotation from Ambrose about the impassibilityof the exalted body of Christ, his opponents laid claimto Ambrose as the champion of their insistence upon theidentity of the historical and the sacramental body. "Thatwhich we confect," Ambrose said, arguing for the parallelbetween the virgin birth and the Eucharist, "is the bodyborn of the Virgin." After quoting these words againstBerengar, one of his critics asked: "What, I ask, are youlooking for that would be said better or more clearly? Ifthe sacraments on the altar were merely a shadow and afigure of the Lord's body, what would be happening herethat goes beyond nature?" The virgin birth went beyondnature, and so did the confecting of the body of Christin the Sacrament; for the body in both was the same.Ambrose was saying that the eucharistic body was thebody that was "born, not one that is similar to something."The quotation from Ambrose became a commonplace inthe conflict with Berengar. When Lanfranc in his polemiccited it as a refutation of Berengar, Berengar replied byattempting to prove from the context that Ambrose didnot support Lanfranc's position but was, despite the pas-sage in question, making a distinction between the bodyconfected in the Sacrament and the body born of theVirgin. But the identification of the two was already agiven for most theologians. "What the catholic faith holds,what the holy church faithfully teaches" was that "the verybody of Christ that the blessed Virgin bore . . . this verybody, I say without any doubt, and no other, we nowreceive from the holy altar." For if the bread was changedinto the flesh of Christ, it had to be into "that which hereceived from his Virgin Mother, since he does not haveany other."

Yet the flesh and body that Christ had received at birthfrom his Virgin Mother was the flesh and body that hetook into heaven at his ascension. There it would remain"until the times of the restitution of all things," whichBerengar took to mean that it would be eternally im-mortal, incorruptible, and "incapable of being summoneddown." Although theologians repeated the warning ofAugustine that speculative inquiry into the state of theascended body of Christ at the right hand of God inheaven was useless, some answer to this argument seemednecessary; for if Christ could not come down from heaven,


then he was not reigning there, but was a prisoner. Be-sides, as Augustine had added, "the right hand of God"did not refer to a physical location, but to a judicialauthority and power. Because the human nature of Christ,and thus his physical body, was inseparable from hisdivine nature through the hypostatic union, "the divinityof the Logos of God, which is one and which fills allthings and which is total everywhere, brings it about . . .that there is one body of Christ, identical with that whichhe received from the Virgin's womb." Even in his days onearth, the body of Christ had not been subject to thelimitations of space, but had, through its union with hisdivinity, transcended the laws of nature; so it did also bybeing present in the Sacrament. After the ascension, "theflesh of Christ, which has been exalted by God above allcreatures . . . is present everywhere, wherever it pleases,through the omnipotence that has been given to it inheaven and on earth." Therefore, if Christ willed it, hisbody could be present, completely and truly, in heavenand in the Sacrament at one and the same time.

The reference to the presence of the body "completely"in both was also an answer to another of Berengar'sobjections to the identification of the sacramental with thehuman—and now heavenly—body of Christ. "A portionof the flesh of Christ," he urged, "cannot be present on thealtar . . . unless the body of Christ in heaven is cut upand a particle that has been cut off from it is sent down tothe altar." Rejecting such an understanding of what wasimplied by the ascension, Berengar's critics refused to"speak of Christ's being sacrificed or eaten on earth insuch a way that he would meanwhile have to desertheaven, for he is totally in heaven even while his bodyis being truly eaten on earth." The reason was that "thereare not many bodies of Christ . . . but only one body ofChrist" at the right hand of God and on the altar. It waslikewise a single body that was received by communi-cants wherever they were in the world. Therefore "theentire host is the body of Christ, but in such a way thateach separate particle is the entire body of Christ." It was"the entire body of Christ" that was received by the com-municant, so that even if he received only the bread oronly the cup he received the entire Christ. This was trueeven though the body and the blood in the Eucharistwere a way of showing that Christ had redeemed both

The R eal Presence 195

the flesh and the soul, for "he who receives only the bloodor only the body, receives everything." What he receivedwas, ultimately, not a thing, not bits of the body ofChrist, but a person, "the true body of Christ, indeedChrist himself," complete in his humanity and in hisdivinity. In sum, "where there is consecrated bread,there is the entire Christ in the entire species of thebread."

Anyone who identified the eucharistic body with thehistorical body of Jesus Christ had to specify how thatbody was present in the Sacrament. When Guitmond ofAversa, whose "contribution to the development of eu-charistic doctrine . . . far outweighs those of the other"opponents of Berengar, confessed the "total and complete"presence of that body even in "the most minute" fragmentof the consecrated bread, he did so in the context of astatement of faith in which he also spoke of the "total"presence of God the Creator even in "the most minute"of his creatures. The difference between the two kinds ofpresence, however, was that the creature in which Godthe Creator was declared to be present was not said to be,or to have been changed into, God himself, while theeucharistic bread in which the body of Christ was affirmedto be present was thought to have undergone a trans-formation. Another difference, in the judgment of many,was that the presence of the body and blood of Christ inthe Eucharist was conditional on the faith of the recipientin that presence, by contrast with the presence of the Cre-ator in the creature, which was an objective reality, regard-less of whether the creature had faith or not.

The source of this latter view of the sacramental pres-ence was the eucharistic interpretation of the words ofJesus: "I am the living bread which came down fromheaven. . . . He who eats my flesh and drinks my bloodhas eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."Commenting on these words, Bernard of Clairvaux asked:"What does it mean to eat his flesh and drink his bloodbut to communicate with his sufferings? . . . Thereforethis refers to the undefiled Sacrament of the Altar, wherewe receive the body of the Lord." Another commentatoron these words explained that "Christ is the bread of lifeto those who believe in him. To believe in Christ is toeat the bread of life, to have Christ in oneself, to haveeternal life." From such language it was not a far distance


to the idea that since faith was the truest and deepestmeaning of "eating" the flesh and body of Christ, it wasa matter of only secondary importance whether that faithwas accompanied by a physical act of eating or not. Somesuch idea seemed to have been part of Augustine's think-ing, as some of his interpreters had to acknowledge. Butthose who were defending his eucharistic theology in theconflict with Berengar explained that he had had in mindboth a spiritual eating by which "Christ is received in ourheart by faith" and "the eating and use and perception ofhis very body and blood within us"; the first conferred"the presence of the divinity by which we were created,"but the second conveyed "the presence of the body bywhich we were redeemed."

Was the second kind of eating, and therefore the secondkind of presence, dependent on the first? Conversely, werethe body and blood of Christ present in the Sacramenteven when the communicant did not have faith? Theanswer to this question was bound up with the warning ofthe apostle Paul: "Whoever, therefore, eats the breador drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy mannerwill be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. For anyone who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinksjudgment upon himself, not discerning the body." Ifthese words were taken together with the words of Jesusabout the eating of his flesh as the means of grantingeternal life, they appeared to imply that "only ttue be-lievers" received the heavenly food of the body of Christ,while the unworthy received "nothing else than merebread." For "if that bread were to have nothing sacredabout it beyond what common bread has, but he whoate it regarded it as the body of the Lord and took it uponhimself to receive it shamelessly, he would undoubtedlybe subject to no less a judgment than if it were, in utterreality, the body of Jesus." He would be condemned forhis subjective state, regardless of the objectivity of thepresence. The test case was that of Judas Iscariot at theLast Supper. The church fathers had not been able toagree whether or not Judas had received communion be-fore betraying Christ, and the question continued toagitate the theologians of this period as well, withoutleading to much more of a consensus than had beenachieved earlier. Adding to the concern now was thecampaign of the eleventh-century reformers against abuses


in the church, which was raising the issue of the sacra-mental validity of ordination through simony.

What finally determined the answer to the problem ofthose who "eat the flesh of Christ but are not members ofChrist," who "do not become the body of Christ althoughthey eat the body of Christ," was the application to theeucharistic presence of the concept of sacramental ob-jectivity originally formulated by Augustine in his re-sponse to the claim that the apostasy or moral impurityof a catholic bishop invalidated his administration of thesacraments: the validity of the sacrament was dependentneither on the minister nor on the recipient, but on theinstitution of Christ. Now it was recognized, however, thatwhereas Augustine had used the concept to defend thedoctrine of baptism, it had been extended by Radbertusto the doctrine of the Eucharist. Therefore "even if some-one confesses that he is unworthy, he should believe andsay that what he is receiving is the body of Christ"; other-wise an unworthy priest celebrating a private mass asthe sole communicant would nullify the institution ofChrist and the faith of the church in the presence of thebody and blood of Christ. Even those who pointed out thedifficulties of maintaining that the unworthy communi-cant received the true body and blood of Christ to hisown damnation acknowledged the force of the pastoralargument that, since a communicant often doubted hisown worthiness, he would be deterred from communionby his dread of judgment, and they concluded that thesacraments of the church were "common to the reprobateand to the elect."

There were various possible corollaries that could followfrom this view of the objectivity of the presence of thebody of Christ, several of them belonging to the area ofcasuistry or of speculation. For example, if what waspresent in the bread of the Eucharist was nothing otherthan the true body of Christ, the question arose: "Whatdoes a mouse eat" by nibbling a consecrated host? Al-though a denial that the mouse ate the true body appearedto cast doubt on the reality of the presence, "the reverence. . . for the body of the Lord made the thought intolerablethat [it] . . . could get into a situation that was incom-patible with its sublimity," and most theologians rejectedthe suggestion that an animal could eat Christ's body.Another implication could conceivably be that the true


body of Christ, being incorruptible, was not subject todeterioration; as Berengar pointed out, however, the ele-ments of the Eucharist could decay, and it was out of re-gard for this problem that church custom dictated theconsumption of the reserved host within forty days. Themost notorious corollary of the real presence was ex-pressed in Berengar's confession under duress in 1059,probably written for him by Humbert of Silva Candida,perhaps also with the East in mind: "The bread and wineare the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ . . .handled and broken by the hands of the priests andground by the teeth of the faithful." There were some forwhom these words were no different from the report inthe Gospel that Thomas touched the wounds in the bodyof the risen Christ, provided that one preserved the teach-ing that "the immortal and incorruptible body of Christis not subject to any corruption." Others, because of theaversion to the grossly physical notion of "eating Christ"attributed to his hearers in Capernaum (and thereforelabeled "Capernaitic" in later polemics), made such lan-guage part of the paradox that "the body of Christ seemsto be broken and is not broken, seems to be ground by theteeth and is not ground, since surely the grinding andbreaking affect the appearance [species}, not the reality[res}."

Such particulars aside, the fundamental difference be-tween Berengar and his opponents over the real presencelay in the interpretation of the "conversion" that tookplace through the consecration of the bread and wine.Berengar, who preferred to use the word "change," pointedout that "it is not a simple matter to say what the word'to be converted' means," since a thing could be "con-verted" by its objective and physical transformation intosomething that it had not been before, whereas "throughthe consecration at the altar bread and wine become theSacrament of faith, not by ceasing to be what they were,but by remaining what they were and being changed intosomething else" in addition. If it was claimed that in theEucharist bread and wine were destroyed and were re-placed by the body and blood of Christ and yet that theyretained all the qualities of bread and wine, "this is achange that nature cannot undergo." As Saul of Tarsuswas changed into Paul the apostle by remaining what hewas and yet becoming something else, so it was with the


elements in the Sacrament. And "as the Logos of Godbecame flesh by assuming what he was not and remainingwhat he was, thus also the bread . . . becomes the body[of Christ] by remaining what it was and assuming whatit was not." This analogy between the Eucharist and theincarnation led to a theory labeled (whether by theBerengarians themselves or by their critics) "impana-tion," by which the substance of the bread and wine re-mained, but "the body and blood of the Lord are containedthere in a manner that is true but hidden."

All of these efforts by Berengar and his followers toexplain—or explain away—the miracle of eucharisticchange were unacceptable. Either the bread stopped beingbread, or there was no point in calling it the body ofChrist. Therefore "before the consecration the bread setforth on the Lord's table is nothing but bread, but in theconsecration, by the ineffable power of the Divinity, thenature and substance of the bread are converted intothe nature and substance of the flesh" of Christ. As for thebread, nothing remained except its outward appearance.Despite the parallel that could be drawn between creationby the word, "Let there be light," and the new creationby the word, "This is my body," the change in the Eu-charist differed from the original creation ex nihilo pre-cisely because, "by a manner that is new and unheard-of,"the bread was changed into the body of Christ, but thebody of Christ did not cease being what it had always been.That was also why the analogy between the incarnationand the Sacrament broke down, for the Logos did notcease to exist but assumed the body to himself, while thebread did cease to exit as bread when it was changed intothe body. Hence the theory of "impanation" was mis-guided. None of these theories sufficed, in the judgmentof Berengar's critics, to describe "the work of truth bywhich the bread and the wine are transformed into thetrue body and blood of the Lord." The transformation was"true and mystical," both at the same time. For the Eu-charist remained a mystery of faith also for those who hadthe right doctrine about the presence. The body of Christremained invisible in the Sacrament, partly to exercisethe faith of the communicants and partly, as Berengarand his opponents agreed on the basis of Ambrose, toavoid "horror at the blood."

Only with a doctrine that asserted the "true and mysti-


cal" transformation of the bread and wine into the bodyand blood of Christ would the rule of faith be conform-able to the rule of prayer. Although Berengar also quotedthe authority of the canon of the Mass and other liturgicaltexts in support of his views, the import of the beliefthat liturgical words and actions "contain the mysteries[sacramenta] of heavenly secrets" was clearly workingagainst him. Even the prayer "that what we now do in anoutward sign [specie], we may take hold of in reality[in rerum veritate]," which seemed to contrast the out-ward sign of bread and wine in the Sacrament with thereality of the body and blood, to be grasped in the future,became instead a proof that it was the true body of Christpresent both in the Sacrament now and in the celestialvision eternally. For if the bread and wine were only anoutward sign of the body and blood, analogous to othersymbols of Christ, there would be no reason to veneratethe eucharistic elements as the worship of the church didor for the eucharistic prayer to ask that they be placedon God's heavenly altar by the hands of an angel. Withinthe eucharistic prayer, it was increasingly the words ofinstitution—understood as literally true, in opposition toBerengar's view that they were not meant "literally[proprie]"—to which Western theologians attributed thepower of transforming bread and wine into body andblood. There contined to be echoes of the characteristicallyEastern idea that the transformation took place throughthe invocation of the Holy Spirit. But as the emphasisshifted from "being filled with the Spirit" to "making thebody and blood present," the words of institution cameto be seen in isolation from the rest of the eucharisticprayer, including the invocation of the Spirit. "Beforethe words of Christ, the chalice is full of wine and water;when the words of Christ have been spoken, then theblood that redeemed the people is produced." Unless thesewords were spoken, there would be no transformation ofthe elements. Although the priest spoke the words of in-stitution at the celebration of the Mass, it was Christ him-self who did the consecrating. Thus the words of institu-tion were "the essence [substantia] of the Sacrament";everything else was merely decoration.

The formal rule of prayer in the liturgy was reinforcedby the informal rule of prayer in the piety of the people.Above all, it was through "miracles that are congruous to


this faith of ours" in the real presence that the doctrinewas confirmed. Although Berengar criticized Radbertusfor his credulity in repeating tales of eucharistic miracles,his adversaries used "very well-known miracles" as proofin "rational confutation" of his teachings. Through thesemiracles God had revealed to his faithful not only whatglories awaited them in heaven, but also "what a gift heleft for them here on earth" in the Eucharist. A primarypurpose of the miracles was to "show the visible realityof the body of the Lord." Sometimes this happenedthrough a special revelation by which a spectator at Masssaw a human form, often the form of a child, replace theform of the consecrated host. Then there were miraclesthat served as the means of calling someone to repentanceafter he had profaned the sacrament. The presence andpower of Christ in the Eucharist was even able to raisesomeone from the dead. In hagiographic literature and intheological polemics, the accounts of eucharistic miraclesserved the purposes of edification and of correction, espe-cially against Berengar's denial of the real presence. Thevindication of the real presence against him was, in turn,responsible for "the rise of a eucharistic devotion" de-voted to the adoration of the consecrated host apart fromthe celebration of the Mass.

For so massive a reality as this, the very presence of thebody and blood of Christ, born of Mary, the language of"likeness, figure, and sign," for all its patristic support,was inadequate. If the presence amounted to no morethan a figure or a memorial, it would be "perfunctory."When Berengar sought to put the presence on the samelevel with such statements as "Christ is the chief corner-stone," he failed to comprehend the difference betweenthis figure of speech and the words of institution, "Thisis my body," which "no one should suppose to have beenset forth figuratively by him through some sort of sig-nification," since what was involved was not a "figure,"but "reality." It was not "body," but "bread," that was usedfiguratively, since "we sometimes call things by the namesof the things from which they have been made." Theproper distinction between figure and reality in this arealay between the figure of the Eucharist in the Old Testa-ment and the reality of Christ in the New. As Radbertushad pointed out, Christ did not say, "This is the figure ofmy body," for the body and blood made of bread and wine


in the Eucharist were no more figurative than was thewine made of water at Cana of Galilee. When such churchfathers as Augustine spoke of the Eucharist as a "figure,"they were calling it a figure not of the real body of Christ,but of the church.

If the language of "figure" was no longer an appropriateway of speaking about the real presence, the language of"substance" now became appropriate, for this "was thenew factor about the discussion on the Eucharist fromthis time on." The term "substance [substantia]" hadbeen used in patristic Latin for the divine essence or"ousia," and it continued to carry that meaning in medie-val theology. The Latin fathers do not appear to have madeuse of the word in speaking of the eucharistic presence,although the Vulgate did translate the fourth petitionof the Lord's Prayer as "Give us this day our super-substantial [supersubstantialis] bread." When an eighth-century theologian spoke of "consecrating the elementsof bread and wine into the substance of the most holybody and blood of Christ," he was apparently not intro-ducing "substance" in a technical or precise philosophicalsense. That lack of philosophical precision in employingsuch terminology became evident in the exchange be-tween Radbertus and Ratramnus. According to Radbertus,the body and blood of Christ were "produced from thesubstance of bread and wine" when "the substance ofbread and wine is changed into the flesh and blood ofChrist, efficaciously and inwardly" and "the invisiblePriest converts his visible creatures into the substance ofhis body and blood." For his part, Ratramnus could alsospeak of "bread and wine that have been converted intothe substance of [Christ's] body and blood," but heequated the "invisible substance" of the eucharistic ele-ments with "the power of the divine word" by which thischange was wrought. He also insisted, after quoting thewords of Christ, "I am the vine, you are the branches," that"substantially the bread is not Christ, nor is the vineChrist, nor are the branches the apostles." And he evenspoke of "taste, smell, and color" as "the substance of thewine" that remained after the consecration, thus using theword in a sense opposite to that which it was to have herein the eleventh and especially the twelfth centuries.

What now gave the term "substance" an increasinglyspecific meaning was the expansion of philosophical learn-


ing, which "took place partly through a more generaldistribution and use of sources that had hitherto beenknown very little, partly through the translation of philo-sophical authors who had been unknown until now."Although Rupert of Deutz, echoing a formula of Iren-aeus's, spoke of an "earthly" and a "divine substance"in the Eucharist as in the incarnation, and equated thelatter substance with the Logos, this sounded too muchlike the Berengarian theory of "impanation." It was neces-sary to believe, in the words of Berengar's recantation of1079, that the bread and wine "are substantially con-verted" into the very body of Christ. That became theaccepted way of describing the change: "not in a phantasy,but substantially"; "earthly substances . . . are changedinto the essence of the Lord's body"; "the substance ofthe bread is changed into the substance of the flesh ofChrist." The problem of the color, taste, and smell of theeucharistic elements remained to be dealt with; not onlyRatramnus, but his severe critic, Ratherius, referred tothese qualities as the "substance" of the elements. Al-though the Aristotelian distinction of "substance" and"accidents" had been known to Erigena and others, thosewho were quite ready to speak of "substance" in the Eu-charist would still refer to "outward appearances andcertain other qualities" or to "properties," but not to"accidents."

When "accidents" also became part of the standardvocabulary, with the treatise of Guitmond, the way wasprepared for the definitive statement of the doctrine ofthe real presence, which took the form of the dogma oftransubstantiation. The first use of this word has beenattributed to various theologians of the period, often toPeter Damian, until the Exposition of the Canon of theMass under his name, where the word occurs, was shownto be a later work. It now seems that Rolando Bandinelli,who eventually became Pope Alexander III, was the firstto speak of "transubstantiation," in a work prepared about1140, although it also appears in a work ascribed toStephen of Autun from about the same time. Three-fourths of a century later, the Fourth Lateran Council in1215 promulgated the dogma that "the body and blood[of Jesus Christ] are truly contained in the Sacrament ofthe Altar under the outward appearances of bread andwine, the bread having been transubstantiated into the


body and the wine into the blood." Theologians continuedto recognize that the fundamental content of the dogmaof transubstantiation was the doctrine of the real presence,rather than a particular philosophical definition of sub-stance and accident. Even after the upheaval of the Refor-mation, the Council of Trent in 1551 reaffirmed tran-substantiation with the statement: "This change [of breadand wine into body and blood} has conveniently andappropriately been called transubstantiation by the holycatholic church."

The Grace of the Sacraments

In the controversy over the real presence, Berengar wasattempting to explain the doctrine of the Eucharist on thebasis of a general definition of likeness, figure, sign, andsacrament, but by the time the controversy had ended thedoctrine of the Eucharist had decisively affected the defi-nition of sacrament itself. Even his severest critics hadto acknowledge that he had inadvertently brought abouta clarification of sacramental theology by raising questionsthat had been neglected by the fathers. Theologians andchurchmen discovered that they had not paid sufficientattention to these questions, and they concluded that"celebrating the sacraments without understanding themis like speaking a language without knowing what itmeans." It was incumbent especially on the clergy to pene-trate into the mysteries of the sacraments they were ad-ministering. Paraphrasing the apostolic formula of faith,hope, and love, theologians opened their treatises ondoctrine with the statement: "The sum of human salva-tion consists of three things: faith, love, and the sacra-ments." For a denial of the sacraments was tantamountto a denial of the church itself. The sacraments were thatimportant because each sacrament "contains a certainspiritual grace," and it was through the several sacramentsthat the grace of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvationwas communicated.

During the patristic era and even beyond it, the para-digm for the understanding of the sacraments as means ofgrace had been baptism. In the West, the founder of Latintheology, Tertullian, had summarized the catholic doctrineof baptism in a form that was to remain constant for mostof the following centuries. When the issue of the validityof the sacraments arose, Augustine turned to baptism as the

The Grace of the Sacraments 205

key to a resolution of the issue. Even here in the eleventhand twelfth centuries, when the Eucharist was moving intothis paradigmatic role, baptism continued to be seen asfundamental, sometimes even as "chief among the sacra-ments that Christ instituted in the church," because italone was necessary for salvation. So necessary was it thatunbaptized children, even those of believing parents,were condemned, albeit to a punishment milder thanthat imposed on obdurate adults. Because of its necessity,baptism could, in cases of extreme emergency, be admin-istered by a layman or even by a pagan or an infidel. Thiswas because of the principle, defended by Augustine, that"baptism is good regardless of who gives it, because itdoes not depend on the faith of the one giving it." Yet thenecessity of baptism did not deny salvation to those who,like the thief on the cross, had the desire, but not theopportunity, for the sacrament.

Although this period, then, continued to teach that"without the faith [conferred] in baptism, the other sacra-ments are annulled," there appears to have been a shiftin emphasis from baptism to the Eucharist, such that onecould perhaps call baptism fundamental but no longercentral, at least not so central as it had been. Outweighingthe statement that baptism was "chief among the sacra-ments that Christ instituted in the church" were otherstatements in which it was one of the "two chief" or "threechief" sacraments. The other "chief sacrament" was theEucharist, with ordination sometimes added as the third.The blood and the water that flowed from the side ofChrist on the cross, while sometimes used to justify theliturgical practice of mixing water with wine at theconsecration of the elements, became, together with thePauline typology of the manna in the desert and the cloudthrough which Israel passed, biblical proof for the twosacraments of Eucharist and baptism. These two were uni-versal throughout Christendom and essential for salva-tion. Of the two, however, the Eucharist was "the greater"and was "not only on a par with baptism, but its founda-tion and its completion." Baptism was carried out"through nothing more than the invocation of the Trin-ity," but the Eucharist was "confected by the very Logosof God." While the water of baptism had its power offorgiving sins only for a brief moment and then flowedaway, "this host [in the Eucharist] is always borne up to


the throne of glory and will never perish."' For although"the sacrament itself is transitory and is therefore repeatedevery day, the divine power [virtus} that is eaten in it iseternal."

As sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist possessedcertain similarities, but it was easy—and dangerous—topress these too far. Thus Ambrose had drawn a parallelbetween the two sacraments by declaring: "As you haveassumed the likeness of the death [of Christ], so you alsodrink the likeness of [his] precious blood." The troublewith the parallel was that because "there is not a truedeath of Christ in baptism," someone might conclude that"therefore it is not his true blood in this sacrament"either. There were those among the followers of Berengarwho maintained, on the basis of the parallel, that "thebread and wine are not changed, but are merely a sacra-ment, like the water of baptism," and hence that the bodyof Christ in the Eucharist was figurative, not real. But thedifference that this ignored was a basic one: "The waterof baptism . . . does not contain the Holy Spirit essentially,but only figuratively; only the Sacrament of bread andwine is changed in such a way that in substance it is notwhat it used to be before." The significance of the parallelbecame even more obscure when an opponent of Beren-gar, seeking to make the point that it was the ever-presentChrist who "baptizes men through men and consecrateswhatever is consecrated through men," went on to asserta kind of real presence of Christ in the water of baptism,because "whenever a body is immersed in water with theinvocation of certain solemn words, He Himself makesthe dead soul alive by remitting its sins." One aspect ofthe parallel that did prove useful in this period was theargument that not only baptism, but also the Eucharisthad an objective validity, so that both of "these mysteriesare not better when administered by good priests norworse when administered by evil ones."

The consideration of the Eucharist and of its relationto other "sacraments," especially baptism, brought abouta more precise consideration of the idea of sacrament assuch. It was recognized by Lanfranc, and on the basis ofLanfranc by Alger, that "the term 'sacrament' is not foundto be used with a uniform meaning in the divine writ-ings." From the statement of the New Testament that"manifestly the sacrament of piety [pietatis sacramentum}


is great, that which was manifest in the flesh," the term"the sacrament of the incarnation" established itself per-manently in theological usage; it was "the well-knownchief sacrament, the incarnation of the Logos," from whichthe understanding of "the other sacraments" proceeded.Thus "Christ is the sacrament of Christ" himself, and it

0 was Christ who disclosed the meaning of the sacraments.His consecration, not that of the priest apart from him,made the sacraments efficacious, granting to the recipientsof the sacraments the grace of being "cosacramental withChrist." Even after the controversy over the sacramentshad, at least in principle, been settled, it was still possibleto speak of "the four sacraments, namely, the nativity, thepassion, the resurrection, and the ascension of Christ." An-other usage of the word, going back to pre-Christian Latin,was as a term for an oath, especially an oath of allegianceor an oath confirming the truth of a statement. Takingaccount of this classical definition of the word as well asof Christian definitions, Guibert of Nogent posited athreefold significance for the term: "as an oath, as a thingthat has been consecrated, and as a mystery." A differentsort of threefold significance was that proposed by Hughof Saint-Victor: "those sacraments in which salvationprincipally consists and is received"; "others which, whilenot necessary for salvation, contribute to sanctification";and "yet other sacraments which appear to have beeninstituted for the sole purpose of somehow preparingand sanctifying the things that are necessary for thesanctification and institution of the other sacraments." Anillustration of the lack of clarity in the usage was the wide-spread designation of the Eucharist as "sacraments" inthe plural, "the two sacraments of life, namely, the bodyand the blood of the Lord," even though in their significa-tion the two were one.

Nevertheless, the issues raised by Berengar made itobligatory to introduce greater specificity into the church'slanguage about the grace of the sacraments, for "whenBerengar proposed his definitions of sacramentum andused them to argue his point, the theologians opposinghim were not sufficiently prepared to discuss the specula-tive value of those definitions." One of the most widelyemployed ways of defining "sacrament" had come fromAugustine: "as Augustine says, a sacrament is the visiblesign of an invisible grace." A variation on this definition


was simply to say that " a sacrament is the sign of a sacredreality." The biblical use of the word "sign" as a term forChrist himself made it possible (and necessary) even forthose who were arguing that the sacraments, in particularthe Eucharist, could not be adequately denned as signs, toacknowledge that the term was appropriate, if insufficient.Another definition, also attributed to Augustine, was that"a sacrament is the visible form of an invisible grace."But the formula as usually quoted does not seem to appearin the authentic writings of Augustine, and Berengar "is,as far as we know, the first author who ever employed thisdefinition." These two definitions—sometimes with theaddition of the formula "sacred secret" or mystery—wereto "dominate the theology of the twelfth century in itsdetermination of what a sacrament is," and even PeterLombard and Thomas Aquinas still built their own dis-cussions of the matter around these definitions.

The requirement that, in order to qualify as a sacrament,a sacred action had to involve the visible "form" or "sign"of an invisible reality present there seems to have comefrom a consideration of the Eucharist, where the notionof "presence" was fundamental; it was much more difficultto apply to such a sacrament as penance, where there wasno presence and no obvious visible sign. It was likewisefrom eucharistic theology that other elements in thedefinition of sacrament were derived. Thus the distinctionbetween the sacrament and "the matter of the sacrament,"which had been thought to apply only to the Sacrament ofthe Altar, and not to the other sacraments, now servedto explain baptism, where the matter of the sacramentwas "the justification of a man" or his "inward washing,"as well as matrimony, whose "matter is the process ofbecoming a member of Christ." It was true of all thesacraments that some received only the sacrament, someonly the matter of the sacrament, and some both of these.The stress on the necessity of the words of institution inthe Eucharist also carried over to baptism, which wasnot valid "without the solemn form of the words"; thesuggestion that "without the invocation of the Trinityno sacrament takes place in the church" moved in theopposite direction, from baptism to the Eucharist and theother sacraments, but it did not take hold.

With the shift to the words of institution as the con-stitutive force in a sacrament came an emphasis on insti-


tution itself as the warrant for the sacrament. It wasapparently with Hugh of Saint-Victor that "institutionby Christ is for the first time taken over formally intothe definition of a sacrament." Although it continued tobe "the Holy Spirit who is the author and the power ofthis sacrament [the Eucharist] and of all the sacraments,"the certification of that power came through the proofthat the sacrament had been properly instituted. But whilethere were four accounts in the New Testament of theinstitution of the Eucharist, the institution of the othersacraments was more difficult to establish. For the institu-tion of baptism it was possible to cite at least threeseparate occasions: the baptism of Christ in the Jordan byJohn; the statement of Christ to Nicodemus about thenecessity of being born again through water and theSpirit; the command of Christ to his disciples to go andbaptize. Another possibility sometimes cited was theflowing of water from the wounded side of Christ on thecross. The status of other sacraments was even more am-biguous. It could be said, for example, that John theBaptist had instituted the sacrament of penance with hiscall to repentance. On the basis of the Book of Acts itseemed that confirmation had been instituted by theapostles, not directly by Christ. During this period therewas general agreement that the anointing of the sick or"extreme unction," too, owed its origins to an apostolicinstitution; but in the sixteenth century the Council ofTrent was to insist that it had come from Christ himself,"through James, the apostle and brother of the Lord."

This fluctuation in the definition of the grace of thesacraments and in the requirements for a sacrament wasreflected inevitably in the list of actions qualifying assacraments. One of the most widely accepted formulasspoke of "four sacraments," which were, on the basis ofIsidore: "baptism; chrism; the body of the Lord; theblood." But the number varied widely, from the two onwhich everyone agreed to twelve and even more. It is notclear where the notion of seven as the number of thesacraments began, although the anonymous Sentences ofDivinity from about 1145 may have been the first to listthe seven that were to become canonical: the five sacra-ments common to all Christians (baptism, confirmation,penance, the Eucharist, and extreme unction); and twothat were not shared by everyone (marriage, which was


only for the laity, and ordination, which was only for theclergy). That distinction, together with the number seven,achieved acceptance within a decade or two. Perhaps be-cause of the number seven, with its biblical and othersacred associations, the number was accepted even bythose contemporaries whose actual lists varied from these.But this list was the one that Peter Lombard took over intohis Sentences; and "for the further development of thedoctrinal concept the Sentences of Peter Lombard weredecisive. . . . It is significant that . . . his doctrine of thesacraments, especially the number seven, finds universalacceptance." The commentators on the compilation ofcanon law by Gratian almost all listed seven sacraments,because of the influence of Peter Lombard, even thoughGratian himself did not.

So it came about that a definition of "the sacraments ingeneral" determined the understanding of the individualsacraments: "the sacrament of the body and blood ofChrist, and the sacrament of baptism, and all the othersacraments of the church." Of these other sacraments, themost important (despite the ambiguity of its having beeninstituted not by Christ, but already in the Old Testamentor perhaps by John the Baptist) was probably penance,which was fundamental not alone to a full understandingof sacramental doctrine, but to the pastoral and disciplin-ary life of the church. "Without it," said a cardinal andreformer of the early twelfth century, "none of the sacra-ments is of any use to sinners." There was, said an earliercardinal, nothing standing between penance and the king-dom of heaven. Therefore it received far lengthier treat-ment in manuals of theology than, for example, confirma-tion or the anointing of the sick. Penance was institutedas a means of grace because those who had received theforgiveness of sins through baptism went on to sin againand needed "a second refuge after this shipwreck" toreconcile them to the church, from which they werealienated by their transgression. It was defined as con-sisting of a vow to avoid sin, an act of confession, andan act of satisfaction. The seven steps of penance were,as enumerated by Bernard of Clairvaux and his discipleNicholas: "the knowledge of oneself; repentance; sorrow;oral confession; mortification of the flesh; correction [orsatisfaction] by a work; perseverance." Satisfaction,which provided Anselm with the fundamental metaphor


for his theory of redemption, consisted in reparation orrestoration of that which one had taken away by sinningand was the public witness to the church of one's contri-tion and absolution.

Confirmation and extreme unction were probably theleast clearly defined and the least specifically developedof the seven sacraments in the thought of this period.Confirmation was "greater" than baptism in the sense thatthe administration of it was reserved to bishops whilebaptism could be administered by priests or even by lay-men. Sources from earlier periods of the history of thechurch showed that priests had performed confirmationsthen, but such testimony "is to be understood on the basisof the times, namely, the primitive church, when it waspermissible for priests to do so because of the rarity ofbishops." Although "the fullness of the entire mystery ofthe Christian religion" was present in confirmation, theidentification of the special grace it conferred did notcome until after the Middle Ages, if then. Extreme unctionlikewise suffered from lack of clarity in medieval theology.It was "a great sacrament," but the question of its institu-tion seemed to be more interesting than the question ofthe special grace that it conferred. For example, Bruno ofSegni, generally acknowledged as one of the leadingexegetical scholars among medieval theologians, "doesnot even make an allusion either to marriage or to extremeunction as a sacrament." When theologians did discussextreme unction, they were hard pressed to identify anyways in which it contained any different "sacramentalmatter" from that of the other sacraments.

The two sacraments that were "not common to all"believers were matrimony and ordination: priests did notreceive the first (although widowers could be ordained),and laymen did not receive the second. It was characteris-tic of both of these sacraments that canon law dominatedthe discussion of them even on the part of theologians.Thus the oft-repeated observation that "while the insti-tution of the other sacraments took place through humanbeings on this earth of sin and misery and on account ofthe variety of sins, this sacrament [matrimony] was in-stituted by the true and living God in the joys of Paradiseat the beginning of time" could serve as the preamble toa detailed catalog of consanguinity, affinity, and otherimpediments to marriage, where the sacramental defini-


tion of matrimony played no role at all. The problem wasthat "marriage, although it is of course a sacrament, doesnot confer any particular gift [of grace], as the othersacraments do, but is a remedy for evil." Another am-biguity was that, in a formula received from Isidore, mar-riage was good but virginity was better, and yet virginitywas not a sacrament while marriage was. In fact, marriagewas the only one of the sacraments to be explicitly calleda sacrament in the New Testament; "this is," the apostledeclared, "a great sacrament [sacramentum hoc magnumestj," adding: "I am, moreover, speaking in Christ and inthe church." On the basis of this passage, matrimony was"the sacrament of Christ and the church," and the relationbetween spouses was a sign of the relation of the churchto Christ as his bride. Despite this connection with thechurch, however, matrimony was the only sacrament thatwas constituted "without any celebration . . . and withoutthe institution of the church," on the basis of "only theconsensus of certain persons."

