The Contents of the Summa contra Gentiles
"frivolities" (frivolitates).
Thus in his response to Gerard, the conventual lector of Besançon, who questioned him on the form of the star that appeared to the Magi (a cross, a man, or a crucifix?), Thomas responds that there is nothing in Scripture or tradition that addresses this and he adds rather dryly: "It is not proper for the preacher of truth to lose himself in unverifiable fables."78 For an intellectual, Thomas's preaching appears astonishingly concrete, supported by daily experience, concerned with social and economic justice.79
We certainly see here the mentality of his epoch (superstitions, antisemitism, male biases, etc.), but his preaching is also impregnated with a massive use of the Bible and a profound love for the Word of God. (It is in the context of a sermon on keeping holy the Lord's Day that he invokes the Jews as an example to Christians because Jews spend the Sabbath meditating on Scripture.)
As to the content, his sermons repeat many themes favored by the preachers of every time: the meaning of God, devotion to the Virgin, prayer, humility (Thomas loved the theme of the vetula who knows more about God than a proud intellectual), but we also find here some personal lines of force. In the first place, concern for the essential, charity: Tota lex Christi pendet a caritate.80 Then, imitation of Christ: "Everything the Lord did and suffered in the flesh is a salutary teaching for us."81
The theme of man as the image of God finds a place in this context, for Christ came to restore the image disfigured by sin. Thomas insists here on freedom as the privileged sign of resemblance to God. Finally, he
78. Responsi ad lectorem Bisuntinum, Leon., vol. 42, p. 355; see in Torrell, Pratique, pp. 224–25, two other examples of this attitude and the somewhat larger context of this response. We also refer to this study for the following paragraphs. No one has done more than L.J. Bataillon for a better knowledge of Saint Thomas's preaching. We refer again to a text edited by him: "Le sermon inédit de S. Thomas Homo quidam fecit cenam magnam. Introduction et édition," RSPT 67 (1983) 353–69; cf. his earlier: "Un sermon de S.
Thomas sur la parabole du festin," RSPT 58 (1974) 451–56.
79. See the examples given in Torrell, Pratique, pp. 230–31; in reference to our article in the DS (col. 727, par. 2), Father Gauthier has advised us that, in his work in preparation for the edition of the Quodlibets, he is "on the contrary struck by the complete lack of concern for social justice;" Thomas did not engage himself in that way, contenting himself with passing on, through Saint Ambrose, Saint Basil's positions, themselves drawn from Stoicism, "whose social criticism is a significant trait," while Aristotle was rather conservative. This perhaps results from the difference of literary genre, but Thomas's preaching seems to us more positive in this field.
80. Collationes XI (ed. Torrell), p. 227.
81. Sermon Puer Iesus proficiebat (ed. Raulx I, p. 418).
strongly emphasizes the place of the Holy Spirit as a source of Christian liberty, the bond of ecclesial communion, the origin of our prayers, the realizer of the petitions in the Pater.
These are some themes to which we return in the next book,82 dedicated to Thomas's spiritual theology. In mentioning them here, we wish to draw attention to the connection that exists for him between theology and preaching. We can speak of Thomas, as about many of the theologians of this period, as a ''preacher's magisterium."83
82. As this volume goes to press, preparation of the French edition of the second volume is nearly complete; an English translation of the second volume will be published by The Catholic University of America Press.
83. This is the theme of a wonderful study by J. Leclercq, "Le magistère du prédicateur au XIIIe siècle," AHDLMA 21 (1946) 105–47.
Chapter V—
Defender of Mendicant Religious Life
The Palm Sunday 1259 incident, mentioned in the previous chapter, was only one sign among several of a university atmosphere in continual deterioration since the arrival of the mendicant friars in Paris.1 The Dominicans had obtained their first chair in theology thanks to Roland of Cremona, who received a master of arts degree from Bologna and had entered the order in 1219. He arrived in Paris in 1228 and became bachelor of the Sentences for John of Saint Giles, an English secular master. He was to become master of theology in May 1229. With the agreement of the chancellor and the Holy See, he began teaching as a regentmaster because of the strike of 1229–30. Thanks to the good reputation the friars enjoyed, he quickly acquired a strong student following.2 In September 1230, John of Saint Giles was to take the Dominican habit. Since he was already regentmaster, he retained his chair and continued teaching.3 This was the second chair in theology at Saint
Jacques, the one designated "for foreigners" (rather improperly, it seems).
1. M.M. Dufeil's thesis, Guillaume de SaintAmour et la polémique universitaire parisienne 1250–1259 (1972), which is remarkable in many ways, also makes that decade come alive again with an impartiality that religious historians have not always maintained; some of the data about Saint Thomas ought to be adjusted in light of recent work by the Leonine Commission; cf. also [C. Vansteenkiste], RLT (1975) no. 774, pp. 318–22.
2. In addition to the observations of Glorieux, Répertoire I, no. 1, p. 42, see on this subject M.H. Vicaire, "Roland de Crémone ou la position de la théologie à l'université de Toulouse,"
Cahiers de Fanjeaux 5 (1970), pp. 145–78.
3. On John of Saint Giles, cf. Glorieux, Répertoire I, no. 3, pp. 52–53; Käppeli, Scriptores II, pp. 536–37; on what seem to be the real, concrete circumstances about the acquisition of these chairs, cf. Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 24–25.
History of a Quarrel
The secular masters never forgave the Dominicans for sabotaging a strike they thought legitimate; they also looked askance at the presence of the religious orders in their ranks, which had previously been homogeneous.4 To understand their attitude, we must remember that the number of chairs in theology at the University of Paris (though not the number of professors) was strictly limited.5 At the beginning of the century, there were only eight, of which three were reserved for the canons of Notre Dame; this group, once graced with Peter Lombard, also furnished the university chancellor. In the beginning, the seculars were thus clearly a majority. In 1254, the number of chairs grew to twelve, but three mendicants were now included in addition to the canons of Notre Dame. Each new arrival meant another lost chair for the seculars; beyond the fact that the fruitful commercial game that surrounded the appointments (locations, exchanges, or even the selling of chairs) was somewhat upset by this development, the constellation of forces was becoming very different and relentlessly played out to the seculars' detriment.6
Things were therefore complicated when the English master Alexander of Hales entered the Franciscans in 1236.7 An active master since 1229, Alexander naturally kept the chair and passed it on to John of Rochelle, Eudes Rigaud, and William of Meliton. The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was the Franciscans'
claim to a second chair in theology, as the Dominicans had. The occasion presented itself at the candidacy of Saint Bonaventure.8 A bachelor of the Sentences since 1250, Bonaventure
4. Cf. the manifesto Excelsi dextera, February 4, 1254, addressed to all the prelates and university figures, in which the secular masters give their version of the events that occurred following the arrival of the Dominicans at the university; see also the analysis and commentary on this document in Dufeil, Polémique pp. 103–6, 110–12.
5. Cf. the remarks of Glorieux, L'enseignement, p. 91, and Réprtoire I, p. 225; cf. Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 109–10, and the appendix containing a detailed table of the chairs and their occupants from 1215 to 1284.
6. The arrival of the Cistercian Guy de l'Aumône seems to have marked the beginning of a noticeable increase in the ranks of the regulars (cf. Glorieux, Répertoire I, no. 360, p. 251, and also p. 228). Cf. Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 106–7, 113; P. MichaudQuantin, "Guy de l'Aumône, premier Maître cistercien de l'Université de Paris," Anal. S. Ord. Cisterciens. 15 (1959) 194–
219.
7. Glorieux's work in Répertoire II, no. 1, pp. 15–24, should be updated with M. Mückshoff, Lexikon des Mittelalters 1 (1980) 377–78; see also V. Doucet's additions in his review of Glorieux: AFH 26 (1933) 4–11.
8. Cf. Glorieux, Répertoire II, no. 305, pp. 37–51; A. Gerken, Lexikon des Mittelalters 2 (1983) 402–7; Dufeil's Polémique, pp. 3–9, 157–58, presents the details and hidden side of this claim to a second Franciscan chair.
had received his license in theology in 1253, but beginning in February 1252 the secular masters had put out new statutes denying the regulars more than one master's chair per religious college.9
Without entering further into the Franciscans's engagement in this quarrel—they were as implicated as the Dominicans, and the widespread Joachimism among them rendered them more vulnerable, as Dufeil has shown—and without explaining in detail the endless skirmishing that followed,10 we may sum up the principal phases in the conflict thus: in March 1253, a new strike broke out at the university. Once again, the regulars (on the Dominican side, Elias Brunet and Bonhomme) continued their courses. In April and September, the seculars promulgated new statutes requiring those who wished to be admitted to the college of masters to take an oath promising to observe the new rules.11 But on 26 August, Innocent IV invited the two parties to reconcile with one another, and asked them to come to Rome if they did not succeed in reaching an understanding prior to 15 August 1254.12 The seculars began a large offensive campaign, and in February they sent the letter Excelsi dextera to all the prelates in Christendom. In it, they presented the history of the conflict from their point of view.13 Shortly afterward, William of SaintAmour, the university delegate in the case against the Order of Preachers, went to Rome and succeeded in obtaining from an aged Innocent IV a late declaration of support: the Bull Etsi animarum (21 November). That document limited the privileges of the mendicants with regard to confessions, collections, preaching, and so forth, but maintained a prudent reserve about the university.14 The pope died on 7 December, and his successor, Alexander IV, quickly promulgated (22 December) the Bull Nec insolitum, which quashed Etsi animarum.15
After 14 April 1255, the Bull Quasi lignum vitae would modify the
9. The text is Quoniam in promotione ( Chartul. , no. 200, pp. 226–27), which Humbert of Romans, the master general of the Dominicans, will describe as having been promulgated by a congregatio clandestina ( Chartul. , no. 273, p. 310).