The other of the two sacraments "not common to all"was ordination. It, like matrimony, belonged to the cate-gory of those sacraments "in which salvation principallyconsists and is received"; unlike matrimony, however, ithad been "instituted for the sole purpose of somehowpreparing and sanctifying the things that are necessaryfor the sanctification and institution of the other sacra-ments." The sacrament of holy orders, therefore, was basicto the other sacraments, which were, as a rule, dependenton it for their valid administration. The validity or in-validity of ordination, consequently, had implications forthe grace of every sacrament. When the reform of thechurch during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, directedas it was against the twin abuses of simony and lay investi-ture, reopened the question of the validity of ordinationsobtained by illegal means, these implications were un-avoidable. As in the discussions of matrimony, this was aproblem in canon law that impinged upon theology. TheAugustinian emphasis on the objectivity of baptism couldserve as the basis for the generalization of Peter Damianthat "the divine power truly effects its sacrament," re-gardless of the merit of the priest. Radbertus had trans-ferred this principle from baptism to the Eucharist; andnow, in support of the objectivity of the real presence,Damian transferred it "to a third, namely, to ordination."


The development in the thought of Alger of Liege, pre-sumably under Damian's influence, is illustrative of thedoctrinal problem. He believed that "in the celebration ofthe sacraments of Christ" one must follow the institutionof Christ, to assure that "what we perform is true by Hispower and legitimate by His authority." Originally thisled him to maintain that sacraments administered by apriest who had been invalidly ordained were "as far astheir effects are concerned, neither true nor holy," buteventually he concluded that the Mass was the sacrificeof the church even when it was offered by such a priest.

The definitive list of the seven sacraments was anexclusive as well as an inclusive one, eventually disqualify-ing certain sacred acts that had at one time or anotherbeen called sacraments or that had at any rate participatedin the sacramental system. Monastic vows, for example,had long been identified as a "second baptism," and oc-casionally they joined the list of sacraments. "The dedi-cation of a church in which all the other sacraments arecelebrated" could assume the dignity of a sacrament itself.The sign of the cross accompanying sacramental actionslikewise seemed to merit the title. Although matrimonywas one of the seven sacraments to attain official recogni-tion, there were those who defined the mutual fidelity ofthe spouses as "the sacrament that is appropriate to mar-riage." Similarly, while baptism was a sacrament on every-one's list, the faith accompanying it could also be one.Together with the sign of the cross, the blessing of Eastercandles belonged to "those sacraments in the church fromwhich, even though salvation does not actually consist inthem, salvation is enhanced insofar as devotion is exer-cised"; these were too numerous to mention. On some lists,"the sacrament of the anointing of a king" was able toclaim a place. On the other hand, the consecration of abishop, on which the ordination of a priest depended inmuch the same way that the other sacraments in turndepended on ordination, was sometimes called a sacra-ment, but it did not achieve sacramental status. Only afterthis period was the idea of "sacramentals" fully evolvedto include some of these actions.

The principle that each of the sacraments containedand conveyed a special grace, combined with a moredetailed and precise definition of what a sacrament mustbe and must do, helped to establish the normative list of


seven sacraments. More importantly, it served to integratethe sacraments with one another—and to integrate allof them as a system with the communion of the saints inthe church—in such a way as to bring the entirety ofhuman life, literally from the cradle to the grave, underthe sway of divine grace. Sacramental theology and itscorollaries thus became the most thoroughly articulatedapplication of the ancient principle that "the rule of prayershould lay down the rule of faith."

5 The One True Faith

The application of the principle that "the rule of prayershould establish the rule of faith" to the doctrine of thesaints and the doctrine of the sacraments confirmed thedoctrinal authority of "the rule of prayer," but in theprocess it also called attention to the need for a furtherand more fundamental inquiry into "the rule of faith."At no time in the period covered by this volume wouldthere have been any substantial denial of the assertionthat there was one true faith, the faith set forth in theunchanging and unchangeable consensus of the catholiccenturies. Yet the disputes and developments of theeleventh and twelfth centuries, in particular the eu-charistic controversy and its repercussions, made it im-possible to identify or to assert the one true faith assimplistically as its spokesmen had been doing before thecomplexity and ambiguity of such an assertion cameclearly into view.

In part this complexity was due to the understandingof the nature of faith itself. "The invisible things ofGod," according to Hugh of Saint-Victor, "can only bebelieved, but cannot in any way be comprehended." Theytranscended all analogy and likeness, whether of body orof soul, and therefore "their very substance is the faithby which they are believed." Faith was "the certain com-prehension of unchangeable truth, confirmed by the surestauthority," a comprehension that "exceeds all the experi-ence of the senses and transcends all the conjectures ofhuman reason" and that deserved to be called "knowledge"in the fullest sense, since it was a confident trust in theGod who was truth itself. Again, it was "a certitude of the

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mind concerning matters that are not present, aboveopinion but below knowledge." Different though thesedefinitions were in emphasis, they were agreed in viewingthe true and catholic faith as "only one," by contrast withthe "vain credulity" of false believers, which was incon-stant and varied. Although there was a "diversity of cus-toms," this did not affect "the one faith of our holycatholic mother, the church." Standing over against "thefoolish wisdom of heretics and of philosophers" was "thetrue and catholic faith," which was distinct from theknowledge that came from sense experience or throughreason. What made it distinct was its origin in divinegrace and its ground in the supernatural authority ofdivine revelation. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuriesthe implications of these truth claims needed to be drawnin relation to tradition, in opposition to schism and heresy,in response to other religions, and in comparison with theclaims of reason.

The Problem of Patristic Consensus

In the course of the conflict over the nature of the eu-charistic body, the central issue often appeared to comedown to the question of authority, especially because somuch of the tradition, including the ecumenical creeds,had been silent on the matter. When it was discoveredthat among "the authorities there are some who seem tosay clearly that this is the true body" while others seemedto say the opposite, that represented a potential threat tothe identification of "our faith" as "solidly established onthe firm rock of divine authority" rather than on "theuncertainty of human opinions." Berengar made thequestion of authority basic to his argument. When hisopponents claimed the support of the majority in thechurch for their view of the presence, he countered thatthe majority was not always in the right, and cited asproof the seven thousand who, in the days of Elijah theprophet, had not bowed to Baal. It was better to standwith the few in the defense of the truth than to err withthe many. Nor did he accept the charge that he had beencondemned by a church council; for there had beencouncils before in the history of the church that had erred,and the true church council was one that confessed thetruth, that is, one that taught as he did. In sum, he declaredto his adversaries, "as you have nothing of truth, so also

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you have nothing of authority." They in turn accused himand his followers of claiming: "Only in us and in thosewho follow us has the holy church remained on earth."

The need to be in agreement with the church, whateverthe definition of the church might be, made it imperativeto identify what had been taught "everywhere over sucha long period of time," for this was a norm of catholictruth. When it came to eucharistic doctrine, "that under-standing of these words of Christ is to be preferred . . .which is acknowledged to belong to the interpretation ofthe church, which has the support of the authority ofthe orthodox fathers, and which has the commendationof the faith of the catholic and apostolic church." Whatthe catholic church believed was what Christ had wantedit to believe and what the Holy Spirit had led it to believe,and this was the true faith that it had handed down bytradition to subsequent generations. "The universal faithof the church" was "not recent, not a matter of this orthat man, but of the whole world." Echoing the Augus-tinian formula that "the judgment of the whole world isreliable," Berengar's critics attacked him for setting him-self "against the whole world," but he refused to equate"the confession of the church throughout the wholeworld" with "the madness of the fools in the church" whotaught otherwise than he did. Indeed, if his teaching werelabeled as heresy, then "without this heresy no one hasever been or ever will be a catholic." His opponents hadno right to claim "the ancient faith of the church" as theirauthority.

But "if what you believe and affirm about the body ofChrist is true," they replied, "then what is believed andaffirmed by the church throughout the nations is false,"and they challeged him to ask anyone in the Latin worldor, for that matter, anyone among the Greeks or Ar-menians about the doctrine of the real presence. East andWest, "all the principal doctors of the church, both Greekand Latin, teach" this doctrine. All of them, as part ofthe catholic church, taught the same thing, and "there isno schism" among them. For if this doctrine was not anecumenical one and if "the faith of the universal churchhas been a false one, then either there has never been acatholic church or it has perished"; neither of these con-clusions was possible. It was "incumbent on a member ofthe church not to deviate from the church." So deeply


embedded was the doctrine of the real presence in thefaith of the universal church that both the heretic Nestor-ius and the ecumenical Council of Ephesus that con-demned him in 431 had been agreed on it, even thoughthey drew from it contradictory teachings about theperson of Christ. In the previous century, Hilary ofPoitiers—whom Berengar was accused of attacking onother grounds as well—had been able to take an orthodoxdoctrine of the Eucharist for granted even among thosewho denied that the Son was homoousios with the Father,and he had "proved what was in doubt [the homoousion]on the basis of what was beyond doubt [the real presence},even for the heretics." Not only Eastern theologians andheretics, but Satan himself was a witness to the doctrine ofthe real presence, who, "whether he wants to or not, ac-cepts the reality of the body and blood of the Lord."

Within the tradition of the universal church, it wasabove all Augustine who was the "patron" for the criticsof the developing doctrine of the real presence. Theyargued that when the Synod of Vercelli in 1050 had con-demned what it took to be a heretical doctrine of theEucharist, that doctrine was in fact "the teaching of SaintAugustine." To prove this, they compiled catenae ofquotations from the writings of Augustine that seemedto reject the notion of a physical presence of the historicalbody of Christ in the elements of the Sacrament. Thechampions of the real presence themselves recognizedthat "the origin of almost the entire scandal seems to havecome from Saint Augustine," whose language about theEucharist was so "subtle" that "certain perverse individ-uals have fallen into the labyrinth of error on account ofthis great doctor's ways of speaking and have strivenobstinately to draw others in after them." Nevertheless,they charged that it was "altogether false" to identifyAugustine with the doctrines of Berengar. The only wayto achieve such an identification was "to spin out somepathetic rationalizations and then to support them fromcertain of the statements of Saint Augustine." But if in-stead one took the pains to understand him rather than toblame him for teachings he had never espoused, one wouldfind that in his writings there was "nothing embarrassing,nothing ambiguous."

There were, however, more than a few passages in theAugustinian corpus that did seem somewhat ambiguous


and that were therefore also quite embarrassing. WhenBerengar quoted passages that described the Eucharist as a"figure" and a "sign," the response was that "Augustine. . . never called the food on the altar of the Lord a 'sign'or a 'figure,' but he did say that the celebration of theLord's body is a 'sign.' " Other passages were more trouble-some. One such was the oft-quoted statement, "Why areyou preparing your teeth and your stomach? Believe, andyou have already eaten." This could be dismissed on thegrounds that Augustine was speaking "about one mode ofeating, that according to which Christ is eaten throughfaith by the righteous." It was not so easy to dismiss an-other familiar Augustinian paraphrase of the words ofJesus, "Understand spiritually what I have said. You arenot to eat this body which you see, nor to drink thatblood which will be shed by those who are to crucify me,"especially if these were taken to be authentic words ofChrist himself. Berengar found his teachings substantiatedin these words, which became for him "the foundation of[his] defense." "If, then," he argued, "it is not that bodyor that blood, it follows that what is eaten from the altar ismerely a shadow and a figure of the body and blood." Intheir responses to the quotation from Augustine, hisopponents cited, as had Berengar himself, other words ofAugustine in the same commentary: "He received fleshfrom the flesh of Mary. . . . He walked here in that veryflesh and gave us that very flesh to eat for our salvation."It was a "calumny" to twist Augustine's words and totransform "this pillar of the church, this foundation of thetruth" into a heretic.

Nevertheless, the only way for Augustine to stand as apillar of the church and a foundation of the truth in hiseucharistic teachings was with the support of other cath-olic doctors, notably Ambrose. As had become evidentalready in the ninth century, Ambrose was a far moreexplicit witness to the real presence than Augustine, andit was from his definition of the eucharistic body as thebody born of the Virgin that the defenders of the realpresence had derived their doctrine. His exposition of thechange that took place in the Eucharist provided thedocumentation for their position. Even when he was beingquoted alongside such fathers as Hilary and Augustine,Ambrose was said to "possess the principal authority inthe catholic church, next to that of the apostles," and he

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was an important witness to the ecumenical character oforthodox doctrine because "no other Latin [theologian]seems to have followed the Greeks" as much as he. Ber-engar, too, demanded to have his ideas put "under thejudgment . . . of Saint Ambrose," claiming Ambrose'sstatement that the body of Christ could not be woundedagain as substantiation of his contention that the true bodycould not be broken by the hands of the priest nor torn bythe teeth of the communicant. He could cite Ambrose"with complete justification and with no injury" to histeaching. But he was, replied his opponents, "presumptu-ous in summoning Ambrose as a witness," for an examina-tion of his "On the Sacraments or of all the other bookswritten by Ambrose that are now in use in the church"would not produce any passages in which he had taughtwhat Berengar claimed to have derived from him. Andso, whether one took Ambrose or Augustine or Jerome,it would be evident that "these great men do not disagreeand that everyone in the catholic church should think oneand the same thing, and that there is no schism amongthem."

All the parties in the controversy would probably haveagreed that "everyone in the catholic church should thinkone and the same thing," but it was by no means as clearthat "these great men do not disagree." The assumptionthat there was such a thing as patristic consensus on thequestion of the eucharistic presence was difficult to sub-stantiate, even for the opponents of Berengar. They could"simply put forward the testimonies of the holy fathersabout the body of the Lord," but that did not remove theproblem. For the best they could do sometimes was toacknowledge that, for example, some of Augustine'sstatements about the Sacrament, "although they are some-what ambiguous, do not support their [the Berengarians']side any more than they do ours." Even in the case ofAmbrose, there were some passages that had to be inter-preted in a particular way, "lest he contradict his ownauthority and that of the other saints." Still there werestatements in the fathers that did not lend themselvesto such harmonization; in such cases the father in ques-tion "either is not to be accepted or is to be believed onthe basis of many of his statements rather than only ofone." Sometimes it was possible to atttibute the contra-dictions to differences in language, specifically to the con-


trast between the fathers, who had observed a reverentsilence about the mysteries of the faith, and later genera-tions, which had felt obliged to invent new terminology"for the sake of a devout confession of the faith." Whennone of these techniques of explanation availed, "it is saferfor the reader, in dealing with very difficult passages inthe holy fathers,... to say that he does not know than . . .to define things in a way that is contrary to the faith."

Underlying all such attempts to cope with the contra-dictions among the church fathers was the recognitionthat the writings of the fathers were only part of a largerand more comprehensive system of doctrinal authority.An individual passage from an individual father on suchan issue as the eucharistic presence needed the context of"Scripture itself . . . and the message of the gospel andthe authority of the universal church" to be interpreted inan orthodox manner. It is not surprising that the disputeover the real presence brought the problem of patristicconsensus into sharper focus; "nor," on the other hand,"was it accidental that when the Eucharistic controversyrevived in the eleventh century," the questions of theexegesis of Scripture and the authority of Scripture oncemore became prominent. This was not only because Ber-engar and his followers were seen as "despising the histo-ries of the fathers as well as contradicting the gospel," butalso because his opponents made the literal truthfulness ofthe words "This is my body" dependent on the trust-worthiness of the entire Gospel narrative of the institutionof the Eucharist, including the statement that Christ"broke" the bread, so that "anyone who does not concedethat the body of Christ 'is broken' has done everything hecan to break the entire [article of] faith concerning thisSacrament." If even the most trivial details in Scripturewere fraught with meaning, much more so was its lan-guage about such an important matter as this.

Among the defenders of the doctrine of the real pres-ence in the twelfth century, Baldwin of Canterbury wasoutstanding for his recognition that the doctrine of theunique inspiration and supreme authority of Scripturewas crucial to the orthodox doctrine of the Eucharist.While he acknowledged that in doctrinal and even inliturgical questions "the authority of the ancient [churchfathers] ought to be reason enough for us" and while hecould speak as though "the words of the law and the


prophets, of the apostles and evangelists, of the orthodoxfathers, and of individuals who have been faithful in theconfession of the faith" were all on the same level, thechurch fathers and the church itself bore such authorityonly because the church had "accepted the word of faith,which is the word of God, in the apostles" and in theapostolic Scripture of the New Testament. For example,the monastic life had the standing it did in the churchbecause it had been established "by the apostles them-selves," without whom it would have no authority. It was"extremely dangerous to let in any false opinion aboutGod," who was "his own witness to himself" in Scripture,which "is divinely inspired [and in which] the form offaith is written down for us." Because God had "seen fitto reveal the truth about God in the Sacred Scriptures, afaith that believes worthily about God ought to be a faithin the words of God." It followed from this that "thefoundation of our faith can be reduced to the authorityof Sacred Scripture: if this is true, the witnesses of thefaith are true, the testimonies of the faith are true, andconsequently the faith itself is true."

Like his contemporaries, Baldwin was troubled by dis-crepancies between various biblical accounts, for examplein chronology, but faith did not depend on how one re-solved such discrepancies, "so long as we believe withoutany doubt what the deeds or words say [in] the Gospelnarrative." For there could not possibly be any contra-diction between the Gospels and the writings of the OldTestament prophets, since both had been inspired by thesame Holy Spirit. Accordingly, when theologians madethe correct understanding of Scripture dependent on aprior acceptance of faith in Christ or when they arguedthat the Gentile world "accepts the authority of the [OldTestament] Scriptures because it has first come to believein Christ," this was in no way a diminution of the author-ity of Scripture. In fact, in a consideration of the Gospelaccount of the transfiguration of Jesus, at which Mosesand Elijah appeared on either side of him, Richard ofSaint-Victor drew a distinction between those teachingsof Christ "which I am able to confirm on the basis of myown experience" and those that dealt with sublime andtranscendent truth; when the teachings of Christ spoke ofthese latter, "I will not accept Christ without a witness,nor can any revelation, regardless of its verisimilitude,


be valid without the attestation of Moses and Elijah, thatis, without the authority of the Scriptures." Hence "theauthority of the faith" was established by the testimonythat the Father bore to Christ in revealing "the Son inthe Scriptures" and "the Son in us."

Although it was still appropriate to link Scripture andthe fathers as two parts of a unified system of authority,there was a qualitative difference, not merely a quantita-tive one, between the authority of the two. A contra-diction among the fathers was perplexing, a contra-diction within Scripture was unthinkable. Moreover, whatmade a church father such as Augustine great was thathe was "filled with the Spirit of the prophets and apostles";for the fathers saw themselves, and wanted others to seethem, as interpreters of Scripture. As such, they had"treated many great and profound matters with all dili-gence, expounding many things historically or allegori-cally or tropologically in a wondrous way." Therefore itwas not to seem "surprising if they left behind a lessadequate exposition of some passage" and if, as a result,"we are able, in one or another passage, to add somethingthat could make a contribution to a greater insight ora clearer understanding." It was necessary to make thispoint "for the sake of those who refuse to acknowledgeanything except what they have received from the mostancient fathers." What was important was that the thingsone said "after the fathers" not be "contrary to the fathers,"even though they themselves may not have said thesethings. Such an addition was not an act of presumptionor of "temerity," but of faithfulness to the heritage of thefathers. It was better, in the study of Scripture, to draw on"one's own experience" than merely on the opinions ofothers.

To dramatize the qualitative distinction between theauthority of Scripture and the authority of the fathers,Peter Abelard compiled a chrestomathy of passages, whosevery title, Yes and No [Sic et non\, suggested that the in-consistencies and downright contradictions in the patristictradition, together with methods of dealing with these,were to be its theme. Such compilations ordinarily servedthe purpose of documenting the patristic consensus onissues of Christian doctrine and practice. In addition toproviding methodological suggestions for discoveringsuch a consensus behind the discrepancies, Abelard pur-


posed to "introduce certain passages from the Scriptures,[which would] arouse the reader and draw him to aninquiry into the truth, all the more so when the authorityof Scripture itself is given greater emphasis." The canoni-cal Scripture of the Old and New Testaments was thenorm of true doctrine, and dissent from it was heretical.The same did not apply to the church fathers, who, as"commentators" on Scripture, did not merit the "undoubt-ing faith" appropriate to the writers in the biblical canon.Augustine had warned his readers: "Do not be willing toyield to my writings as to the canonical Scriptures." Theseand other quotations from Augustine provided Abelardwith proof that the greatest loyalty to the fathers con-sisted in subjecting them to the authority of the Bible, asthey themselves had demanded.

Although there were other theologians who also em-phasized that there was no obligation to give to anychurch father, regardless of how learned and catholic hewas, the same deference that belonged to the canonicalScripture, it is clear that "in this differentiation betweenScripture and the fathers Abelard sets himself apart fromhis theological contemporaries." Yet the fundamentaltendency of his book was one that he shared with them,as well as with those among his contemporaries whose pri-mary concern was not with theology, but with canon law.For the legal scholars, too, "their firm belief that theauthors of the canons acted under the inspiration of theHoly Spirit also rendered more acute the inherent diffi-culties of sifting and interpreting the so disparate elementsin the monuments of canonical tradition." It was "a greatinsult to the Holy Spirit himself" if one did not attemptto achieve a consensus among the statements that he hadinspired. In their procedures for harmonizing these ele-ments of patristic tradition, the expositors of doctrine andthe expositors of law made use of the same methods, butthey were also aware that there was a basic differencebetween the two areas; for "the catholic fathers have fromthe beginning established the limits of true faith andsound doctrine, which it is altogether forbidden to trans-gress," while in such areas of custom as fasting or liturgicalpractice the rules set down by the fathers and councilshad not been intended to carry the same weight of author-ity. It was possible to speak of "a change of the lawbrought about by necessity," but not of a change of doc-


trine. In spite of this difference, however, lawyers andtheologians faced many of the same problems in dealingwith the tradition of the church, and they formulatedmany of the same solutions. For "it is by this sublimedisregard of history (or, we may say, by the primacy ofreason over history) that the medieval lawyers [as wellas the medieval theologians] were able to make a systemout of the conflicting data they found in the experience ofreality."

Abelard's first rule for handling contradictions was todecide whether there had been "a false identification ofthe title or a corruption of [the text of] the writing itself."During some of the controversies of medieval theology,the question of authenticity had been an important factor,and various parties had exchanged accusations of tamper-ing with the text of the fathers. The right did not lie in-fallibly with any of the parties, but there had been in-stances—for example, in the conflict over predestination—in which the Pseudo-Augustine had been able to prevailover the real Augustine. Recognizing the problem, inter-preters of Augustine urged that "when Augustine con-tradicts himself," one possible explanation was that "hismanuscripts could have been corrupted by some falsifier."In addition, entire works or individual pieces of legisla-tion could carry the name of a church father but not havecome from him at all; for "many things have been falselyattributed to the statutes of the holy fathers," both in lawand in doctrine. This had happened, Abelard pointed out,even in the text of Scripture itself, and it was understand-able if the works of the fathers had not been immune tocorruption. The diagnosis and correction of these errorscould serve to separate the wheat of patristic teachingfrom the chaff of later accretions.

If the authorship of the document and its text werebeyond challenge, the next step was "to pay attention . . .to whether elsewhere . . . [such statements] were retractedby them and corrected, once they had recognized thetruth." In dealing with canon law, "a comparison of di-verse statutes with one another is very helpful to us,because one [statute] often elucidates another" by clari-fying it or even correcting and retracting it. The mostillustrious example of this self-correction was, of course,Augustine himself, whose Retractations, written near theend of his life, had reviewed his books one by one and


made detailed revisions and explanations In the courseof "retracting and correcting" various of his earlier state-ments, Augustine had also "acknowledged that he hadtaken many of these positions more on the basis of theopinions of others than from his own convictions." In hisworks or in those of any other father, therefore, it wasnecessary also to be aware of the places where he wasquoting or paraphrasing someone else, often for the pur-pose of considering alternatives rather than of settingforth his own ideas.

"When diverse things are said on the same issue,"Abelard continued, "one must also investigate what wasintended [by each] . . . , so that we may find a solution ofthe difficulty on the basis of a diversity of intentions,"specifically the diversity between general rules and par-ticular legislation. Among the precepts and the prohibi-tions of church law, "some are movable, some are im-movable." Sometimes the apparent conflict betweenvarious parts of the tradition could be traced to thisdifference. For "the holy fathers instituted [some things]as a matter of prudent administration [dispensatorie], tobe observed only temporarily," while other rules weremeant "to be kept universally and for all time." Abelardpointed out that some legislation had been intended tocarry "the force of precept," while in other cases the in-tention had been to mitigate the demands of the rule. Ifsome canons had been "based on rigor and others onmoderation, some on justice and others on mercy," thatwould lead to apparent contradictions. Obviously, thismeans of coping with contradictions was better suited tocanon law than to theology, where it was not permissibleto make adjustments for the sake of "rigor" or of "moder-ation" and where the tension between "justice" and"mercy" had been resolved not by legislation but by theatoning death of Christ. Yet such a question as that ofsacramental validity, which was under discussion in thisperiod, belonged both to doctrine and to canon law, sothat, for example, Alger of Liege, who was simultaneouslya theologian and a canonist, did make such adjustments inhis teaching; and a contemporary of his, faced with thesame question, drew a distinction between the "effect" ofbaptism, which could never be outside the church, andthe "reality" of the sacraments, which was objectively trueregardless of the status of minister or recipient.


Underlying any such adjustment or distinction was thehistorical recognition, especially in the case of decreesand canons, that "one must distinguish between times,"since "what has been allowed at one time is found to havebeen prohibited at another." For example, the requirementof clerical celibacy had been dispensed for the Englishchurch, on the grounds that the marriage of priests, whileless desirable than celibacy, was preferable to promiscuity;but "when the necessity ceases, the dispensations alsoought to cease, nor should one regard as law what utilityhas urged or necessity has required." A failure to payattention to these historical differences, according toBernold of Constance, could lead a careless observer to thehasty conclusion that different canons were "absurd orcontrary," when "a consideration of the times, the places,or the persons" would show that the diversity was to beattributed to the special circumstances surrounding thecases and that there was no real contradiction betweenthem. When Bernold pointed out, in this same connection,that "the original causes" that had provoked the statutescould illumine the specific intention of the legislation, hewas enunciating a principle of historical interpretationthat could be applied to the original causes, often theteachings of heretics, that had been the provocation fordogmatic legislation as well.

Abelard was less interested in these historical solutionsof the contradictions than in the proposal that "an easysolution of many controversies will be found if we candemonstrate that the same words have been used bydifferent authors in different senses." As he had saidearlier, "the greatest impediment to our understanding[of the fathers] is our unfamiliarity with their way ofspeaking and with the diverse significance of many ofthe same terms." Sorting out these various meanings andlearning that the same word had been used in variousways and that various terms could be used for the samething would lead to a clarification of ambiguous texts andso to a harmonization of the discordant statements thathad come from the tradition. It was a standard principle oftheological method that "similar terms, when applied todissimilar objects, are to be understood in differing ways,and they should not always be understood in one or theother way even though they sound the same." As thatprinciple applied to Scripture, it provided a way of pre-


serving orthodox doctrine even when—as, for example, inmany passages that spoke of (a or the) "son of God"—biblical writers had not used a term univocally. But itcould also justify the procedure of comparing patristicquotations with a view to analyzing how various termshad been employed. Thus even so crucial a trinitarianterm as "substance" had been employed in differing waysby the fathers, especially if one compared Greek and Latinusage, but this did not compromise their doctrinalorthodoxy.

Although these techniques would take care of many,perhaps of most, contradictions, there would inevitablybe some "that cannot be resolved by any device." In sucha case, "the authorities should be compared, and that whichhas the stronger witness and the greater support shouldbe given preference." In canon law likewise, "if therehappens to be a patent opposition, the lesser authoritywill have to yield to the greater." In effect, this moved theentire process back to where it had begun, for the issueof choice among authorities had been the fundamentalproblem all along—not only the choice between Scriptureand the fathers, but the choice among the fathers them-selves. Even those who maintained that the contradictionswithin the tradition were often apparent rather than realhad to concede that the tradition was less than uniformon many questions. Such was the case on relatively minorissues such as whether or not the bodies in which angelsappeared were their own, or whether hell was an actualplace or only the condition of eternal damnation. But ithad to be admitted that "not only those who assemble[passages] with the intention of starting an argument,but also those who would like to use them in support ofthe catholic faith" found the statements of the fathers onsuch a central question as the Eucharist "so doubtful andso troublesome and sometimes so downright mutuallycontradictory" that some comparison of their relativeauthority was unavoidable.

Such a comparison was not an easy assignment, atleast partly because there was such a large number oftraditions to take into consideration. The reverence forChristian antiquity had brought about an attitude thatwas better informed about the events and ideas of a mil-lennium before than about those that were only forty orfifty years old. But everyone was committed to the effortof harmonizing the tradition and achieving a patristic

Schism, Sect, and Heresy 229

consensus. It had been customary for centuries to warnagainst "temerity" in dealing with apparent contradictionsin that tradition, and Abelard made use of the very sameword in the opening sentence of his preface to Yes andNo, warning that "one should not judge with temerityconcerning those by whom the world is to be judged."The warning, "Do not cross the boundaries which yourfathers have set," which Western theologians were con-stantly quoting against the East, was applicable here aswell: disputation was not to proceed so far as to givethe impression that it was crossing those boundaries, and"the statutes of those who have precedence over us in ageand in wisdom" were the boundary that it was not legiti-mate to cross. But the task of creating—or, as they wouldhave put it, of discovering—harmony among these stat-utes and traditions was one that had to wait until theend of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenthcenturies for its successful completion.

Schism, Sect, and Heresy

The twelfth century witnessed a resurgence of schism, ofsect, and of heresy, as well as of movements that qualifiedfor more than one of these names. Because the one truefaith had as its necessary corollary the doctrine that therewas only one true church, a defender of the catholic faithagainst "a schismatic" had to make "the unity of thechurch" a central theme of his exposition. The patristicdistinction between "heresy" and "schism" implied that,in strict usage, a heretic was one who persisted in de-fending error, one who "with a pertinacious mind refusesto cling to the unity of that faith which the universalchurch of Christ believes and holds." Such a false teacherwas distinct from a faithful catholic who fell into erroror doubt, but who did not "resist the church publicly andpertinaciously." While it was historically valid to assertthat certain teachings "are specifically called 'heresies' be-cause they have been judged and condemned in thecouncils" of the church, "the legal definition" of a hereticapplied also to an errorist on whom a council had not yetpassed judgment. For the example of the ancient councilsand fathers showed that "no heresy is to be overlooked."Now that there were "new heretics emerging" along withthe same "old heresies," as Hugh of Amiens put it, it wastime to defend the one true faith again.

One of the first of "the heresies of his own time" against


which this twelfth-century heresiologist contended wasthe refusal to recognize that because "the Holy Spirit pro-ceeds from the Father and is sent from the Son," it fol-lowed that "being sent from the Son, he also proceedsfrom him"; this had to be asserted "against the heretics,"by whom he evidently meant Eastern Christians. The doc-trinal differences between the two parts of Christendomhave been treated in some detail in the second volume ofthis work and need not be rehearsed here. But the schismwith the East was also a significant part of the theologicalatmosphere within the Western church itself during thetwelfth century, when there developed "a lively . . . curi-osity about the heritage of Eastern Christianity," past andpresent, partly as a consequence of the intensified contactwith the East through the Crusades and other forms oftravel and commerce. Among the noblest products of thiscontact was the irenic activity of Anselm of Havelberg,and particularly the dialogues he held with Nicetas ofNicomedia at Constantinople in 1135.

Unlike Hugh of Amiens, Anselm of Havelberg wascareful not to label the Byzantines as heretics, but asdissenting catholics. He acknowledged, in a prefatoryepistle to Pope Eugenius III, that many of his Latin co-religionists had misunderstood the teachings of theGreeks, "supposing that they affirm what they do notaffirm and that they deny what they by no means deny."It was his concern to identify "how the church of God,while she is one in and of herself, is multiform as far asher sons are concerned, those whom she has formed andcontinues to form in diverse laws and institutions." De-spite some passing attention to such differences as theGreek rejection of the Latin custom of mingling waterwith the wine at the Eucharist, Anselm and his fellowdisputant concentrated on the fundamental points ofdivergence: the problem of the Filioque and the locus ofauthority in the church. On the first, Anselm urged thatthey avoid "a quarrel about words" and stick to the sub-stantive issues. He also took pains to refute the suggestionthat the idea of Filioque was introducing the notion ofmore than one principle of being within the Godhead.Therefore the Holy Spirit was said to proceed from theSon as well as from the Father, "not according to hisessence, which is common [to all three persons], nor ac-cording to his person, which is unto itself, but accordingto his relation" to both the Father and the Son.


Eventually, of course, even the problem of the Filioquecame down to the question of authority. In support ofthe Western theory of the procession of the Holy Spirit,Anselm cited the authority of various Eastern fatherswhom he took to be espousing the doctrine of Filioque.When Nicetas appealed to an ecumenical council as theproper forum of authority for adjudicating this and otherdoctrinal differences, Anselm agreed: "I, too, earnestlydesire that there be a universal council." To be sure, hisdefinition of what constituted an ecumenical and ortho-dox council had at its center the stipulation that the popemust validate such an assembly for it to have universalauthority over the church. By going its own way onvarious questions, the Eastern church had separated itself"from obedience to the most holy Roman church andfrom its unity with this great communion." Yet it wasRome alone that had "always remained unshaken" byheresies, while all the other sees of Christendom had, atone time or another, succumbed to error. More than any ofthem, Constantinople had "always been fermenting withinnumerable heresies." Although this view appeared to theGreeks to be substituting the authority of the pope forthat of Scripture and tradition, it was, even more thanthe Filioque, the one point on which it was impossiblefor Rome to compromise.

Policy toward Byzantium was only one of the forces—political as well as theological, domestic as well as foreign—that led the defenders of church authority at this timeto place even greater emphasis on the legitimacy and ob-jectivity of the structures of the church. As we have notedrepeatedly, the conflict with the Eastern church and theconflict with the Western empire had long been responsi-ble for evoking affirmations from Rome and its spokesmenabout the nature of the church and its authority. The newfactor in the twelfth century was the rise of sectarianmovements, which, taking as their target of protest the cor-ruption of the church and of its leaders, repudiated theinstitutional structure, the liturgical order, and even thesacramental system of catholic Christianity. Around thebeginning of the century it may have been possible toexult that "the catholic faith has fought and has crushed,conquered, and annihilated the blasphemies of the her-etics, so that either there are no more heretics or they donot dare to show themselves," but the situation changedrapidly and drastically. Bernard complained that "heresy


is creeping in clandestinely almost everywhere" and ex-pressed his amazement that while earlier heretical groupshad taken their names from those of their founders, hewas now confronting a series of movements that wereanonymous. Some of the founders were in fact identifiedby their orthodox opponents, and others have come to beknown in other ways; but more important are the parallelsbetween men and movements who seem not to have hadany direct connection.

What many of them had in common was "the boast thatthey maintain the apostolic life," and that no one elsecould lay claim to it. "In the region of Perigueux," ac-cording to one account, "a great many heretics have arisenwho say that they are leading the apostolic life." The con-tent of this so-called apostolic life, it continued, was athoroughgoing asceticism: "They do not eat meat; theydo not drink wine, except very moderately every thirdday; they genuflect a hundred times a day; they do notaccept money." If their critics are to be believed, thesegroups did not extend their asceticism to the area of sexand marriage. They were said to oppose the catholic exal-tation of celibacy and at the same time to reject thecatholic definition of matrimony as a sacrament. Never-theless, there would appear to be some indications thatsome of them urged absolute sexual continence. It wasapparently the ideal of Christian poverty that they exaltedabove other virtues as the essential criterion of the apos-tolic life. This ideal applied in particular to the clergy:"The bishops and priests," they argued, "should not haveeither honors or money." In the name of their "apostoliclife," some of them "say that they do not lie, nor do theytake any oaths whatever," and "under the pretext ofabstinence and continence they condemn the eating ofmeat as well as marriage."

All of this was in contrast to the life of the bishops andclergy in the catholic church. The church had become forthem a "den of thieves." On the doctrine of the one, holy,catholic, and apostolic church "all [the heretics] suffershipwreck." Apparently it was "especially those whohave fallen away from the clergy and gone over to heresy"who led the campaign against the ecclesiastical structure.The "chief motivation" of the heretics, according to theiropponents, was hostility "against our priests," whom theyattacked "as though all of them were filled with crimes."