10. Besides Dufeil, Polémique, we might refer to H.F. Dondaine, Préface à Léon. , vol. 41, pp. A 7–8, which updates P. Glorieux, "Le conflit de 1252–1257 à la lumière du Mémoire de Guillaume de SaintAmour," RTAM 24 (1957) 364–72.
11. Chartul. , no. 219, pp. 242–43.
12. Chartul. , no 225–26, pp. 249–51.
13. Chartul. , no. 230, pp. 252–58; cf. above, Chapter III, p. 3.
14. Chartul. , no. 240, pp. 267–70; the Bull Lecta coram of 10 May ( Chartul. no. 26, pp. 263–64) had already appeared and established the same general stance. See the analysis of the two documents and their circumstances in Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 114–19, 127–31.
15. Chartul. , no. 244, pp. 276–77.
decrees against the mendicants, demand their reintegration, and suppress the limit on the number of chairs. But the Pope's letter was far from being onesided: though it commends the two Dominican masters for refusing to join the 1253 strike, when they had been excluded from the university, it recommends that in the future they participate in a just strike.16 Significantly echoing the pope's letter, the Dominican general, Humbert of Romans, wrote to the friars of his order, at the behest of the general chapter at Milan (1255), to do everything possible to overcome the quarrels with the seculars in the domain of administering the sacraments, preaching, burials, alms, etc.17
In the fall of 1255 (2 October), the seculars published a novel declaration, Radix amaritudinis, in which they affirmed their readiness to dissolve their society and leave Paris rather than admit the Order of Preachers among them—a maneuver that would prove to be a mistake.18 An attempt at mediation by the bishops of the Paris region reached a halting compromise, which the Franciscans accepted but the Dominicans refused. The pope, however, rejected it in a letter of 17 June 1256, which also relieved of their duties the four masters most engaged in the conflict: William of SaintAmour, Odon of Douai, Nicholas of BarsurAube, and Christian of Beauvais.19
The pope further asked King Louis IX to expel these four masters from the kingdom of France. But Louis limited himself to seizing and referring to Rome William's De periculis. Only after William had been condemned by Rome and forbidden by the pope to reenter France did Saint Louis ban him as well.20 From the university's point of view, these contestations found a provisional conclusion on 12 August 1257, when, in the church of the friars minor, Christian of Beauvais pronounced his submission to a delegate of the bishop of Paris and promised to work toward the university's reception of brothers Thomas and Bonaventure.21 Thomas, therefore, 16. Chartul. no. 247, pp. 279–85; cf. Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 152–56.
17. MOPH 5, pp. 21–24; Dufeil, Polémique, p. 163.
18. Chartul. no. 256, pp. 292–97.
19. Chartul. nos. 268 and 280, pp. 304–5 and 319–23; for the bishops's efforts, see Dufeil, Polémique, 203–12.
20. Chartul. nos. 282 289, 288, 314–16, pp. 324–25, 333–35, 331–33, 362–64; see also on this subject M.M. Dufeil, "Le roi Louis dans la querelle des mendiants et des séculiers," in Histoire, pp. 517–30.
21. Chartul. no. 317, pp. 364–67; cf. ibid., no. 293, pp. 338–40, for Odon of Douai's retraction; Nicholas, who belonged to the arts faculty, was simply called to order, cf. Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 282 and 286; see p. 307 where he proposes 23 October 1257 as the effective date for the reception of the two religious masters into the consortium magistrorum.
waited about eighteen months for his admission into the consortium magistrorum. Bonaventure, however, had waited four years, and he gave his principium when he had already been minister general of the friars minor for six months.
This dry account hardly conveys the violence of the quarrel; the seculars had manoeuvred well enough to raise a segment of the students and the Latin Quarter against the religious. Thus during the winter of 1255–1256, the friars were assaulted in the streets, and SaintJacques had to be guarded by the royal archers. When Thomas gave his inaugural lecture, it was under their protection; some demonstrators kept outside listeners from entering.22
The Contra impugnantes
Thomas's admission to the college of masters resolved only part of the problem. The conflict had very quickly overflowed the university setting. It became clear that the wave of opposition, whose leader was William of SaintAmour, had at bottom a much more central question: the very legitimacy of the ministry of the mendicants, who claimed to be devoted to study and teaching, and to live, not by labor, but by alms. These are the central theses of one of the major pieces in the quarrel, the Tractatus de periculis nouissimorum temporum, which William published around March–April 1256.
That work, which survives in several versions, presents itself as a warning to the bishops and other pastors of the Church about the perils of the last days before the Antichrist. It seeks to make them aware of the danger that the false preachers described by Saint Paul will pose to the Church.23 The essence of William's proposed remedy consists in sending all the religious back to their monasteries (from which they should never have departed) to perform manual labor. This simplistic proposition shows the depth of the misunderstanding: William never comprehended that the mendicant religious were not monks, nor to what extent the order of 22. Chartul. no. 279, pp. 317–19 ( = MOPH 5, pp. 31–38); no. 280, p. 321; the second of these documents is by Alexander IV, the first by Humbert of Romans: Dufeil, Polémique, 217–18, has no trouble showing that Humbert espouses without reservation the Dominican point of view, but the facts are beyond dispute. Most notably, the protection of Saint
Jacques by the royal police is confirmed in one of the secular masters's documents ( Radix amaritudinis, Chartul. , no. 256, p. 294; cf. Dufeil, Polémique, p. 170, and note 91, p.
193.)
23. For an analysis of this work and the various versions, see Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 212–27, 241–42, 252–53.
preachers was defined by study and preaching. This book was condemned by Alexander IV on 5 October 1256, not before making waves that lasted a long time.24
The poet Ruteboeuf, an ardent partisan of William, witnesses to this in his way.25
MarieMichel Dufeil has written an unflattering portrait of William of SaintAmour.26 Subdeacon for life, he collected, however, two prebends as a canon and one as a curate. Irascible, violent, and obstinate, he certainly did not possess the intellectual breadth of his adversaries Thomas and Bonaventure, but it is necessary to try to understand his motives and those of his colleagues. Those motives were doubtless mixed: envy and jealousy over the success of the religious masters, and fear for a loss of revenues played a part. But not all their motives were meanspirited, nor was their fear of heresy without its reasons. That William took to Rome the Introductorius ad Evangelium aeternum of Gerard de Borgo San Donnino, when it was still anonymous and attributed to the Dominicans, or that he drew up with his colleagues the list of thirtyone errors sent to Pope Innocent IV by Renaud Mignon de Corbeil, the bishop of Paris, testifies to a certain perspicacity.27 But the misguided fear of heresy made him confuse one kind of friar with another by putting into the same category the new preachers and Gerard's sectarians.
William's sincerity is probably not to be doubted, since he seems to have ended believing in the dangers he was denouncing.28 But his theological conservatism drove him to defend the established hierarchy, without the
24. Chartul. , no. 288, pp. 331–33.
25. See Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 148–50, 316–24, and the same author's "L'oeuvre d'une vie rythmée: Chronographie de Ruteboeuf," in Histoire, pp. 671–87.
26. To the point of being suspected of a certain Manieheism by Jacques Le Goff in the preface that he wrote to Saint Thomas et l'histoire (cf. p. 12); for the biographical data, see Dufeil, Polémique, pp. xx–xxxii, or, for want of it, the same author's Saint Thomas et l'histoire, in two articles that sum up the essential points: "Un universitaire parisien réactionnaire vets 1250: Guillaume de SaintAmour," pp. 445–56, and "Guillaume de SaintAmour," pp. 543–50. For a less partisan judgment, see Phillipe Delhaye, "Guillaume de SaintAmour," DS 6
(1967) 1237–40.