They were, to be sure, not alone in their belief that afundamental reform of life and morals was necessary.Bernard of Clairvaux lamented that "now that we havepeace from the pagans and peace from the heretics, thereis still no peace from the false sons [of the church], . . .Almost all Christians are looking after their own interests,not those of Jesus Christ." The offices of the church hadbecome a matter of shameful profit and shady dealing,and the pastor who served the Lord for the Lord's sake wasexceedingly rare. Hence it was not only the heretics butalso faithful believers who, "as catholics," were concernedabout the church of God. Their "lukewarm" attitude tothe church and their hesitancy about involvement withits moral corruption did not brand them as heretics, fortheir opposition was "neither public nor pertinacious."

The heretics were distinct from such faithful catholicsby their reiteration of the question: "How can someonewho is accursed consecrate?" Rejection of the catholicdoctrine of penance was one of the things on which allheretics agreed. They repudiated the absolution pro-nounced by priests, on the grounds that "the priests of ourown time do not have the power to bind and loose [sins],for they have been deprived of that power by their ownsins." They even went so far as to argue that it had notbeen a commandment of the Gospels at all that one shouldgo to a priest to confess. Baptism likewise suffered fromthe general corruption of church and clergy and, when itwas administered by an immoral or hypocritical priest, wasinvalid. It was above all the Eucharist that had lost itsefficacy through the corruption and apostasy of the cath-olic clergy. Quite simply, "the body of Christ is not con-fected by an unworthy minister," and only "if he who doesit is found to be worthy" could the body of Christ be calledinto being at the Mass. "The power of the sacraments,"according to Tanchelm, "depends on the merits and theholiness of the ministers." Otherwise, if the Mass werecelebrated by an adulterer, God would be associated witha sinner in the confecting of the body of his Son. Thewords of Christ contrasting the true shepherd with thethief and robber meant that "only he enters through thedoor who approaches with a true and a pure heart, togovern the people of God for the sake of righteousnessand truth."

Beyond these attacks on the sacramental ministry of


the catholic church, which were strongly reminiscent ofDonatism, the sectarians of this period directed an evenmore fundamental criticism at the catholic understandingof the sacraments as such. When the defenders of thechurch reasserted the Augustinian doctrine that "baptismsuffices, regardless of time or age or condition or gender,for the forgiveness of sins, for righteousness, for the re-ception of grace, and for eternal life, once it has beenproperly received in Christ from anyone whatsoever andthrough anyone at all," they were also reaffirming thecorrectness of infant baptism, which Augustine, in hiscritique of Donatism, had been able to take for granted.But now "the heretics . . . say that the sacraments are ofbenefit only to those who know about them, not toignorant adults, and that they do not confer anything atall on little children. Therefore they condemn the baptismof little children and infants." Because the command ofChrist had required that, to be saved, one both believe andbe baptized, "infants, even though they are baptized byyou, are simply not saved, because their age prevents themfrom believing." Since it was impossible to please Godwithout faith and "an infant cannot believe or knowanything," it followed that "a faith that he cannot havedoes not do him any good." Christ himself had been bap-tized as an adult, not as an infant. Not only was it im-possible for infants to be saved through a faith not theirown; it was also "unjust for someone to be condemnedthrough a sin not his own." Infants who had not sinnedthemselves were said to be punished because of theirparents' sin. This was as unacceptable to the sectarians asthe catholic doctrine that children were saved throughthe faith of the church.

Those who depreciated infant baptism likewise refusedto see anything special about the Eucharist. Thus Tan-chelm "compelled many to be rebaptized . . . and declaredthat the Sacrament of the Altar should no longer be cele-brated." Significantly, the longest section of the defenseof the orthodox faith against various errors by the theo-logian and jurist "Master Vacarius" near the end of thetwelfth century was devoted to an exposition of the doc-trine of the real presence in the Eucharist. "The principalaffirmation of the sects was directed against the conversionof the bread and wine into the body and blood of JesusChrist." These sectarians seemed to be even worse than


Berengar had been in their denial of the real presence,for he at least had continued to affirm that the Eucharistwas a sacrament and a figure, which they were now deny-ing. They were attacking not only "the holiness of thebody and blood of Christ" in the Eucharist, but the pres-ence. One group said that the words "This is my body"meant "This is the sign and the remembrance of thesuffering of my body," another that the words referredto the body of Christ seated at table with his disciples.Sharing in the body and blood of Christ meant sharingin his love, not in his true body. As a real presence wasunnecessary, so also was a sacrifice. The heretics "despisethis sacrifice of ours and deny altogether that [a sacrifice}exists now in the church." Either the sins of the communi-cants had already been forgiven (in which case they didnot need a sacrifice), or they had not (in which case theywere eating and drinking unworthily). "Otherwise," theyargued, "the Lord would have died twice."

Underlying the attack on the sacrifice of the Mass wasnot only the general opposition to the sacramental minis-try of clergy who were deemed unworthy, but also, atleast in some cases, a denial of the doctrine of purgatory,to which the sacrificial interpretation of the Eucharisthad been closely connected. It was charged among theorthodox that some of the sectarians had gone so far asto reject the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Itdoes seem clear, in any event, that, for example, Peter deBruys and his followers contended "that the sacrifices ofthe altar, offerings, prayers, alms, and other good deedsof the good who are still living cannot be of any benefitto the good who are dead." If there was nothing that thechurch terrestrial could do to improve the state of thosewho had died, this negated the belief that it could "prayfor the rest or the glory of those of its members who havebeen translated into the other life," and even more thebelief that those who needed further cleansing from theirsins could profit from the offering of the body and blood ofChrist in the Mass. Hence Hugh of Speroni asserted "thatneither in the law nor in the prophets nor in the NewTestament do we hear the statement that Christ 'diesmystically' " in the Mass.

The repudiation of the catholic priesthood and the cath-olic sacraments could be broadened into a repudiation ofthe entire liturgical life of the church. The Petrobrusians


and others were opposed to the use of hymns and music,on the grounds that the proper worship of God was in-ternal and spiritual. They also scorned church buildings,which they refused to call "churches" because that namewas appropriate "not to a structure with walls, but to thecongregation of the faithful." Henry the Monk, a sectarianleader, made the matter of "churches constructed of woodor stone" the first item on his agenda of grievances. Hughof Speroni similarly asked: "Who is it that has taught ourpeople to build towers, to ring bells, to draw pictures, toset up crosses, to fabricate, worship, adore, and kiss idols?"He did not believe that "sanctifying things made ofwood" had anything to do with God, and he took issuewith catholic practice in building altars and celebratingfestivals. Even the cross, which Eastern iconoclasts had con-tinued to worship when they rejected the use of images,was not immune from attack: "Oh, how miserable arethose who adore you!" they said of the cross and of theimage of Christ. It was, they charged, "foolish and profaneto adore or venerate the cross, because the tree that tor-tured the members of Christ deserves to be crushed orburned rather than venerated or adored." To this theorthodox responded that there was nothing in all creationthat had not somehow served as an instrument of torture,so that "all of humanity would have to rise up against allof the world" in indignation. Besides, religion had needof objects and of holy places, where it could veneratewhat was sacred.

Concentrating as they did on the institutions and prac-tices of catholic Christianity rather than on its dogma,such sectarians did nevertheless diverge from the churchin some fundamental doctrinal ways, so that they were"heretics" as well as "schismatics." They professed to beloyal to the church, if only they could find the true churchand receive an answer to their question: "What is thechurch of God, and where is it, and why is it?" But theywere tearing asunder the "seamless robe" of Christ bycreating division in the church. In their repudiation ofinfant baptism they acted as though the entire church hadbeen in error for a thousand years or more, and in theirrepudiation of the real presence in the Eucharist theyacted as though in the words of institution "the LordJesus and the apostle had chosen such words as to deceivethe whole world, except for you." Quoting Acts 5:29


against the established church, they declared their inten-tion to obey God rather than the bishops. They claimedto accept only the primitive gospel but to reject subse-quent tradition as a betrayal of the message of Christ,even though, according to catholic teaching, the gospel,the church, and the apostolic tradition had all come fromthe same source and had been transmitted through thesame channels. The defenders of the faith, urging that"faith should come by persuasion, not by imposition" andthat heresy should be overcome "not by force of arms butby force of argument," nevertheless charged the bishopsof the church with the responsibility of using "preachingand even, if need be, armed force through laymen" ingovernment to overcome heresy. The contradictions inthat attitude, while not in the strict sense a part of thehistory of Christian doctrine, were to be a source of con-sternation to theologians and churchmen throughout thetwelfth century and well beyond it.

While it is probably sound to insist, with the leadinghistorian of these movements, that "the idea of Christianpoverty and of the apostolic life . . . is the essential con-tent of the heresy" and that "the question of the authenticChristian life in accordance with the gospel as the wayof salvation is mote important and more vital than alltheological and cosmological questions of doctrine," therewas one heretical group in which questions of doctrinedealing with theology and cosmology occupied a promi-nent place. These were, as they referred to themselves,"the Cathari, that is, the pure," or, as they also called them-selves, "the true Christians." Many of the emphases forwhich they acquired a reputation as heretics were thosethat they shared with other heretical movements of thetime, but their espousal of radically dualistic theories ofcosmology, with all the implications of such theories, setthem apart from other critics and even from other heretics.

Together with other groups, these "Manichean here-tics . . . make the false claim that they hold to the apostoliclife," even though, according to their opponents, "they arecontrary to the holy faith and the sound doctrine that hasbeen handed down to us by tradition from the holyapostles and from the Lord and Savior himself." Theirclaim of adhering to a truly apostolic life, which led themto repudiate capital punishment and to oppose "all waras illicit," was their way of differentiating themselves from


the institutions of the catholic church; for they believedthat since the days of the apostles there had been a fall ofthe church from apostolic purity. As a consequence ofthis fall, catholics were unable to do genuine good works,and therefore the sacraments administered by their priestswere invalid. Like the ancient Donatism which it re-sembled, this position left the Cathari open to the argu-ment that on the vety same grounds they could never besure of the objective efficacy of their own sacraments, buthad to "labor under very great doubt and danger." In theircharge that the church had fallen, some went so far as toidentify Sylvester I, who was the pope when the emperorConstantine was converted, as the Antichrist prophesiedin the New Testament. The Cathari objected to the catho-lic practice of prayers for the dead, as well as to its corol-lary, the idea that the saints in heaven were praying forthe living on earth. Setting themselves in opposition tothe catholic belief that churches and shrines could becalled "holy places" and "the house of God," they de-nounced the practice of pilgrimages to the so-called holyplaces of Christ and the saints. They brushed aside thesacramental system of the church, asserting "that thereare not more than two sacraments," namely, confirmationand ordination, both administered by the laying on ofhands. In place of the catholic practice of the Eucharistthey practiced a breaking of bread at table, during thenoon meal and again during the evening meal.

Extreme though such doctrines were in how they car-ried out the implications of more generally held views,these teachings of the Cathari could be seen as no morethan a part of the general heretical attitudes that we havebeen summarizing. But the Cathari and their catholicopponents agreed on one conclusion, if on very little else:that the doctrine of the Cathari went far deeper in itsdivergence from catholic orthodoxy than even the mostradical of attacks on the church and its structures, pene-trating to the very center of Christian monotheism, in-cluding the doctrines of the Trinity and the person ofChrist. It had amalgamated the ideas of various earlierheresies into "a single general heresy." When catholicpolemics charged that "the church of the Cathari hastaken its origin . . . from the heathen or from the Jewsor from apostate Christians" or when their teachings wereconnected to those of the Gnostics, the Muslims, the


Nestorians as well as the Monophysites, and the Apolli-narists, this could be no more than the regular practice ofattacking a heresy by identifying it with some previousmovement already condemned by the orthodox church.But such charges implied more than that, and accurately.The Cathari stood in a succession, episcopal as well asdoctrinal, with the Bogomils of Bulgaria, and throughthem—whatever the historical connection may have been—with the ancient Manichean heresy. At the same timecatholic theologians recognized that the Cathari were nota homogeneous group doctrinally, but contained a con-siderable variety of opinion on various issues.

Both the confessional literature of the Cathari them-selves and the writings of catholics against them identifiedthe dualistic view of God as their primary tenet. "Theysay that there are two gods," catholic theologians reported,or, amplifying the report, "they say that there are twogods, one of them omnipotent and the other malignant."Ever since Marcion, Christian dualists such as the Bogo-mils of the East had been quoting the saying of Jesus thata good tree cannot bear evil fruit. Evidently that sayingbecame a locus classicus for the Cathari as well, who foundsupport in it for their contention that an evil world couldnot have been the work of a good Creator. Some of themtaught that God had been the original Creator of theelements of the world, while others attributed their crea-tion to the devil; but they were agreed that the devil haddivided the elements and was their lord. As one of themstated their creed, "God created and made all good things. . . by which I understand only those things that areinvisible to the physical eye; the other things were createdand made by the devil." The irreconcilable antithesis be-tween the notion of a good Creator and the reality of evilin the world led them to the conviction that "there isundoubtedly another creator or maker who is the sourceand the cause of death, perdition, and all that is evil." Suchacts as murder and fornication could not be the work ofthe good Creator, but had to be the result of the activityof another deity, the evil god. The catholic response tothis assertion of the Cathari was the familiar idea thatbecause God was the Creator only of all things good, evilwas the absence of good and therefore did not truly exist.

Among the many heretical corollaries that seemed tothe orthodox to be derived from this primary tenet of

T H E ONE TRUE FAITH 240

dualism, the most crucial doctrinally were those that im-periled the two central dogmas of the catholic faith—-notonly the Trinity, which was obviously jeopardized by theassertion that there were two gods, but also the personof Christ. If the good God could not be the Creator of avisible world in which sin and evil took place, it had tofollow that the human nature of Christ could not partakeof such a world. He must have had "only one nature,"which was not involved in a sinful creation. Therefore"some of the heretics say that the Son of God presentedto men only the shadow of a human nature, not thereality," because a fully real humanity would have beenunable to avoid contamination by the physical world,whose origin was the malignant god or the devil. Someof the Cathari apparently extricated themselves from thisdifficulty by resorting to the ancient docetic heresy thatthe humanity of Christ was only an illusion; thus "Christwas not born of a woman, did not have genuine flesh,did not truly die, and did not suffer but only gave theappearance of suffering." Despite the efforts of catholicheresiologists to trace the lineage of these christologicalideas to various ancient systems of false doctrine, thefundamental dilemma of the Cathari, as understood bytheir catholic critics, was between the divine sonship ofChrist and his true humanity, one of which had to give. Ofcourse, whichever way the dilemma was resolved would beunacceptable to orthodox Christianity.

It was likewise a corollary of the duaiism of the Catharithat the traditional Christian doctrine of the resurrectionof the body was unacceptable: "We shall rise in anotherbody, and God will give us a new body." For if the humanbody, together with all things visible in the world, hadcome from the devil rather than from the good God, "bywhom will the bodies of the saints be glorified on theDay of Judgment? Certainly not by the devil, nor, so itseems, by God; for God will not glorify an evil nature.And therefore it seems that the saints will not rise inbodies that have been glorified." At least one of the sectsof the Cathari appears to have taught a doctrine of thetransmigration of souls, according to which "the souls ofGod are transmitted from one body to another and theyare all finally liberated from punishment and guilt." Onthe other hand, there seem also to have been those whoasserted that the soul was mortal and perished with the


death of the body. Still others, echoing ideas of Origen,identified the resurrection bodies with those that were de-feated in the prehistoric battle between Satan and thegood angels, bodies that were destined to rise at the endof the world. This was apparently related to the belief,also reminiscent of the theology of Origen, that humansouls were fallen angels, condemned to do penance for atime in human bodies. The contempt for the physicalbody expressed in this attitude toward the resurrectionasserted itself as well in the strict rules of fasting enforcedby the Cathari.

The "second article of the heresy" of the Cathari, ac-cording to the defenders of the catholic faith, was theirassertion "that the law of Moses was given by the princeof darkness, that is, by the malignant god, while the lawof the gospel was given by the prince of light, that is, bythe merciful god." This was consistent with their dualism,"so that as there are two principles of reality, there arelikewise two testaments derived from them." The con-trast between the morality of the Old Testament and thatof the New was due to the origin of the former in theevil god. Attacking the Cathari for their arbitrary methodof quoting proof texts from Scripture, the catholics citedthe authority of Christ, who taught his disciples that "thelaw of Moses and the prophets and the psalms" had beenwritten about him. A particular feature of the hostilityof the Cathari to the Old Testament was the belief that"the patriarchs . . . and all those who died before thepassion [of Christ] were damned." When such NewTestament passages as the eleventh chapter of the Epistleto the Hebrews spoke of the patriarchs as having beensaved, this referred to "certain other celestial beings hav-ing the same names." John the Baptist came in for specialcondemnation from some of the Cathari as "the one whohad been sent by the devil to impede the way of Christ"and who had been damned.

Nor was it only those who had lived before Christwhom the Cathari repudiated; they also put themselves inopposition to the catholic tradition after Christ, claiming"that the truth of the Christian faith is known only to[them] and has been hidden with [them] alone." Thefathers of the catholic church—whether Ambrose orGregory, Augustine or Jerome—"these and others theyuniversally condemn." To the catholics such an attitude


toward tradition and the church fathers was self-contra-dictory. Setting the apostolic Scriptures in antithesis notonly to the Old Testament but also to the church under-mined the authority of Scripture, which was validatedby the church. Therefore the heretics "should believe [thechurch] in the very same way as [they] believe the apostlesthemselves." What they rejected as having come fromAugustine came from the Gospels, and there was no con-tradiction possible between the church and Scripture intheir authority. The conflict with dualistic heresy, likethe conflicts with Eastern schismatics and with Westernsectarians, finally came down to the defense of the onetrue and apostolic faith as confessed by the one true andapostolic church, which defined itself as the legitimate"successor" of the apostles.

The Encounter with Other Faiths

While the theologians of the twelfth century were en-gaged in a renewed conflict with heresy, they also en-countered, more intensely and more systematically thanhad any of their medieval predecessors, the spokesmenfor other faiths. Although they believed that "the gospelhas been broadcast throughout the world through thepreaching of the apostles," they gradually discovered thecontinuing power of alternatives to the gospel. "The threegreatest enemies of holy Christendom in our times,namely, the Jews, the heretics, and the Saracens," all calledforth the defense of the faith in the twelfth century, aswell as the enterprise of "comparing [our doctrine] withall other doctrines." Thus when Alan of Lille wrote atreatise entitled On the Catholic Faith against the Hereticsof His Time, he devoted the first two books to the Chris-tian heretics, the third to the Jews, and the fourth to theMuslims. Whereas Alan identified the Saracens as "pag-ans," Peter the Venerable recognized "four varieties ofsects in the world in our days, namely, the Christians, theJews, the Saracens, and the pagans." Peter spoke of "theheresy of Mohammed" as "the dregs of all heresies," whichexceeded "all the heresies that have been aroused by thediabolical spirit in the 1,100 years since the time of Christ."

The encounter of Western Christendom with "theheresy of Mohammed" reached a climax in this period fora variety of reasons, chief of which was, of course, the

The Encounter with Other Faiths 243

action by which "the enemies of Christ occupied thetemple and the sepulcher of Christ, together with Jeru-salem itself, that divine and royal city." The campaign of"the Latin world" aimed at "expelling these enemies ofthe Christian name" and the counterattacks of the Mus-lims in "subjugating the Holy Land" made the confronta-tion between Christianity and Islam principally a mili-tary one during these centuries. Islam had "shrouded thename of Christendom," managing to conquer more Chris-tian territory than had any of the heresies, even more thanArianism had. Indeed, it had assumed control of "almostone-third of the human race, by an inscrutable judgmentof God." But the Crusades, whose military progress doesnot in itself belong to the history of the development ofChristian doctrine, did oblige the thinkers of the Latinchurch to take Islam more seriously as a theological issueas well. Except for some occasional references in earliermedieval literature, which varied "between the ridicu-lously inaccurate and the unpleasantly absurd," the Chris-tian case against the Muslims had been the businessprincipally of theologians in the East such as John ofDamascus and Theodore Abu Qurra, who formulated thestandard apologetic arguments; these need not be repeatedhere. Although "none of the teachers of the {Western}church have written against" Mohammed, it now fell toscholars in the Occident to defend the faith against thereligion of the prophet, even as their armies were de-fending it against the Saracens. The most important ofthese scholars was Peter the Venerable, whose works, in-cluding the translation of the Koran into Latin, were toremain "the major source of informed European Christianknowledge of Islam since the twelfth century," at leastuntil the writings of Raymond Lully and of Ricoldus deMonte Croce in the fourteenth century.

With their colleagues in the East, Western commenta-tors on Islam were impressed by the way it had "mixedthe good with the bad and confused the true with thefalse." In that respect it seemed to deserve being calleda Christian heresy, for it had, "after the manner of theheretics, accepted some things from the Christian faithand rejected others." Such affinities witn Christian heresywere understandable historically, since Mohammed hadderived his knowledge of Christian doctrines from hereti-


cal sources, specifically from a Nestorian monk, who hadconverted him from heathenism to heresy, to which, then,some elements of Judaism were added. Like the Jews andlike certain Christian heretics, the Muslims attacked theChristian worship of images as a form of idolatry. Er-roneous though this charge was in Christian eyes, it didexpress the affirmation of monotheism and the rejectionof idolatry to which Mohammed had come as a result ofhis conversion, but to Christian apologists it illustratedthe propensity of the prophet and his followers to let "anew error expel previous errors." Probably the most dra-matic instance of that propensity was the Muslim viewof the person of Christ.

"They assert," a Christian tract against the Muslimsnoted, "that Christ was born of a virgin, that Mary re-mained a virgin, and that Christ was conceived by theSpirit of God, that is, by the breath of God." What ismore, Christ was believed by the Muslims to have beennot only "born of a holy virgin by the divine breath," but"to have taught what is true and to have performedmiracles." Yet because "according to them no one canbe a father without sexual intercourse, they deny thatGod the Creator is the Father" of Christ. Consequently,"although they believe that Christ was conceived by theHoly Spirit, they do not believe that he is the Son of God,nor that he is God." Instead he was, according to them, "agood prophet and a most truthful one, free of all lies andof all sins, the Son of Mary, born without a father." Asthe Christian polemicists saw it, therefore, the doctrineof the virgin birth, which was to them a guarantee of thetrue humanity of Christ, became for Muslim theology ameans of ascribing to him less than a complete humannature. The Christians attributed to Muslim teaching thebelief that Christ "had never died, since he was not de-serving of death; but when the Jews were intent onkilling him, he escaped from their hands and ascended tothe stars, where he now lives in his flesh in the presenceof the Creator, until the coming of Antichrist." Therefore,although Mohammed "confesses that [Christ} is the mes-senger of God, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God, hedoes not understand or confess by the terms 'messenger,''word,' and 'spirit' what we do." Such misreadings of thetraditional christological terminology vitiated the ortho-


dox appearance of the Muslim confession about the personof Christ.

The other favorite object of criticism by the Christianapologists was Muslim eschatology. As the promises ofthe Koran about the life to come appeared to Christians,they were completely materialistic, setting the hopes ofMuslim believers on the attainment of the objects of allthe physical appetites that had not been fully satisfied inthe present life. Even in the present life the morality ofthe Gospels had been modified to make concessions to theflesh; likewise, eternal life was not patterned after "theangelic society, nor the divine vision, nor the highest good,'which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has enteredinto the heart of man,' but actually the sort of thing thatflesh and blood, indeed the dregs of flesh and blood, havedesired and yearned to attain." Here again the Muslimtendency to accept and then to distort orthodox Christianbelief was manifest. Thus they affirmed the validity ofmiracles, but proceeded to lay claim to miracles "by anti-phrasis," that is, by using the term for acts that were de-void of "either reason or authority." To Christian apolo-gists this was evidence that in their faith, as in their hope,the Muslims were mixing the good with the bad andconfusing the true with the false.

The encounter of the twelfth century with Muslimteaching was important for yet another reason. It servedto put the entire question of the relation between Chris-tianity and Judaism into a different light. On the onehand, Christians could say to Jews that their two faithswere at least agreed on the reality of the crucifixion anddeath of Christ, while Muslims regarded these events asan illusion. At the same time Christians laid claim to anagreement with the Muslims about the virgin birth overagainst the teachings of the Jews, who, because they were"not far away from us, but in our very midst, are muchworse than the Saracens" (although the heretics wereeven worse than the Jews). Presumably it was an expres-sion of some such judgment when Crusaders, on theirway to make war against the Muslim infidel in the HolyLand, interrupted their journey to massacre Jews inEurope. In other ways, too, Islam provided a foil for thedisputes between Jews and Christians. A convert fromJudaism to Christianity could be challenged to explain


why he had not become a Muslim instead, and in re-sponse he articulated the distinctiveness of the Christiangospel in contrast to both of these options. Another Jewishdisputant took the rise of Islam as an occasion to ask hisChristian interlocutor: "If the Christian era, now es-tablished, . . . could not believe without miracles, how isit that. . . the Mohammedan heresy . . . has infected suchlarge portions of the world without performing anymiracles?" As it had before, the Christian encounter withother faiths compelled an examination of the prior ques-tion of the relation between Christianity and Judaism.

The twelfth century, therefore, seems to have producedmore treatises of Jewish-Christian disputation than anypreceding century of the Middle Ages, perhaps as manyas all those centuries combined. Some of the treatises wereobviously literary creations, not reports of genuine en-counters; in at least one case, the "dialogue" was betweentwo Christians rather than between a Christian and a Jew.The ancient Christian practice of compiling "testimonies"from the Old Testament to prove the superiority of Chris-tianity to Judaism was also continued. Other treatises,however, were based on meetings that had actually takenplace, as in the conversation between Odo of Cambrai anda Jew named Leo on the way to Poitiers, a conversationwhose conclusion was an exchange in which the Christianasked, "Why then do you not believe?" and the Jew re-plied, "Because I do not dare to surrender the truth ofour tradition to these words of yours." Despite the failureto effect conversions, the disputations could be carried onin an "amicable" atmosphere, and even a discussion be-tween a Jew and a convert from Judaism to Christianitydealt principally with the theological issues. Christianspokesmen did repeat atrocity stories about Jewish ritual,as well as the stock charges of Jewish commercialism;nevertheless, the treatises of this period stand out from theliterature summarized earlier, not only quantitatively butalso qualitatively.

Although, in the twelfth century as in earlier centuries,"the themes of anti-Jewish polemics are in large part astep-by-step repetition of the usual 'authorities' of Chris-tian apologetics," the existential situation between spokes-men for Judaism and spokesmen for Christianity hadchanged. There were even some Christians who believedthat the time for the conversion of all Israel was at hand.


Jews were playing a new role in provoking Christiantheological discussions, for example in the circle surround-ing Anselm of Canterbury; and in a report on such adiscussion with a Jew, one of Anselm's disciples gave anaccount of a dialogue that was fair and substantive inits argumentation on both sides. The prominence of theJewish question in Christian discourse may be gaugedfrom the works of Alan of Lille and Ebrard of Bethune,both of whom incorporated a polemical tract againstJudaism into a general heresiology. So imposing was theencounter with Judaism that on such perennial issues asthe proper translation and interpretation of the word"virgin" or "young woman" in Isaiah 7:14, which con-tinued to engage attention on both sides, it became neces-sary for defenders of orthodoxy to warn against a "Judaiz-ing" tendency among some Christian theologians to con-cede that Jewish exegesis had been correct. Followingestablished custom, Christian heresiologists were quickto label as "Jewish" the implications of false teaching,especially on the doctrine of the person of Christ. Theylikewise warned that "heretics or pagans, and especiallyJews," were to be excluded from attending Christianworship.

Of the conventional topics for dispute between Jewsand Christians, the question of "Trinity and Shema," thecharge that the dogma of the Trinity contradicted theoneness of God, continued to be prominent. Repeatedlythe words of the Shema appeared as the basis for a Jewishcritique of trinitarianism, or even for a pagan critique.The Christian response to this critique was to quote theNew Testament formula "There is one God, the Father,from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and oneLord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things andthrough whom we exist" and to argue that although Godwas "one," that did not mean that he was "solitary"; bothof these responses were drawn from Hilary's expositionof the unity of God affirmed in the Shema. "Trinity" didnot imply "triplicity." In defense of trinitarian mono-theism, Christian exegetes repeated the standard inter-pretations of various Old Testament "passages of distinc-tion," to prove that the doctrine of the Trinity was presentalready there. Peter Alfonsi, a convert from Judaism,went even further, setting forth a fanciful explanation ofthe Tetragrammaton from Exodus 3:14 as a mystical


symbol of the Trinity; this was an extension of the beliefshared by Jews and Christians that "the name of God"was God himself. As part of this defense, Christians alsohad to specify that it was not the man Jesus as such whowas the object of Christian faith, but the preexistent Sonof God incarnate in him. Otherwise, the worship of Jesuswould be idolatry, as would the worship of images andstatues, including the image of the cross; but Christianapologists maintained that "when we genuflect before thecross, we are not adoring that cross nor the image affixedto it, but rather God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ."

In that light, Christians could assert that they were asfaithful to the law of Moses as Jews were, in fact muchmore faithful. Quoting the words of the prophet, "Whilekeeping every law, they did not know Me," they chargedthat Judaism had substituted the observance of the lawfor the knowledge of God, but that Christianity proceededthrough the study of the law to the knowledge and theworship of God. As it was impossible to eat a nut thatwas still in its shell, so the true observance of the lawhad to penetrate to its kernel. "We observe the Law givenby God," the Jews replied, "and we implicitly followMoses the lawgiver," and they recited the various com-mandments of Moses that Christians flouted. Everyoneknew that "practically all delicious foods are forbidden"to Jews. They also made the law of the Sabbath an issuein their exchanges with Christians. To the Christians,such citations of the Mosaic law ignored the fundamentalpurpose of the Old Testament dispensation, which was"to go on from things that were good to things that wereeven better." Therefore some of the provisions of thelaw of Moses were temporary, and "what the old law haddecreed temporarily, that the new law has fulfilled eter-nally." The symbols and requirements of the Mosaic lawwere intended to prepare for the coming of Christ, butwith that coming they were to cease. The prophets of theOld Testament themselves had promised that there wouldbe a "new law" written in the heart, to replace the lawwritten on stone, and the law that was more recent wouldsupersede the earlier and less perfect law. The more re-cent law was also the recovery of the original natural law,which had preceded the promulgation of the writtenlaw. The patriarchs of the Old Testament, includingAbraham, had had to be content with this natural law.


The law of Moses came after the natural law and beforethe evangelical law; it was valid for its own time, but notfor all time.

The contention over the validity and the interpretationof the law of Moses was part of the larger dispute aboutthe authority and the exegesis of Scripture as a whole."We have overcome you with the Holy Book" was theChristian claim, to which the Jewish response was said tohave been: "All the things you say belong to me, andyou have taken them over from my books. Where didyou get these things? What business do you have with myScriptures?" The reason for this reliance on the JewishBible in Christian apologetics was obvious: Christianswere attempting to make their case on the basis of anauthority that they had in common with Jews, urging theJews to "believe your own Scriptures, not someone else's."Ultimately this authority rested on faith rather than onproof, and the Christian appeal to Jewish hearers waspredicated on the assumption that acceptance of the OldTestament led inevitably to acceptance of the New, sothat as the Christians believed the Jewish prophets, theJews should believe the Christian apostles.

Upon closer scrutiny, the premise of a common author-ity was open to some question. For one thing, the Chris-tians did feel competent to go beyond the text of the OldTestament, as when they "added what Isaiah does notadd, namely, that after the birth [of Christ, Mary] re-mained a virgin." The rabbis also noted that Christiansoften quoted as sayings of the law and the prophets variouspassages that did not appear in canonical Jewish Scripture,for example, from the Book of Baruch. These "deutero-canonical books" stood alongside the Jewish canon in theChristian version of the Old Testament. Charged as theywere with having canonized more than the legitimatebooks of the Bible, the Christians accused the Jews ofelevating the authority of the Pentateuch over that ofthe Psalms and the prophets, books that were essentialsources for the Christian arsenal. Moreover, Judaism, too,had gone beyond the canon of the Old Testament, "beyondthe law and beyond the prophets," by raising the Talmudto the level of Scripture or even regarding "this egregiousdoctrine of yours, this Talmud, as preferable to the booksof the prophets and all the authentic" books of the Bible.The Christian message was not "a new faith." To the


accusation of having tampered with the canon and thetext of the Old Testament Christians indignantly re-sponded that "because Christ is the truth, the faith ofChrist does not need any falsehood, nor is there any placein the church of Christ for falsehood." The church hadreceived the law and the prophets from Judaism, and"what it received from you, it has preserved unchangedthrough so many centuries to the present time."

Not only had Christians "preserved intact and pre-served uncorrupted" the books of the Old Testament thatthey had received from the Jews; they had also beenresponsible for bringing these books to the Gentiles, bytranslating them into the languages of the nations as partof the Christian mission, so that "the Latin, the Greek, andthe barbarian have from these books whatever you as aJew have," whereas the original Jewish impulse that hadbeen responsible for the translation of the Bible intoGreek had not continued and Christians had taken overthe responsibility for teaching the law and the prophetsto other peoples. The Jewish translation of the Bibleinto Greek, the Septuagint, became a sore point in itself.Despite the dependence of Christian exegesis on thetranslations (or mistranslations) of the Septuagint, Chris-tians, following Jerome, still accused the Jewish trans-lators of having suppressed evidence for the doctrine ofthe Trinity when they rendered the Hebrew into Greek.Yet it remained true in most cases that the Jewish partici-pants in the debate did not know the Septuagint, whilethe Christian participants did not know the Hebrew text.That situation would, of course, change when the Chris-tian partner in the conversation was a convert from Juda-ism; but it was also becoming less surprising than it hadbeen when a Christian theologian, even one who had notbeen born a Jew, could claim at least some grasp of theoriginal language of the Old Testament.

The disputes over the canon, text, and language of theOld Testament were all directed toward the real issue be-tween Jews and Christians in their use of the Bible, whichwas the interpretation of the crucial passages. "To Judaizeaccording to the letter" was a standard way for Christiansto derogate the Jewish methods of exegesis. The Jewishinterpretation of a favorite Christian locus classicus suchas Psalm 2 was "tortuous." Jewish disputants reciprocatedby accusing Christian exegetes of "speaking as you wish,


citing the terms of the Scriptures in accordance with yourown intention and twisting them any way you want."The hermeneutics of the Christians was guided by thebelief that the writings of the Old Testament prophetswere obscure in themselves and needed a principle ofinterpretation beyond themselves to make sense. Thebooks of the Old Testament were filled with "many thingsthat are diverse and even contradictory, which cannotstand if they are interpreted literally," and therefore aspiritual interpretation was called for. For example, Psalmn o , which had been a favorite proof text in the NewTestament and in the early fathers of the church, did not,as Jewish scholars claimed, refer to Abraham, but to "JesusChrist as God and man at the same time," who wasauthorized to be seated at the right hand of God theFather. The same was true of many other passages of theOld Testament.

Among such passages, the prophecy of Jacob to Judahcontinued to provide the most comprehensive guide to thehistory of Israel. Sometimes it was the sole subject of atract against the Jews, but it also played a prominent partin the total argument. It was used to prove to the Jewsthat the figures of the Old Testament law could no longerclaim to be valid, now that the object of their symbolismhad come. That object was Jesus Christ, who was, as thetext of Genesis 49:10 stated, "the expectation of thenations." For if it was true that Jews had been living fora thousand years without a king and under the dominationof alien nations, that was the fulfillment of the prophecythat "a leader shall not fail from Judah, nor a ruler fromhis thighs, until that which has been laid up for himshall come; and he shall be the expectation of the nations."As a twelfth-century chronicle of world history put it,"when the legitimate unction of the Jewish nation cameto an end, there was imminent, according to the propheticword, the expectation of the nations, our Lord JesusChrist." Of course, God would have called the Gentileseven if all the Jews had believed, but the Jewish rejectionof Christ became the historical occasion for the call to beextended to other nations. To make this kind of historicalsense of the prophecy, however, it was necessary for anexegete to study not only the text of Genesis itself, butalso "historical annals." Such study would show that thereign of Herod was the time when the prophecy was ful-


filled, and once again Christians relied on Josephus asthe primary historical source for their argument.

The narrative of Josephus was read as proof that theRoman conquest of Jerusalem and the Holy Land wasan act of divine judgment. Specifically, the destruction ofthe temple showed that Judaism, valid for its own time,had now come to an end as a dispensation of God. Acalamity of such proportions could not have come uponthe Jewish nation "except by the most extreme wrath ofGod" and by his "righteous vengeance," brought on by"no other cause than their sin against Jesus Christ." Allthe "prerogatives" of Judaism had been annulled. Aboveall, "the land that they had received, they lost on accountof their sins," but the land had not been "the whole ofthe promise, only a sort of bonus added on." Yet it wasthe loss of the land and of the city of Jerusalem that wasthe most acute reminder of the captivity of Israel. Itwas a captivity from which they would not be set freeuntil the Jews began to believe what their fathers in thetime of Christ had refused to believe. The promises givento the people of Israel in the Book of Deuteronomy hadignored "spiritual blessing" and had concentrated ex-clusively on earthly blessings, including the promise ofthe land. These were blessings that Christians interpretedas "heavenly" in their intent rather than "earthly." Thesame was true of eschatological hopes. Thus the Jewshoped that after the resurrection their faithful wouldinhabit the Promised Land, where the true believers "fromeverywhere would congregate." Yet after so many yearsof captivity, such hopes were absurd.

A significant component of that Jewish hope was theexpectation not only that "all kingdoms will be subjectedto us" in the Messiah, but also that "under him we shallhave perpetual peace." Using the same passages of theOld Testament, Christians had also been claiming for along time that with the advent of Christ "wars have cometo an end throughout the world." The realities of politicaland military history, as in the East so also in the West,seemed to Jewish critics to belie the promise. Above all,it was the prophetic vision of a world in which "they shallbeat their swords into plowshares, and their spears intopruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword againstnation, neither shall they learn war any more" that seemedto be a long way off, even though such events "without


doubt are to be completed after the coming of Christ. Yetto the present day the nations are battling against oneanother." The Christian response that these propheciesdid not pertain to "what the nations are going to do, but towhat Christ is going to command" was not altogethersatisfying. The Jewish complaint that "the military orderin our time is not yet beating its swords into plowsharesnor its spears into pruning hooks," but that rather "thereare scarcely enough smiths or enough iron for the manu-facture of military weapons" seems to have been suffi-ciently forceful to be quoted verbatim in two Christiantracts separated by about a century. To Christians, all ofthis unrest, whether foreign or domestic, was a sign of theimpending end.

Nevertheless, as one Jewish disputant put it, "evenif we have disposed of all these matters, we come toChrist, in whom the entire point at issue in the question-ing and in the controversy consists." All the other issuesin the controversy were a function of this one. The disputeover the Trinity was ultimately a conflict over the ap-propriateness of ascribing such titles as "God" and "Lord"to Christ. When Jews and Christians were contendingover the status of the Mosaic law, it was the temporaryvalidity of the "old law" given by Moses by contrast withthe eternal permanence of the "new law" given by Christthat Christians were seeking to establish. Although differ-ences of opinion on exegetical matters were commonwithin each of the two communities, the differences ofbiblical interpretation between the two communities hadto do basically with the application of Old Testament textsto the person of Christ as the incarnate Son of God. Andthe dominant theme of the clash over the loss of thePromised Land was the Christian claim to have "provedbeyond all doubt that this captivity has lasted so long onaccount of the death of Christ and [Jewish] malevolencetoward him," together with the correlative principle thatthe promises about the land, which Judaism applied toitself, actually dealt with the Christian "hope in Christ."

Throughout the disputations, therefore, the funda-mental difference between the Jew and the Christian was,as one Christian stated it, that "I say, 'He has come,' whileyou say, 'He will come.'" For if he had already come, theJews asked, why was it that the prophecies of the uni-versality of the messianic kingdom had not been fulfilled?


It was still only the Jewish nation that was saying, "Come,let us go to the mountain of the Lord," whereas the Chris-tians said, "Let us go to the Church of Saint Peter or ofSaint Martin." Specifically, it was the Christian belief thatJesus was the promised Messiah that defined the differencebetween Judaism and Christianity. Even when a Jewfound it possible to pay a high tribute to Jesus, declaring,"I believe that Christ is a prophet, most excellent in hispossession of all virtues, and I shall believe Christ [Christocredam]," he was obliged to add: "But I do not believein Christ [in Christum], nor shall I ever do so, because Ido not believe in anyone but in God, and in one God."The Jews could not identify the "angel of the Lord" withthe Lord himself. As the Christians saw it, the stumblingblock for Jews was the paradox foretold by the prophetand fulfilled on Palm Sunday, that "your king comes toyou . . . humble." Others had been humble and lowly, forthat was the human condition, which the Jews "regard asvile and unworthy of the name or the honor of the DivineMajesty." It seemed to them "incongruous" for the sub-lime glory of God to be present personally in so humble aman. And yet, the Christians countered, if Jesus Christwas not the humble king promised in such Old Testamentprophecies, who else could it be?

The Christian conflict with Judaism over the necessityof Christ raised with special poignancy the question ofthe possibility of revelation and of salvation apart fromChrist. Christians did share with Jews and with Muslims,and for that matter with other rational men, a commit-ment to monotheism and an abhorrence of polytheism andidolatry. From this common ground, however, each re-ligious tradition went its own particular way in "believingthat it is serving God and supposing that it does whatis pleasing to him." Yet this did not imply that one shouldgive approval to all the religious traditions indiscrimi-nately, as though the differences between them weremeaningless. Just such indifference was thought to be oneof the errors of Muslims, who "say that everyone can besaved in his own faith." Within Christendom, too, theproblem could not simply be dismissed, especially becauseof the encounters with Judaism and now also with Islam.The standard view, which had come out of the earlychurch in its disputes with Jewish and with classicalthought, continued to be the principle that "from the

Faith in Search of Understanding 255

beginning no one has been saved without faith in Christ,"but that for some this had been a faith in Christ as "theone who was to come," while for Christians it was afaith in "the past events" of his life, death, and resurrec-tion. That principle appeared to be too firmly establishedin the faith of the church to be open to question.

Yet there did arise some who, it was reported, "assertthat many who came before the incarnation of God weresaved and redeemed through his passion, even though theynever believed either his incarnation or his passion."Peter Abelard, while rejecting this idea as heretical andarrogant, was willing to consider the case of someone who"has refused to give honor to Christ, not through malicebut through error." He could not accept the simple answerthat such a person would be damned for an "invincibleignorance [that] makes him similar to those for whom theLord in his passion or Stephen prayed." Rather, he foundit "consonant with piety as well as with reason" to believethat those who strove to please God according to theirbest lights on the basis of the natural law would not bedamned for their efforts. But since salvation must bethrough Christ, God would disclose the saving truth of"what is to be believed about Christ" to such heathen,either through a special messenger or by direct inspiration.With this proposal he safeguarded the tenet that there wasno salvation except through Christ, without having toconsign the invincibly ignorant to a state that was beyondthe reach of the grace and mercy of God. In effect, heaccomplished this by shifting the question from the topicof salvation to the topic of revelation, asking not, "Howcan one be saved without Christ?" but, "How can oneknow of God, and how much can one know, withoutScripture and the church?" The answer to that questioncould come only through a new consideration of the rela-tion between faith and understanding.

Faith in Search of Understanding

The defense of the faith against heresy and against thetruth claims of other faiths inevitably raised the questionof how the authority of revelation within the church wasrelated to other ways of knowing. Even if the relation be-tween reason and revelation had not been forced on theattention of the interpreters of the faith by these chal-lenges, moreover, the imperatives of Christian thought


itself would have compelled them to address the problemof faith and understanding. There was, then, both aninner and an outer necessity to reopen a perennial dis-cussion that had been going on since patristic times andthat had been raised for medieval theology by the probingspeculations of John Scotus Erigena.

"The catholic faith," according to one heresiologist ofthe twelfth century, "is based not only on the foundationof divine reasons, but also on that of human reasons," eventhough "it stands invincible because of its irrefutabletheological authorities." The rise of the "new heretics,"who were reviving ancient heresies and "philosophicalspeculations," made it incumbent on him "to give a rea-soned account of a rational faith on the basis of clearreasons." The Cathari, for example, were said to "rely notonly on the testimonies of the Scriptures, but also oncertain reasons that appear to them to be natural or logical,although they are in fact sophistic." Anselm drew a dis-tinction between "the impious" and "those who admitthat they take delight in the honor of the name 'Chris-tian' "; it was proper to direct a rational defense of thefaith only against the former group. But Anselm wouldhave included the various heretics of his time among "theimpious," not among those who could lay claim to "thehonor of the name 'Christian,'" and therefore would havefound it appropriate to "demonstrate rationally to themhow irrational it is for them to despise us." The orthodoxrefutation of heresy could not content itself with argu-ments based on the interpretation of Scripture, but hadto be concerned with questions of philosophy and rea-son as well.

To no heresy did this apply more fully than to the denialof the real presence in the Eucharist, which the sectar-ian radicals of the twelfth century shared with Berengarof Tours. "The foundation of the whole system of Beren-gar's exegesis" is said by a modern scholar to have beenan "application of the dialectical method, in order to sup-plement the authority of tradition, whether Scriptural orpatristic." At the time, however, Berengar seemed to besupplanting, not merely supplementing, traditional au-thority. "By disputing philosophically about the body andblood of Christ, he has led us to impossible conclusions,"one of his opponents declared. His most prominent op-ponent, Lanfranc of Bec, accused Berengar of "leaving the


sacred authorities behind and taking refuge in dialectic."Yet Lanfranc himself was not averse to the use of dialec-tic, which, he said, "does not oppose the mysteries of God,but, when the subject requires it, supports and confirmsthem, provided that it is held in line." Lanfranc was cele-brated as a scholar and a master of the liberal arts, evenby the Greeks, and soon after his death it was said of himin a biobibliography of ecclesiastical writers that "Lan-franc, the dialectician and the archbishop of Canterbury,expounded Paul the apostle, and, wherever the oppor-tunity presented itself in the passages of the text, he setforth propositions, assumptions, and conclusions in ac-cordance with the laws of dialectic." Other critics ofBerengar also used their polemics against him as occasionsto distinguish among the ways of knowing and to analyzethe relation of faith to sense experience and to reason.After warning in the preface to his work on the Eucharistthat "the conjectures of human reason" could not dealadequately with the mystery of the eucharistic presence,another archbishop of Canterbury went on, in a laterchapter of the work, to find that he could not altogetheravoid dealing with such philosophical concepts as formand matter or species and substance. His warnings werea commonplace of eucharistic theology, which repeatedlyurged that this mystery was meant to be believed andvenerated rather than discussed and debated. Nevertheless,the discussion and debate went on.

While bad Christians such as heretics were in someways worse than unbelievers, they both deserved to be meton their own chosen field of battle, which was reason. Inthe encounter with other faiths, whether Jewish or Mus-lim, the spokesman for the Christian faith "refuted bothof them, sometimes on the basis of reason and sometimeson the basis of authority." Reliance on reason as a defen-sive weapon against rival systems of belief was all the morenecessary when those systems, unlike Judaism and Islam,had no biblical authority in common with Christianity. Ithad been "with reason as their guide" that the Gentileshad "understood the anticipations of divine revelation,"including even some aspects of "the mystery of our repa-ration," which they awaited with yearning. And then,when the Christian gospel came into the world, it suc-ceeded in converting the most rational of men, the Greekphilosophers, to its message; this was proof that the gospel


was not to be dismissed as irrationality and "insanity."Since it was obvious that the differences between theseveral faiths were due to the differences of authority onwhich they were based, rather than to "reason, which isby nature prior to" all of these authorities, it was thefunction of reason to analyze how those who "acknowl-edge that we are all worshipers of one God" couldnevertheless each adhere to "a diverse [form of] faithand life," be it that of the Christian or that of the Jew orthat of the philosopher.

The confutation of false doctrine, which professedChristianity but was not faithful to the tradition, and theresponse to alternative faiths had often been the occasionfor a consideration of the relation between revelation andreason. It was a distinctive characteristic of this period inthe growth of medieval theology that in addition to con-tinuing and intensifying the "rational defense of ourfaith against the impious," whether heretics or infidels,it took upon itself the task of beginning with the con-fession of faith and the "pledge made at baptism" and ofmoving on from it, by "advancing through faith to under-standing, rather than proceeding through understandingto faith." In the history of the development of Christiandoctrine (and of "theology" in this sense of the word) asdistinct from the history of medieval philosophy (and of"theology" in this sense of the word), the discovery ofthis imperative that faith must move on to understandingis perhaps the most important aspect of the intellectualchanges that took place during the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies. For this discovery shaped the development ofseveral fundamental doctrines in ways that were to deter-mine their future course for centuries to come.

A decisive source of the change, as well as a helpfulindex to it, was—together with the often-quoted admoni-tion of the New Testament to "be ready always to give areason" for the faith—the use of an early Latin transla-tion of Isaiah 7:9, based on the Septuagint but not in-corporated into the Vulgate: "Unless you believe, youwill not understand." Although he knew the Vulgate'srendering of the words as "Unless you believe, you willnot abide," Augustine quoted the older version in histreatise On the Trinity to show that "faith seeks, butunderstanding finds," so that it was necessary to seekunderstanding on the basis of faith; he also quoted it to


show that until understanding came, it was essential tohold to faith. Thus the passage continued to be used inthe Old Latin form even after the general acceptance ofthe Vulgate. John Scotus Erigena quoted it in support ofthe principle that faith had to precede understanding. Theclassic interpretation of the words of Isaiah was the oneformulated by Anselm in the first chapter of his Proslo-gion: "I yearn to understand some measure of thy truth,which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek tounderstand in order to believe, but I believe in order tounderstand. For I believe even this: that I shall not under-stand unless I believe." Abelard likewise used it to justifyhis argumentation, as did Herman of Scheda in his dis-cussion of Christian apologetics toward Judaism. Richardof Saint-Victor also quoted it in the opening chapter ofhis treatise On the Trinity, where it provided the justifi-cation for his position that "faith, the attraction for everykind of fruitful investigation and the foundation of everygood, nevertheless occupies an inferior place in our ascentto God" in comparison with understanding. The tradi-tional proof text on faith and understanding was thewarning: "Seek not what is too difficult for you, nor in-vestigate what is beyond your power. Reflect upon whathas been assigned to you, for you do not need what ishidden." This warning continued to be quoted, beingespecially applicable to the mystery of the real presencein the Eucharist. Yet even the mystery of the Eucharistlent itself to the use of the verse from Isaiah as proofthat "faith is not the fruit of understanding, but under-standing is the fruit of faith" in the presence.

The idea of faith in search of understanding, togetherwith the use of Isaiah 7:9 to support it, came from Au-gustine, to whose thought Anselm, in the context of hisapologetic writings, acknowledged his continuing debt.This element of the Augustinian synthesis had neverdisappeared from medieval theology. Alcuin, for example,in his attack on Elipandus, quoted the formula of Au-gustine: "We have not known and believed, but have 'be-lieved and have come to know.' For we believed in orderto understand." Writing against the same opponent,Beatus of Liebana likewise elaborated the Augustinianschema of a faith that led to understanding. Other medie-val theologians echoed the phraseology. For all of themAugustine was "the greatest philosopher" among Chris-


tians, who had come from pagan philosophy to Christiantruth. His speculations about the "traces of the Trinity"in the human mind were the outstanding example of faithin search of understanding. Yet the thinkers of the twelfthcentury went well beyond such speculations in their in-vestigation of the role of understanding and reason inrelation to faith and revelation, and they were awarethat in doing so they were engaged in an enterprise forwhich there were very few precedents in the writings ofthe church fathers. It was not until the Christian traditionstood virtually unchallenged that it could undertake thetask of determining how much of its contents could beknown without faith.

As the foundation for Augustine's speculations aboutthe trinitarian structure of the mind was the biblical plural,"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," so itwas also the idea of creation in the image of God that pro-vided the justification for the effort to confirm by reasonwhat was already known by revelation. Every creature ofGod reflected to some degree the nature of the Creator.Merely by being, it participated in the being of God.But the Creator was the living God, and therefore thosecreatures that were living resembled him more than thosethat were not. Since the living God was at the same timeone who perceived all things, the perceiving among hisliving creatures had a special likeness to him. But amongthe creatures that perceived other creatures, those thatwere able to reason about this perception were in a uniqueposition in relation to the divine Origin and bore hisimage in a special way. Therefore "that which is rational[bears the likeness of the supreme nature} more than thatwhich is incapable of reasoning." God had put his imageinto man so that man might be aware of him, ponder him,and love him. Man could not do this, because of his sin,unless God "renewed and reformed" the image. And yetthe rational mind continued to be created "according tothe likeness" of the supreme wisdom of God. Thereforeit was incumbent on any "rational creature . . . to expressby its voluntary activity this image that has been im-pressed on it by natural power." This it did when it ap-plied all of its powers to "remembering, understanding,and loving the Summum Bonum."

Scripture itself acknowledged the validity of the ac-tivity of reason when it left to the choices of reason the


questions that it defined as "undetermined" by its ownauthority. Even those matters that were determined bythe authority of Scripture, moreover, could also fall withinthe purview of "rational necessity" to deal with on itsown terms. On this level such matters could be treated "byreason alone," which could produce its own kind of cer-tainty about such questions as the existence of God andthe reality of the divine nature. The certainty to whichrational demonstration led came from "not merely proba-ble, but necessary" arguments in support of ultimate truth.It was the responsibility of philosophy to "investigate thereasons of all things, whether divine or human," althoughlogic, mathematics, and physics were incapable of pene-trating to "that truth in which the salvation of the soullies." One basic different between philosophical andtheological reasoning was that the former proceeded fromethics to theology and metaphysics, while the latter startedwith a consideration of the nature of God and then wenton to "good works." Beginning, then, with "the truth ofthat which the catholic church believes in its heart andconfesses with its mouth," the Christian mind was to "seekto discover the reason why this is true." At least in prin-ciple, there was no aspect of that truth to which the be-lieving mind could not turn in its search for understand-ing.

The most important of these aspects of the truth forthe Christian thinkers of the period was the existence ofGod. The logical validity of Anselm's "ontological argu-ment" for the existence of God (defined as "that thanwhich nothing greater can be imagined") is not ourconcern here, but the definition itself is. Significantly, itwas a definition that Anselm shared, not only with hisown disciples, but with Abelard, whatever other theo-logical differences they may or may not have had. At theheart of Anselm's reasoning was the conception of "onenature, highest of all the things that are, alone sufficientunto itself in its eternal beatitude." The traditional Chris-tian view of the absoluteness of God, which had long beenunderstood not only as the explicit assertion of divinerevelation but at the same time as an axiom of naturalphilosophy, thus became once more a principle whosedemonstration did not depend on an acceptance of theauthority of Scripture and tradition, but was shared byall who could think clearly, Christian or not. From this


principle it followed by reason that all other realitiesexisted through this one ultimate reality, and that therecould not be a multiple source of things, but only onesource. Quite apart from the authority of revelation, then,"there are many ways by which we can prove that there isno God but one." As the words of the apostle Paul said, theevidence of the works of creation had led the Gentilephilosophers to recognize not only the existence, but alsothe oneness of God.

Yet "once a Christian thinker gets to this point, nothingcould prevent him from applying the same method toeach of the Christian dogmas," not merely to the existenceand the oneness of God but also to the Trinity and theincarnation. Anselm's most complete statement of hisdoctrine of the atonement was not his Meditation onHuman Redemption, based on Scripture and tradition,but his Why God Became Man, which set out to provethe doctrines of sin and redemption within the limits ofreason alone, "putting into parentheses, so to speak, thehistoric fact of Christianity, the dogmatic imperative ofrevelation, and, all the more, the authority of the fathersand doctors" of the church. In this enterprise he wasfollowed by Richard of Saint-Victor, who maintained that"it is demonstrated on the basis of reason that the Medi-ator between God and men must be true God and trueman." Richard did recognize that there were some articlesof faith to which it would be almost impossible to holdif the catholic tradition had not transmitted them. Whilethere were doctrines that were "above reason but not be-yond reason," such as those dealing with the oneness ofGod, other doctrines "are above reason and seem to bebeyond reason or even contrary to reason," such as "al-most all the things that we are commanded to believeabout the Trinity of persons."

Almost all such things in the dogma of the Trinity hadto come either "through revelation" or "solely by author-ity," but not quite all of them. For the creation of manaccording to the image of God, which was used to vali-date this effort to move from faith to understandingthrough the use of reason, was, by general agreement, acreation "according to the image of the Trinity." Augus-tine taught, moreover, that through an understanding ofthe nature of true love one would come to a knowledgeof the Trinity. His analysis of love led to the conclusion


that "there are these three: the one who loves, the one whois loved, and the love itself." On the basis of this analysisRichard of Saint-Victor proceeded to a consideration ofthe Trinity on the basis of love, "but Richard's concep-tion is quite different: his attention is directed entirely tothe personal relations" between human beings as well aswithin the Trinity. As a consequence, Richard concen-trated on the implications of love as a natural proof forthe doctrine of the Trinity. There could be no love wherethere was only one person; since God was supremely goodand only God was deserving of absolute love, it followedthat the infinite love which was God must always have hadan infinite object even when there were no creatures.Therefore a rational consideration of the nature of love,without the aid of revelation, led to the conclusion that"the fulfillment of love requires a Trinity of persons."Augustine's idea of "traces of the Trinity" in the mind,as interpreted by Anselm, had served Richard's mentor,Hugh of Saint-Victor, as a justification for the claim that"to some degree the human reason has the power" topenetrate to the truth of the Trinity, but Richard carriedthe effort to prove the Trinity rationally to further lengths.In this effort he was joined by those who found evidencefor the doctrine of the Trinity in the ancient Gentilephilosophers.

If it was permissible to apply the methods of rationalspeculation to the mystery of the Trinity, even to thepoint of proving the doctrine of the Filioque on thebasis of reason alone, without the authority of Scriptureor tradition, what was to prevent someone from beginningwith the same rational method but coming to conclusionsthat did not accord with the orthodox doctrine? Richardspoke out against logicians and "pseudophilosophers,"who cared more about novelty than about truth, as wellas against stylists, who were more fearful of violating therules of the grammarian Priscian than of sinning againstthe rule of Christ. The widespread revival of interest inlogic and grammar during the twelfth century and theapplication of these disciplines to theology, specificallyto trinitarian theology, set off a series of disputes andspeculations on the Trinity, some of which he seems tohave had in mind in his attacks. From the Cappadocianfathers to Hegel and beyond, the Nicene dogma hasfascinated the metaphysically minded among its exposi-

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tors, especially when, as in the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies, a recovery of acquaintance with earlier systemsof philosophy stimulated new interest in long-neglectedquestions. The doctrinal implications of these movementsof thought, as distinct from their dialectical principles assuch, had a direct bearing on what the church was believ-ing, teaching, and confessing about the Trinity.

As in the trinitarianism of the Cappadocians, the rela-tion between the Three and the One in the Godhead wasbound up with the question of universals. Roscellinus ofCompiegne seems to have discussed the doctrine of theTrinity within the context of a theory of universals ac-cording to which "universal substances are only vocalsounds," so that, for example, color had no reality of itsown as distinct from a colored object. It was, accordingto his opponents, an application of this theory whenRoscellinus also taught that "in God, either the three per-sons are three realities, [existing] in separation from oneanother (as do three angels) and yet [existing] in such away that there is one will and power; or else the Fatherand the Holy Spirit were incarnate" as well as the Son.From the only work of his that has survived, a letter toAbelard, it is clear that Roscellinus did argue from thewell-known confusion between Greeks and Latins intrinitarian terminology, by which the Greeks spoke of"three substances [hypostases]," while the Latins, using"substance" for "ousia," spoke of "one substance." Ros-cellinus took this to mean that one could say: "Nothingelse is the substance of the Father except the Father him-self, and nothing else is the substance of the Son exceptthe Son himself." Therefore there were "three substances"in the Trinity. Indeed, Roscellinus apparently went sofar as to say that the Three "could truly be called threeGods if usage permitted it." Quoting a phrase of Isidore's,Roscellinus found the oneness of the Trinity in "a com-munity of majesty" rather than in "a singularity ofmajesty."

The trinitarianism of Abelard was diametrically op-posed to that of Roscellinus, against whom he composed atreatise on the doctrine of the Trinity. Although there wasno discerning Christian who forbade rational discussionof the faith, Roscellinus was twisting dialectic into so-phistry by his argumentation. Abelard attacked the notionthat "the diversity of persons" in the Trinity implieddiverse "realities," as Roscellinus contended. Nor, on the


other hand, would he admit that the alternative was to saythat the Father and the Holy Spirit were incarnate, too.The doctrine that the Father had begotten the Son frometernity did not imply, as Roscellinus contended, that"substance begets substance." For there was only "onesubstance and one reality" in the Trinity of three persons,since God was "trine, not according to a diversity of sub-stance but according to the properties of the persons." Inopposition to the statements of Roscellinus about "threeGods" and about "a community of majesty" rather than "asingularity of majesty" in the Trinity, Abelard declared thatthe Christian faith "consistently proclaims and believes asingularity of unity, except for what pertains to the dis-tinction of the three persons.... not three Gods or Lords";thus "the three persons are somebody different withoutbeing something different." If Roscellinus inclined towardtritheism by his theories, Abelard stressed the unity of theGodhead in such a way as to seem to imperil the distinc-tion of persons, which was a matter of attributing to oneof the divine persons a work that "in accordance with theunion of their nature we do not question as belonging toall of them." Although "the assumption of flesh is as-signed only to the Son, and we are said to be born again'of water and the Spirit' alone, not of water and the Fatheror the Son, yet the activity of the entire Trinity was pres-ent in these [works]." It was in this sense that powerwas predicated of the Father, wisdom of the Son, andlove of the Holy Spirit.

In his philosophical exposition of the docttine of theTrinity, Abelard knew that he was drawing heavily onwhat had been "handed down to us by Boethius alone." Itwas also on Boethius, "a catholic by virtue of his soundfaith in the things that are not seen, a philosopher by vir-tue of his true knowledge of realities," that Gilbert de LaPorree based his trinitarian speculations. These specula-tions, according to contemporary accounts, led Gilbertinto a dispute over the distinction between God and hisessence and between nature and person in the Godhead.It has been suggested that "one principle dominates in hiswritings and is truly the key to Gilbert's system, namely,that there is no true knowledge of a concrete materialobject or id quod, unless the mind succeeds in establish-ing the cause or id quo of each and every reality in theid quod and classifies it according to the ten Aristoteliancategories." That principle could, however, be applied


"only to created things," while "in theological matterssome things are [to be treated] similarly, but othersdifferently." The language of theology was not as preciseand rich in its capacity for discrimination among syno-nyms as was the language of philosophy, but to somedegree the basic principle and distinction of Gilbert'sthought was appropriate also in theology, since "the prob-lem for him is in origin one of predication and logic." Forit was true also of God that "there is one single, undi-vided, simple, and solitary essence by which the EternalOne was, is, and will be God." It was that single essenceby which also the three persons of the Trinity were one,so that the essence was "predicated of the Three com-munally, separately, and collectively." But because therewas only one divinity that belonged to the Three, theywere "one God by [this] unity." Each of them was "sub-stance" in his own right, but because "the same substanceis predicated of the Three collectively, . . . there is trulyone substance." They were "one by the property of theessence, simple and without any composition." Despiteparallels that could be quoted from Augustine, this dis-tinction between "that which is" and "that by which it is"in the Trinity inevitably aroused suspicion.

The application of categories that were "logical ratherthan theological" to the dogma of the Trinity by Roscel-linus, Abelard, and Gilbert led to quite divergent theologi-cal conclusions, but the application was suspect in eachcase and in each case led to official condemnation by thechurch. Roscellinus was condemned at the Synod of Sois-sons in 1092 for teaching tritheism, and he recanted.Abelard, who cited the condemnation of Soissons againstRoscellinus as proof of heresy, was himself prosecuted forhis doctrine of the Trinity, as well as for his other theo-logical ideas, by Bernard, who accused him of "attemptingto bring the merit of the Christian faith to naught becausehe supposes that by human reason he can comprehend allthat is God." Specifically, he was accused, despite his in-sistence on the equality of the three persons in the Trinity,of ascribing "power" only to the Father, not to the Sonor the Holy Spirit, and thus of denying the catholic doc-trine of the Trinity. Gilbert also earned the opposition ofBernard, who charged him with teaching "that there issome thing by which God is what he is, but which isnot God," while Bernard's pupil charged that Gilbert af-


firmed "a form in God by which God is what he is, butwhich is not God." With such forces arraigned againsthim, Gilbert was condemned at the Synod of Reims in1148, which decreed "that no reason in theology shouldmake a division between nature and person [in the Trin-ity]" nor between God the Trinity and his essence.

Whether or not these condemnations disposed of thechallenges to the received form of the dogma of the Trin-ity, they did not resolve the underlying questions raisedby these three dialecticians. For each of them had, in hisown way, reopened the problem of the relation betweentraditional doctrine and theological speculation, or, morefundamentally, the problem of theological method, andthe problem could not be disposed of by simply urgingthat "the teachers of the church should follow the divinearts, not the liberal arts, and imitate the apostles, not thephilosophers." For the logical, grammatical, and dialecticalinquiries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries wouldeventually go their way, with results that were to affect thehistory of philosophy permanently; but the preservationand cultivation of the catholic tradition of doctrine hadits own task of administering the patristic heritage in away that was intellectually respectable. The very legiti-macy of this task was called into question by all the issueswith which we have been dealing here: the contradictionsamong the fathers, the challenges of other interpretationsof Christian doctrine, the encounters with other systemsof faith, and the questions raised by reason. If the tradi-tion of the church and the faith and worship of thechurch were to be affirmed, it would be necessary to finda method of theology that could do justice to the claimsof reason without capitulating to them and that could atthe same time come to terms with the other counterclaimsof the age. The thirteenth century represented a distinctivecombination of all those counterclaims and of the theo-logical capacity to address them.

6 Summa Theologica

Whether or not it was the "greatest of centuries," thethirteenth century does hold a special place in the historyof Christendom. It was the age of Pope Innocent III andEmperor Frederick II, of Saint Dominic and Saint Francisof Assisi, of Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, ofThomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, of Giotto and Dante,of the Fourth Crusade and the Fourth Lateran Council.It began with the papacy in almost unchallenged controlof European society; it ended with the papacy in disarray,about to flee to Avignon. Probably never before, andperhaps never again, did the Christian view of the worldand of man play so decisive a role in the life of the mind.Philosophical reflection, long overshadowed, came into itsown again, and scientific questions once more demandedserious attention. Systems of speculative divinity, liter-ally by the dozens, were published and debated, amongthem the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas (lesscommonly, but more accurately called Summa Theo-logiae), which continues to be the only such work onvirtually every list of great books. In the history of "theol-ogy" understood as systematic theology, the thirteenthwas undeniably one of the most important of all centuries.

Paradoxically, it was far less important in the historyof the development of Christian "doctrine" as we havebeen denning it in this work, and in the history of "the-ology" as we have defined it in this volume. At the FourthLateran Council in 1215, the doctrine of the real presenceof the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist achievedits definitive formulation in the dogma of transubstantia-tion; but this was the doctrinal achievement more of the

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twelfth than of the thirteenth century. At the Council ofLyons in 1274, the doctrinal issues in dispute betweenEast and West were debated and resolved, if only tempo-rarily, but very little was changed by the actions of thecouncil. Although the scholastics speculated extensivelyabout the nature of angels, church doctrine continued tobe reticent on the subject, contenting itself with a re-affirmation of the opening statement of the Nicene Creed,that God was the Creator of "all things invisible andvisible," which meant "both the angelic and the earthly"creatures. The reality of the church as an institution wasmore impressive than was the doctrine of the church asan object of faith during the thirteenth century. As weshall have occasion to observe, the twelfth century sum-marized the full scope of the medieval doctrine of thechurch more effectively than the thirteenth did; on theother hand, it was only in the fourteenth century that thedoctrine began to develop: "the first treatise on the churchin the history of theology," that of James of Viterbo,appeared in 1301—1302, followed almost immediately bythose of Giles of Rome and John of Paris. It was signifi-cant that the term "summa" was becoming increasinglypopular as a way of describing and often entitling a workof theology, for the principal contribution of this periodto the history of doctrine was to be summarization andsystematization, not further development.

Still, as the examples of Gregory the Great and of Maxi-mus Confessor show, it also deserves to be called a formof doctrinal development when an era summarizes intoa systematic whole the doctrines that have developed inpreceding centuries. Those two examples suggest, more-over, that such an achievement often goes on to serve thefollowing period as a starting point for further develop-ment. So it was to be with the thirteenth century. A criti-cal reexamination of its systems during the fourteenthand fifteenth centuries, and above all during the sixteenth,brought on far-reaching changes in the life and teachingsof the church. The reintegration of the catholic traditionachieved by the thirteenth century continued to take itfor granted, as catholic theology in East and West haddone since the early church, that the authentic witness oftradition and the authentic message of the Bible wouldalways be in accord. But what would happen when, withvarying degrees of radicalism and with varying degrees

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of consistency, Protestantism would pit Scripture againsttradition and reject first the authority and eventuallymuch of the content of this catholic tradition? In relationto the developments of the Middle Ages as well as tothe developments of the Reformation, this century wasto be "a watershed in religious history" and in the historyof doctrine, a time of "summa theologica" not only in thebook bearing that title but in what was believed, taught,and confessed by many different spokesmen of the church,despite important differences among them in philosophi-cal outlook and in systematic formulation.

The Reintegration of the Catholic Tradition

At no time during the growth of medieval theology hadthere been a threat in principle to "the integrity of thecatholic tradition" that was its foundation, except fromcertain heretics who acquired that label because of theirrejection of the authority of tradition. But the contro-versies of the Carolingian period disclosed that the tradi-tion was considerably less integrated than everyone hadbeen assuming, and the clarification of the doctrine ofthe real presence had as its by-product the recognitionthat citing the authority of Augustine and other churchfathers was not adequate to adjudicate a doctrinal conflict.Abelard's expose of inconsistencies in the tradition, whilenot intended to discredit its authority, did serve to callattention to the problem. It was likewise Abelard who,together with several of his contemporaries, brought thestatus of the doctrinal tradition up for discussion inanother way, by opening again the investigation of thedogma of the Trinity. The reintegration of the catholictradition, therefore, consisted in the clarification of thenorms of orthodox doctrine and in the reassertion of themost hallowed of its tenets. Both of these were madepossible by the compilation of quotations from the fathersin the work of Peter Lombard, "the Master of the Sen-tences" and by the work of the Sententiaries, more than athousand in number, who commented on his book.

Fundamental to the program of the Sentences, and tothat of its commentators during the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies, was the reaffirmation of Augustine. In Lom-bard's compilation "Augustine is quoted most often, inabout 950 passages, or, if one includes the quotations fromthe writings that are certainly ascribed to him falsely, in

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more than a thousand passages, i.e., more than twice asoften as all other fathers combined." That reliance onAugustine continued to dominate the thirteenth century.Bonaventure's systematization of Christian doctrine, theBreviloquium, concluded one chapter after another withwhat he took to be "Augustine's opinion, which is to bebelieved," what "Augustine truly says," and what "theeminent doctor Augustine explains." Augustine was, with-out a doubt, "the most authentic doctor among all theexpositors of Sacred Scripture." To carry out his criticismof Augustine, Thomas Aquinas appealed from traditionto tradition and proceeded "to reestablish the truth byrescuing Saint Augustine from the compromising context"of his Platonism and yet keeping the orthodox substanceof the Augustinian doctrine intact. It was in response toa troubling quotation from Augustine that Thomasformulated his general principle: When "the holy doc-tors have at times gone beyond the bounds of preciselanguage . . . , we must not expand on their expressions,but interpret them in a correct sense," although elsewherehe made it applicable to other fathers as well. There wasno doctrine of the Christian faith for which this reamr-mation of the Augustinian-catholic tradition was notappropriate, but both the ambiguities of Augustinismitself and the earlier history of medieval theology madecertain questions unavoidable.

The most obvious of such questions was the doctrineof predestination. Already during his own lifetime Au-gustine had faced certain "brethren" who feared the conse-quences of his predestinarian views, and in response hewrote his treatises (which may be two parts of a singletreatise) On the Predestination of the Saints and On theGift of Perseverance. The controversies of the followinghundred years left the question of predestination unre-solved, and it remained for the ninth century to bring itback into open discussion. That discussion had likewiseconcluded ambiguously, with no clear identification of anorthodox doctrine on the issues in dispute. One of thefundamental issues in the predestinarian conflict of theninth century was the relation between the justice of Godand the mercy of God. The doctrine of redemptionthrough the vicarious satisfaction rendered to the "right-ness [rectitudo]" of God by the death of Christ the God-man—elaborated by Anselm in his Why God Became


Man, but shared by other spokesmen for the theology ofthe church in the twelfth century—was a way of treatingthe relation between justice and mercy; but because of itsemphasis on divine election as the basis of the creationand redemption of man, the Anselmic doctrine of theatonement compelled further consideration of the Au-gustinian doctrine of predestination.