27. Cf. Chartul. , no. 257, p. 297; the book was condemned by a commission of cardinals, and Saint Bonaventure was not soft on the author, since the tribunal over which he presided condemned the author to life imprisonment. Cf. P. Péano, "Gérard de Borgo San Donnino," DHGE 20 (1984) 719–21; for his condemnation at Anagni, cf. H. Denifle, "Das Evangelium aeternum und die Commission zu Anagni," in Archiv für Litteratur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters 1 (1885) 49–142. Several texts concerning this affair have appeared in French in Dufeil, "Trois 'sens de l'histoire' affrontés vers 1250–1260," in Saint Thomas et l'histoire, pp. 619–66: cf. also Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 119–27, 172–73.
28. Dufeil, Saint Thomas et l'histoire, pp. 546 and 627, who is joined on this point by J. D. Dawson, "William of SaintAmour and the Apostolic Tradition," MS 40 (1978) 223–38, especially p. 234.
proper and necessary nuances, against the invasion of "the papal militia." (His position often seems a Gallicanism before the fact.) This stance made him misunderstand the newness of Spirit at work in the history of that time. Without entering here into an evaluation of the underlying ecclesiologies behind the respective positions, we may still think that one reason for the (temporary) defeat of the seculars lay precisely in this theological rigidity, which hindered William and his associates from seeing the growing importance of the papacy.29
Thomas did not wait long to get involved in the melee. As we have seen, at the same time that he gave his inaugural lecture the new master was supposed to dispute four questions during the two days that his inceptio lasted. According to Weisheipl, it is to this occasion that we owe the De opere manuali religiosorum.30
According to Gauthier, we should consider this text rather an integral part of the first Quodlibet defended by Thomas after his accession as master.31 Neither hypothesis affects the date, since that remains fixed during Lent of 1256, Easter falling that year on 16 April.
Analysis of the text, article 18 in particular, shows that Thomas is following and refuting the De periculis. The proposed dates make this entirely possible. The first version of William's text could have appeared after 15 March or at the beginning of April 1256.32 And we know from other sources that Thomas undertook his inceptio between 3 March and 17 June of that same year. It would evidently be a clear sign of the combativeness of the young master if he had spontaneously chosen this topic in preference to another, less burning one for an exercise already dangerous enough in itself. But this does not change the result in the slightest: Thomas immediately took a position.
It also seems clear that, around this time, he began the composition of Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem. In any event, that work was finished before William's condemnation became known at Paris, since
29. Dufeil's thesis ( Polémique, pp. 260–64 in particular) about this point is well founded, but a better contextualized theological analysis may be found in Dawson's article (cf. note 28 above). Dawson shows that William's error was to have taken the reference to the primitive Church as a strict juridical norm, and also to have opposed it to innovations in his day. Yves Congar's, "Aspects ecclésiologiques de la querelle entre mendiants et séculiers dans la seconde moitié du XIIIe et le début du XIVe," AHDLMA 28 (1961) 34–151, retains its relevance to this point.
30. Quodlibet VII q. 7 a. 1–2 [17–18]; cf. Weisheipl, pp. 104–9, who joins here P. Castagnoli, "Regesta," DTP 31 (1928) 253–56.
31. We thank Father Gauthier for communicating this information to us along with the new text of the Quodlibet VII, which he has edited for volume 25 of the Leonine edition.
32. Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 214–15, 232–33.
Thomas would certainly have mentioned it. The Leonine editors say November was the date of completion, but, with Weisheipl, we might push that date back to October.33 As to the place of composition, in spite of Tocco, who is clearly misinformed, it was not Anagni but evidently Paris.34
At first sight, this is not Thomas's most passionate work. But after Hyacinthe Dondaine's introduction to the text that he prepared for the Leonine edition and the labors of Dufeil, it can be read with a new eye and considerable interest. In addition to being very well constructed, its plan exactly reflects the parties in the debate then underway.35 Thomas begins by defining a religio, which is to say a religious order, and what constitutes its perfection (chapter 1); for the whole argument of our adversaries, he says, seems directed against the religious orders ( quia eorum tota intentio contra religiosos esse videtur—Prologue). He then establishes the licitness of teaching for the religious orders (2), and their right to belong to the professorial body (3).
These two last chapters use official university documents, while the following chapters, which energetically defend the mendicant ideal, use materials borrowed from various sources such as disputed questions, sermons, and lampoons of all sorts published by their opponents. First, he defends the right to preach and hear confessions, even if the mendicants did not have pastoral responsibilities ( cura animarum, chapter 4). They were not to be hindered from these activities by the obligation to do manual labor (chapter 5). This is why Thomas claims for them the right to the most absolute poverty (chapter 6) and the possibility of living by alms in order not to be entangled in financial administration or other business (chapter 7).
The seventeen remaining chapters of this work are used to demonstrate the iniquity of the infamous accusations formulated against the "religious mendicants." These chapters follow rather closely the argument of De peri33. Cf. Leonine, vol. 41, pp. A 12–13; Weisheipl, p. 88.
34. Cf. Ystoria 20, pp. 262–67 (Tocco 19, pp. 91–93); this entire chapter in Tocco should be approached with caution.
35. This plan is stated at the end of the prologue, and a synopsis of the whole book may be found in the Leonine, vol. 41, p. A 7; see also Glorieux, "Le 'Contra impugnantes' de S.
Thomas," Mélanges Mandonnet I, 51–81, and the very lively analysis by Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 253–60. All references in this chapter to the Contra impugnantes, De perfectione, and Contra retrahentes refer to vol. 41 of the Leonine edition with its threefold division: A, B, C. There is a French translation, complete but aged (from 1857), of these three opuscula in Opuscules de Saint Thomas d'Aquin (VrinReprise 4 and 5) (Paris, 1984). Often the chapter numbering does not correspond with that in the critical edition.
culis. Thomas took pains to discover the weak spots in that work's armor. Everything passes in review: things (the habit, the mobility of the religious, study, their way of preaching ornate, etc.), all good but turned to seeming evil by a manifest intention to detract; persons are accused of being false apostles, brigands, and thieves—
because they let themselves into others' sheepfolds—and of being precursors of the Antichrist, who announces his coming in their preaching. Thomas lets nothing pass, because the honor of the Preachers is at stake. He thus uses in his book an almost unheardof array of auctoritates, among which the Decree and the Gloss receive a special place. It is clear that he wants to wrest from William his very weapons, since the latter believed himself to be proceeding on the basis of received authorities.
We can appreciate the Contra impugnates from diverse points of view. Thus, Dufeil can praise Thomas's sense of history compared with William's rigidity or Gerard's confused messianism.36 In place of a lengthy exposition, we might highlight that Thomas's historical sense matches the vision of religious life that we find in his opening chapter. Thomas puts the theological life in its fullness at the root of the religious life: faith first, which is the first link that reunites man to God. But he also includes hope and charity. All charitable works thus become part of that "service" rendered to God in the religious life. What unifies everything is the New Testament
"spiritual sacrifice": the offering of oneself, body and soul, as an agreeable victim (Romans 12:1) through the vows of chastity and obedience, and of one's goods through the vow of poverty.
Along the way—one cannot help but admire it—Thomas positions his pawns in full theological truth. First: given charity's extension throughout all the works of the Christian life, "there is no work of compassion [in the full sense he gives to this word] that may not become the focus of a religious order even if it has never been done up until now."37 Nothing remains but to present preaching and teaching theology as a spiritual work of mercy (because "man does not live by bread alone") in order with a single stroke to legitimate the Order of Preachers despite the novelty of their intentions.
Second example: the perfection of a religious order comes naturally, as for every other thing, from the end that it pursues (the active and contem36. Cf. note 29 above, but also the central thesis of S. Thomas et l'histoire, especially pp. 102–5.
37. Contra impugnantes 1, ll. 66–68, p. A 54: "Nec est aliquod opus misericordiae ad cuius exsecutionem religio institui non possit, et si non sit hactenus instituta."
plative lives are distinguished by this), but also from the means employed, which may be more or less suitable for the achievement of that end. Take two contemplative orders: the more perfect one will have an internal organization that liberates its members for contemplation.38 The reasoning is irrefutable; Thomas uses it in the appropriate way to show the connection between poverty and perfection.
The De perfectione and the Contra retrahentes
After William's condemnation and his associates' retraction, the debate lay dormant for several years, and Thomas completed his first round of teaching in Paris in a more peaceful atmosphere. As we have seen, it is probably to this interlude that we owe the Super Boetium De Trinitate, which was composed around this period.
The peace was fragile, though. So as not to have to return to it later, let us anticipate a bit of the history that was to follow. A new wave of assaults against the religious soon started up. William of SaintAmour was exiled to his lands in the Mâconnais, but he was not inactive;39 the attack, however, was led first by Gerard of Abbeville, then by Nicholas of Lisieux.
The latter is hardly known except for his participation in these polemics,40 but the former was a considerable figure. A colleague of William of SaintAmour as early as 1254, Gerard survived William in the corps of regentmasters until his death in 1272. Highly active within the university, he was one of the rare masters (along with Saint Thomas) regularly to hold two quodlibets annually. Richly endowed with benefices, a true ''prince of the Church," he can be considered one of the founders of the Sorbonne's library; he left more than 300 volumes to the college founded by his friend Robert. Until death a fierce adversary of the mendicants, Gerard moreover specified that he was leaving his books to poor students so long as they were not in religious orders.41
38. Ibid., ll. 135–69, pp. A 54–55; there is a third point of view, that of penitence and various austerities, but the other two are "more essential," says Thomas, cum perfectio vitae magis consistat in interiori iustitia quam in exteriori abstinentia (ibid., ll. 166–68).
39. Cf. Dufeil, Polémique, pp. 324–31.
40. Cf. R. Hissette's article, "Nicolas de Lisieux," Catholicisme 9 (1982) 1254–55; P. Glorieux, "Une offensive de Nicolas de Lisieux contre S. Thomas d'Aquin," BLE 39 (1938) 121–29.
41. Gerard's biography, will, and the disputed edition of his Quodlibet may be found in Phillip Grand, "Le Quodlibet XIV de Gérard d'Abbeville. La vie de Gérard d'Abbeville,"
AHDLMA 39 (1964) 207–69; see the same author's article, "Gérard d'Abbeville," DS 6 (1967) 258–63; Glorieux, Répertoire I, no. 174, pp. 356–60. See also A. Teetaert, "Quatre questions (footnote continued on next page)
In 1267, Gerard had already held his Quodlibet XI on the licitness of encouraging young people to promise to enter the religious life. In his quodlibet of Christmas 1268, he questions the Franciscan teaching about perfect poverty. During a sermon eight days later, in the very church of the friars minor, he places the highest perfection in the office of pastor of souls (not in the bishops alone, which would have been unquestionable, but in the curates and the archdeacons as well).
Furthermore, this perfection, he argues, is in no way diminished by possession and administration of temporal goods. In his quodlibet of Easter 1269, he again devoted two questions to defending the perfection of prelates; finally, in the course of summer of 1269, he published his Contra adversarium perfectionis christianae, which led to a resounding polemic between him and the friars minor.42
It may be that the recrudescence of that acrimony was among the reasons for Thomas's return to Paris in the fall of 1268. In any case, after the spring of 1269, he entered the lists with his Easter quodlibet. He first occupied himself with showing that for a religious to apply himself to study and teaching not only was not a sin but was a work of perfection. And this was all the more the case for anyone who did so at a high level, for those he formed would be able, in turn, to teach others.43 In the important response ad 2, he clearly announces the two central lines of his position on poverty: first, poverty as an instrumentum perfectionis, and second, the difference between perfection and the state of perfection.
Thomas returns at his leisure to these two points in the De perfectione spiritualis vitae. Begun rather early in 1269, it appears to have been finished at the beginning of 1270, since its last chapters echo the Quodlibet XIV Gerard of Abbeville held at Christmas 1269. Traces of the controversy may be found in the De perfectione, since the first twentytwo chapters,
(footnote continued from previous page)
inédites de Gérard d'Abbeville pour la défense de la supériorité du clergé séculier," in Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 1 (1951) 83–178. For the stages in this new phase of the quarrel, cf. P. Glorieux, "Les polémiques 'contra Geraldinos'," RTAM 6 (1934) 5–41, and the prefaces by H. Dondaine in Leonine, vol. 41, pp. B 5–9 and C 5–8.
42. This work has been edited by S. Clasen in AFH 31 (1938) 276–329; 32 (1939) 89–200. It was on this occasion that Saint Bonaventure published his Apologia pauperum [ Opera omnia 8 (Quaracchi, 1898), pp. 233–330), and John Pecham his De perfectione evangeliea. Cf. F. Delorme, "Quatre chapitres inédits de Jean Pecham O.F.M. sur la perfection religieuse et autres états de perfection," Coll. Franciscana 14 (1944) 84–120.
43. Quodlibet I q. 7 a. 2 [14]: "Ipsa etiam ratio demonstrat quod melius est erudire de pertinentibus ad salutem eos qui et in se et in aliis proficere possunt, quam simplices qui in se tantum proficere possunt."
which develop free of any doctrinal controversy, brusquely give way to four chapters not foreseen at the outset. In these, Thomas indicates he must respond to the attacks against him; this visibly reflects Gerard's Quodlibet XIV.44
The interest of the De perfectione is not limited to the history of this polemic. From the very outset, its teaching on Christian perfection and the religious life begins an exposition that will find its completion in the Summa and is already rather different from the one in the Contra Gentiles.45 Furthermore, this little work marks a decisive stage in Thomistic theology about the bishop's office. Under the influence of Dionysius, Thomas from then on sees the episcopal function as a true power of a kind that constitutes the bishop in the state of perfector.46
Thomas will return to contemporary questions in his quodlibet of Easter 1270, notably on the licitness of encouraging young people to promise to enter into the religious life and on the binding nature of such promises. He will also address the question whether curates are in a greater state of perfection than the religious orders.47 The analogy is with the status servitutis, in which one is not free to follow one's own wishes and has been consecrated by a solemn commitment. He will deal again with De ingressu puerorum in his quodlibet of Easter 1271.48 But this subject is developed at length in the Contra retrahentes.
According to its conclusion, this new opusculum is directed "against the erroneous and pernicious [pestiferam] doctrine of those who dissuade men from entering into religion."49 H.F. Dondaine believes this work comes after the De perfectione—to which it explicitly refers—and is contemporaneous with Quodlibet IV, which, in article 23, takes up again the theme De ingressu puerorum. It also takes up (in article 24) the relation 44. Cf. De perfectione. , beginning of chapter 24, Leonine edition, vol. 41, p. 99: "quorum assertiones postquam premissa conscripseram ad me pervenerunt"; beside Grand's edition (see note 41 above), a partial edition of Gerard's Quodlibet XIV may be found in the same Leonine volume, pp. B 56–62. See P. Glorieux's article, "Pour qu'on lise le De perfectione,"
VS Suppl. 23 (1930) 97–126. A more current, but partial, translation than the VrinReprise version may be consulted in VS 18 (1928) 498–506, 619–24; 19 (1928) 85–97, 223–28, 342–
52, and H. Maréchal, Thomas d'Aquin, Vers la perfection de la vie spirituelle (Paris, 1932).
45. Cf. ST IIa IIae qq. 182–89; SCG III 130–38.
46. De perfectione. 28, ll. 93–115, P. B 108; see also J. Lécuyer, "Les étapes de l'enseignement thomiste sur l'épiscopat," RT 57 (1957) 29–52.
47. Quodl. III q. 5 a.1–2 [11–12], and q. 6 a.3 [17].
48. Quodl. IV q. 12 a.1 [23].
49. Text in the Leonine edition, vol. 41, pp. C 39–74; on this point, chapter 16, l. 164, p. C 74.
between precepts and counsels. The parallelism of subjects and argument is quite striking between the two articles and chapters 2–7 of the Contra retrahentes. Since the quodlibet is securely dated to Lent 1271, there is no need to doubt the date of this opusculum, in Dondaine's view. Dondaine says Glorieux thought it possible to place the Contra Retrahentes a little bit before the De ingressu puerorum, but that the labors of A. Sanchis have convinced him and other scholars to place the composition of the Contra retrahentes between Lent and Christmas, "perhaps after Easter 1271 or not much later than the vacation of 1271."50
Nevertheless it is still possible to regard the Contra retrahentes as anterior to Quodlibet IV in its reference to the text of Augustine quoted at the beginning of the response of article 23. This passage speaks of those obtuse spirits who will not give in, even to the clearest statements. Could Thomas have written this if he had not already written the Contra retrahentes? And could he have written the latter work immediately after having written this? In any case, we are speaking about the same period (within a few months). A sermon for Sexagesima Sunday, in which we find several points that are taken up only in this opusculum (the sermon clearly predates it), shows that Thomas was entirely occupied with writing at the time. 51
His reflections, however, deepen from the De ingressu to the Contra retrahentes. Thomas had stated as much: "To extirpate this error radically, it is necessary to discover its root or origin."52 Thus, in order to better establish the relationship between precepts and counsels, he abandons the distinction used in Quodlibet IV, article 24, between interior acts of virtue and exterior acts. Instead he utilizes a new reflection, the absolute primacy of charity, which will be taken up again and developed in Quodlibet V, article 19, of Christmas 1271, and above all in the Summa (IIa IIae q. 189 a. 1).
It should not be surprising that we encounter, among the strong points in this defense and at the highest level of importance for Thomas, voluntary and mendicant poverty. In fact, according to M.M. Dufeil's for50. H.F. Dondaine, Leonine edition, vol. 41, p. C 7, who refers to A. Sanchis, "Escritos espirituales de Santo Tomás (1269–1272)," Teologia espiritual 6 (1962) 277–318; cf. P.
Glorieux, La polémique, pp. 40–41 (table adopted by Grand, DS 6, col. 262).