Anselm himself was the one who began to provide abasis for the consideration. By his recognition that therewas a sense in which God could be said to have pre-destined evil deeds, but only because he caused them asdeeds and not because he caused the evil in them, Anselmformulated a principle for explaining away those state-ments of Augustine and other fathers, and even of Scrip-ture, that spoke of God as having predestined somethingevil. He resolved the paradox of man's free will and God'spredestination with the aid of a resolution of the moregeneral paradox of man's free will and God's foreknowl-edge. Freedom and foreknowledge were not incompatibleeven in the case of human sin, because the precise way ofstating their relation was: "God foreknows that it is with-out necessity that I am going to sin." Because there wasneither past nor future in God but only an eternal present,it was—as had been pointed out in the predestinariancontroversy—inaccurate to speak as though God hadknown in the past what was going to happen in thefuture, for "in eternity is present immutably all truthand only truth." So likewise God did not in fact pre-destine anything, since "all things are present to him atonce." It was a reasonable conclusion from the analysisof foreknowledge to argue that "all the considerations bywhich I have shown above that free choice is not incom-patible with foreknowledge show equally that it is com-patible with predestination."

Soon, by a process noted earlier, Anselm joined thelist of authorities on the question. Within a generation orso, an essay on predestination could observe that "out-standing theologians have composed many treatises onthis subject" and then, without mentioning him (or anyother of these "outstanding theologians") by name, quoteAnselm's definition of "free choice." Although PeterLombard does not himself seem to have included any ofAnselm's discussion of predestination in his compilationof quotations on that question, the commentators on his

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Sentences did draw upon Anselm for their explication ofthe Lombard's distinctions. Anselm's books on the fallof the devil and on the harmony of free will with theforeknowledge, predestination, and grace of God figuredin the discussion of predestination by Alexander of Halesand in the explanation offered by Thomas Aquinas forthe fall of the devil, as well as in Bonaventure's accountof why divine foreknowledge and divine predestinationdid not impose any constraint on the free will of menand did not destroy the free will even of demons. Bona-venture enumerated authorities—two quotations fromthe New Testament, one from Augustine, and one fromAnselm—in support of the teaching that God was nothimself the Author of the hardening of the heart of asinner. Addressing the same issue in his own commentaryon Lombard's Sentences, Thomas Aquinas cited as hisauthority the consensus of "what the saints say in com-mon," namely, Dionysius, Augustine, and Anselm: "thatthe reason why someone does not have grace is that herefused to accept it, and not that God refused to grant it."

The pattern set by Anselm for the treatment of pre-destination was visible in these commentators in otherways as well, most notably in their concentration on thequestion of divine foreknowledge as the key to predesti-nation. Augustine showed, according to one compilationof Sentences, "that predestination and reprobation cannotbe without foreknowledge." If "foreknowledge is con-strued strictly," according to Albertus, "there is no pre-destination without foreknowledge." In particular it wasGod's knowledge of future contingents—"not successively. . . , as we [know them], but simultaneously"—whoseimplications for predestination concerned them. In a dis-cussion of the certainty of predestination, Aquinas re-jected the suggestion "that God does not know futurecontingents except in accordance with what they are,namely, that he knows them to be contingent," for thiswould mean "that God does not know any more aboutthe salvation of men than man does." Bonaventure's an-swer to the question of the certainty of predestination wasalso based on a consideration of foreknowledge. Althoughit had to be admitted, on the basis of the distinction be-tween contingency and reality, "that there is no greatercertainty about the number of the elect than there isabout the number of other future contingents," still, "be-


cause divine foreknowledge is infallible and thereforethings always turn out as he has foreknown them," pre-destination to salvation was completely certain. From thefundamental axiom that God, as first principle, "knowsall things perfectly through his own self" it followed thathe "knows contingent things infallibly" and that there-fore predestination was sure.

Bonaventure did not, however, ground the certainty ofpredestination only in the infallibility of God's foreknowl-edge, but in the unchangeability of his "plan and ordi-nance." For, as Thomas Aquinas put the matter, "thenumber of the predestined is said to be certain to God,not only by reason of his knowledge, that is, because heknows how many will be saved—for in this way thenumber of drops of rain and the number of the sands ofthe sea are certain to God—but by reason of his electionand determination." Aquinas's emphasis on election anddetermination rather than on foreknowledge had beenanticipated in the teaching that the cause of justificationwas not what God had known from eternity in his mindbut what he had planned from eternity in his mercy, andin the Augustinian teaching that "Christ Jesus is thebrightest light of predestination." In keeping with thisemphasis, Aquinas, in the main body of almost everyarticle of his examination of the doctrine of predestina-tion, connected this doctrine closely with the doctrine ofdivine providence. It was all the more striking that heshould do so, since he maintained that predestination be-longed chiefly to the divine intellect while Bonaventureassigned it chiefly to the divine will. At the same time,Bonaventure warned against defining the will of God asan arbitrary "cause of causes and reason of reasons," whichelected whomever it pleased simply because it pleased todo so; for "in wanting to exalt the will of God, we mayrather be diminishing it instead" by removing the mysteryfrom the doctrine of predestination.

The warning came during the defense of a statementon predestination that included the provision that pre-destination "does not have its cause in [human] merit."For the temptation was to avoid the impression of arbi-trariness in predestination by basing it on God's fore-knowledge of how men were going to act. It was atemptation to which Augustine himself had succumbed.In a commentary on the passage, "Jacob I loved, but Esau


I hated," he had suggested that the basis for the differencelay in the divine foreknowledge of the two. Later, how-ever, having struggled through the Pelagian controversies,Augustine retracted that suggestion, because any suchdifferentiation between the saved and the damned wouldbe a negation of the priority of grace. Augustine's maturejudgment became a standard part of the various compila-tions of patristic theology, as well as an inducement todeeper study. The Sentences of Gandulph of Bolognadocumented Augustine's change of mind, and Hugh ofSaint-Victor, attributing to "some" theologians the ideathat God had selected Jacob on the basis of the fore-knowledge that Jacob would be faithful, quoted Augustinein refutation. Whatever his sources may have been, PeterLombard summarized— again with a reference to "some"who had believed otherwise—Augustine's eventual stresson election by grace without any consideration of fore-known merit. On this basis the commentators on theSentences could find in Augustine's On the Predestina-tion of the Saints declarations to the effect that "Godchose us not because he knew that we would be suchmen, but in order that we might be such men." Beyondthat, "no doubt it was the repeated reading, one prolongedbeyond the florilegia, of the De praedestinatione sanc-torum and of the De dono perseverentiae, which led SaintThomas to discovering the historical existence of semi-pelagianism, and thus to underscoring with much greateremphasis, from the Contra Gentiles onward, God's initia-tive in the preparation for grace." Augustine, not as adistant authority but as a continuing force, became theinspiration for a transition from a speculative to a soterio-logical view of grace—even though he had in fact beenthe source of both.

The stumbling block in the Augustinian view of graceremained, as it had been in the fifth and ninth centuries,his doctrine of reprobation, implying as it did a gracethat was less than universal. The hardening of the heart ofPharaoh, over which Gottschalk and Hincmar had con-tended, was still a problem. The compilers and commen-tators of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries strove to ex-plain Augustine's language on the issue. Peter of Poitiersattributed a statement to Augustine that does not seem tobe present in his authentic writings, to the effect that "asthe reprobation of God is his not wanting to have mercy,


so his hardening [of the human heart} is his not havingmercy"; reprobation, therefore, was not a positive act ofdivine election, but a negative act of divine "permission."It was similarly from a work attributed to Augustine butnot composed by him—this time the Memorandumagainst the Pelagians and Celestians, on which Hincmarhad relied in his dispute with Gottschalk—that PeterLombard, who taught that "the hardening of the heart ismerited by the sin of the entire condemned mass (ofhumanity]," quoted the alleged principle of Augustine,which had also been quoted by Hincmar: "This rule mustbe inviolably observed, that sinners have been foreknownin their sins, but not predestined, but that their punish-ment has been predestined." But in quoting it to support a"sharp emphasis" on the distinction between predestina-tion and foreknowledge, both Gandulph of Bologna andPeter Lombard identified its location as Augustine's tractTo Prosper and Hilary, that is, On the Predestination ofthe Saints, which was the source for some of the very state-ments about reprobation that had so frequently causeddifficulty for Augustine's defenders. The same confusionregarding Augustine's authorship appeared in Alexanderof Hales.

Even this endorsement of Hincmar's (and Pseudo-Augustine's) solution for the problem of reprobation waslinked to a repetition of Augustine's (and Gottschalk's)conclusions about the mystery of double predestination.Isidore's summary of Augustine was quoted in the dec-laration: "Predestination is double." Augustine had de-fended divine justice in reprobation on the grounds that"if all had remained under the punishment of just con-demnation, the mercy of redeeming grace would not havebeen visible in anyone, but if all had been transferredfrom darkness to light, the severity of retribution wouldnot have been made manifest in anyone." Quoting thisargument in a paraphrase, Bonaventure reinforced the"need for the concealment" of the ways of God, as pro-claimed in a passage from Romans that Augustine hadcited over and over at decisive points in his statementsof the mystery of double predestination against the Pela-gians: "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowl-edge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments andhow inscrutable his ways!" Thomas Aquinas attempted toharmonize the love of God with the fact of divine reproba-


tion by maintaining that in loving all men and wishingthem all some good, God did not wish the same good toall of them; "insofar, therefore, as he does not wish [someof them] this particular good—namely, eternal life—heis said to hate or to reprobate them." This withholdingof his grace was "of his own accord." As for the statementof the New Testament that God "desires all men to besaved," which had been so vexing for Augustine, it wasto be explained by the various devices that Augustine hadproposed. In addition, this statement was to be understoodaccording to "his antecedent will," by which he willedthings relatively, depending on how men responded,rather than according to "his consequent will, which is towill absolutely." The conclusion of the whole matter wasyet another quotation from Augustine about the remote-ness of divine judgment from our senses, together withthe no less Augustinian admonition: "And so the dis-cussion of predestination must be closed in the insuffi-ciency of our understanding, 'so that every mouth maybe stopped, and the whole world may be held accountableto God,' whose judgments are not open to our scrutiny,but are to be revered with awesome silence." WhenThomas Bradwardine, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, andJohn Calvin reopened the question of double predestina-tion, it was with this neo-Augustinism that they began.

There was a second constituent of the Augustinianlegacy whose interpretation had been reopened for dis-cussion by Gottschalk in the ninth century; it was thenreintroduced during the debates of the twelfth century,and needed to be restated in the summae of the thirteenth,where the echoes of Gottschalk's dispute with Hincmarover the "trine" in God could still be heard. In spite of itsstanding as the most utterly unchangeable of all theunchangeable dogmas of the one true faith, the doctrineof the Trinity had reappeared on the roster of disputedquestions, not only because of the conflict with the Eastover the procession of the Holy Spirit, but because of thespeculations of "the labyrinths of France," particularlythose of Peter Abelard and Gilbert de La Porree, as wellas those of Roscellinus. The response to this phenomenonwas "an enrichment of theological speculation specificallyin the area of the doctrine of the Trinity," which in turnserved to bring about the reappropriation of Augustine'sdoctrine and the reintegration of the catholic tradition in


the light of this trinitarian perspective. The grammaticaland logical implications of calling God "Trinity," as raisedin the twelfth century, obliged Peter Lombard and hiscommentators, up to and including Martin Luther, toaddress once more the question of "how the three personsare one," and to do so "by aligning these missions [ofthe three persons] with the properties of the one or theother person who is sent" in the trinitarian relation.Eventually, however, "in accordance with the riches hereaps from Augustine's analyses, [Thomas Aquinas]brings to the fore the original relationship of subject toknown and loved object in a mind capable of knowing andloving God." And Bonaventure, who in his view of theThree and the One "is more dependent on Alexander [ofHales] then he is almost anywhere else," systematized thisview in what must be called a trinitarian ontology withfew parallels in the history of Christian doctrine.

First it was necessary to dispose of the challenges fromthe logicians and dialecticians. Often without being men-tioned by name, they helped to define the areas of discus-sion on the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus, for example,the identification of the Father as "power," for whichAbelard had been condemned by Bernard, was acknowl-edged as legitimate so long as it referred to the "order"or the origin of the persons in the Trinity, since theFather was the only one of the three persons who didnot come from another. The suggestion that the trinitar-ian distinctions were little more than a manner of speak-ing, connected explicitly with Roscellinus but present alsoin the thought of other critics, was met with the objectionthat ancient heretics had similarly dismissed the issues inthe dogma of the Trinity as a question merely of names.The references were often anonymous because "the doc-trines being refuted were not the specific property" of anyone party, even though the doctrines of Gilbert de LaPorree were, perhaps more often than not, the explicitobject of the anathema. Gilbert's effort to draw a dis-tinction between "that by which the Father is God" and"that by which the Father is Father" was rejected, as washis distinction between "that which is God" and "thatwhich is in God." Despite its association with Roscellinusthe identification of the three hypostases as "three re-alities" could be legitimate, so long as it was rememberedthat "they are one and the same supreme reality," for

The Reintegration of the Catholic tradition 279

Augustine had spoken of Father, Son, and Holy Spiritas "realities" in the plural and yet in the singular. PeterLombard's most consistent response to Gilbert's questionswas to refer, usually by means of a quotation from Hilary,to the transcendence and incomprehensibility of truthabout God. His commentators defended his appeal toHilary and identified Gilbert as the object of his criticism,and the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 took the unusualstep of declaring: "We believe and confess with Peter[Lombard]" on trinitarian questions raised by Gilbert deLa Porree and by Joachim of Fiore (in a book since lost).

At least partly because of these challenges but alsobecause of an intensified study of the catholic tradition,the thirteenth century came to a deepened awareness ofthe centrality of the doctrine of the Trinity as (togetherwith its corollary, the doctrine of the incarnation) thefundamental teaching of the Christian faith. Richard ofSaint-Victor called "the most sacred and most secret mys-tery of the Trinity" "the supreme article of our faith."Peter Lombard, quoting Augustine, declared that "theTrinity is the one and only true God." Consequently, thecentral message of biblical religion, whether in the OldTestament or in the New, which was the oneness of God asconfessed in the Shema, was dependent for Christians onthe confession of the Trinity, since "without faith inthe Trinity the faith in one God is not complete, becausethe Trinity is the one God." Thomas Aquinas summarizedthis trinitarian confession. "The recognition of the Trinityin unity," he affirmed, "is the fruit and the goal of ourentire life." The result of his reappropriation of Augus-tine and the catholic tradition on the doctrine of theTrinity was a series of articles in the Summa Theologicathat were "unrivalled as precise statements of the Chris-tian faith." For his own system as well as for the reintegra-tion of the tradition, the dogma of the Trinity becamedeterminative, so that "the doctrine of the Trinity is thekey to the whole theology of the Sum-ma."

Two specific issues for which Thomas Aquinas drewupon Augustine to achieve this fuller statement of thetrinitarian faith were the Filioque and the image of God.Among the various objections of Eastern theologians tothe Latin idea of Filioque, none was more sensitive thanthe charge that by introducing the notion of a processionof the Holy Spirit from the Son as well as from the Father


the West was making the Son a second "source" or"principle" or "cause" within the Trinity and was therebyjeopardizing the unity of the Godhead. It did not helpmatters that so influential a Western expositor of thedoctrine of the Trinity as Hilary of Poitiers could bequoted in evidence of the charge, for he had said that theHoly Spirit proceeded "from the Father and the Son ashis authors [(a) Patre et Filio auctoribus]." On the basisof Hilary's formula some thirteenth-century theologianswere saying that the Father and the Son were both"spirators" of the Holy Spirit, and Thomas himself wasinitially willing, perhaps because of Albertus Magnus, toassert that the Father and the Son "are spirating and arespirators." Eventually he altered this position and, follow-ing a suggestion made also by Alan of Lille, found onlythe participle acceptable, not the noun: "The Father andthe Son are two spirating . . . , but not two spirators."

It was from Augustine that Thomas drew this defenseof the Filioque against the accusation of teaching twoprinciples in the Godhead. In his reply to a series of ob-jections containing the quotation from Hilary, he quoted,though not quite verbatim, what "Augustine says, thatthe Father and the Son are not two principles, but oneprinciple of the Holy Spirit." Augustine's On the Trinitywas also the source of the axiom, quoted by others as well,"The Father is the principle of the entire Godhead,"which formed the basis for Thomas's discussion of theappropriateness of referring to the Father, and only to theFather, as "principle." The same axiom then appearedagain in a later question, in which Thomas identified thesense in which it was true that the Father was the princi-ple both of the Son and of the Holy Spirit by begettingthe former and spirating the latter. As part of his counter-attack against the East, Thomas, like Alexander of Hales,was also able to point out an imprecision in Greek trini-tarian terminology as compared with that of Augustine."The Greeks use the noun 'cause' and the noun 'principle'indiscriminately in speaking of God, whereas Latin theo-logians do not use the noun 'cause,' but only the noun'principle.'" The reason was that "cause," if applied tothe relation between the Father and the Son, could notavoid the taint of subordinationism.

The thought of Augustine was also the source forAquinas's teaching that the image of God, according to


which man had been created, was the image of the Trinity.The exegesis of the plural in Genesis 1:26, "Let us makeman in our image, after our likeness," in the light of theorthodox doctrine of the Trinity was a speculative ideaof far-reaching "historical importance." It was a universalpatristic consensus among both Latins and Greeks that theplural was a reference to the Trinity, but it has beenpointed out "that among Greek Christian writers there isno precedent to be found for the trinitarian analogies ofAugustine." Thomas sought to reflect the consensus whenhe quoted John of Damascus and Gregory of Nyssa asauthorities on the image of God, following this with aquotation from Hilary to the effect that man had beencreated "after the common image" of Father, Son, andHoly Spirit, namely, their common deity, which wassingle, rather than after the image of their distinctness,which was trine. Therefore the trinitarian interpretationof the image of God, as distinct from the standard trini-tarian interpretation of the creation narrative itself, wasdependent on Augustine, who had almost single-handedlyturned Western theology in this direction.

In Thomas's interpretation of the image of God, therewere many passages from Augustine to be considered,more, in fact, than from all other Christian writers puttogether. These passages dealt with almost all the variousaspects of the image of God. Although Thomas gave littleor no attention to the place of the doctrine of creationafter the image of God as an issue between Augustineand his Pelagian opponents, he did comment on Augus-tine's interpretations of the creation story. There was onlyone reference to Augustine's City of God, not the familiarpassage in the twelfth book in which Augustine hadsummarized the general teaching of the church on creationafter the image of God, but a less common passage in theeleventh book, in which Augustine had made explicit hischaracteristic idea that "we recognize in ourselves theimage of God, that is, of the supreme Trinity," and thattherefore there was a trinity in the image, one of beingwhat we are, of knowing what we are, and of loving whatwe are. An examination of the many quotations on thissubject from Augustine's On the Trinity in Thomas'sdiscussion of the image, some of which had appeared inPeter Lombard and in Alexander of Hales, suggests thathe put his reading of this treatise to several uses, the most


typically Augustinian of which was "the psychologicaldoctrine of the Trinity" as "mind, knowledge, and love" oras "memory, understanding, and will."

Our account of the place of the doctrine of the Trinityin the twelfth and thirteenth centuries would not becomplete without at least some attention to the mannerin which "the number three sometimes inspires in PeterLombard ingenious combinations out of which there risecurrents of high spirituality." This, too, was a way of ap-propriating the Augustinian tradition, where "numbers. . . exist apart, a kind of galaxy in the mind's firmament."Lombard manipulated threes of all kinds in his sermons,even to the point of using the warning of the New Testa-ment about "the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyesand the pride of life" as the basis for a discussion of atrinity of evil, corresponding to the Augustinian trinityof "memory, understanding, and love." "Therefore thetempter has proposed three things," he concluded, "sothat he might by three devices separate from God a manwho clung to God in three ways; thus he who by a trinitywas similar to the Trinity would by a trinity become dis-similar to it." Various of the commentators on the Lom-bard engaged in such numerological speculations inspiredby the doctrine of the Trinity, but it would seem that fornone of them were such trinitarian discussions as centralas they were for Bonaventure.

"Since every science," Bonaventure wrote, "and particu-larly [though not only] the science contained in the HolyScriptures, is concerned with the Trinity before all else,every science must necessarily present some trace of thissame Trinity." In his treatise, The Reduction of the Artsto Theology, Bonaventure applied this trinitarian methodto the several fields of study. His Collations on the Hex-aemeron not only followed the patristic consensus in find-ing evidence for the Trinity in the creation story ofGenesis and other passages of the Old Testament, but itsvery outline and method of presentation went throughone natural trinity after another, with trinities within trin-ities, all as signs of the divine Trinity; even the three or-ders in the church—laymen, prelates, and contemplatives—corresponded to the three persons of the Trinity. Thechapters on the Trinity in Bonaventure's Breviloquiumwere an adaptation of the dogma in the technical vocabu-lary of scholastic theology. Perhaps the supreme instance


of this trinitarian tendency was his treatise On the Three-fold Way, where, following the lead of Peter Lombardand Richard of Saint-Victor, he even had to formulate theresults of the fall of Adam as "guilt incurred, grace wasted,and glory lost," and where he urged that "because oforiginal sin, three things, namely, sorrow, gratitude, andconformity, are necessary requirements for any person,"while before the fall only the latter two had been needed.Bonaventure's idea of "the threefold way" was based on atrinitarian interpretation of the traditional steps of mysti-cal ascent—purgation, illumination, and union—whichwere then spun out in further series of triplets.

Although there were other examples of numerology inBonaventure, as there had been in Augustine, which werenot directly related to the Trinity, his generalized trini-tarianism was more than this. It was, rather, the funda-mental structure or "order" of created as well as of un-created reality. It would not be going too far to say thatBonaventure, on the basis of Augustine, had developed atrinitarian ontology, according to which there was a"triple existence of [created] things: existence in physi-cal reality, in the mind, and in the 'eternal art' " or wisdomof God. In setting forth such a trinitarian ontology, Bona-venture was continuing the thought of Augustine, whohad translated the doctrine of the Trinity from the liturgi-cal and the dogmatic understanding of the Creator to themetaphysical and the psychological understanding of thecreature. Although this Augustinian tour de force hadbeen the basis for the doctrine of the image of God inAquinas, it does seem that in this respect as in othersBonaventure's "Augustinian traditionalism" went furtherthan Thomas was willing to go. Bonaventure carried hisidentification of the created trinities throughout theuniverse into "manifest" evidences of the uncreatedTrinity, and he argued from the trinity in the mind to theTrinity in God (and not merely from the divine Trinityto a human trinity) with a confidence in the analogy thatwent even beyond that of Augustine, although he alsoasserted that, strictly speaking, the unaided mind couldnot know "the Trinity of persons, but only the trinity ofunity, truth, and goodness as attributes [appropriata]."Such a reintegration of the catholic tradition, however,was incomplete and indefensible without a careful analy-sis of the method of argument and proof. The relation be-


tween proof from tradition and proof from reason, andtherefore the relation between believing and knowing,was an indispensable part of the restatement of Augustin-ian theology.

Natural Theology and the Scholastic Method

The attempt of certain Christian thinkers to prove thedogma of the Trinity by natural reason brought thequestion of the method of theology into the center of at-tention, including its relation to the method of philosophy.Because our concern here is not with scholastic philoso-phy, but only with scholastic theology, and even withthis only as a statement of what the church believed,taught, and confessed, the problem of theological methodis pertinent to our narrative only as it affected thecontent of that statement, not as it affected its forms.The search for a valid method of stating Christian doctrinewas also an issue in the reintegration of the catholic tradi-tion through the repossession of the church fathers, espe-cially of Augustine. For, as Abelard's review of the con-tradictions in the tradition had suggested and as thecautionary example of John Scotus Erigena had alreadyshown, one could sometimes resolve such contradictionsby transposing them into the province of philosophicaldiscourse. Method, in this way, was a matter of vitaldoctrinal concern.

The doctrinal basis for a method that sought to provethe Trinity by reason was a proposition shared even bythose who rejected such an attempt, namely, that manhad been created after the image of the Trinity. Morefundamental was the belief in creation after the image ofGod as such, which provided the basis for the effort toprove the existence of God, but not the doctrine of theTrinity. But the doctrine of the image of God—be itthe image of the Trinity or, more generally, the image ofthe one God in the human mind—had an even morefundamental doctrinal basis, which was essential to theChristian case for the use of rational demonstration inthe treatment of the articles of faith. This was the familiarAugustinian distinction between nature and grace. Foronly if the state of nature, after the fall and despite thefall, had retained some of its integrity and rationality,could it proceed, by rational steps and without the aid ofrevelation, to demonstrate the reality and the oneness of

Natural Theology and the Scholastic Method 285

God. Conversely, only if the state of nature were nowdevoid of the superadded gift of grace, could one contend,on Christian grounds, that certain mysteries of the faith,notably the Trinity and the incarnation, were beyond thereach of nature and of reason.

In clear recognition of these connections, ThomasAquinas, in the very first question of the Summa Theo-logica, stated the entire rationale for the use of proofs as atheological enterprise, as distinct from his clarificationselsewhere, for example in his commentaries on Aristotle,of the philosophical significance of such proofs. Havinglaid down the axiom that when treating of the doctrineof God "we make use of his effects, either of nature or ofgrace, rather than of a definition," he went on to takeup the question of "whether sacred doctrine proceedsby argument." The answer to the question required aprecise distinction between the method of "sacred doctrine["theology" in the modern sense]" and the methods ap-propriate to other sciences. In the other sciences the argu-ment from authority was the weakest form of proof; buthere it was the strongest of all, because it argued not fromhuman reason but from divine revelation. Therefore thewarnings of the church fathers against relying on argu-ments in support of faith were meant to rule out argumen-tation that would seek to prove the articles of faith fromreason, but an argumentation that proceeded from thearticles of faith to their necessary corollaries was legiti-mate. As for the use of argument "to confute those whocontradict" the faith, this was valid if it argued on thebasis of the articles of faith against false Christians, butconfined itself to the refutation of false arguments, avoid-ing proof, against those who did not accept the Christianrevelation at all.

Thomas Aquinas justified this determination of theo-logical method by appealing, beyond the principles ofepistemology, to the doctrines of creation and redemptionand thus to the relation between nature and grace. "Sincegrace does not abolish nature, but completes it," heasserted, it followed that "natural reason should ministerto faith, just as the natural inclination of the will minis-ters to the love [created by grace]." The possibilities aswell as the limitations of rational argument in sacreddoctrine were derived from the axiom that grace did notabolish nature, but completed it. Nature and grace were


not identical; else the same methods of proof wouldobtain in both. Nor were they equal, for nature withoutgrace was imperfect, and a knowledge based only on na-ture and on reason was inadequate in matters of salvationand revelation; therefore "Sacred Scripture has no sciencethat is superior to it." Nor, on the other hand, were na-ture and grace antithetical, but grace affirmed and sus-tained nature even as it completed and perfected it; hence,"since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since thecontrary of a truth can never be demonstrated," the de-fense of the faith could and should resort to rational argu-ments in confutation of objections that were raised againstthe articles of faith. Only by a correct demarcation ofthe scope and territory of both nature and grace could therespective functions of reason and of revelation and theuse of each of these in theology be defined.

This way of discriminating between reason and revela-tion on the basis of the relation between nature and gracewas the culmination in the thirteenth century of a processgoing back to the beginning of the twelfth century, whenthe question of whether or not the truth of the doctrine ofthe Trinity was subject to rational proof gained the at-tention of theologians. Apparently alluding to Abelard'sexploration of this question, Peter Lombard, in hisexegesis of the standard passage of Scripture on thenatural knowledge of God, cited the opinion of those whotook "the invisible things" in that passage to refer to theFather, "virtue" to refer to the Son, and "divinity" torefer to the Holy Spirit, all as part of what had been"understood through the things that have been made." Hisreply was that the heathen philosophers "did not have,and could not have had, this distinction [between thepersons] of the supreme Trinity, which the catholic faithprofesses, without the teaching [of the church] or therevelation of an inner inspiration." (Elsewhere he ex-plained that inspiration could take place either "throughdreams and visions" or "by the impulse of the HolySpirit alone, without any external means.") He took thisreply over almost verbatim into his Sentences. The inter-pretation of Romans 1:20 as proof for a natural knowl-edge of the Trinity, indeed the very effort to assert sucha knowledge, was rejected by his contemporaries as well,but the presence of this discussion in the Sentences pro-vided the occasion for continuing study of it, particularly


because the trinitarian definition of the image of God,when combined with the belief that the image had notbeen lost in the fall, could be taken to indicate that anatural knowledge also of this mystery was still possible.As we have noted, Bonaventure seems to have come closeto positing such a possibility, at least in some passages ofThe Journey of the Mind to God.

In his Commentary on the Sentences, on the other hand,he denied that it was possible to rise from a knowledgeof creatures to a knowledge of the Trinity of persons inthe Godhead. On the basis of Peter Lombard, ThomasAquinas rejected the suggestion that the heathen philoso-phers could have known the Trinity by the use of naturalreason; and, noting the passages from Richard of Saint-Victor that appeared to be affirming such a natural knowl-edge of the Trinity, he declared that "if the statement ofRichard is taken in a universal way to say that everythingtrue can be proven by reason, it is obviously false," al-though it could be interpreted differently. He spoke outeven more strongly in the Summa Theologica, chargingthat the attempt to prove the Trinity by reason detractedfrom the faith by diminishing the dignity of faith and bysubjecting it to the ridicule of its despisers. For "it isimpossible to attain to the knowledge of the Trinity bynatural reason." If it were possible, the distinction be-tween nature and grace would be meaningless, for onlyby grace and revelation could man know those thingsabout God that did not pertain to him as "the principleof all things." The effort of Alexander of Hales to asserta natural proof for the doctrine of the Trinity on the basisof the natural knowledge of the goodness of God wasalso misguided, according to Thomas, for it failed to dis-tinguish with sufficient precision between nature andgrace. "The supreme goodness of God," Aquinas main-tained, "as we understand it now through its effects [increation}, can be understood without the Trinity of per-sons," for this was in the realm of nature; "but as under-stood in itself, and as seen by the blessed, it cannot beunderstood without the Trinity of persons," for this wasin the realm of grace.

By nature, then, one could know the existence of God,and even the supreme goodness of God. The words ofRomans 1:20, whose application to the doctrine of theTrinity was rejected as false, were the first sentence of


the first chapter of the first book of the Sentences of Peterof Poitiers, where they were paraphrased to mean that"when man sees that this machine of the world, so greatand spacious, could not have been made by some othercreature, he understands that it was Another who pro-duced this beautiful and spacious work, and thus, withthe guidance- of reason, he comprehends God very welland very surely." Peter Lombard's exegesis of the passagein his own Sentences identified two factors that helpedin this process of understanding: "[human} nature, whichwas rational; and the works of God." God had made arational creature that would be able by its reason to under-stand him as the Summum Bonum and to love him. Man'sreason was that which he did not have in common withthe beasts but did have in common with the angels. As aconsequence of the fall of Adam, man lost his holinessand thus his freedom from sin; but he did not lose hisrationality and his freedom to act without necessity. Forthe first of these was "by grace," but the second was "bynature." In this sense it was even possible to say that man"by nature wills the good." Reason was able to con-clude from the creation that there was a Creator, becausereason belonged to nature, not to grace, and, although"deformed," continued after the fall.

On the basis of Peter Lombard, theologians of thethirteenth century continued and developed the argumentsfrom Christian doctrine for the validity of a natural theol-ogy. The distinction between nature and grace impliedthat even "rightness [rectitudo]," which had been centralin the soteriology of Anselm, was "of two kinds, namely,that which is by nature and that which is by grace." Whenapplied to the question of a knowledge of God based oncreation, natural rightness implied the use of reason todemonstrate the existence of God. For although it wastrue that "a corrupted reason is not reason" to the extentthat it was corrupted, still it also remained true that "thatwhich is natural is not abolished as a result of sin," and"therefore the spark of reason is not extinguished as aresult of sin." Even after the fall, human reason "bothincludes and is more than that part of the mind in whichthe image [of God] consists." As a consequence of thefall, however, the knowledge of God through his creation,which had been "as though in a mirror clearly," had nowbecome "in a mirror dimly"; yet as far as it went, it was


valid. Such knowledge or demonstration of the existenceof God could not comprehend God as he was in himself,because demonstration dealt either with sense experienceor with understanding, neither of which was capable ofgrasping a God who had no body and no form, but whowas characterized most fully in the self-definition: "I amwho I am."

That self-definition from Exodus 3:14, in combinationwith the standard proof text for natural theology fromRomans 1:20, provided Thomas Aquinas with the neces-sary biblical support for undertaking to prove the exis-tence of God by reason. Hence it was by the authority ofrevelation that the theologian proceeded to argue evenapart from revelation that God could be known from hiscreation. First, what "the apostle says, 'The invisible thingsof [God] are clearly seen, being understood through thethings that have been made' " was cited to show that theexistence of God could be known and proved "from thoseof his effects that are known to us." Then the word spoken"in the person of God" to Moses became the ground forthe "five ways" by which Thomas, with the aid of Aris-totle, proved the existence of God. For "since the name ofhis God was 'I am,' any Christian philosopher had toposit 'I am' as his first principle and supreme cause of allthings, even in philosophy," and therefore "his philo-sophical first principle had to be one with his religiousfirst principle." The equation of the God of Abraham,Isaac, and Jacob with the first principle of being per-mitted the theologian, charged as he was with the taskof expounding the doctrinal tradition, to engage also inthe philosophical enterprise of measuring the capacity ofreason to establish the truth of the divine being; and inthis sense he was obliged to state a natural theology.

The alternative to such an equation of the philosophicalfirst principle with the religious first principle was a doc-trine of double truth, by which something could be truetheologically and false philosophically or vice versa. Be-lieving (mistakenly, as it now seems) that some of hiscontemporaries were espousing such a doctrine, Thomascondemned a position that would "necessarily concludeby reason" that one thing was true, but "firmly hold theopposite by faith." A few years after Thomas's death, thesethinkers were condemned by the bishop of Paris for pro-ceeding in their philosophizing "as though there were


two contradictory truths and as though there were in thesayings of the accursed heathen a truth that is contraryto the truth of Holy Scripture." The object of these con-demnations was the effort of several thirteenth-centuryChristians, notably Siger of Brabant and Boetius of Dacia,to adapt to the purposes of Christian thought the inter-pretations of Aristotle that had been created by thetwelfth-century Muslim philosopher Averroes (Ibn-Rushd), who was understood to have preserved his Islamicorthodoxy by means of a theory of double truth. Since itwas through Latin translations of Arabic translations ofthe Greek original that many of Aristotle's writings cameto be known in the Western church during the thirteenthcentury, together with the commentaries of Averroes andother Muslim thinkers, it became necessary, for the pur-poses of the theological use of Aristotle, to disengage histhought from the accretions of "Averroism" and to pro-duce translations of his works directly from the Greek.In the process Averroes was condemned, along with hisChristian followers, but Aristotle was exonerated ofthe guilt by association that had attached itself to hisphilosophy.

Whatever these actions may have meant philosophi-cally, the condemnation of Averroism and the exonerationof Aristotelianism were both direct corollaries of thetheological principle that "grace does not abolish nature,but completes it." It followed from this principle that al-though "the truth of nature" and "the truth of faith"were not coextensive, they did stand in the kind of con-tinuity that enabled the truth of nature to be true as far asit went. There could not be a contradiction between onekind of truth and another; for if there were, grace wouldnot be able to complete nature, but would have to destroyand replace it. The tension between the two kinds of truthbecame especially troublesome in the case of those doc-trines on which Scripture and Aristotle had both spokenexplicitly but in opposite ways. Of these, the eternity ofthe world was perhaps the most serious; for "ThomasAquinas recognized that Aristotle had advanced the doc-trine that neither the world nor time had a beginning, buthe defended Aristotle against the contemporary Augus-tinians on the grounds that no demonstrative reasons areconclusive for or against the eternity of the world, andcreation is an article of faith." This did not imply that


the eternity of the world was true philosophically whilecreation ex nihilo was true theologically, but rather thatcreation ex nihilo could be known only by revelation andthat therefore the question lay beyond the competence ofreason and of philosophy to decide. Reason and philoso-phy were competent to conclude from the order andmotion of the universe that there was a First Cause and"an unmoved Mover. Revelation did not abolish this con-clusion, but completed it by disclosing that the FirstCause was in fact the Trinity of Father, Son, and HolySpirit, and that the universe had not existed forever, buthad, together with time itself, come into being ex nihilo.