51. Cf. Th. Käppeli, "Una raccolta di prediche attribuite a S. Tommaso d'Aquino," AFP 13 (1943) 59–94, cf. pp. 66–67, 84–85.
52. Contra Retrahentes, chap. 6, ll. 2–3, p. C 45: "Ad hunc autem errorem radicitus extirpandum, oportet eius radicem sive originem invenire."
mulation, this was not the basis of the quarrel, but it was the most obvious axis for it.53 Thomas defended here one of the newest aspects of his order, and he dedicated his longest chapters to it: 1025 lines for the chapter on voluntary poverty in the Contra impugnantes; 1694 lines in chapter 7 on the right to the mendicant life in the same book. Chapter 7 alone amounts to one sixth of the entire work. But we should not let ourselves be distracted by these quantitative data; it is not in poverty itself that Thomas places perfection. He explains very clearly in the De perfectione: If we examine carefully our Lord's words, it is not in the abandonment of riches itself that he has placed perfection; he shows that this is only a way that leads to perfection, as his manner of speaking proves when he says: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have, give it to the poor, and follow me" (Matt. 19:21). This is to say that perfection consists in following Christ [ in sequela Christi consistat perfectio] and that renouncing riches helps us to walk in that path.54
Thus the distinction of Quodlibet I q. 7 a.2[14] ad 2 between the end and the means is established once and for all, and this thesis about poverty as an instrumentum perfectionis will come to completion in the definitive formula of the Summa: "Perfection does not consist essentially in poverty, but in following Christ . . . poverty is like a means or an exercise which permits us to arrive at perfection."55
Faithful to the principle he had announced at the beginning of the Contra impugnantes, he explained in the Contra Gentiles: we judge the goodness of poverty according to the liberty that it produces in the pursuit of spiritual good.56 He continues, we judge its relative perfection in the way it contributes to attaining the goals of the order that practices it: "A religious order will be the more perfect from this point of view, when it practices a poverty better adapted to the ends which it pursues."57
We may guess that it is no longer the secular masters who are being addressed here
53. M.M. Dufeil, "Evolution ou fixité des institutions ecclésiales: une controverse universitaire. L'édition critique de trois oeuvres polémiques de saint Thomas d'Aquin," RSPT 55
(1971) 464–79, cf. p. 472.
54. De perfectione 8, ll. 86–94, p. B 73.
55. ST IIa IIae q. 188 a.7: "Perfectio non consistit essentialiter in paupertate, sed in Christi sequela. . . . Paupertas est sicut instrumentum, vel exercitium perveniendi ad perfectionem."
56. SCG IV 133, no. 3067: "Non enim paupertas secundum se bona est: sed inquantum liberat ab illis quibus homo impeditur quominus spiritualibus intendat"; see also no. 3066 and chap. 135, no. 3080, and ST la llae q. 108 a. 2 ad 3: "Iam imminebat tempus perfectae libertatis."
57. Ibid.: "Tanto erit unaquaeque religio secundum paupertatem perfectior, quanto habet paupertatem magis proportionatam suo fini"; cf. ibid., ad 1.
but the Franciscans: John Pecham was not deceived when he violently attacked the Thomist thesis of poverty as instrumentum perfectionis.58
Thomas in this way liberated his order from the endless disputes about perfect poverty that continued to agitate the various Franciscan factions. But we should especially remark in these texts the place given to the sequela Christi. Perhaps in no place does he underline more strongly the place of Christ and following in his footsteps as the essentials of religious life. It is a true leitmotiv. That becomes clear in the first chapter of the Contra retrahentes, where Thomas recalls several times that Christ taught poverty et facto et verbo.
But we should also read the admirable chapter 15 of this work in which—with a liveliness his usual reserve hardly prepares us for—Thomas unveils a personal mysticism of attachment to the poor Christ, which must be explained in part by the struggles that he had to undergo to enter into his Dominican religious family, and later to defend that life.59
Thomas held to this theme of Christ the model. We find it again in his thought on the Christian life in general, but, for the religious life, we cannot help but remark how his wellknown theory of the superiority of the apostolic life over the solely contemplative life is based directly on the example that Christ has left us.60 More paradoxically, he tells us that Christ himself chose this life because of its superiority:
The contemplative life is better than the active life that solely concerns itself with bodily necessities; but the active life that consists in passing on to others through preaching and teaching truths that have been contemplated is more perfect than the solely contemplative life, for it presupposes a plentitude of contemplation. That is why Christ chose a life of this type.61
After Christ, the best reference point is the early Church. The faithful heir of the successive rebirths of the monastic life, all of which took their model from the uita apostolica, Thomas loves to refer to that life: it is in
58. J. Pecham, De perfectione evangelica, ed. F. Delorme, pp. 117–20. This was only the beginning of a controversy that would develop particularly after Thomas's death, but which already finds here one of its roots; see on this point U. Horst, Evangelische Armut und Kirche. Thomas von Aquin und die Armutskontroversen des 13. und beginnenden 14. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1992).
59. Cf. above, chap. I, pp. 10–12.
60. Cf. ST IIa IIae q. 186 a.6.
61. "Vita contemplativa simpliciter est melior quam activa quae occupatur circa corporales actus; sed vita activa secundum quam aliquis praedicando et docendo contemplata aliis tradit, est perfectior quam vita quae solum contemplatur, quia talis vita presupponit abundantiam contemplationis. Et ideo Christus talem vitam elegit" (IIIa q. 40 a. 1 ad 2).
the primitive Church that we find the most perfect state of religion, and it is from this model that all the religious orders have drawn their inspiration.62 The same idea with the same scriptural support ( cor unum et anima una, Acts 4:32) is found almost literally in the De perfectione: " a quorum exemplo omnes religiones derivatae sunt." The reference to this very passage in Acts is repeated in the Contra retrahentes, but this time to address more specifically the question of religious poverty.63
Meanwhile we find in the Contra impugnantes what we might call the double evangelism of the religious life according to Saint Thomas. In that work we find a practice that would like to join the life in common of monks and canons with the apostolic mission of the itinerant preachers in the previous century.64 Basing himself simultaneously on Acts 4:32 and on Matthew 10, Thomas thinks that the true uita apostolica conjoins the teaching of these two texts. Thus, confronted with William of SaintAmour who turned the example of the primitive Church into a quarrelsome juridical rule against the "innovations" of the mendicants, Thomas provided a scriptural basis for Saint Dominic's order that gave it legitimacy from its very foundation. If this was the form of the apostle's lives, he says, it is quite clear that someone might follow it in a religious order instituted for that reason:
Every religious order has been founded upon the model of the apostolic life, according to that which is said in the Acts; everything was in common among them . . . the apostolic life was such that, having abandoned everything, they went about the world to evangelize and to preach, as one sees in Matthew 10, where that is imposed upon them as a rule.
We are therefore very well justified in founding a religious order for these two tasks.65
The Polemicist
In these polemical writings defending the religious life, Thomas commits and manifests himself personally in a more open way than in other 62. Quodlibet IV q. 12 a. 1[23]: " In primitiva Ecclesia omnium christianorum erat perfectissimus religionis status, secundum illud Act. 4, 32: Multitudinis credentium erat cor unum et anima una . . . ad cujus vitae exemplar omnes religiones sunt institutae."
63. Cf. De perfectione 27, ll. 240–42, p. B 106; Contra retrahentes 15, ll. 225–42, pp. C 70–71.
64. Cf. M.H. Vicaire, "L'ordre de saint Dominique en 1215," AFP 54 (1984) 5–38, cf. pp. 36–38.
65. Contra impugnantes 4, ll. 880–89, p. A 78: "Omnis religio ad exemplum vitae apostolicae formata est . . . Haec autem fuit vita apostolica ut relictis omnibus per mundum discurrerent evangelizando et praedicando, ut patet Matthew 10 ubi regula quaedam eis inscribitur: ergo ad predicta potest aliqua religio convenientissime institui."
works; we feel him touched here in that which he holds most dear: the vocation for which he struggled in his youth. For that reason these books are among those in which we can best grasp the passionate character of Thomas's temperament. And they allow us to add several significant traits to his spiritual portrait. If we feared, for example, that he may have been too timorous in the troubled university situation, these writings do not lack in vigor or firmness or even, as M.M. Dufeil has underscored,66 in a "sarcastic irony which bursts forth at intervals" in the Contra impugnantes. Thus Thomas replies to the objection that one cannot belong to two colleges at the same time (the body of masters and a religious family) that Church law does not in any way prohibit this double membership, but instead proscribes the simultaneous adherence to two ecclesiastical colleges, or being a canon of two different churches.67
If the later writings avoid this tone, they are neither less severe nor less firm; the young master's moderation has its limits, and if he does everything possible to constrain himself within "serious and delicate dialogue" (H.F. Dondaine), he allows himself sometimes to be carried away to the point of judging his adversaries: "They lie plainly ( plane mentiuntur]."68 Everyone remembers the wellknown close of the De perfectione: If anyone desires to write against this work, that would be quite acceptable [ acceptissimum] to me; for the truth will never manifest itself better than in resisting those who contradict it and in refuting their errors; as the book of Proverbs says: "Iron is sharpened by iron, man is refined in the contact with his neighbor."69
The conclusion of the Contra retrahentes is no less firm:
If someone would like to contradict this work, let him not go and babble to children, but let him write a book and publish it, so that competent persons can judge what is true and reject what is false according to the authority of truth.70
Non coram pueris garriat, doubtless an allusion to the students in the arts faculty, clearly younger than the theologians, whom various people 66. M.M. Dufeil, Evolution ou fixité, p. 471.
67. Contra impugnantes 3, ll. 341–72, p. A 67.
68. Ibid. 24, l. 238, p. A 162; grammatically it would doubtless be possible to translate: "They deceive themselves," which would leave his adversaries with good faith intact. But the context reminds us of the illwill with which they have proceeded toward the religious, and it hardly allows doubts to remain about Thomas's indignation.
69. De perfectione, chap. 30, p. B 111, the quotation is from Proverbs 27:17.
70. Contra retrahentes, chap. 17, p. C 74.
were trying to dissuade from joining the friars. It is worth emphasizing this conclusion: it is the third text published in a single year (1271) that formulates this invitation to discussion in the form of a personal challenge.71 In an article already mentioned, Edward Synan has remarked on the abundant metaphors borrowed from chivalry in the most unexpected contexts. We might add to the documentation that Synan collected these challenges issued to an opponent, which make us think about the challenges milites addressed to one another when they engaged in tournaments.
But it is not enough to say that Thomas was capable of issuing challenges; he was also capable of showing surprise, impatience, and even indignation when his adversaries' arguments were highly inconsistent or lacking in verification. This is true not only of the young Thomas, the one who wrote the Contra impugnantes, but also of the man he remained for the rest of his life (in 1270–71 he had already marked his fortyfifth birthday). It suffices to reread some passages to be convinced of this, and to see emerge a type of man entirely different from the placid and majestic obese figure popularized by current iconography.
In response to the general of the order, John of Vercelli, who questioned him on the positions of Peter of Tarentaise, which had been brought to his attention as suspect, Thomas formulated this judgment. He certainly recognized the weak points in his colleague's argument, but he was not afraid of defending them in the clearest terms: "The objector is committing a calumny, he does not understand what is being debated." And a bit further: "What the objector says is a calumny and completely frivolous."72
With regard to a radical position on the separated intellect, he is astonished that people can go astray "so lightly,"73 and he is not afraid to speak of "delirium" ( insania) to describe another position.74 But it is particularly in the De unitate intellectus that the harvest of these signs of impatience appears abundantly; this might be explained in part by the heatedness of the discussion and the crucial character of the subject, but it is also fair to regard it as an example of the capacity of a "master polemicist.''75
71. Cf. the conclusion of the De unitate intellectus, chap. 5, Leonine edition, vol. 43, p. 314, ll. 434–41; Quodlibet IV, q. 12 a. 1 [23], beginning with the Responsio, where Thomas uses a text from Saint Augustine to issue the challenge.
72. Resp. de 108 art. , 16 and 74, Leonine edition, vol. 42, pp. 282 and 290.
73. Super III De anima, chap. 1, ll. 372–73 (Leonine ed., vol. 45/1, p. 207): "Mirum autem est quomodo tam leuiter errauerunt."
74. De substantiis separatis 13, ll. 26–28 (Leonine ed., vol. 40, p. D 64): "Adhuc in maiorem insaniam procedentes aestimant Deum nihil nisi se ipsum intellectu cognoscere."
75. This is the title of an article by P. Glorieux, "Un maître polémiste: Thomas d'Aquin,"
(footnote continued on next page)
It is in this book that Averroes is described as the deprauator and even the peruersor of Aristotle's thought,76 but he is not in the least suspect in regard to intelligence. By contrast, Thomas strongly doubts the intelligence of his Parisian adversaries, which he characterizes rudely: "Those who defend that position must confess that they do not understand anything at all [ confiteantur se nihil intelligere] and that they are not even worthy of discussion with those whom they attacked."77 We pass over other delicious phrases of this kind and go to the conclusion, which is itself also justly celebrated: If anyone, glorifying himself with false knowledge, dares to argue against what I have just written, let him not babble in the corners or with infants [ in angulis uel coram pueris]
who are incapable of judging such a difficult subject, but let him write against this book—if he dares. You will then have to deal not solely with me, who am only the least in this affair, but with a crowd of other lovers of truth who know how to resist your errors and remedy your ignorance.78
Even if we must concede that this polemic does not bring out the best in Thomas, we must recognize that the man who speaks thus is not a timorous intellectual; he has a consciousness of his own worth and does not fear confronting adversaries. In addition, perhaps he even inwardly regrets not finding them up to his measure. What we may glimpse here also is a simmering sensibility that is obliged to contain itself in order not to surface too often in discussion, where passion must not obscure clarity of the argument. These observations are already enough to destroy the legend of a highly secretive author who does not speak of himself and never reveals himself. Thomas never wrote his Confessions, it is true, but his works say a great deal about him, more than one would think. And what we feel in reading his writings is confirmed in an indisputable way by an analysis of his handwriting.
(footnote continued from previous page)
MSR 5 (1948) 153–74, to which we refer the reader for several amplifications on this point; cf. also the Leonine edition, Super Iob, Introduction, vol. 26, p. 18*.
76. De unitate intell, 2, l. 155; 5, l. 392: Leonine ed., vol. 43, pp. 302 and 314; this is an entirely different matter than a simple mood, for Thomas had already long known to what extent Averroes's interpretation of Aristotle was opposed to his own, and he could not "think about it without rancor." Cf. R.A. Gauthier, Leonine ed., vol. 45/1, pp. 224*–25*, who has assembled a significant dossier on this subject.
77. Ibid. 3, ll. 315–17, p. 306; cf. 5, ll. 397–400, p. 314, where Thomas confesses his astonishment or, better, his indignation that a Christian philosopher (not identified further) dares to speak tam irreverenter about the Christian faith.
78. Ibid. 5, ll. 434–41, p. 314.
For a long time it has been known that the study of his handwriting bears on the history of Thomas's thought in that it allows us to see the changes through which Thomas passed before arriving at the definitive versions of his text.79 That shall not detain us here; but instead we shall look at a toooften neglected aspect which the study of Thomas's handwritten manuscripts also allows us to address: a better comprehension of Thomas the man. Thomas's writing is of legendary difficulty, but we cannot say that he did not know how to write; Father Gils, the undisputed specialist on Thomas's handwritten manuscripts, long ago showed the foolishness of these received ideas.80 Thomas simply had a highly personalized way of writing, and it reveals with undeniable force the author's temperament.
The expressions that occur most frequently in the austere and fascinating study by Gils are so surprising that you understand why he felt the need to repeat them and support them by hundreds of examples. Thomas is "tense and hurried"; he "would like to go faster"; "that patience,'' which he would need to write correctly, "Thomas did not possess." It is only because he noticed that "his own texts were frequently badly interpreted by his assistants" that he dedicated himself to being clearer.
"Hurried," "fatigued," "distracted," he allowed "lapses," "cacographies," and "dreadful errors" to remain in his text.
In his efforts at composition, when the subject or the expression escapes him for a minute and he sometimes has to begin the same paragraph three times, "it sometimes happens that he writes the contrary of what he thinks, he forgets words, he commits some anacoluthon and . . . he does not always correct himself." Since we cannot transcribe the whole passage, let us record the closing summary: "Saint Thomas is thus a man in a hurry. He clashes with himself over the demands of writing. He is constantly experiencing distractions, which oblige him to interrupt himself and to return later. He struggles with putting his thoughts in order and with the means of expressing them. He is simultaneously meticulous, and careless of the inconsistencies that his irresistible forward movement cause him to commit."81
79. We refer simply to the two magisterial studies: P.M. Gils, "Textes inédits de S. Thomas: Les premières rédactions du Scriptum super Tertio Sententiarum," RSPT 46 (1962) 445–
62 and 609–28; L.B. Geiger, "Les rédactions successives de Contra Gentiles I, 53 d'après l'autographe," in Saint Thomas d'Aquin aujourd'hui, Recherches de philosophic 6 (Paris, 1963), pp. 221–40.
80. I cannot recommend enough the entire study where P.M. Gils synthesizes what he has learned through an assiduous examination for more than forty years of Thomas's handwritten texts: S. Thomas écrivain, Leonine ed., vol. 50, pp. 175–209.