The most influential presentation of this doctrine ofthe relation between reason and revelation was probablynot that of any of the theologians with whom we havebeen dealing, but that of Dante Alighieri. Although hisepitaph acclaimed him as "Dante the theologian, not lack-ing in any doctrine," it is evident that this was "a poeticaleulogy," for he was not a theologian in the technical sense.On the other hand, although "the Thomism of Dante isan exploded myth," it is no less evident that he "was athome in the intellectual world of the Latin Middle Ages,"so that it is quite proper to speak of the "Augustinism" ofDante. The identification of the role of Vergil in theDivine Comedy as, among other things, that of reasonleading to revelation and of nature being completed butnot abolished by grace is, despite the objections of someDante scholars, warranted by the words of the poem aswell as by its very structure. "I can speak to you," Dantehad Vergil say, "only as far as reason sees; beyond that,you must wait for Beatrice, for that is the business offaith [opra di fede]." In that realm the natural reasonrepresented by Vergil was no longer able to be of service,since he could "see no further"; and only the grace ofrevelation, represented, at least in part, by Beatrice, couldsuffice. The messianism of the Fourth Eclogue qualifiedVergil to be the one through whom the Roman poetStatius had been converted to Christianity. Yet Vergilhimself admitted that he had lived in an age of idolatry,and that he had not known and worshiped the true God"as was due him." Having been present in the infernoat the time of the harrowing of hell, he had witnessed thevictory of Christ; it was perhaps for that reason thatVergil was able to quote the familiar hymn of Venantius


Fortunatus about the "banner" of the cross. But "doctrinalnecessity" required that Vergil, the spokesman for thecapacities of nature at their highest, take leave of the poetwith no further "word or sign" when they came to thegates of Paradise. And that doctrinal necessity was thenecessity that came from the doctrine of the relation be-tween nature and grace; for Dante "knew, having derivedthe notion from St. Thomas, whose fundamental thesis itis, that the peculiar effect of grace is not to vindicatenature or to suppress it, but to perfect it."

That Thomistic—and basically Augustinian—thesiswas to come under attack from several directions duringthe centuries that followed the period being covered inthis volume. In its criticism of scholastic theology forbeing too generous toward nature and reason, the theol-ogy of the sixteenth-century Reformers sometimes threat-ened to denigrate not only reason and philosophy, butnature and creation itself, and to verge on determinismand dualism. Grace did not abolish nature, nor did itcomplete nature; it seemed to replace nature with a "newcreation" that was radically discontinuous with the oldcreation. "Magisterial Reformers" such as Luther andCalvin resisted this tendency, but in the writings of theirfollowers (and sometimes in their own writings) itcontinued to appear. Most of the time, however, intellec-tual history since the end of the thirteenth century hasbeen dominated by the opposite emphasis: the exaltationof nature over grace. If Thomas and Bonaventure arguedthat nature needed grace to be complete and could notattain perfection by its own powers, the more recent cham-pions of nature found grace to be less and less necessaryfor the perfection—or, at any rate, for the progress towardperfection—of man in his natural state. In the same way,the corollary of the scholastic hierarchy of nature andgrace, which was the hierarchy of reason and revelation,was increasingly unacceptable to those who found that,despite the warnings of the scholastics, unaided reasoncould and did lead to ultimate truth about man andthe universe, or at least to as much of it as was needed;the truths of revelation, on the other hand, diminishedin importance when the questions to which they wereintended to be answers lost their hold on human mindsand hearts. For the scholastics of the twelfth and thir-teenth centuries, natural theology was a necessary task

The Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies 293

for church theology to engage in, but for some of the ra-tionalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it wasthe only task and thus it became a substitute for churchtheology.

The Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies

Two areas of doctrine that are conventionally associatedwith the thirteenth century are angels and the church.Even without the help of "the hoary canard about medie-val disputation being chiefly concerned with the numberof angelic occupants of the point of a pin," for whichthere is no documentation in the texts, the impression iswidespread that during this period angelology establisheditself as a central topic of official church teaching. Simi-larly, the institutional dominance of the church over theculture of the thirteenth century has seemed to indicatethat ecclesiology occupied a prominent place in the doc-trinal thinking of the time. There is in fact little saidabout either doctrine in the pronouncements of what thechurch believed, taught, and confessed, even though thespeculative systems of theologians and philosophers diddeal extensively with the first and the administrativestatements and actions of prelates and popes did givevoice to an explicit understanding of the second.

The two doctrines were in some ways closely related,for both of them were based on a hierarchical definitionof reality. The parallel between the celestial hierarchy andthe ecclesiastical hierarchy had achieved classic formula-tion in the mystical theology of Pseudo-Dionysius. Afterquoting various definitions of "hierarchy" from Dionysius,Bonaventure proposed a definition that would "apply notonly to the angelic hierarchy, but also to the ecclesiasticalor human hierarchy," namely: "A hierarchy is an orderedpower of sacred and rational realities, which preserves forthose who are subordinate [in the hierarchy] their properauthority [over others]." There was "a concordance ofhierarchies." It is not surprising, in the light of his trini-tarianism, that for him any hierarchy had to be threefoldin its structure. Commenting on these same texts from thefirst book of The Celestial Hierarchy by Dionysius,Thomas Aquinas also set forth a generalized view ofhierarchy, which was based "upon a hierarchical view ofreality as proceeding from the divine goodness in orderlyand graded fashion." In his commentary on the Sentences


and again in the Summa he quoted with approval (as didBonaventure) the principle of Dionysius that the ecclesi-astical hierarchy was modeled after the celestial, eventhough he disapproved of some of the uses to which thatprinciple was being put. Nor was hierarchy confined toangels and the church, for "the entire universe" wasordered hierarchically. This was a corollary of the funda-mental tenet discussed earlier, that grace did not abolishnature but completed it, which implied a "hierarchizationof grace over nature."

In this hierarchical universe, the celestial hierarchy ofangels, who "move and are moved within a hierarchicalorder," held a special place. According to Thomas, theperfection of such a universe required that between aCreator who was pure spirit and a creature who was com-pounded of body and spirit there should be a creaturewho was pure spirit; according to Bonaventure, the Cre-ator made not only physical nature, but also that naturewhich was "closest to his own, the spiritual and immate-rial." Despite the differences between a "linear" view ofthis hierarchy in Aquinas and a "more complicated" viewin Bonaventure, therefore, they were agreed on the placeof the angelic hierarchy within the hierarchical universe.Although there were some theologians who held that "theorders of angels were not distinguished this way from thebeginning of their creation," it became the prevalent viewto hold that the distinction between the orders of angelswas by nature as well as by grace; yet it remained "princi-pally by grace" among the angels, while within the churchsuch a distinction was entirely by grace. The participationof the angels in divine grace made them a proper topic inChristian doctrine. "There are many other questions aboutthis spiritual nature, from which the curiosity of the hu-man mind cannot manage to find rest"; but most of thesequestions, for example, the angels' means of locomotionor even their mode of cognition, were not articles of faith,any more than similar questions about human beingswould be, but at most were inferences drawn from articlesof faith. Our attention here is directed only to questionsthat pertained directly to the creed of the church and toits message of creation and salvation.

The two most important questions of this kind withreference to the angels were the creation of the evil angelsand the confirmation of the good angels. The Christian


doctrine of creation, as it had been stated by the earliestspokesmen for the church against classical thought, re-jected the idea that the world or matter or time had alwaysexisted. This assertion of creation ex nihilo could not beestablished by reason, but the scholastics made it a funda-mental part of their doctrine of angels. For it was contraryto the catholic faith to teach, as some philosophers had,that spiritual beings such as angels had always existed,since "the catholic faith maintains the assertion that theybegan to exist after they had previously not existed." Tobe sure, there was no mention of the angels in the creationnarratives of the Book of Genesis, which could be takento mean that they did not belong to the order of creatures.But the comprehensive term "heaven and earth" includedthem together with all other temporal reality, since "thecatholic faith holds without doubting that God alone,Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is from eternity." Becauseof the silence of Genesis, there was some question aboutwhen the angels had been created, especially since some ofthe Greek fathers had taught that the angels were madebefore the physical world. Bonaventure identified fourcreatures—time, matter, the empyrean heaven, and theangelic nature—as the first among all things to have beencreated; Aquinas, despite his regard for the Greek patristictradition, preferred to hold that the angels had not beencreated before the physical world.

Such questions as these about the creation of the angelsprovided the backdrop for the consideration of the crea-tion of the devil and the other angels who fell, an issuemade even more vital by the recrudescence of various kindsof cosmological dualism. In this consideration, as distinctfrom some other questions of angelology, the faith ofthe church definitely was at stake, so that both Bonaven-ture and Thomas Aquinas, who elsewhere in the discus-sion of angels spoke about "the more prevalent" or "themore reasonable" or "the more probable" opinion, resortedhere to the word "heretical." Yet, by the authority ofChrist himself, the devil had been "a murderer from thebeginning." If this was the same beginning spoken of inGenesis, the conclusion seemed to be that the devil hadbeen created evil. Augustine appeared to be drawing thatvery conclusion from the passage when he said that "itis not groundless to suppose that the devil fell by pridefrom the beginning of time and never lived in peace and


blessedness with the holy angels, but apostatized from hisCreator at the very outset of his creation." "By a veryanalytic procedure and with a very precise terminology,"Peter Lombard and Peter of Poitiers both cited this ex-planation, but went on to show, in the words of the latter,that the words of Christ in John 8:44 had meant "fromthe beginning of time, that is, after the beginning" ofcreation referred to in the opening words of the Bible.Hugh of Saint-Victor and Bonaventure, quoting the Au-gustinian and anti-Manichean axiom that "the supremelygood First Principle does not make anything that is notgood," concluded that all the angels, including the onesthat fell, must have been created good. Supported by a ref-erence to Albertus Magnus and other authorities, Thomasasserted: "It is clear that the sin of the [fallen] angel wasan act subsequent to his creation." Bonaventure, too,posited an interval, albeit "a very brief interval [morula},"between creation and fall. No one who wanted to hold tothe catholic faith could suggest that anything created byGod had been created evil, for "God saw everything thathe had made, and behold, it was very good." Alluding tothese words of the creation story, the Fourth LateranCouncil reaffirmed the doctrine that orthodoxy had beendefending against dualism since the conflicts with Gnos-ticism and Manicheism: "The devil and the other demonswere created naturally good by God, but they became evilby their own doing."

But if all the angels were created good and if some ofthem fell, it followed, according to Hugh of Saint-Victor,that their "goodness, righteousness, and blessedness wereof the kind that nature received as it was beginning, notof the kind that it itself achieved or that it merited bythe achieving." They were sinless and holy, not perfect,since perfection belonged to the completion and con-summation of a creature, not to its beginning. Were thenthe angels, including those that eventually fell, createdwith grace? This was a question on which orthodoxtheologians could disagree, and did. It was, Aquinas con-ceded, "the more prevalent" opinion that the angels had,to use the Augustinian terms, received the "natural en-dowment" but not the "superadded gift." Alexander ofHales thought that "it seems better to say that [the apos-tate angel] never had that grace which makes one pleas-ing to God [gratia gratum faciens]." In this interpretation


of the original state of the angels Hugh of Saint-Victorand Alexander of Hales were joined by Bonaventure, whoidentified it as "the more prevalent" view and who ac-cepted it as "the more probable" one. Although thisopinion was "more prevalent," the opinion that the angelswere created with grace was, according to Thomas, "moretrue," because "it harmonizes more completely with theopinion that maintains that at the beginning of creationall things were distinguished according to species"—anopinion that did have "more authorities of the saints" insupport of it. Once again, he was appealing from an ex-plicit statement in the tradition to the implications of themain body of the tradition. In the Summa he reiteratedthis opinion, supporting it from the relation betweennature and grace and arguing that "sanctifying gracestands in the same relation to blessedness as the seedlikeform does to the natural effect in the order of nature,"where God had created the separate species as "seedlikeforms."

The dispute over the presence of grace in the angels attheir creation was closely related to an idea for whichthere was no explicit biblical warrant but such wide-spread support in the catholic tradition and such theologi-cal and even pastoral necessity that it was to survive inProtestant dogmaticians who claimed to rely on Scripturealone: the confirmation of the good angels after the fallof the evil angels. A major source of this idea was thebelief in guardian angels, in support of which theologiansquoted the saying of Jesus that "in heaven [children's]angels always behold the face of my Father who is inheaven," together with Jerome's comment: "Great is thedignity of souls, for each one to have an angel assignedto guard it from its birth." Honorius of Autun had sys-tematized the view of individual guardian angels, whichseems to have been deeply rooted in piety and devotion.Even before the fall of Adam and Eve angels had beengiven this assignment. But after the fall of Adam and Eve,preceded and brought on as it had been by the fall of theapostate angels, the guardianship of the angels over theindividual soul required that "those angels who turnedtoward [God after the fall of the evil angels] were atonce confirmed in their choice through grace and glory,"since otherwise the angel and the soul it was guardingwould be even more vulnerable. The confirmation was


not an act of the "operating grace" of God, by which heworked on men to convert them from sin to grace, butof his "cooperating grace," by which he worked with menafter their conversion. Although the confirmed angels, likethe saints in glory, were not able to sin (non posse pec-care), they did not lose the essence of free choice thereby,any more than the saints—or, for that matter, God him-self—did.

As the belief in guardian angels and the idea of the con-firmation of the good angels suggest, much of the doctrineof angels—including, according to Hugh of Saint-Victorand Peter Lombard, the names of the various angelicranks—was "on our account." Likewise, the celestial hier-archy was, according to Dionysius, the model after whichthe ecclesiastical hierarchy had been patterned. Thereforein Bonaventure's angelology the illumination of the Trin-ity passed successively through the angelic hierarchies,which consisted of three hierarchies of three memberseach, and "through all of them to the ecclesiastical" hier-archy. In spite of the parallel, however, the scholastictheologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whodiscoursed so extensively about the celestial hierarchy,wrote relatively little about the ecclesiastical hierarchy oreven about the nature of the church in general. Duringthese two centuries we must look not primarily to the sys-tematic theologians and summists, nor to the canonists andlawyer-popes, but to the monastic exegetes and expositorypreachers for a comprehensive doctrine of the church.Above them all, Bernard of Clairvaux, simultaneously (oralternately) a reflective mystic and an eminence grise,articulated a vision of the church that was "extremelyspiritual" and yet included its spotted actuality. Hisyounger contemporary, Joachim of Fiore, who was alsoa monastic exegete and a mystic, had his own vision of thechurch, one in which all of human history was "the pro-gressive assimilation of society to the mystical body ofChrist." The contrasts—and the affinities—between thesetwo visions of the church and of the ecclesiastical hier-archy may well be interpreted as representing the rangeof ecclesiological doctrine in this period.

The analogy of the celestial and the ecclesiastical hier-archy implied for Bernard not only a parallel betweenthe orders of "angels and archangels arranged under theirone head, who is God" and the orders of clergy and prel-


ates arranged "under one supreme pontiff," but a uniquestatus for the church as a society that "has God as itsAuthor and that derives its origin from heaven." Therewas therefore, strictly speaking, a single church of angelsand of men, which was, taken together as a unit, "thebride of Christ." It was also "the body of Christ," moreprecious to him than his own physical body. This was"the church of the elect," which, by the mystery of divinepredestination, had always existed as a reality in the mindof God. The God who governed and administered theentire universe was nevertheless especially concerned withthe well-being of this "church of the elect" as with noth-ing else in all creation. The object of this special carewas the church as a whole, "not I as an individual nor youapart from me nor someone else without both of us, butall of us at the same time." Even the saints could not enterthe church triumphant without the believers on earth. Forwhen God had "wrought salvation in the midst of theearth," this was not the salvation of "the individual soul,but of the great number of souls which he intended togather into the one church."

In such a high view of the church and of its place inthe divine scheme of things, "the unity of the Spirit inthe bond of peace" within the church was the essentialpresupposition for the salvation of any individual. If theindividual was to belong to the church "not only withoutstrife, but with grace," he must assiduously cultivate thatunity. Therefore "woe to that man who is responsible forbreaking the sweet bond of unity!" Out of the many tribesand languages of the human race this one catholic churchgathered men together into the unity of the one truefaith. Those such as Jews, heretics, and heathen, who didnot participate in this unity, did not receive the supportof the church's prayers; and when they did, as in thespecial intercessions appointed for Good Friday, thechurch still omitted from its petitions those who hadseparated themselves from its fellowship and had thereforebeen excommunicated. Yet it would be a mistake toequate the unity of the church with uniformity. Thechurch was "wrapped around with varieties" of custom,order, age, and gender. "Whether Cluniacs or Cisterciansor regular clergy or even faithful laymen [sive etiamlaici fideles}"—the church was "one out of all" of these.If "the authority of the prelates, the proper conduct


of the clergy, the discipline of the people, and the peace-ful devotion of the monks" were united amid all theirvariety, the unity of the church would be preserved. But ifthose who had just been "converted" to the monastic lifefell away or if the monks attacked the secular clergy andthe prelates for doing what they had to do in society, theunity of the church was in jeopardy.

The emphasis on catholic unity also held together the"extremely spiritual" image of the church as the bride ofChrist or the body of Christ and the institutional under-standing of the church as consisting of the pope, the pre-lates, the clergy, the monks, and "even faithful laymen."In the name of the catholic unity of the body of ChristBernard involved himself in the practical issues of theinstitutional church and the papacy. He equated "apostolicsanctions" and "the decrees of the holy fathers" with "thepractices of the holy Roman church," whose authority as"the apostolic see" was to be enforced in all the churches.The pope was "the prince of bishops, the heir of theapostles, Peter according to his authority and Christ ac-cording to his anointing." On such a question as theobservance of the nativity of the Virgin Mary and even,apparently, the doctrine of her immaculate conception, forexample, he was prepared to defer to the judgment ofRome. Yet he also warned Pope Eugenius III, in a treatiseon discipline written especially for him, that "the holychurch of Rome . . . is the mother of churches, not theirmistress," and that the pope himself was "not the lordof bishops, but one of them, in fact, a brother." Possessionand dominion over the earth belonged to God alone, andthe pope merely had the responsibility of caring for it.There were many aspects of the papacy, especially itstemporal wealth and power, in which the pope was "notthe successor of Peter, but of Constantine." The word ofthe psalm about meditating on the law of the Lord dayand night had come to refer not to the laws of the Lord,but to those of Justinian. The chief business of the popehad become litigation, not the upbuilding of the spiritualwelfare of the church.

Such criticism of the spotted actuality of the institu-tional church was not the same as the repudiation of thechurch by sectarians and heretics, for here it was a matterof "carrying on a contest against the church, even in ahostile spirit, but with a pain that is constructive." Thechurch not only deserved this kind of criticism, but needed


it. While the great threat to the primitive church had beenpersecution, the new enemy was hypocrisy and greed. "Thechurch," Bernard complained, "is filled with ambitiousmen," and he even echoed the language of the heretics inspeaking of a "den of thieves." He recognized that therewere wicked men who shared in the church's confession offaith and in the sacraments and who for such reasons asthese were called members of the church and "childrenof Jerusalem." It remained true that the church on earthwas a pilgrim church, which, though it already possessedspiritual treasures and had spiritual members, was still farfrom its goal. As such, the church, having passed through"the struggle of its laborious warfare," bore the stains andthe scars of that experience. Yet this church, so spottedand stained, was the very same reality of which the apostlespoke as "a glorious church, not having a spot or a wrinkleor anything of the kind, but holy and immaculate."

The tension between the church as an object of faithand hope and the church as an object of criticism, whichBernard manifested but did not resolve, could be resolvedby a more radical doctrine. That came in the ecclesiologyof Joachim of Fiore, who incorporated his interpretationof the institutional church and of the ecclesiastical hier-archy into an eschatology in which the nature of thechurch was to be transformed by being "resurrected, as itwere, from the grave." Like Bernard, Joachim lamentedthe present state of the church and its loss of spiritualvitality. In contrast with "the perfection of the primitivechurch," whose prelates had "begun to cross over fromvices to virtues," there stood "the church of the presenttime," to which it was appropriate to apply the words ofthe prophet about Jerusalem: "How has the faithful citybecome a harlot!" The harlot of Babylon described in theApocalypse of John, "the great city," had been identifiedby the catholic fathers as Rome—"not because of thechurch of the righteous, which carried on its pilgrimage inthe midst of [Rome], but because of the multitude ofthe reprobate, who by their wicked words blaspheme andharm the pilgrim church in their midst." From these wordsthemselves, as well as from their context, it appears thatby "Rome" Joachim may not have been referring to theancient pagan city with a minority church in its midst,but to the capital of catholic Christendom, in which thetrue church was still (or again) a minority.

Joachim's criticism of the corruption of the church was


part of a total interpretation of church history. The doc-trine of the Trinity, which provided other thinkers of thetwelfth and thirteenth centuries with a scheme of organi-zation for their view of the world, became the basis for adivision of history into three ages: "the first, in which wewere under the law; the second, in which we were undergrace; the third, which we expect very soon, under a moreample grace." The stages of church history were boundedby various notable events. The conversion of Constantine,"when the church of Peter, or rather of Christ, was es-tablished as the mistress of the whole world," closed thefirst stage; the second had endured for fourteen genera-tions; and the third was now about to close. The signs ofthe end announced in the Gospels were being fulfilled,and a new epoch would soon begin. In this third stage anew church would be born of the old church, and "theorder of clerics" would reach its consummation and itsconclusion. Stating the theme of this apocalyptic hope atthe beginning of his book The Harmony of the New andthe Old Testaments, Joachim declared: "It is our intention. . . to comprehend the end of the temporal realm, which isproperly called Babylon, and to disclose in the clearestpossible words that which is near, the birth of the church,which will take place at the same time."

The vision of a new spiritual church that was yet to bedid not invalidate the institutional church that had pre-ceded it. The older form of the church was like John theBaptist, worthy of respect even though it was beingsuperseded. "For even if, with the substitution of thethings that are new, the things that are old were to passaway, this was not as though these things had not in theirown time been instituted by God for righteousness, butrather because lesser things are to be left behind so thatmore powerful mysteries might be given to the faithfulfor their salvation." A "new [form of] religion, whichwill be altogether free and spiritual," was to replace theobsolete "ecclesiastical order, which struggles over theletter of the Gospel." As Christ rose from the dead onthe third day, so in this third age of history the churchwould be raised. What would rise, as from the grave ofthe old church, was a new "spiritual church," into whichthe true "lovers of Christ" would pass over just as someJews, those who believed in Christ, had passed over fromthe synagogue to the church; in this restored spiritual

The Vision of God 303

church all the Jews would finally be converted to Christ.With "the coming again of the Lord in the Holy Spirit,"there would come a basic change of attitude, for in thespiritual church "men will cease being zealous for thoseinstitutions that have been established temporarily [protempore et ad tempus]." Thus there would have to arise"a new leader, a universal pontiff of the new Jerusalem,"which would seem to mean quite explicitly "that thepapacy in the form it has had hitherto cannot continueand cannot even provide from within itself the spiritualleaders of the future." Even the sacraments of the churchwould be replaced, just as they in their turn had replacedthe observances of the Old Testament. The institutionalchurch would be transformed into the spiritual church,and the kingdoms of this world would yield to the king-dom of God.

Despite the response that Joachim's dichotomy betweenthe institutional church of the present and the spiritualchurch of the future evoked in the thirteenth century, evenfrom Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, it could notprevail against the dominance of an ecclesiology like thatof Bernard of Clairvaux in which the spiritual and theinstitutional were ultimately inseparable. Only when thestate of the institutional church made it increasingly dif-ficult to apply spiritual attributes to it would the dichot-omy begin to gain widespread support. The publication ofthe first theological treatises devoted to ecclesiology inthe fourteenth century and the demands for reform of theecclesiastical hierarchy (as well as for a new form of itsrelations with the nation-state) in the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries gave fresh currency to views that hadappeared eccentric or even dangerous in the twelfth andthirteenth centuries. Augustine's notion of a "church ofthe predestined," which had recurred throughout thehistory of medieval theology, became, in the hands ofWycliffe and Hus, an instrument to call the institutionalchurch to account in the name of the true church.

The Vision of God

The culmination of the history of the church was thevision of God. It was not, strictly speaking, a doctrine, butit was the consummation of all doctrine. The vision ofGod was the content of eternal bliss, transcending thecommon state of nature, as God was "above all things"


in his singularity, simplicity, and constancy. As such, itwas a blessing that the saints in glory shared with theangels, and it was not attainable in its fullness here onearth. For although here man's vision of God was "througha mirror in an image," the vision in glory would be "faceto face." Nevertheless, there were anticipations of thevision vouchsafed to some in the experience of this pres-ent life. It was another characteristic of the doctrinal re-flection of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that itbegan once more to relate the dogmas of the tradition tosubjective experience and that it thus served to introducea new element into the interpretation of the faith. A briefconsideration of this element of subjectivity in the medie-val understanding of the content of Christian doctrinemay well serve as a conclusion to this volume.

"We shall read today," Bernard told his monastic con-freres, "in the book of experience. Turn your minds in-ward upon yourselves, and let each of you examine his ownconscience in regard to those things that are to be men-tioned." He himself had frequently been granted a per-sonal experience of the presence of Christ the Logos, whenhe "felt that He was present." Richard of Saint-Victorcarried the reading "in the book of experience" even fur-ther than Bernard had. There was, he taught, "nothingbetter, nothing more certain, and nothing more sublime"that the human mind could know than what it learned byexperience. The practice of prayer was especially condu-cive to such experience, when "the light of illumininggrace" would come over the mind and enable it "to pene-trate profound mysteries by the inspiration {of grace]."Experience joined with the consciousness of faith and withthe events of the history of salvation to teach man abouthis nature as a being who was both physical and spiritual.The exploration of subjectivity was a constituent partof the Augustinian tradition, and even though the manu-scripts of Augustine's Confessions were not distributed aswidely in monastic libraries as were those of some of hisother major works, this unique history of a soul soundingits own depths to know a God who transcended the anti-thesis of subject and object continued to find echoes inmedieval literature and thought. In the early twelfth cen-tury, Guibert of Nogent composed an autobiographicalwork in the Augustinian mode, upon which we havedrawn repeatedly in this book. The data of his life and


experience served as a way reward the knowledge of selfand of God.

Yet the most remarkable statement in these two cen-turies of what we have called "the identification of per-sonal religious experience as an epistemological principlein theology" came neither in the Sermons on the Canticlesof Bernard of Clairvaux nor in the meditative books ofthe Victorine mystics nor in the autobiography of Guibertof Nogent, but in The Journey of the Mind to God, writ-ten by Bonaventure and inspired by Francis of Assisi. Aswe have seen, Bonaventure found traces of the Trinitythroughout the "macrocosm" of the universe, but thecreated trinities came into the sharpest focus when oneturned to a consideration of the "microcosm" of the mind.The mirror of the external world was dark and useless un-til one had polished the mirror of that internal world.From philosophy there came the method of speculationon the basis of the outer world, but one had to learn tospeculate about the inner world from Scripture. The in-trospective method of speculation was, Bonaventure main-tained, "superior" to the method that began with externals,for by introspection it was possible to "enter our ownself, that is, our own mind, in which is reflected [God's]very own image," and the mind was enabled to "reenterits own inner world, there to see God 'in the splendor ofthe saints.' " The celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies hadtheir counterpart in "the hierarchy of our mind." If onewanted to enter into the celestial hierarchy or the heavenlyJerusalem, it was necessary not only that he participatein the sacraments administered by the ecclesiastical hier-archy, but that he "first descend, by grace, into his ownheart." Thus he would be "transported in ecstasy above theintellect" to the beatific vision of God.

As the paradigm for this theology of experience, Bona-venture pointed to "the example of our most blessed fatherFrancis," who had been "transported out of himself" andhad thereby become "a model of perfect contemplation, asecond Jacob," through whom God was to "invite all trulyspiritual men" to the same experience, not by what Francishad said or taught but by what he had done and by whathad been done to him. Among those who followed in thefootsteps of Francis—almost literally—was Bonaventurehimself, who, "at a time close to the thirty-third anni-versary of the blessed man's departure," had traced the


path of Francis to the top of Mount Alverno, where hehad worked out the contents of The Journey of the Mindto God. Although he could not presume to match Francisin the quality of his experience, what he learned there wasa way of reflection that drew upon such experiences asthose of Francis and even on his own experiences. Thismeant that Bonaventure as a person provided data forBonaventure as a theologian. The method of pressing ex-perience to extract from it the truth of doctrine enabledone to probe the imagination in such a way as to "see andunderstand that the 'best' is . . . that than which nothingbetter can be imagined." In Bonaventure's treatment of it,this rendition of the Anselmic and originally Augustinianargument for the existence of God became a way for whathe called "the flash of intuition" to come to the truth ofbeing and of goodness. The Augustinian combination ofobjective and subjective truth led Bonaventure to assertthat "when the soul speculates on its triune Principle bymeans of the trinity of faculties which makes it the imageof God, it is assisted by the lights of knowledge, whichperfect and inform it and which represent the blessedTrinity in a triple manner." It was an experience of themind that transcended the mind, going beyond doctrineto grace and beyond intellectual understanding to existen-tial desire.

Profoundly Augustinian and thoroughly medievalthough this theology of experience was in Bonaventure,it was to become something quite different in later cen-turies. As the natural theology of the scholastics eventu-ally lost its connection with the traditional doctrine out ofwhich it had come, so the experiential theology of Bona-venture and of Augustine was transformed into an au-tonomous source of truth. In Bonaventure, the Augus-tinian method of introspection within the context ofdivine grace led, through experience and reflection, toa transcendent Goodness than which nothing better couldbe imagined, the God whose mercy, made known inChrist, made it possible for one to sound the depths of hisown experience and to affirm himself in nature as wellas in grace. In Descartes, on the other hand, despiteits undeniable ancestry in Augustine, Anselm, and Bona-venture, the "cogito" led through doubt to thought andfrom thought to the affirmation both of the self andof God. Although the piety of Descartes undoubtedly


stood in the catholic tradition, the Cartesian method ofphilosophy by introspection did not stand or fall with thetruth-claims of Christian faith, but increasingly compelledsuch truth-claims to justify themselves, if they could, by itscanons. That transposition of experience from one key toanother will play a major part in our subsequent narrative.

SelectedSecondary Works

GENERAL

Arquilliere, Henri Xavier. L'augustinisme politique: Essai sur la formation des theoriespolitiques du moyen-äge. 2d ed. Paris, 1955.

Auerbach, Erich. Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Mid-dle Ages. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York, 1965. The first chapter, entitled"Sermo Humilis" (pp. 25—81), is especially pertinent to our narrative.

. Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Translated byWillard R. Trask. Princeton, 1971.

Bach, Joseph von. Die Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters. 2 vols. Vienna, 1874—75. Anearly effort to identify the distinctive features of the history of doctrine during theMiddle Ages.

Blaise, Albert. Manuel du latin chretien. Strasbourg, 1955.. Dictionnaire latin-frangais des auteurs du moyen-äge. Turnhout, Belgium, 1975.

A companion volume to the series Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis (See"Editions and Collections" above).

Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society. 2 vols. Translated by L. A. Manyon. Paperback edition.Chicago, 1964.

Bloomfield, Morton Wilfred. Essays and Explorations: Studies in Ideas, Language, andLiterature. Cambridge, Mass., 1970. Includes "Distance and Predestination" and "SomeReflections on the Medieval Idea of Perfection."

Chenu, Marie-Dominique. La theologie comme science au XIIIe siecle. Paris, 1957.. La theologie au douzieme siecle. 2d ed. Paris, 1966. Works of great learning and

profound insight.Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Translated by Wil-

lard R. Trask. Princeton, 1953. The "excursuses," which form about a third of thevolume, are at least as important as the text.

Diaz y Diaz, Manuel C. Index scriptorum latinorum medii aevi hispanorum. 2 vols. Sala-manca, 1958-59.

Du Cange, Charles Dufresne. Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis. 10 vols. Niort,1883-87. Originally published three hundred years ago, this work remains in-dispensable.

Durant, William James. The Age of Faith. New York, 1950.Franz, Adolf. Die Messe im deutschen Mittelalter. Freiburg, 1902. Based on extensive

study of manuscript sources.

308

General 309

Geyer, Bernhard. Die patristische und scholastische Philosophie. Reprint edition. Basel,1951. The medieval volume of Ueberweg's Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie.

Ghellinck, Joseph de. Litterature latine au moyen äge. 2 vols. Paris, 1939.. L'essor de la litterature latine au XIIe siede. 2 vols. Paris, 1946.. Le mouvement theologique du XIIe siede. 2d ed. Paris, 1948.

Gilson, Etienne. The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy. Translated by Alfred Howard Camp-bell Downes. New York, 1940. The Gifford Lectures for 1931.

. History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. New York, 1955.

. "Historical Research and the Future of Scholasticism." In A Gilson Reader.Edited by Anton Charles Pegis, pp. 156—67. Garden City, N. Y., 1957.These works, together with others by the same author listed under various chapterheadings below, have been fundamental to the modern study of medieval thought.

Gordon, George Stuart. Medium Aevum and the Middle Age. London, 1925.Grabmann, Martin. Mittelalterliches Geistesleben. 3 vols. Munich, 1956. An inexhaustible

source of information.. Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode. 2 vols. Reprint edition. Graz, 1957.

Despite its title, this work concerns itself with far more than method.Harnack, Adolf von. Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. 3 vols. 5th ed. Tübingen, 1931-32.Hefele, Carl Joseph. Histoire des conciles d'apres les documents originaux. Translated by

Henri Leclercq. 10 vols. in 19. Paris, 1907—38.Jungmann, Josef Andreas. The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development.

Translated by Francis A. Brunner. 2 vols. New York, 1951—55.Kamiah, Wilhelm. Apokalypse und Geschichtstheologie: Die mittelalterliche Auslegung

der Apocalypse vor Joachim von Fiore. Berlin, 1935.Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political

Theology. Princeton, 1957. There is almost no aspect of medieval thought and faiththat is not illumined by this analysis.

Klibansky, Raymond. The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition during the Middle Ages.London, 1939.

Knowles, David. The Evolution of Medieval Thought. London, 1962. Dependent on thework of Grabmann, Geyer, and Gilson, the account that Knowles has fashioned is abalanced and learned telling of the story.

Landgraf, Artur Michael. Dogmengeschichte der Frühscholastik. 4 vols. Regensburg,1952—56. These four double volumes rest almost completely on manuscripts in variousarchives, and thus they are a unique collection of source material.

Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Cul-ture. Translated by Catherine Misrahi. Paperback edition. New York, 1962.

Lopez, Robert Sabatino. Introduction to Age of Faith, by Anne Fremantle. New York,1965.

Lot, Ferdinand. The End of the Ancient World and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages.Translated by Philip and Mariette Leon. Introduction by Glanville Downey. Paper-back edition. New York, 1961.

Lubac, Henri de. Corpus mysticum: L'eucharistie et l'eglise au moyen age. Etude historique.2d ed. Paris, 1949.

. Exegese medievale: Les quatre sens de l'Ecriture. 2 vols. in 4. Paris, 1959-64.Many of the thinkers dealt with in our account are also the subjects of this erudite andprofound work.

Manitius, Max. Handschriften antiker Autoren in mittelalterlichen Bibliothekskatalogen.Leipzig, 1935.

SECONDARY SOURCES 310

. Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters. 3 vols. Reprint edition.Munich, 1965.

Mirbt, Carl. Die Stellung Augustins in der Publizistik des gregorianischen Kirchenstreits.Berlin, 1888.

Overbeck, Franz Camillo. Vorgeschichte und Jugend der mittelalterlichen Scholastik:Eine kirchenhistorische Vorlesung. Edited by Carl Albrecht Bernoulli. Basel, 1917.

Pickman, Edward Motley. The Mind of Latin Christendom. New York, 1937.Raby, Frederic James Edward. A History of Christian Latin Poetry. iA ed. Oxford, 1953.Rand, Edward Kennard. Founders of the Middle Ages. Cambridge, Mass., 1929.Seeberg, Reinhold. Die Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters. Volume 3 of Lehrbuch der

Dogmengeschichte. Basel, 1953.Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Paperback edition. Notre

Dame, Ind., 1964. Especially helpful for its discussion of the Victorines and for itsaccount of the revival of Christian interest in Hebrew.