81. P.M. Gils, Leonine ed., vol. 50, pp. 176, 179, 195, 208–9.
We must recognize that this portrait hardly fits with the image of the timeless thinker that is usually given of the "Common Doctor" or "Angel of the Schools." Shall we say that, even if it corresponds to reality, the portrait has ultimately little to do with his thought, which is fixed forever? To argue thus would be to show little respect for the historical rootedness of that doctrine, a rootedness that provides illumination for an accurate understanding of it. Does not Thomas himself repeat after Aristotle:
"When we consider things in their genesis, we obtain a perfect understanding"?82 Not only the successive versions of the text should interest us, but what he was still seeking in thought at the time of his death, something to which many points in his work testify. There is more to be gained than lost in this type of research.
Without entering further here into the question of Thomas's intellectual evolution, let us say that it would scarcely be a testimony to someone whom we venerate as a saint to neglect him as a person and a model for the Christian life, which he incarnated. Indisputably, there is a continuity between the man who writes in this way and the man who so happily challenges his adversaries, or is irritated by their inconsistency. If he was able to express himself with such vehemence, we may suspect he struggled to achieve the virtuous selfmastery that was required for the birth of more austere works (where signs of humor practically never show themselves). Beyond the impatience that these linguistic remnants reveal, they eloquently witness that the spontaneityinmoderation, which the whole world recognizes in Thomas's genius, was the fruit of a conquest. Meditating on what is only a simple confirmation, a disciple of Thomas's may well perceive that he was a master, not only of thought, but of life.
82. Cf. Aristotle, Politics I ii, 1; cf. Saint Thomas, Sententia libri Politicorum, Leonine ed., vol. 48, p. A 73, ll. 135–37: "In omnibus enim ita uidemus quod si quis inspiciat res secundum quod oriuntur ex suo principio, optime poterit in eis contemplari ueritatem." We have used the translation by M.D. Chenu, La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle, Paris,3 1957, p. 9.
Chapter VI—
Return to Italy:
The Summa contra Gentiles
At the beginning of June 1259, Thomas arrived at Valenciennes, where the general chapter of the Dominicans was being held, in order to participate in the work of a commission established to promote studies. This commission consisted of five members, all masters of theology in Paris, and it comprised the intellectual elite of the order at that time. In addition to Thomas, it included Albertus Magnus, his former master; Elias Brunet's colleague Bonhomme le Breton, who taught in the first Dominican chair at SaintJacques; Florent of Hesdin, Bonhomme's successor, who was Thomas's colleague during the academic year of 1256–57; Peter of Tarentaise, who would teach in the very same chair from 1259 to 1264, and then again between 1265 and 1267. Peter would also twice be provincial for France, until his election as a cardinal in 1272, and then would be elected pope under the name Innocent V on 21 January 1276. He was to exercise that office for only a few months, since he died on 22 June 1276.1
To Promote Study
This commission's meeting and work should be placed in the framework of the general policy of the order, which favored the intellectual life, in 1. See on this topic M.H. Laurent, Le bienheureux Innocent V (Pierre de Tarentaise) et son temps (Studi e Testi 129), Rome, 1947; A. Amargier, art. "Innocent V," Catholicisme 5
(1962) 1661–1664; the other figures mentioned here are known to a greater or lesser extent. On them, see Glorieux, Répertoire I, or Käppeli, Scriptores.
conformity with the original intention of Saint Dominic.2 John the Teuton had already given proof of his wish to be faithful to that intention; the clearest indication is the decision by the 1248 general chapter in Paris to open four studia generalia, which would be added to the one already in existence at SaintJacques. It was one of the consequences of that decision that Albert and Thomas departed for Cologne. With this new commission, Humbert of Romans in turn showed that he intended to continue that orientation; to all appearances, it was Humbert who had named the commission and convoked the members before the chapter.3 He showed, furthermore, to what extent this subject was close to his heart in his De uita regulari, which he composed after stepping down as general and whose long pages detail what pertains to study and books.4
The commission sketched out a series of recommendations that were inserted into the chapter's acts.5 All these acts asserted the priority of study over other tasks: avoiding the use of lecturers in jobs or responsibilities that would prevent their doing their primary work, and making sure that Mass not be celebrated at the same time as lessons for those who had to attend them. As to the young, superiors should select those most adept at study to be sent to a studium generale; the older brothers should be reminded that even the priors are supposed to follow courses—whenever they are able to do so conveniently; the lecturers themselves ought to go to the disputatio when they are available. Without being fully formulated, the idea already exists here of continual formation, a notion cherished in our time.
If a province is too poor in personnel to provide a lecturer in each priory, it should make sure not to leave the young in these houses; they should instead be sent wherever they can to be formed. If a province does not have someone capable of public teaching (teaching open to others in addition to the friars), they should at least have teaching carried on in private (within
2. Cf. A. Duval, "L'étude dans la législation religieuse de saint Dominique," Mélanges offerts à M.D. Chenu, Bibl. thom. 37 (Paris, 1967), pp. 221–47.
3. The suggestion of WN, p. 112. (following QuétifEchard), according to which Thomas would have participated in the chapter as socius of the delegation from the Roman province, does not find any support in the texts, and we know the name of that socius: Lawrence of Todi, designated the previous year at the chapter in Viterbo ( MOPH 20, p. 23).
4. Humbert of Romans, Opera de vita regulari, ed. J. J. Berthier (Rome, 1888–89), vol. 2, pp. 254–66.
5. MOPH 3, pp. 99–100; Chartul. , no. 335, pp. 385–86, which gives the names of the five members of the commission according to the provincial chapter held at Béziers in 1261 (the text is in Douais, Essai, p. 173); see also the brief analysis of this text in Weisheipl, pp. 138–39.
the priory). The Historia ecclesiastica by Peter Mangiador should be read, or the Summa de casibus, by Raymond of Peñafort, or some manual of that type.6 The friars should not remain inactive (ne fratres sint ociosi). Houses of study in the liberal arts should be fostered in particular, so that the young may receive their basic philosophical formation.
Reading this text certainly gives a high idea of the work of the commission and the ideals of the order about this material. But it allows us clearly to perceive a new situation. Whereas the first generations of Dominicans often consisted of people already formed, capable of immediately assuming positions in government or teaching, the influx of vocations was bringing in young members who were lacking in the basics. It was therefore necessary to see to this lack, and it immediately became apparent that certain provinces were quite poor. It was also clear that the desire for study was not shared universally. Visitors would have to oversee the implementation of these measures: to verify regular participation in the courses (the friars who abstained from taking them would be severely punished, dure puniantur); to assure the progress of the young in study and to punish the lazy (puniant negligentes); to look into the quality and the frequency of the teaching provided and to make sure that there would be a sufficient number of teachers in all provinces, which required a certain mobility of personnel.
The Uncertainties of 1259–1261
After the chapter, Thomas probably returned to Paris. If there had been a few days still available he might have given several lectures (up until 29 June), but he was coming to the end of his regency. In order to understand what we have just said, it is necessary to grasp that Dominican policy briskly rotated the masters in and out of positions at Paris in order to form the greatest possible number and then to send them to teach elsewhere.7
Several weeks earlier, Thomas had presided at the inceptio of his successor, who was then his bachelor of Sentences, the Englishman William 6. See Leonard Boyle's commentary, "Notes on the Education of the Fratres Communes in the Dominican Order in the Thirteenth Century," in Pastoral Care, study 6, which demonstrates the exceptional place that the manuals of morals held for confessors at the beginning of the order, notably Raymond of Peñafort's.
7. Tolomeo XXII 24 tells us that Thomas "rediit de Parisius ex certis causis"; the historians have lost themselves in conjectures trying to penetrate what these words cover (cf. WN, pp. 115–16); the explanation that we propose is the one that appears the most natural, which is also Weisheipl's view, pp. 142–43, and Tugwell's, p. 217.
of Alton (or of Altona), who had exercised that responsibility for only one year (1259–60). Although William's biblical work was rather extensive and gave witness to an interest in the rabbinical tradition, in line with studies that had been going on at SaintJacques since Hugh of SaintCher, his work does not show any influence from Thomas's commentaries.8 The chair was to pass after that to Thomas's disciple and friend, Annibaldo d'Annibaldi, who held it for two years (1260–62), until December 1262, when Urban IV made him a cardinal. It was to Annibaldo that Thomas would dedicate, several years later, the last three books of his Catena aurea. Unlike his predecessor—and without doubt for the first time then—if Annibaldo used Peter of Tarentaise, he also permitted his master's influence to appear, since Annibaldo's commentary on the Sentences is only a recapitulation of Thomas's.9
During the next two years, dates and places are less certain. We do not know the date of Thomas's departure for Italy. Tolomeo gives us to understand that it was under Urban IV, and therefore not before 29 August 1261, but this is much too late.10 Mandonnet, apparently reproducing the view of De Rubeis, thought that Thomas went directly to Anagni, to the residence of Alexander IV, in order to become a lecturer in the pontifical curia;11 but that view, once accepted by several scholars, has been abandoned today because it has not been supported by any biographer or by the ancient documents. With some justification, Weisheipl hypothesized that, returning to Italy, Thomas would quite normally have gone to Naples, his original priory.12 He stayed there from the end of 1259, or from the beginning of 1260 until September 1261, the date on which he was assigned to Orvieto.13
This hypothesis seems to us to be the most plausible, but it runs afoul of the fact that no document explicitly attests Thomas's stay in Naples at this time. And certain people even think that perhaps he did not leave Paris immediately; such a thoughtful historian as Walz did not hesitate to imag8. William is not well known ("a shadowy figure"), cf. T. Käppeli, "Guillaume d'Alton," DHGE 22 (1988) 836–37; Scriptores II, pp. 82–88; Glorieux, Répertoire I, no. 18, pp. 113–16.