Southern, Richard William. The Making of the Middle Ages. New York, 1953.. Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, Mass., 1962.. Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. Baltimore, 1970. Volume 2

of "The Pelican History of the Church."Stegmüller, Friedrich. Repertorium commentariorum in sententias Petri Lombardi. 2 vols.

Würzburg, 1947.Thomasius, Gottfried. Die Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters und der Reformationszeit.

Erlangen, 1876. Volume 2, published posthumously, of his Die Christliche Dogmenge-schichte als Entwicklungs-Geschichte des kirchlichen Lehrbegriffs.

Thompson, James Westfall. The Literacy of the Laity in the Middle Ages. Berkeley, 1937.. The Medieval Library. Reprint edition, with a supplement by Blanche B. Boyer.

New York, 1957. The preservation and transmission of learning, both Christian andclassical.

Troeltsch, Ernst. Augustin, die christliche Antike und das Mittelalter. Berlin, 1915. Anattempt at definition.

Vacant, Jean-Michel-Alfred, et al., eds. Dictionnaire de theologie catholique. 15 vols.Paris, 1903—50. Usually the first place to turn, and often the last.

Waddell, Helen. The Wandering Scholars: The Life and Art of the Lyric Poets of theLatin Middle Ages. Reprint edition. Garden City, N. Y., 1955.

Williams, A. Lukyn. Adversus Judaeos: A Bird's-Eye View of Christian "Apologiae" untilthe Renaissance. Cambridge, 1935.

Young, Karl. The Drama of the Medieval Church. 2 vols. Oxford, 1933.

1. T H E INTEGRITY OF THE CATHOLIC TRADITION

Altaner, Berthold. "Der Stand der Isidorforschung: Ein kritischer Bericht über die seit1910 erschienene Literatur." In Miscellanea Isidoriana: Homenaje a San Isidoro deSevilla, pp. 1—32. Rome, 1936. "The theological writings of Isidore, including theexegetical works, are practically unknown territory as regards the investigation oftheir sources."

Arnold, Franz. Das Diözesanrecht nach den Schriften Hinkmars von Rheims. Vienna,1935. A study in canon law.

Beeson, Charles Henry. Isidorstudien. Munich, 1913.

The Integrity of the Catholic Tradition 311

Betz, Karl-Ulrich. Hinkmar von Reims, Nikolaus I., Pseudo-lsidor: Fränkisches Landes-kirchentum und römischer Machtanspruch im 9. Jahrhundert. Bonn, 1965.

Bischoff, K. "Wendepunkte in der Geschichte der lateinischen Exegese im Frühmittel-alter." Sacris Erudiri 6 (1954) : 189-281.

Braegelmann, Sister Athanasius. The Life and Writings of Saint Ildefonsus of Toledo.Washington, 1942.

Burch, George Bosworth. Early Medieval Philosophy. New York, 1951.Capelle, Bernard. "Le role theologique de Bede le Venerable." Studia Anselmiana 6

(1936) : 1-40.Carlson, Charles P. Justification in Earlier Medieval Theology. The Hague, 1975. A study

of Pauline commentaries.Carroll, Mary Thomas Aquinas. The Venerable Bede: His Spiritual Teachings. Washing-

ton, 1946.Cascante Dävila, J. M. Doctrina Mariana de S. Ildefonso de Toledo. Barcelona, 1958.Duckett, Eleanor Shipley. Anglo-Saxon Saints and Scholars. New York, 1947.Ellard, Gerald. Master Alcuin, Liturgist. Chicago, 1956.Fontaine, Jacques. Isidore de Seville et la culture classique dans l'Espagne wisigothique.

2 vols. Paris, 1959. The fundamental work on the subject.Fröhlich, Karlfried. Formen der Auslegung von Mt. 16:13—18 im lateinischen Mittelalter.

Tübingen, 1963. The locus classicus on Peter and the church.Göller, Emil. Die Staats- und Kirchenlehre Augustins und ihre Fortwirkung im Mittel-

alter. Freiburg, 1930.Hillgarth, Jocelyn Nigel. "El Prognosticon futuri saeculi de San Julian de Toledo." Ana-

lecta Sacra Tarraconensia 30 ( 1 9 5 7 ) : 5—61.

. "The Position of Isidorian Studies: A Critical Review of the Literature since1935." In Isidoriana: Colecciön de estudios sobre Isidoro de Sevilla, publicados conocasiön del XIV centenario de su nacimiento, edited by Manuel C. Diaz y Diaz, pp.1-74. Leon, 1961.

Iserloh, Erwin. "Die Kontinuität des Christentums beim Übergang von der Antike zumMittelalter im Lichte der Glaubensverkündigung des heiligen Bonifatius." Trierertheologische Zeitschrift 63 (1954) : 193—205. A provocative essay on the meaningof "medieval."

Kleinclausz, Arthur Jean. Alcuin. Paris, 1948. Especially pertinent is the discussion of"Alcuin contre l'heresie," pp. 71—90.

Laistner, Max Ludwig Wolfram. Thought and Letters in Western Europe A.D. 500—900. Paperback edition. Ithaca, N.Y., 1966.

Levison, Wilhelm. England and the Continent in the Eighth Century. Oxford, 1946.McNeill, John Thomas, and Gamer, Helena Margaret, eds. Medieval Handbooks of

Penance: A Translation of the Principal "Libri Poenitentiales" and Selections fromRelated Documents. New York, 1938.

Meyer, Hans Bernhard. "Alkuin zwischen Antike und Mittelalter: Ein Kapitel frühmittel-alterlicher Frömmigkeitsgeschichte." Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 81 (1959) :306-50, 4O5-54-

Mullins, Sister Patrick Jerome. The Spiritual Life according to Saint Isidore of Seville.Washington, 1940.

Murphy, Francis Xavier. "Julian of Toledo and the Condemnation of Monotheletism inSpain." In Melanges Joseph de Ghellinck, S.J., 1:361—73. Gembloux, 1951.

Ogara, Florentino. "Tipologia biblica, segun S. Isidoro." In Miscellanea Isidoriana, pp.135-50- Rome, 1936.


Schubert, Hans von. Geschichte der christlichen Kirche im Frühmittelalter. Tübingen,1921.

Stout, D. A Study of the "Sententiarum libri tres" of Isidore of Seville. Washington, 1937.Tiralla, Hugo. Das Augustinische Idealbild der christlichen Obrigkeit als Quelle der

"Fürstenspiegel" des Sedulius Scotus und Hincmar von Keims. Greifswald, 1916. Theearly medieval use of Augustine's City of God.

Wallach, Luitpold. Alcuin and Charlemagne: Studies in Carolingian History and Litera-ture. Ithaca, N. Y., 1959.

Winandy, Jacques. Ambrose Autperte moine et theologien. Paris, 1953.

2. BEYOND THE AUGUSTINIAN SYNTHESIS

Amann, Emile. "L'adoptionisme espagnol du Vllle siecle." Revue des sciences religieuses16 (1936) : 281—317.

. L'epoque carolingienne. Paris, 1934. Volume 6 of Fliehe, Augustin, and Martin,Victor, eds., Histoire de I'Eglise depuis les origines jusq'd nos jours.

Balic, Carlo. "The Mediaeval Controversy over the Immaculate Conception up to theDeath of Scotus." In The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: History and Signifi-cance, edited by Edward Dennis O'Connor, pp. 161—212. Notre Dame, Ind., 1958.

Beeson, Charles Henry. Servatus Lupus as Scribe and Text Critic. Cambridge, Mass., 1930.Boshof, Egon. Erzbischof Agobard von Lyon: Leben und Werk. Cologne, 1969.Brink, J. N. Bakhuizen van den, ed. Ratramnus. De corpore et sanguine Domini. Amster-

dam, 1954.Browe, Peter. Die Verehrung der Eucharistie im Mittelalter. Munich, 1933. "The rule of

prayer" on the Eucharist.. Die eucharistischen Wunder des Mittelalters. Breslau, 1938.

Canal, J. M. "La virginidad de Maria segün Ratramno y Radberto, monjes de Corbie.Nueva edicion de los textos." Marianum 30 (1968) : 53—160.

Cappuyuns, Maieul. Jean Scot Erigene: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensee. Reprint edition.Brussels, 1964. Probably the most important single work on Erigena.

Cristiani, Marta. "La controversia eucaristica nella cultura del secolo IX." Studi medievali9 (1968) : 167-233.

Dörries, Hermann. Z»r Geschichte der Mystik: Erigena und der Neuplatonismus. Tübin-gen, 1925.

Fahey, John Francis. The Eucharistie Teaching of Ratramn of Corbie. Mundelein, 111.,1951.

Geiselmann, Josef Rupert. Die Eucharistielehre der Vorscholastik. Paderborn, 1926.Geiselmann's investigations of the history of medieval eucharistic doctrine, includingthose listed under chapter 4 below, have been decisive for our understanding of thedevelopment.

Giannoni, Carl. Paulinus II. Patriarch von Aquileia: Ein Beitrag zur KirchengeschichteÖsterreichs im Zeitalter Karls des Groszen. Vienna, 1896.

Gordillo, Mauricio. La Asuncion de Maria en la Iglesia Espanola (siglos VII—XI). Madrid,1922.

Graus, Frantisek. Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger. Prague, 1965.A social-political interpretation of the cult of the saints.

Halphen, Louis. Charlemagne et l'empire carolingien. Paris, 1947. Includes (pp. 213 ff.)a discussion of Charlemagne and theology.

Beyond the Augustinian Synthesis 313

Häring, Nicholas Martin. "Character, Signum und Signaculum: Die Entwicklung bisnach der karolingischen Renaissance." Scholastik 30 (1955) : 481-512; 31 (1956) :41-69, 182-212.

Hauck, Albert. Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands. Vol. 2. 4th ed. Leipzig, 1912. Especiallyimportant for its sections on doctrine and theology (pp. 297—349, 623-88) .

Heil, W. "Der Adoptianismus, Alkuin und Spanien." In Karl der Grosze: Lebenswerkund Nachleben, edited by B. Bischoff, 2:95—155. Düsseldorf, 1965.

Helfferich, Adolf. Der westgothische Arianismus und die spanische Ketzer-Geschichte.Berlin, i860. Still useful.

Jolivet, Jean. Godescalc d'Orbai et la Trinite. Paris, 1958. An original and illuminatingmonograph.

Kolping, Adolf. "Amalar von Metz und Florus von Lyon: Zeugen eines Wandels imliturgischen Mysterienverständnis in der Karolingerzeit." Zeitschrift für katholischeTheologie 73 (1951) : 424-64.

Lopez, Robert Sabatino. The Tenth Century: How Dark the Dark Ages? New York, 1959.A judicious selection of sources, in English translation.

Mathon, Gerard. "L'utilisation des textes de saint Augustin par Jean Scot Erigene dansson De Praedestinatione." In Augustinus Magister, 3:419—28. Paris, 1954.

Mauguin, Gilbert. Veterum auctorum qui a IX. saeculo de praedestinatione et gratiascripserunt opera et fragmenta. 2 vols. Paris, 1650. Still the handiest collection ofsource materials.

Menendez y Pelayo, Marcelino. Historia de los heterodoxos espanoles. 2d ed. 3 vols.Madrid, 1912—19. The unique role of Spanish theology throughout most of theMiddle Ages.

Meyvaert, Paul. "The Exegetical Treatises of Peter the Deacon and Eriugena's Renderingof the 'Ad Thalassium' of Maximus the Confessor." Sacris Erudiri 14 (1963 ) : 130—48.

Morrison, Karl Frederick. The Two Kingdoms: Ecclesiology in Carolingian PoliticalThought. Princeton, 1964.

O'Meara, John J., and Bieler, Ludwig, eds. The Mind of Eriugena: Papers of a Colloquium,Dublin, 14—18 July 1970. Dublin, 1973.

Peltier, Henri. Pascase Radbert, abbe de Corbie. Amiens, 1938.Quadrio, G. "II trattato 'De Assumptione beatae M. V.' dello pseudo-Agostino." Analecta

Gregoriana 52 (1951) : 149—62.Sage, Carlton M. Paul Albar of Cordova. Washington, 1943.Scheffczyk, Leo. "Die Grundzüge der Trinitätslehre des Johannes Scotus Eriugena." In

Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Michael Schmaus zum sechzigsten Geburts-tag, edited by J. Auer and H. Volk, pp. 497-518. Munich, 1957.

. Das Mariengeheimnis in Frömmigkeit und Lehre der Karolingerzeit. Leipzig,1959-

Schrörs, Heinrich. Hinkmar, Erzbischof von Reims: Sein Leben und seine Schriften.Frei bürg, 1884.

Severus, Emmanuel von. Lupus von Ferneres: Gestalt und Werk eines Vermittlers antikenGeistes gutes an das Mittelalter im 9. Jahrhundert. Münster, 1940.

Sheldon-Williams, Inglis-Patric. "A Bibliography of the Works of Johannes ScottusEriugena." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 10 (1959) : 198—224.

Solano, Jesus. "El Concilio de Calcedonia y la controversia adopcionista del siglo VIII enEspana." In Das Konzil von Chalkedon: Geschichte und Gegenwart, edited by AloysGrillmeier and Heinrich Bacht, 2:841—71. Würzburg, 1951-52.


Van der Meer, Frederik. Augustine the Bishop. Translated by Brain Battershaw and G. R.Lamb. New York, 1961.

Vielhaber, Klaus. Gottschalk der Sachse. Bonn, 1956. Even though the personal elementsin Gottschalk's story are the most fascinating, Vielhaber devotes a significant part (pp.68—82) of his narrative to Gottschalk's doctrine.

Walker, George Stuart Murdoch. "Erigena's Conception of the Sacraments." In Studiesin Church History, edited by Geoffrey John Cuming, 3:150—58. Leiden, 1966.

Wilmart, Henri-Marie-Andre. "L'ordre des parties dans le traite de Paulin d'Aquileecontre Felix d'Urgel." Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1938) : 22—37. Wilmartproposes, on the basis of manuscript evidence, a different sequence of the sections ofPaulinus's treatise. His argument is persuasive, but for the sake of convenience wehave in our citations followed the conventional order.

3. T H E P L A N OF SALVATION

À Cluny. Congres scientifique, fetes et ceremonies en l'honneur des saints abbes Odon etOdilon, 9—11 juillet 1949. Dijon, 1950.

Aulen, Gustaf. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Ideaof Atonement. Translated by A. G. Hebert. Reprinted with an introduction byJaroslav Pelikan. New York, 1969.

Blomme, Robert. La doctrine du peche dans les ecoles theologiques de la premiere moitiedu XIIe siecle. Louvain, 1958.

Blum, Owen J. 5";. Peter Damian: His Teaching on the Spiritual Life. Washington, 1947.Bourgin, Georges, ed. Guibert de Nogent. Histoire de sa vie (1053—1124). Paris, 1907.Clerck, D. E. de. "Droits du demon et necessite de la redemption: Les ecoles d'Abelard

et de Pierre Lombard." Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 14 ( 1 9 4 7 ) :32-64.

Dubois, Marguerite-Marie. Les elements latins dans la poesie religieuse de Cynewulf.Paris, 1942.

Fairweather, Eugene Rathbone, ed. A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Occam. Philadel-phia, 1956. Important texts in English translation, with a spirited and informativeintroduction.

. " 'Iustitia Dei' as the 'Ratio' of the Incarnation." In Spicilegium Beccense,1:327—35. Paris, 1959.

Franks, Robert Sleightholme. A History of the Doctrine of the Work of Christ in ItsEcclesiastical Development. 2 vols. London, 1918. Volume 1:147—350 deals with "themediaeval theology."

Gilson, Etienne. Heloise and Abelard. Translated by Leonard K. Shook. Ann Arbor, Mich.,1960.

Gottschick, Johannes. "Studien zur Versöhnungslehre des Mittelalters." Zeitschrift fürKirchengeschichte 22 (1901) : 378—438.

Gross, Julius. Entwicklungsgeschichte des Erbsündendogmas im nachaugustinischen Alter-tum und in der Vorscholastik (5.-11. Jahrhundert). Munich, 1963.

Heyer, George S. "St. Anselm on the Harmony between God's Mercy and God's Justice."In The Heritage of Christian Thought: Essays in Honor of Robert Lowry Calhoun,edited by Robert E. Cushman and Egil Grislis, pp. 31—40. New York, 1965.

Hiss, Wilhelm. Die Anthropologie Bernhards von Clairvaux. Berlin, 1964.Hopkins, Jasper. A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm. Minneapolis, 1972. Together

with the author's translations of Anselm into English, a significant contribution to theliterature.

The Communication of Grace 315

Kahles, Wilhelm. Geschichte als Liturgie: Die Geschichtstheologie des Rupertus vonDeutz. Münster, 1960.

Kuttner, Stephan Georg. Kanonistische Schuldlehre von Gratian bis auf die DekretalenGregors IX systematisch auf Grund der handschriftlichen Quellen dargestellt. Rome,1935.

Leclercq, Jean. Saint Bernard mystique. Paris, 1948. The christocentrism of Bernard's de-votion and thought.

. Saint Pierre Damien, ermite et homme d'eglise. Rome, 1960.Mclntyre, John. St. Anselm and His Critics: A Reinterpretation of the "Cur Deus Homo."

Edinburgh, 1954. A defense against Aulen and others.Macrae-Gibson, O. D. "Christ the Victor-Vanquished in The Dream of the Rood." Neu-

philologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969) : 667—72.Monticelli, Giuseppe. Raterio vescovo di Verona (890-974). Milan, 1938.Ott, Heinrich. "Anselms Versöhnungslehre." Theologische Zeitschrift 13 (1957):

183-99-Patch, Howard Rollin. "Liturgical Influence in The Dream of the Rood." Publications of

the Modern Language Association 34 (1919) : 233—57.Phelan, Gerald Bernard. The Wisdom of Saint Anselm. Latrobe, Pa., 1960.Riviere, Jean. Le dogme de la redemption au debut du moyen age. Paris, 1934.Schmitt, Franciscus Salesius. "La 'Meditatio redemptionis humanae' di san Anselmo in

relazione al 'Cur deus homo.' " Benedictina 9 (1955) : 197-213.Schwark, Bruno. Bischof Rather von Verona als Theologe. Königsberg, 1915.Stevens, William Oliver. The Cross in the Life and Literature of the Anglo-Saxons. New

York, 1904.Strijd, Krijn. Structuur en Inhoud van Anselmus' "Cur Deus Homo" (The structure and

content of Anselm's Cur Deus Homo}. Assen, 1957.Weingart, Richard Ernest. The Logic of Divine Love: A Critical Analysis of the Soteriol-

ogy of Peter Abailard. Oxford, 1970. An examination of the charge of "subjectivism."Williams, George Huntston. The Norman Anonymous of 1100/I.D.Cambridge, Mass.,

1951. "Christocentrism" in political thought.. Anselm: Communion and Atonement. Saint Louis, 1960. Baptism and the Eu-

charist as models for the doctrine of the atonement.

4 . T H E C O M M U N I C A T I O N OF GRACE

Beekenkamp, Willem Hermanus. De avondmaalsleer van Berengarius van Tours [Theeucharistic doctrine of Berengar of Tours]. The Hague, 1941.

Beissel, Stephan. Die Verehrung der Heiligen und ihrer Reliquien in Deutschland biszum Beginne des 13. Jahrhunderts. Freiburg, 1880.

. Geschichte der Verehrung Marias in Deutschland während des Mittelalters.Freiburg, 1909.

Bover, Jose Maria. "Maria Mediatrix." Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses 6 (1929) :439-62. A compilation of quotations from Eastern and Western sources.

Brommer, Ferdinand. Die Lehre vom sakramentalen Charakter in der Scholastik bisThomas von Aquin inklusive. Paderborn, 1908.

Courtney, Francis. Cardinal Robert Pullen: An English Theologian of the Twelfth Cen-tury. Rome, 1954.

Dooley, Eugene A. Church Law on Sacred Relics. Washington, 1931.


Eynde, Damien van den. Les definitions des sacrements pendant la premiere Periode dela theologie scolastique (1050-1240). Rome, 1950.

Forsyth, Ilene H. The Throne of Wisdom: Wood Sculptures of the Madonna in Roman-esque France. Princeton, 1972. Illustrations of "the rule of prayer" as expressed in art.

Geiselmann, Josef Rupert. "Die Stellung des Guibert von Nogent (†1124) in derEucharistielehre der Frühscholastik." Theologische Quartalschrift 110 (1929) : 66—84,279-305.

. "Der Abendmahlsbrief des Anselm von Canterbury ein Werk des Anselm vonLaon." Theologische Quartalschrift 111 (1930) : 320—49.

. Die Abendmahlslehre an der Wende der christlichen Antike zum Frühmittel-alter: Isidor von Sevilla und das Sakrament der Eucharistie. Munich, 1933. Funda-mental for an understanding of the transition from patristic to medieval interpretationsof the Eucharist.

Geary, Patrick J. Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages. Princeton,1978.

Geyer, Bernhard. "Die Siebenzahl der Sakramente in ihrer historischen Entwicklung."Theologie und Glaube 10 (1918) : 324—48.

Ghellinck, Joseph de. Pour l'histoire du mot sacramentum. Paris, 1924.. "Un chapitre dans l'histoire de la definition des sacrements au XIIe siecle." In

Melanges Mandonnet, 2:79—96. Paris, 1930.Gillmann, Franz. Die Siebenzahl der Sakramente bei den Glossatoren des Gratianischen

Dekrets. Mainz, 1909.Gregoire, Reginald. Bruno de Segni exegete medieval et theologien monastique. Spoleto,

1965.Guth, Klaus. Guibert von Nogent und die hochmittelalterliche Kritik an der Reliquien-

verehrung. Augsburg, 1970.Häring, Nikolaus Martin. "A Study in the Sacramentology of Alger of Liege." Mediaeval

Studies 20 (1958) : 41—78.Heurtevent, Raoul. Durand de Troarn et les origines de l'heresie berengarienne. Paris,

1912.Jorissen, Hans. Die Entfaltung der Transsubstantiationslehre bis zum Beginn der Hoch-

scholastik. Münster, 1965.Kemp, Eric Waldram. Canonization and Authority in the Western Church. London, 1948.Korosak, B. Mariologia S. Alberti Magni eiusque coaequalium. Rome, 1954. The doctrine

of Mary in Dominican theology.Lebon, J. "Sur la doctrine eucharistique d'Heriger de Lobbes." In Studia mediaevalia in

honorem . . . R. J. Martin, pp. 61—84. Bruges, 1948.Macdonald, Allan John. Berengar and the Reform of Sacramental Doctrine. New York,

1930. A sympathetic account.Male, Emile. The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century.

Translated by Dora Nussey. Paperback edition. New York, 1958.Montclos, Jean de. Lanfranc et Berenger: La controverse eucharistique du Xle siecle.

Louvain, 1971. For some time to come, the definitive monograph.Newman, John Henry. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Edited by

Charles Frederick Harrold. New York, 1949.Poschmann, Bernhard. Busse und letzte Oelung. Freiburg, 1951. Part of the sacramental

section of the Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte.Rahner, Karl. "Die Gegenwart Christi im Sakrament des Herrenmahles." In Schriften zur

Theologie, 4:357—85. 3d ed. Einsiedeln, 1962. On the distinction—and the connection—between "real presence" and "transubstantiation."

The OneTrue Faith 317

Rogers, Elizabeth Frances. Peter Lombard and the Sacramental System. New York, 1917.Includes a translation of the text of the Lombard's discussion of the sacraments.

Rosati, M. La teologia sacramentaria nella lotta contro le simonia e I'investitura laica delsecolo XL Tolentino, 1951. An important, but little-known investigation of a signifi-cant question.

Saxer, Victor. Le culte de Marie-Madeleine en Occident des origines ä la fin du moyen-age.Paris, 1959.

Schapiro, Meyer. The Parma Ildefonsus: A Romanesque Illuminated Manuscript fromCluny, and Related Works. New York, 1964.

Seekel, Friedrich. Geistige Grundlagen Petrus Damianis untersucht am "Liber gratis-simus." Jena, 1933.

Shaugnessy, P. The Eucharistie Doctrine of Guitmund of Aversa. Rome, 1939.Shea, George W. "Outline History of Mariology in the Middle Ages and Modern Times."

In Mariology, edited by Juniper B. Carol, 1:281—327. Milwaukee, 1955.Sheedy, Charles Edmund. The Eucharistie Controversy of the Eleventh Century against

the Background of Pre-Scholastic Theology. Washington, 1947.Simson, Otto von. The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medie-

val Concept of Order. New York, 1956. According to von Simson (p. 172), "theage was indeed the age of the Virgin."

Sitwell, Gerard, ed. St. Odo of Cluny. London, 1958.Somerville, Robert. "The Case against Berengar of Tours—A New Text." Studi Gregori-

ani 9 (1972) : 53-75.Southern, Richard William. "Lanfranc of Bee and Berengar of Tours." In Studies in

Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, edited by Richard WilliamHunt et al., pp. 27—48. Oxford, 1948.

Whitney, James Pounder. Hildebrandine Essays. Cambridge, 1932.

5. THE ONE TRUE FAITH

Altaner, Berthold. "Zur Geschichte der anti-islamischen Polemik während des 13. und14. Jahrhunderts." Historisches Jahrbuch 56 (1936) : 227-33.

Barth, Karl. Fides quaerens intellectum: Anselms Beweis der Existenz Gottes im Zusam-menhang seines theologischen Programms. Munich, 1931. An analysis that many willreject but none can ignore.

Bligh, J. "Richard of St. Victor's De Trinitate: Augustinian or Abelardian?" HeythropJournal 1 (1960) : 118-39.

Blumenkranz, Bernhard. Juifs et chretiens dans le monde occidental, 430—1096. Paris,1960.

. Les auteurs chretiens latins du moyen age sur les Juifs et le Judaisme. Paris, 1963.Borst. Arno. Die Katharer. Stuttgart, 1953. Identified by Grundmann (see below) as

"probably the definitive presentation in its substance."Buytaert, Eloi Marie. "Abelard's Trinitarian Doctrine." In Peter Abelard: Proceedings of

the International Conference Louvain, May 10—12, 1971, edited by Eloi Marie Buy-taert, pp. 127—52. The Hague, 1974.

Daniel, Norman. Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. Edinburgh, 1960.Denifle, Heinrich. "Die Sentenzen Abälards und die Bearbeitungen seiner Theologie."

Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters 1 (1885): 402-69, 584-624.


Dräseke, Johannes. "Bischof Anselm von Havelberg und seine Gesandschaften nachByzanz." Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 21 (1901) : 160—85.

Dumeige, Gervais. Richard de Saint-Victor et l'idee chretienne de l'amour. Paris, 1952.Ethier, Albert Marie. Le "De Trinitate" de Richard de Saint-Viet or. Paris, 1939.Gammersbach, Suitbert. Gilbert von Poitiers und seine Prozesse im Urteil der Zeitgenos-

sen. Cologne, 1959.Gauss, Julia. "Anselm von Canterbury und die Islamfrage." theologische Zeitschrift 19

(1963): 250-72.

. "Anselm von Canterbury: Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Re-ligionen." Saeculum 17 (1966) : 277—363.

Ghellinck, Joseph de. "Eucharistie au Xlle siecle en Occident." Dictionnaire de theologiecatholique, edited by Jean-Michel-Alfred Vacant et al., 5:1233—1302. Paris, 1913.

Gilson, Etienne. Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages. New York, 1938.Grundmann, Herbert. Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter. 2a ed. Darmstadt, 1961.

Still the best overall introduction to medieval sects and heresies.Häring, Nikolaus Martin. "The Case of Gilbert de la Porree, Bishop of Poitiers, 1142-54."

Mediaeval Studies 13 ( 1 9 5 1 ) : 1—40.

Kritzeck, James. Peter the Venerable and Islam, Princeton, 1964.Kuttner, Stephan Georg. "Zur Frage der theologischen Vorlagen Gratians." Zeitschrift

der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 23 ( 1 9 3 4 ) :

243-68. On Alger of Liege as canonist and theologian.. Harmony from Dissonance: An Interpretation of Medieval Canon haw. Latrobe,

Pa., 1960.Leclercq, Jean. Pierre le Venerable. Saint-Wandrille, France, 1946.

. "Simoniaca Haeresis." Studi Gregoriani 1 (1947) : 523-30.

. "Les formes successives de la lettre traite de Saint Bernard contre Abelard."Revue Benedictine 78 (1968) : 87—105.

Lerner, Robert Earl. The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages. Berkeley andLos Angeles, 1972.

McGinn, Bernard. The Golden Chain: A Study in the Theological Anthropology of Isaacof Stella. Washington, 1972.

Manselli, Raoul. Studi sulle eresie del secolo XII. Rome, 1953.Miccoli, Giovanni. Due note sulla tradizione manoscritta di Pier Damiani: "Antilogus

contra ludaeos epistola." Rome, 1959.Milano, Ilarino de. "Le eresie popolari del secolo XI nell' Europa occidentale." Studi

Gregoriani 2 (1947) : 43—89. Stresses heresy as a folk movement.Roques, Rene. "La methode de Saint Anselme dans le 'Cur Deus homo.' " Aquinas:

Ephemerides thomisticae 5 (1962) : 3—57.Ryan, John Joseph. Saint Peter Damiani and His Canonical Sources: A Preliminary Study

in the Antecedents of the Gregorian Reform. Toronto, 1956.Schmidt, Martin. Gottheit und Trinitaet, nach dem Kommentar des Gilbert Porreta zu

Boethius, "De Trinitate." Basel, 1956.Southern, Richard William. Saint Anselm and His Biographer. New York, 1963.

Synan, Edward Aloysius. The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages. New York, 1965.Thomas, Rudolf. Der philosophisch-theologische Erkenntnisweg Peter Abaelards im

"Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum, et Christianum." Bonn, 1966.

Williams, Michael E. The Teaching of Gilbert Porreta on the Trinity. Rome, 1951.


6. SUMMA THEOLOGICA

Arquilhere, Henri Xavier Le plus ancien traite de I'Eghse Jacques de Viterbe "Deregirmne chnstiano " Pans, 1926

Baltzer, Otto Die Sentenzen des Petrus Lombardus Ihre Quellen und ihre dogmen-geschichtliche Bedeutung Leipzig, 1902

Benz, Ernst Ecclesia spintualis Kirchenidee und Geschichtstheologie der franziskanischenReformation Stuttgart, 1934

Bergin, Thomas Goddard Dante New York, 1965Bertola, Ermenegildo "II problema delle creature angehche in Pier Lombardo " Pier

Lombardo I-II (1957) 33—54Bloomfield, Morton Wilfred "Joachim of Flora A Critical Survey of His Canon, Teach-

ings, Sources, Biography and Influence" Traditio 13 (1957) 249—311Bonnefoy, Jean-Francois Le Saint Espmt et ses dons selon Saint Bonaventure Pans, 1929

Une Somme Bonaventunenne de theologie mystique Le "De tnplici via " Pans,1934

Bougerol, J Guy Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure Translated by Jose deVinck Paterson, N J, 1964

Chenu, Mane-Dominique toward Understanding Saint Thomas Translated by A -MLandry and D Hughes Chicago, 1964

Chesterton, Gilbert Keith St Thomas Aquinas London, 1933 A work of serious thoughtand great charm

Collins, James Daniel The Thomistic Philosophy of Angels Washington, 1947Camparetti, Domenico Pietro Antonio Virgilio nel medio evo 2d ed by Giorgio

Pasquah Florence, 1955Congar, Yves "L ecclesiologie de S Bernard " In Saint Bernard Theologien, pp 136-90

Rome, 1953Courtes, C "La peccabihte de l'ange chez saint Thomas" Revue Thomiste 53 (1953)

133-63D'Arcy, Martin Cynl "The Philosophy of St Augustine "In Saint Augustine, pp 15 5-96

Paperback edition Cleveland, 1957Delhaye, Philippe Pierre Lombard Sa vie, ses oeuvres, sa morale Montreal and Pans,

1961Geenen, G "L'usage des auctoritates dans la doctrine du bapteme chez saint Thomas

d Aquin ' Ephemendes theologicae Lovanienses 15 (1938) 278—329Gilson, Etienne "Pourquoi saint Thomas a critique saint Augustin " Archives d'histoire

doctnnale et litteraire du moyen age 1 (1926) 5—127God and Philosophy New Haven, 1941

• The Christian Philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas Translated by Lawrence KShook New York, 1960

The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine Translated by L E M LynchNew York, 1960

Dante and Philosophy Translated by David Moore Paperback edition NewYork, 1963

The Philosophy of St Bonaventure Translated by Illtyd Trethowan and FrancisJoseph Sheed Paterson, N J, 1965

Gonzalez, Justo Luis "The Work of Christ in Saint Bonaventure's Systematic Works " InS Bonaventura 1274-1974, pp 371—85 Rome, 1974


Grabmann, Martin. Thomas Aquinas: His Personality and Thought. Translated by VirgilMichel. New York, 1928.

. Introduction to the "Theological Summa" of St. Thomas. Translated by JohnS. Zybura. Saint Louis, 1930.

. Die Werke des heiligen Thomas von Aquin: Literarhistorische Untersuchungund Einführung. 3d ed. Münster, 1949.

Grundmann, Herbert. Studien über Joachim von Fiore. 2d ed. Stuttgart, 1966.Guardini, Romano. Die Lehre des heil. Bonaventura von der Erlösung: Ein Beitrag zur

Geschichte und zum System der Erlösungslehre. Düsseldorf, 1921.. Systembildende Elemente in der Theologie Bonaventuras. Leiden, 1964. The

centrality of the doctrine of the Trinity in Bonaventure's thought.Häring, Nikolaus Martin. "Petrus Lombardus und die Sprachlogik in der Trini-

tätslehre der Porretanerschule." In Miscellanea Lombardiana, pp. 113—27. Novara,1957-

Hellmann, J. A. Wayne. Ordo: Untersuchung eines Grundgedankens in der TheologieBonaventuras. Munich, 1974.

Knowles, David. The Religious Orders in England. 3 vols. Cambridge, 1960.Lonergan, Bernard. Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas. Notre Dame, Ind., 1967. One

of the most important modern studies of Aquinas.Lortz, Joseph, ed. Bernhard von Clairvaux, Mönch und Mystiker. Vienna, 1955.McGinn, Bernard. "The Abbot and the Doctors: Scholastic Reactions to the Radical

Eschatology of Joachim of Fiore." Church History 40 (1971) : 30—47.McKeon, Richard Peter. "Aristotelianism in Western Christianity." In Environmental

Eactors in Christian History, edited by John Thomas McNeill et al., pp. 206—31.Chicago, 1939.

Mandonnet, Pierre. Siger de Brabant et I'Averroisme latin au XIIIe siecle. 2 vols. 2d ed.Louvain, 1908—11.

Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Die Prädestinationslehre des Duns Skotus im Zusammenhang mitder scholastischen Lehrentwicklung. Göttingen, 1954.

Pelikan, Jaroslav. "Imago Dei." In Calgary Aquinas Studies, edited by Anthony Parel.Toronto, 1978.

Principe, Walter Henry. The Theology of the Hypostatic Union in the Early ThirteenthCentury. 4 vols. Toronto, 1963—75. A major work of original scholarship, which hascontributed to our discussion of the Trinity.

Protois, Felix. Pierre Lombard eveque de Paris dit le maitre des "Sentences": Sonepoque, sa vie, ses ecrits, son influence. Paris, 1881.

Reeves, Marjorie Ethel. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study ofJoachimism. Oxford, 1969.

Riquet, Michel. "Saint Thomas d'Aquin et les 'auctoritates' en philosophic" Archives dePhilosophie 3-II (1926) : 117—55.

Schaefer, Alexander. "The Position and Function of Man in the Created World accordingto Saint Bonaventure." Franciscan Studies 20 (1960) : 261—316; 21 (1961) : 233—382.

Schindler, Alfred. Wort und Analogie in Augustins Trinitätslehre. Tübingen, 1965.Schlenker, Ernst. Die Lehre von den göttlichen Namen in der Summe Alexanders von

Hales: Ihre Prinzipien und ihre Methode. Freiburg, 1938.Schmaus, Michael. Die psychologische Trinitätslehre des heiligen Augustinus. Münster,

1927.


Schneider, Johannes. Die Lehre vom dreieinigen Gott in der Schule des Petrus Lombardus.Munich, 1961.

Schupp, Johann. Die Gnadenlehre des Petrus Lombardus. Freiburg, 1932.Stohr, Albert. Die Trinitätslehre des heiligen Bonaventura. Freiburg, 1923.Tavard, George Henri. Experience et theologie: Essai sur la nature de la theologie d'apres

le "Commentaire des Sentences" de Saint Bonaventure. Lyons, 1949.Velecky, Ceslaus, ed. Summa Theologiae. Blackfriars Edition, vol. 6. London, 1965.Vignaux, Paul. Luther commentateur des "Sentences." Vatis, 1935.Walsh, James Joseph. The Thirteenth—Greatest of Centuries. New York, 1907.Weisheipl, James Athanasius. Friar Thomas D'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Work.

New York, 1974. A biography for the septecentenary of Thomas Aquinas.Wendelborn, Gert. Gott und Geschichte: Joachim von Fiore und die Hoffnung der

Christenheit. Vienna, 1974.

Index

Biblical

Genesis1: 1

1:3

1:111:26

1:31

2:21-22

3:15 (Vulg.)5:24

14:18 (Vulg.)

2 2 : 1 — 1 9

49:10

Exodus2:10

3:14

9:12

Numbers17:8

24:17

Deuteronomy6:418:15

32:8

2 Kings2 : 1 1

Job41:1

41:22 (Vulg.)

Psalms

1 0 0

103, 2951 9 9

2 9 7

35, 260, 281296

4371, 1661 7 2

136, 189

1 3 6

35, 36, 251

5520, 110, 146, 247—

48,28984

162

1 6 2

35,61,279

551 4 0

1 7 2

1 3 41 8 0

38-39, 123

1:12

22:1

24:10 (Vulg.)

27:645:14 (Vulg.)50:23

62:11—12

66:1568:1868:3574:12

77:996:10

101:1

n o110:3 (Vulg.)

111:3 (Vulg.)

116:10150:1 (Vulg.)

Proverbs22:28

Song of Solomon4:12

Isaiah1:21

2:2-3

2 : 4

7:97:14

9:611:1 (Vulg.)

1 2 2

2 5 0

531 5 11 8 9

2 9 9

1 2 1

1 5 31 8 9

172

1732 9 9

n o1 3 2

n o2 5 1

3 0 5

1 2

4176

2 2 9

16-17, 122-23

7 0

1 2 2

3 0 1

2 5 4

252-5399,258-59

155, 162-63, 208,

247, 249125

70, 162-63

323

INDEX 324

Isaiah (continued)28:2142:1345:11 (Vulg.)45:22-235353:3 (Vulg.)53:7 (Vulg.)

Jeremiah2:8 (Vulg.)31:31

Ezekiel17:24 (Vulg.)44:1-244:244:3

Daniel7:1-7

Habakkuk2

Zechariah9:9

Malachi1:2-3

Ecclesiasticus3:21—22

24:10 (Vulg.)

31:9 (Vulg.)

Matthew2:23

5:10

5:18

6:11 (Vulg.)7:1810:3811:9

11:29

11:29-30

12:32

16:18-1916:1917:1-818:1020:20—2820:28

1 0 9

3587-884436148, 150-51

1 4 3

2 4 8

2 4 8

881637 3

7 3

36

2 5 4

274-7 5

99,2591 7 3

1 7 9

1 7 7

1 5 51 7 8

7 179—80, 2022 3 9

125-261 2 3

125, 150-51126—27

3347462 2 2

2 9 7

1 2 59 2

21:521:13

26:23

26:28

26:29

27:46

Mark16:15-1616:17-18

Luke1:28 (Vulg.)

1:35

1:42

1:48

2 : 72 : 1 2

2 :22

2:22-392:352:52 (Vulg.)5:3

6:4310:1

10:38—42

16:19—3123:24

23:3423:42

23:4324:44

John1:292 : 1 — 1 1

3:53:13 (Vulg.)6:376:446:516:526:53-586:546:606:638:4410:1—18

12:26

12:32

14:615:5

15:13

2 5 4232, 3011 0 9

92, 108

4353

2 3 4

1 8 0

164-65, 17360

1657 11 6 32 0 8

7 11 6 4

172

1 4 9

432 3 9

45119—20, 172

33127

2 5 52 0 5

332 4 1

8 0

201-2

265

57, 1172 7 3

8475, 1981 9 8

78184, 1951 4 8

148295-962 3 3

1 7 2

84, 92

1 2 0

2 0 2

1 2 8

Biblical 325

17:2119:23-2419:3420:2721:1721 :1921:26

Acts1:262:312:423:213:225:296:87:60

16:3

Romans1:17

1:20 (Vulg.)3:193:284 : 2

5 : 18:298:329-119:139:1810:411:25-2611:33

15:4

1 Corinthians1:302 : 9

3:12-156 : 2

8:610:1-410:16-1711:2611:2711:2913:12 (Vulg.)13:1315:2515:2815:56

2 0

442 0 5

1 9 8

467474

2 4197-98

13192, 19355236-371 7 3

2 5 536

1 1 5262, 286-89

2 7 727-28164

2 7

541 2 9

34274-7 584, 902 5

342761 2 1

1 5 1

2 4 5

332 2 9

2 4 72 0 5

1 9 1

75, 19076, 1961 9 6

288-89, 30423,2041 0 4

1 0 4

1 0 4

2 Corinthians2:12

3:64:135:165:19

Galatians1:8-93:284:4

Ephesians2 : 3

2 :20

4 :34:54 :85:275:32 (Vulg.)

Philippians2:6-82:6-112 : 7

2:21

Colossians2 : 9

2 Thessalonians2 : 3

1 Timothy2 : 4

2 : 5

3:16 (Vulg.)4:76:20 (Vulg.)

Titus1:9

Hebrews2 : 9

4:145:86:13-187:279:269:281 1

11:6

72

354156, 19292, 108

17103

73

552 0 1

2 9 9

67154, 1723 0 1

2 1 2

2 3

142

56, 129, 152, 156

2 3 3

173

238

24-25,90, 2771 5 0

206-79817

2 8 5

147

1 5 3148

8679791 9 0

2 4 1

13

INDEX 326

James1:172:242:26

1 Peter2:62 : 9

3:15 (Vulg.)3:18

2 Peter1:4

85, 11127-2828, 115

2 0 1

45, 1662 5 81 9 0

1 5 2

1 John1:72 : 2

2:16

5:7

Revelation3:206:912:117:1820:1—621:2

1 4 79 2

2 8 2

2 2 3

10-11, 15-162 7 3

183-847 03 0 1

42-434 2

General

Abelard. See Peter AbelardAbraham, 136, 248Adoptionism. See Christ, defined as

adoptedAgobard, d. 840, archbishop of Lyons, 24Alan of Lille, d. 1202, Cistercian

theologian in Paris, 242, 247, 280Albertus Magnus, d. 1280, Dominican

provincial and theologian, 2,273, 280,296

Alcuin, d. 804, intellectual leader ofCarolingian circle, 9—15, 18-19, 46—52,62—65

Aldhelm, d. 709, abbot and poet, 47Alexander of Hales, d. 1245, Franciscan

theologian in Paris, 273, 278, 280, 287,296-97

Alger of Liege, d. 1131/32, canon lawyerand theologian, 206, 213, 226

Amalarius of Metz, d. ca. 850, liturgist andtheologian, 78, 79

Ambrose, d. 397, bishop of Milan—on the doctrine of: baptism, 206;

Christ, 63, 118; Eucharist, 193, 199,206, 219—20

—relation of, to: Augustine, 219—20;Berengar, 193,220; Elipandus,63; Lanfranc, 193; Radbertus, 79

Ambrose Autpert, d. 784, Benedictineabbot, 23,99

—on the doctrine of: Christ, 23, 63.church, 14—15,47; Mary, 69, 71;tradition, 10

Amolo, d. 852, archbishop of Lyons,92-93

Angels, 31, 140, 293—98. See also Devil—doctrine of, in: Bonaventure, 294;

John Scotus Erigena, 103; FourthLateran Council, 269; ThomasAquinas, 294

—relation of, to doctrine of: church,298—99; creation, 294—95; grace,296—97; Mary, 166, 173

Annals of Saint-Bertin, chronicle of theWestern Franks, 93—94

Anselm, d. 1109, archbishop of Canter-bury, 139-44,259-62

—on the doctrine of: Christ, 106—8,116—17, 127, 131, 139—44,210-11;God, 110-12, 141, 261—62, 272;man, 112—14, 272; Mary, 166, 167;predestination, 272; reason, 256,259,262; Scripture, 121—22

—relation of, to: Augustine, 259;Bonaventure, 272; controversy withJudaism, 247; Peter Abelard, 106-8;Thomas Aquinas, 273

Anselm, d. 1158, bishop of Havelbergand archbishop of Ravenna, 2 30—31

Apologetics. See Religions, non-ChristianApophaticism, negative theology, 20,

101—2Apostles, 32,40-41,45, 180, 232. See

also Apostles' Creed; Church, definedas apostolic; Peter

Apostles' Creed, 11—12,174Arianism, heresy associated with Arius, d.

ca. 336, priest in Alexandria, 19,243Aristotle, d. 322 B.C., Greek philosopher,

100, 202—3, 289—91

General 327

Asceticism—doctrine of, in: Bernard of Clairvaux,

150,299—300; controversy withheretics, 232; Isidore of Seville, 212;John Scotus Erigena, 103

—relation of, to doctrine of: baptism,213; Christ, 106-7, 125-27, 150,175; church, 126, 299—300; Mary,163—64; priesthood, 227; Scripture,222

Athanasian Creed, 4, 11, 19,65Athanasius, d. 373, patriarch of

Alexandria, 63Atonement. See Christ, work ofAugustine, d. 430, bishop of Hippo

Regius, 9—49, 50—105, 270—84—cited, 2,4, 11; Retractations cited, 86,

225-26—on the doctrine of: baptism, 29—30,

204-5; Christ, 55,63,77-78, 191,193-94, 274; church, 2,42-43, 303;devil, 295—96; eschatology, 32—33,276; Eucharist, 3, 77-78, 191, 196,202, 218-19; grace, 25, 82-83;man, 26-27, 280—82; predestina-tion, 81,108, 271, 274—75; reason,258—59; sacraments, 29, 187—88,197, 204—5, 207—8; Scripture, 35,224; Trinity, 20—22, 262—63, 280,283

—relation of, to: Alcuin, 66; Ambrose,219—20; Anselm, 259; Bede, 25;Bonaventure, 270—84; Cassian, 16;Elipandus, 65—66; Gandulph, 275;Gilbert de La Porree, 266;Gottschalk, 59, 65; Guibert ofNogent, 304—5; Hincmar, 49-50,65—66; Hugh of Saint-Victor, 275;John Scotus Erigena, 97, 100—101;Julian of Toledo, 42; Peter Lombard,270—84; Peter of Poitiers, 275—76;Thomas Aquinas, 270—84

Augustine, Pseudo-, Memorandum againstthe Pelagians and Celestians, 86,89,276

Authority, 40—42, 231. See also Church;Rome; Scripture; Tradition

Autun, Second Synod of in 670, 11Averroes (Ibn-Rushd),d. 1198,Muslim

philosopher, and Averroism, 290

Baldwin of Ford, d. 1190, Cistercian abbotand archbishop of Canterbury, 5,

221—22, 257Baptism. See also Christ, baptism of—relation of, to doctrine of: asceticism,

213; church, 30-31; circumcision,31,36; confirmation, 211; Eucharist,2-3,29-31, 197,204-6,208; man,55,111,233-34; penance, 210;predestination, 92—93; sacraments,2-3,29-31,204-5

Beatus of Liebana, d. 798, theologian andexegete, 11,55-57,63,259

Bede, the Venerable, d. 735, Englishtheologian and historian

—on the doctrine of: church, 14—15,43,46—47; Eucharist, 80; grace, 25—26;penance, 32; sacraments, 29—30;Scripture, 39—40; tradition, 10,16-17; Trinity, 19; word of God,29

Benedict of Nursia, d. ca. 547, "patriarchof Western monasticism," 106, 127,177, 180

Berengar of Tours, d. 1088, dialecticianand theologian

—on the doctrine of: Christ, 192—94;Eucharist, 186—202,234—35;miracles, 201; reason, 256—57;sacraments, 207—8; saints, 179;tradition, 216—17, 220

Bernard, d. 115 3, abbot of Clairvaux—on the doctrine of: Christ, 129, 137-38,

144—57; church, 6, 231—33,298-301; Eucharist, 184, 188, 195;experience, 154-56, 304; Mary, 6,163, 167, 300; penance, 210; pope,6, 300; saints, 178; Trinity, 266

—relation of, to: Eugenius III, 300;

Gilbert de la Porree, 266—67; PeterAbelard, 129, 137-38, 147, 154-56,266

Bernold of Constance, d. 1100, canonistand theologian, 227

Bishops, 45,211,213Boethius, d. ca. 524, Roman consul and

Christian philosopher, 61, 265Boetius of Dacia, d. ca. 1284, logician and

"Averroist," 289—90Bogomils, dualist heretics in Bulgaria, 239Bonaventure, d. 1274, Franciscan

theologian and cardinal, 268—307passim

Boniface, d. 754, missionary to Germany,11, 24-25,28

INDEX 328

Bruno, d. 1123, bishop of Segni andexegete, 107, 211

Caesarius, d. 542, bishop of Aries, 81Caroline Books, attack on the East

attributed to Charlemagne, 132Cassian, John, d. 435, monk at Marseilles,

16,115

Cathari, dualistic heretics, 237-42, 256Catholicity. See Church, defined as catholicCelestine I, d. 432, pope, 67Celibacy. See Asceticism; Law; PriesthoodChalcedon, Council of in 45 1, 116, 124Charlemagne, d. 814, first emperor of Holy

Roman Empire, 19, 49, 51—52Christ, 22—23, 52—58; 106-57. See also

Eucharist; Mary; Salvation; Scripture;Trinity

—defined as: adopted, 52—58; angel,62—63; enhypostaton, 56; image ofGod, 146 (seealso Man); king,144—45; Logos and Logos incarnate,!9, i °3 , 141—42; man assumed, 63,142; Messiah, 35—36, 253—54;prophet but more than prophet, 120,244,254; Son of God, 26, 52-58,248; two natures, 53—54, 116, 142,146—47, 239—40; two wills, 13—14,116—17; union with the communica-tion of properties, 56—58, 96, 147

—life of, 23, 35,118, 123—24, 149:birth, 72—73, 142, 163, 193,244;baptism, 30, 55, 124—25; transfigura-tion, 222—23; suffering, 30, 35—36,90—92, 142—43; crucifixion, 129—44,151-52; descent into hell, 33, 118,154,291—92; resurrection, 133—34,152-53, 302; ascension, 75, 152-54,192,193-94

—work of, 3, 22, 106—7, defined as:deception of the devil, 134-3 5;example, 23, 119-20, 124-25, 127,128-30, 147-48, 150-51;mediation, 150; redemption, 90—92,128; sacrifice, 136—37, 143, 189—90(see also Eucharist, defined assacrifice); satisfaction, 113—14,140—41, 143, 152; teacher, 23, 29,120, 147—48; victor, 134—35,152-54, 156-57

—relation of, to doctrine of: church, 302;Eucharist, 75, 77—78, 117, 190—94,199; penance, 143, 210—11; pre-

destination, 274; reason, 262; relics,183—84; sacraments, 206—7; wordof God, 29, 76, 120, 147—48

Christian defined, 23, 120Chrysostom, John, d. 407, patriarch of

Constantinople, 16Church, 42—49, 269, 298—303. See also

Baptism; Eucharist; Mary; Sacraments;Scripture; Tradition; Worship

—defined as one, holy, catholic, apostolic,48: one, 36,44—45, 299—300; holy,43, 232-34, 236-37, 298-303;catholic, 10, 14-15, 19, 36-38,44,217—18; apostolic, 32,40—41,45,180, 242

Cicero, d. 43 B.C., Roman orator andphilosopher, 99

Communication of properties. See Christ,defined as union

Confirmation, 211. See also SacramentsConstantine I, d. 337, Roman emperor,

302

Constantinople, 231. See also Rome.Constantinople, Third Council of, in

680-81,64Councils, 12, 231Creation, 102, 199, 239, 290—91, 294—95Cross, 30, 125—26, 129—44, 150, 213, 236,

248. See also Christ, life ofCrusades, 7, 150, 181, 242—43, 245Cynewulf, ninth-century Anglo-Saxon

poet, 118, 130, 154Cyprian, d. 2 58, bishop of Carthage, 30,

44, 187-88

Dante Alighieri, d. 13 21, Italian poet,33-34,291-92

Death. See Eschatology; Man; SalvationDevil, 113, 134, 140, 152,273,295-96.

See also Angels; Christ, work ofDionysius, Pseudo-, the Areopagite, ca.

500, mystical theologian, 5, 101, 273,293-94,298

Discipline and obedience, 25, 118—19,126—27, 150

Doctrine, 4—5, 12—13, 224—25, 268Dream of the Rood, The, anonymous

Anglo-Saxon poem, 130, 135—36, 154

Eastern church, relation of the West to,4-5, 51, 230—31, 269. See also Filioque;Pope

General 329

—on the doctrine of: Christ, 22—23, 56,116-17, 135; church, 47,48-49,231; cross, 132; eschatology, 33;Eucharist, 80, 200, 217; Mary, 70,163, 165; salvation, 15; Trinity, 228,264

Ebrard of Bethune, d. ca. 1212,heresiologist, 247

Einhard, d. 840, biographer ofCharlemagne, 49

Elipandus, d. 802, archbishop of Toledo inSpain, 52-59,64-66, 68

Ephesus, Council of, in 431,41Eschatology, 33-34,42-43, 156-57. See

also Devil; Predestination; Salvation—components of: Antichrist, 37, 238;

conversion of Israel, 34, 246 (seealso Judaism, controversy with);millennium, 42-43, 252-53; purga-tory, 32-33, 235; resurrection, 104,240-41; saints, 174—75 (seealsoSaints); second coming of Christ,156-57

Eucharist, 74—80, 184—204, 216—21,233—35. See also Baptism; Christ;Sacraments; Worship

—denned as: change, 198—99;communion, 184; elements of breadand wine, 137, 189, 198—99, 203;figure, 75—77,201—2; reality,evenfor the unworthy recipient, 196—97;sacrifice, 32,79—80, 136—37,188—90,235 (seealso Christ, workof, defined as sacrifice); transub-stantiation, 6, 202—4, 268—69

—relation of, to doctrine of: ascension,192, 193-94; baptism, 2-3, 30, 197,204—6; creation, 199; incarnation,117, 199; predestination, 92; reason,96, 256—57, 259; relics, 183—84;tradition, 19—20, 216—21; virginbirth, 73—74, 193 (seealso Mary)

Eugenius III, d. 1153, Cistercian abbotand pope, 300

Evil and sin as "nothing," 97, 111, 239Experience, theology and, 154—5 5, 304—7Extreme unction, or the anointing of the

sick, 30, 211. See also Sacraments

Faith, 11-23,23-34, 2 5 5-67. See alsoDoctrine; Miracles; Reason; Religions,non-Christian; Scripture

Fathers. See Tradition

Felix, d. 818, bishop of Urgel in Spain,52-58,68

Filioque, 6—7, 19, 21—22, 229—30, 263,279—80. See also Eastern church; HolySpirit; Trinity

Florus, d. ca. 860, scholar and spokesmanfor the church of Lyons in the pre-destinarian controversy, 81-95

Foreknowledge. See God; PredestinationFrancis of Assisi, d. 1226, saint and

spiritual reformer, 305—6Frankfurt, Synod of, in 794, 58, 59, 62

Gandulph of Bologna, fl. ca. 1170,theologian and author of Sentences,275,276

Gerald of Aurillac, d. 909, lay saintmemorialized by Odo of Cluny, 182—83

Gezo of Tortona or Saint Martian, d. ca.984, author of treatise on Eucharist,185-86

Gilbert of Crispin, d. 1117, pupil ofAnselm, 107

Gilbert de La Porree, d. 1154, theologianand dialectician, 265—67, 278—79

God. See also Christ; Creation;Predestination; Trinity

—defined as: absolute and changeless, 20,85—86, 101—2, no—11, 138—39,146; possessing foreknowledge,86—87,97, 109,272-74 (seealsoPredestination); just and merciful,83—84, 94, 108—18, 141, 157, 272;love, 102; one, 239, 244; salvific inhis will, 90,274; wrathful, 20,141

Gospel, 25, 123. See also Christ, life of;Scripture

Gottschalk, d. ca. 868, monk of Orbais,59—61,64-65,67—69,80—98

Grace, 25—28, 80—95. See also Christ;Faith; Sacraments; Salvation

—relation of, to doctrine of: angels,296—98; free will, 82—84, 114—16;merit, 25,87, 114-15,274-75;nature, 26,82, 103—4, 284-93;predestination, 80—95; sacraments,29, 204—14

Gratian, d. ca. 1159, systematizer of canonlaw, 210. See also Law, canon

Gregory I, d. 604; pope, 16—17, 32—33,181

Gregory, d. 389, native of Nazianzus,theologian and rhetor, 101

INDEX 330

Gregory, d. ca. 395, bishop of Nyssa, 101,281

Gregory, d. 594, bishop of Tours andhistorian of the Franks, 7, 34

Guibert of Nogent, d. 1124, Benedictineabbot and theologian

—on the doctrine of: Christ, 107;experience, 304—5; Mary, 6, 169-70;miracles, 181; relics, 181—84;sacraments, 207; saints, 179

Guitmond, d. ca. 1095, bishop of Aversa,195,203

Hadrian I, d. 795, pope, 62Hatfield, Council of, in 680, 13—14Heresy and heretics, 229—42; defined, 13,

17—19, 229; on the Eucharist, 6,50—51, 185, 190; Islam as, 243—44. Seealso Church; Tradition; names ofindividual heretics

Herman of Scheda, d. 1173, Jewish convertand apologist, 259

Hilary, d. 367, bishop of Poitiers, 64, 218,279-81

Hincmar, d. 882, archbishop of Reims, 7,48-49, 5 8-61, 64-6 5, 67-68, 81-95

Holy Spirit, 21—22,40—41, 146,200,209. See also Filioque; Scripture;Trinity

Honorius of Autun, d. ca. 1156, scholastictheologian, 272, 297

Hugh of Amiens, d. 1164, heresiologist,229—30

Hugh of Saint-Victor, d. 1142, scholasticand sacramental theologian, 5, 207—9,215,263, 275,296-98

Hugh of Speroni, fl. 12th century, Italianheretic, 235

Humbert of Silva Candida, d. 1061,cardinal, 7, 198

Ildefonsus, d. 667, archbishop of Toledo,9, 24, 26-27, 34, 38, 69, 78

Image of God. See Christ, defined as imageof God; Man, defined as image of God

Images, 132,244Immaculate conception. See MaryIncarnation. See ChristInspiration. See ScriptureIrenaeus, d. ca. 200, bishop of Lyons, 203Isidore, d. 636, archbishop of Seville—on the doctrine of: Christ, 54,63;

eschatology, 37; Eucharist, 80; faith,

36—37; God, 20; gospel, 25, marriage,212; Mary, 162; pope, 48; predesti-nation, 88—89; sacraments, 209;tradition, 10, 14, 16; Trinity, 264

Islam, 105,242—45

James, apostle, 115Jerome, d. 420, biblical translator and

monastic theologian, 15—16, 59—60, 99,162,250,297

Jerome, Pseudo-, The Hardening of theHeart of Pharaoh, 84

Joachim of Fiore, d. 1202, apocalyptictheologian and mystic, 279, 298, 301—3

John the Baptist, precursor of Christ, 123,181, 210, 241, 302

John, d. ca. 749, native of Damascus,Greek theologian, 243, 281

John Scotus Erigena, d. ca. 877, philosoph-ical theologian, 5, 95—105, 186, 207,259

Josephus, Flavius, d. ca. 100, Jewishhistorian, 251—52

Judaism, controversy with, 34—38, 61,132, 245—54. See also Eschatology:conversion of Israel

Judas Iscariot, disciple and betrayer ofChrist, 84, 92, 109, 125 ,196

Julian, d. 454, bishop of Eclanum andPelagian theologian, 25

Julian, d. 690, archbishop of Toledo, 2, 17,26-28, 33,42,78

Justification, doctrine of, 27,155-56

Lanfranc of Bee, d. 1089, theologian andarchbishop of Canterbury, 3, 187, 193,206,256-57

Langres, Synod of, in 859, 93Lateran Council, Fourth, in 1215, 5, 203—4,

268, 269,279,296Law: canon law, 210,211—12, 212—13,

224—29, 300; law and gospel, 25,249;Mosaic law, 35, 248—49; natural law,74,248-49

Lawrence, d. 619, archbishop ofCanterbury, 44

Leo I, d. 461, bishop of Rome, 16, 17Lyons, Council of, in 1274, 269

Malachy, d. 1148, Irish saint and friend ofBernard, 178

Man, defined as: free, 26—27, 82—84, 109,114—16, 156,272 {see also Predestina-

General 331

tion); image of God, 146, 260, 280—82,284,305 {see also Christ, defined asimage of God); mortal, 240—41; sinner,26,83,93,112—13 {seealso Christ,work of); soul and rational soul, 20,288-89 {see also Trinity)

Martin, d. 397, bishop of Tours and patronsaint of France, 177

Martyrs. See SaintsMary, 68—74, 160—74. See also Christ;

Saints; Worship—defined as: assumed into heaven, 72,

172; crowned by Christ, 168—69;dying and resurrected, 72, 172—73;humble, 71; imitator of Christ, 125;immaculately conceived, 6, 71—72,171, 300; mediatrix, 71, 165-68;saved by Christ, 71, 169; Second Eve,167; second only to God, 131, 169;Theotokos, 68—69; ever-Virgin andMother, 73, 161, 163, 244

—relation of, to doctrine of: angels, 166,173; Christ, 168—69; church, 70—71;miracles, 181; relics, 170; saints,173—74; sin, 71, 112, 164—65

Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus,

119-20, 148, 172

Mary Magdalene, follower of Christ, 126,167

Matrimony, 211—12, 232. See alsoAsceticism; Law, canon; Sacraments

Maximus, d. 662, "the Confessor," Greektheologian, 99, 101

Means of grace, 29. See also Grace;Sacraments; Word of God

Medieval, definition of, 1—4Melchizedek, 136—37, 189Migetius, fl. ca. 780, Spanish heretic,

58-59Miracles, 26, 31, 73—74, 159—60,170,

179-81,200-201,245-46

Modern, definition of, 1—2Moses, 55, 127, 148. See also Law, Mosaic;

ScriptureMystery. See Sacrament

Nature. See Creation; Grace; LawNecessity, defined, 114, 141Nestorius, d. ca. 451, and Nestorianism,

218,243-44Nicene Creed, 21,43, 131» 146,269Nicetas of Niromedia, twelfth-century

Greek theologian, 230

Nicholas I, d. 867, pope, 93-94Nicholas of Clairvaux, d: ca. 1176,

secretary to Bernard, 210

Odo, d. 1113, bishop of Cambrai, 107, 246Odo, d. 942, abbot of Cluny, 108, 135,

179-80, 182-83, 185Orange, Council of, in 529,81Orders, holy, and ordination, 20, 29, 45,

196—97, 205, 212-13. See also Church;Priesthood; Sacraments; Simony

Origen, d. ca. 254, theologian and scholarin Alexandria, 18-19,92, 104, 183,241

Othlo of Sankt Emmeram, d. ca. 1070,Benedictine theologian, 131

Paganism. See Religions, non-ChristianPardulus, fl. ca. 850, bishop of Laon,

96-97Paul, apostle, 25, 36, 41, 115, 179-80,

198-99Paulinus, d. 802, bishop of Aquileia, 58,

61—62, 71Pelagius and Pelagianism, 25—26, 129,

275Penance, 32,210—11: relation to baptism,

210; heretics on, 233; as sacrament,208; "satisfaction" in, 143,210—11.See also Christ, work of, defined assatisfaction; Sacraments

Peter, apostle, 43—44,46—48, 302. Seealso Church; Pope; Rome

Peter Abelard, d. 1142, theologian anddialectician

—on the doctrine of: Christ, 107-8,127—29; experience, 154—55;reason, 259; revelation, 255; tradi-tion, 223—29; Trinity, 264-65, 266,278

—relation of, to: Bernard, 129,137-38,147, 154—56, 266; Boethius, 265;Roscellinus, 264, 266; William ofSaint-Thierry, 138

Peter Alfonsi, d. ca. 1140, Jewish convertand writer, 247—48

Peter de Bruys, d. 1126, twelfth-centuryheretic, 235—36

Peter Damian, d. 1072, monastic writerand cardinal

—on the doctrine of: Christ, 107,131,135, 144; Mary, 161; orders, 212;penance, 127; salvation, 108

INDEX 332

Peter Damian, Pseudo-, 203Peter Lombard, d. 1160, "Master of the

Sentences" and bishop of Paris,270—98 passim

—on the doctrine of: angels, 296, 298;God, 276; predestination, 272—73;reason, 286—87, 288; sacraments,208, 210; Trinity, 278, 279, 282,286-87

Peter of Poitiers, d. 1205, pupil of PeterLombard, 275-76, 287-88, 296

Peter the Venerable, d. 1156, abbot ofCluny, 242, 243

Pharaoh, 84, 275-76Plato, d. 347 B.C., Greek philosopher, and

Platonism, 100, 103Pope and papacy, 48, 300, 303. See also

Church; Peter; RomePrayer, 12, 176—77, 235, 238, 304. See

also Mary; Saints; WorshipPredestination, 80—98, 271—77. See also

God; Man; SalvationPriesthood, 45, 137, 143, 188—89,232.

See also Church; Orders, holyPriminius (Pirminius), d. 7 5 3, Benedic-

tine missionary and bishop, 23, 24, 31Prophet, 123. See also Christ, defined as

prophet; ScriptureProsper of Aquitaine, d. ca. 463, monk at

Marseilles, 67,90, 115Providence, divine, 85, 97, 274Prudentius, d. 861, bishop of Troyes, 85,

88,94,95, 104

Quiercy, Council of, in 853, 82, 83,90-91,93

Rabanus Maurus, d. 856, archbishop ofMainz, 80—95 passim

Radbertus, Paschasius, d. 865, Benedictinemonk at Corbie

—on the doctrine of: Eucharist, 74—80,197, 202; Mary, 70, 72—74;miracles, 201; sacraments, 30, 197;worship, 79

—relation of, to: Ambrose, 74,79;Berengar, 201; heresy, 50—51; laterdevelopment, 159, 185—86;Ratramnus, 72—80; Vergil, 99

Ratherius, d. 974, Benedictine monk andbishop of Verona, 185, 191—92,203

Ratramnus, d. 868, Benedictine monk atCorbie

—on the doctrine of: Eucharist, 74—80,202—3; Mary, 72—74; predestina-tion, 81,84, 87, 88; Trinity, 59

—relation of, to: Gottschalk, 59, 81,84, 87,88; later development, 80,186; Radbertus, 72-80

Real presence. See EucharistReason, 95-105, 255—67, 284—93—relation of, to doctrine of: Eucharist,

96, 202—3, 256—57; predestination,96—99, 273—74; non-Christianreligions, 257—58; revelation, 98,113—14, 255—67, 284—93; Trinity,263—67, 278—79; double truth,289—91

Redemption. See Christ, work ofReims, Synod of, in 1148, 267Relics, 170, 181—84. See also SaintsReligions, non-Christian, 23—24, 29,

160—61, 242, 254—55, 257—58. Seealso Islam; Judaism; Reason;Superstition

Remigius of Auxerre, d. 908, Benedictinemonk and scholar, 137

Richard of Saint-Victor, d. 1173, mysticaltheologian, 222—23, 259, 262, 279, 304

Robert Pullen, d. 1146, theologian andcardinal, 4

Rolando Bandinelli, d. 1181, later PopeAlexander III, supposed author of theSentences of Roland, 203

Rome, 6,43-48, 52,68, 177,231,300-301

Romuald, d. 1027, founder of theCamaldolese Order, 127

Roscellinus, d. ca. 1125, nominalistphilosopher, 264, 266, 278—79

Rupert, d. ca. 1130, abbot of Deutz, 4,133-34,203

Sacraments, 29—33, 92—93, 187—88,204-14, 303, 305. See also Church;Heresy; Worship; names of individualsacraments

Sacrifice. See Christ, work of, defined assacrifice; Eucharist, defined as sacrifice

Saints, 55-56, 125, 174—84Salvation, 24—25, 102—4, 152. See also

Christ, work of; Grace; ManSatisfaction. See Christ, work of; PenanceSchism and schismatics, 18, 229. See also

Church; East; Heresy

General 333

Scripture. See also Judaism; Reason;Tradition; Word of God

—defined as: allegorical, 39—40; authori-tative, 40—42, 121—24, 221—23;canon, 44,48, 72, 249; efficacious,120-21; Gospels, 38-39, 123-24;historical, 100; inspired by God,40—41, 100, 122—23, 221—23; OldTestament and New Testament, 35,38—40, 109—10, 122, 132—33, 136,148, 188—90, 201; "theology," 6;unified, 38—40, 222—23

—doctrine of, in: Baldwin of Ford,221—23; Bonaventure, 305; Cathari,241—42; Hincmar, 48; John ScotusErigena, 98, 100; Peter Abelard,224—25; Ratherius, 122

—textual variants in, 225, 249—translations of, 99, 140, 250, 258-59

(see also individual passages marked"Vulg." in biblical index)

Servatus Lupus, d. 862, abbot of Ferneres,17,24,81-82,84,88

Siger of Brabant, d. ca. 1284, LatinAverroist, 289—90

Simony, 18, 196-97, 212—13. See alsoLaw, canon; Orders; Priesthood;Sacraments

Soissins, Synod of: in 853, 61; in 1092,266

Stephen, d. ca. 1140, bishop of Autun, 203Substance. See Eucharist; TrinitySuperstition, 24, 73—74, 178—79Sylvester I, d. 335, bishop of Rome, 238

Tanchelm,d. 1115, heretic, 233, 234Tertullian, d. ca. 220, theologian in North

Africa, 143, 204Theodore Abu Kurra, d. ca. 820, Arabic

Christian theologian, 243Theology, defined, 5—6, 268Thomas Aquinas, d. 1274, Dominican

theologian, 6—7, 208, 268—307 passimToledo, Fourth Council of, in 633, 11, 37Toledo, Eighth Council of, in 653, 16Tradition, 9-49,61-66, 216-29, 270-84;

authenticity of, 18, 63-66,84, 86, 225;authority of Scripture and, 41—42, 122,

269—70 (see also Church; Scripture);heretics and, 65, 237, 241—42; prooffrom, 81, 95, 190—91

Transubstantiation. See EucharistTrent, Council of, in 1545—63,204Trinity, 19—22, 58—61, 145—46, 247—50,

262-67, 277—84. See also Filioque;God; Judaism; Reason

Ulrich, d. 973, bishop of Augsburg, 177

Vacarius, d. ca. 1198, theologian andcanonist, 234

Valence, Synod of, in 855, 93Venantius Fortunatus, d. ca. 610, Latin

Christian poet, 132,291—92Vercelli, Synod of, in 1050, 186,218Vergil, d. 19 B.C., Roman poet, 99, 291—92Victorinus, Marius, fl. 360, Roman rhetor

converted to Christianity, 63—64Vision of God, 34, 174, 303—7

War and peace, 38,237,252-53William of Saint-Thierry, d. 1148,

Benedictine monk and mysticaltheologian, 138

Word of God and word of Christ, 29,120, 147-48. See also Christ, work of,defined as teacher; Scripture

Worship. See also Church; Eucharist;Mary; Prayer; Tradition

—authority of, 66—70, 78—79, 146, 159,236

—cited: GelasianSacramentary, 71, 143;Mozarabic Rite and Spanish liturgy,52,62,68

—components of: use of cross, 131—33;eucharistic prayer, 62, 137,200;hymns, 21, 59, 64, 67, 132, 136,146, 179; hymns and prayers toMary, 69-70, 71, 162, 169, 170-71;Mass for the departed, 190; Scripture,29, 122, 124; Trisagion, 67

—feasts and holy days: Good Friday andEaster, 133-34, 136, 153,299;Ascension, 153; Marian festivals, 6,71, 72, 170—72; saints' days, 176—77,179

THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION, Volume III

Designed by Joseph Alderfer.Composed by Typoservice Corporationin Linotype Garamond with display linesin Foundry American Garamond.Printed by Halliday Lithograph Corp.on Warren's Olde Style.Bound by Halliday Lithograph Corp. in Joanna ArrestoxVellum and stamped in purple and gold.

The symbol on the cover is adapted from the RuthwellCross, dating from the seventh or eighth century, onwhich there appear, in runic inscription, portions of theOld English poem The Dream of the Rood.