9. Tolomeo XXII 23 had already noticed this; cf. R. Coulon, "Annibaldi ou Annibaldeschi della Molara," DHGE 3 (1924) 387–88; Käppeli II, pp. 174–76; Glorieux, Répertoire I, no. 19, p.
117.
10. Tolomeo XXII 22 and 24; see the discussion in Mandonnet, "Thomas d'Aquin lecteur à la curie romaine. Chronologie du séjour (1259–1268)," in Xenia thomistica III, pp. 9–19.
11. Mandonnet, Chronologie sommaire, p. 144.
12. Weisheipl, pp. 143–44; Tugwell, p. 221, agrees with Weisheipl.
13. Cf. Documenta 30, p. 582.
ine this scenario.14 We know nothing more about what he did in Italy, except perhaps that the provincial chapter in Naples made him general preacher in 1260.15
Whatever the case, it seems that Thomas had not yet arrived in Italy by September 1259, since the chapter of the Roman province held on that date does not mention him. If, therefore, we follow Walz, who recalls the nuanced position of Denifle, of A. Dondaine, and of Gauthier (in his early phase), we would have to maintain a prudent reticence: "It seems probable that Thomas left France at the end of 1259 or the beginning of 1260 and that he was in Italy before the provincial chapter in Naples (29 September 1260)."16
Making his own examination of the question, Tugwell sums up quite clearly the uncomfortable situation in which the historians find themselves, and Tugwell makes some ingenious suppositions in order to fill the void left us by our documents. We can sum up his position thus: after Valenciennes, Thomas passed through Paris, but only in order to pick up his effects; it is improbable that he would have stayed there solely to write. But we do not know why he took so much time to reach Naples.
Perhaps he lingered in Milan and Bologna—to gather information for the master general on the programs of study for the friars?—and he perhaps preached the two Advent sermons there that these places give testimony to. After that he returned to Naples, his original priory, where he remained until 1261 or 1262, the date of his assignment to Orvieto.17
In our opinion, it would be wrong to press the silence of our texts too much; there were many other provincial chapters besides the one in 1259 that do not speak about Friar Thomas Aquinas. It does not seem at all plausible that Thomas lingered in Paris beyond the end of the scholastic 14. WN, p. 117: "Contrary to general opinion, perhaps [Thomas] returned to Paris after the Valenciennes chapter. Not to teach, since we know his successors, but to work on the Summa contra Gentiles." But this is hardly compatible with what an examination of the autograph teaches us (see further on in the text).
15. Cf. above, note 13; tentativeness on this point is in any case necessary since the source to which we refer to establish this fact is an anonymous document from the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century, which does not at all indicate on what it bases its information; P.T. Masetti, Monumenta et Antiquitates veteris disciplinae Ordinis Praedicatorum ab anno 1216 ad 1348 . . . (Rome, 1864), vol. II, pp. 267–68, who reproduces this document in an appendix, does so with the reservations to be observed in such cases.
16. WN, p. 117; in his Somme contra les gentils, introduction (Paris: Editions universitaires, 1993), Gauthier places this voyage in the fall: Thomas would thus have avoided the great heat of the summer and the bad weather of winter.
17. Tugwell, pp. 216–23; we ought to correct note 207, p. 313, which quotes one of my articles under Father Gauthier's name and attributes to me a contradiction of which I do not think myself guilty, since I have never disputed Mandonnet on this point.
year; whatever the exact date of his return to Italy (the second half of 1259 is preferable to the beginning of 1260), we can take it as the most natural solution that Thomas lived in Naples during this period. (Without being certain about this, we might read Conrad of Suessa's testimony at the canonization process18 in such a way.) Thomas thus would have enjoyed, as Weisheipl suggests, a period of relative leisure that allowed him to make progress on his Summa contra Gentiles, which he had begun before leaving Paris.
The Date of the Summa contra Gentiles
The Contra Gentiles is one of the works we are privileged to have in large part in Saint Thomas's own handwriting (about a third of the work, from Book I, Chapter 13 until Book III, Chapter 120, but with many lacunae).19 We might add to the usual remarks about his handwriting that we have here "a work that Saint Thomas took great care over: he reread it, modified and corrected it several times. . . . All the chapters preserved in the handwritten version have undergone at least one revision;
for the most part they show two or three, or even four, if we take into account the final rereading."20
Father Gils, from whom we borrow this information, draws a conclusion to which we will have to return. But it is Father Gauthier who has the honor of having been the first to recognize that the beginning of the Contra Gentiles is written on the same parchment and even with the same Parisian ink as the Super Boetium. Starting on folio 15 we can verify the change of parchment, and on the back side of folio 14 (l. 43) we may perceive the change ("brutal" says Gauthier, "radical" says Gils) of the ink itself.21 From all this a probable conclusion imposes itself: the change dates from the time when Thomas left Paris for Italy.
This conclusion, fully adopted by the latter critic22 and confirmed by careful examination of the utilization of Aristotle, of the conciliar documents, and, notably, of the evolution of Thomas's doctrine on the Word,
18. Naples 47, pp. 326–27; about this deposition, see Tugwell's remarks, note 206, p. 313.
19. Cf. H.F. Dondaine and H.V. Shooner, Codices manuscripti operum Thomae de Aquino, vol. I (Rome, 1967), pp. 3–5.
20. P.M. Gils, Leonine, vol. 50, pp. 204 and 207.
21. Introduction historique à S. Thomas d'Aquin. Contra Gentiles, introduction by A. Gauthier, trans. R. Bernier and M. Corvez, vol. 1 (Paris, 1961), pp. 31–34. We should be careful to distinguish the older work from the Somme contre les gentils, introduction (1993), which completes the earlier one, very often corrects it, and should be used in the future.
22. For Gils, cf. Leonine, vol. 50, p. 208.
permits Gauthier to sum up the results at which he arrived thus: "Saint Thomas had almost certainly written the earliest version of the first 53 chapters of Book I in Paris before the summer of 1259. In Italy, starting in 1260, he revised these 53 chapters and wrote the rest of the Summa contra Gentiles starting with chapter 54 of Book I. It is certain that the first version of Book III, chapter 4, cannot be before 1261, and that Books II and III were still being worked on at that date. It is very probable, not to say sure, that Book IV was not finished before the end of 1263 or the beginning of 1264, but it was completed before 1265–1267."23
With the exception of P. Marc, who would situate the Contra Gentiles at a much later date, during the second period of teaching at Paris,24 this proposal seems to have won over the critics.25 Gauthier returned to this question again after some thirty years, and in the light of all the labors he himself had carried out in the meantime as well as many other studies by other scholars (notably those involved in the Leonine Commission and the Aristoteles latinus, whose importance cannot be overemphasized), Gauthier was only able to add further precision. The general framework was too solid to be changed very much, and the criteria he had adopted remained the same.
Nevertheless a more precise knowledge of the date of appearance of the translations of Aristotle's works and of their respective singularities allows us to confirm that the Italian part of the Contra Gentiles uses an Aristotle that was not the one current in Paris in the 1250s, but an Aristotle that began to be known in Italy around 1260–1265: "We have seen some new works appear here, the translation of the Rhetoric by Hermann the German, the Liber de bona fortuna, and particularly the first translations by William of Moerbeke, the translation of the Politics, the translation of the books on animals; we have thus had to push back to 1263–1264 the writing of Book III, chapter 85."26
This demonstration is made more precise by the complementary observation that this Aristotle is still not the one who will begin to appear in December 1265 in the Prima Pars of the Summa theologiae, in the commentary on the De anima, and in the disputed questions De anima and 23. Gauthier, Introduction, p. 59.
24. P. Marc, Introductio à S. Thomae Aquinatis Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei contra errores Infidelium (Turin, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 312–82.
25. Cf. O. L(ottin), BTAM 9 (1962–65), no. 457, pp. 145–46; L.J. Bataillon, RSPT 47 (1963) 248–49.
26. Somme contre les gentils, chap. II.
De spiritualibus creaturis. Decisive progress has been made over the first attempt at dating Book IV. The terminus post quem is easy enough to establish by examining the conciliar and patristic documents. Thomas uses here the Collectio Casinensis, which gave him access to the texts of the first four councils, notably Ephesus and Chalcedon. He was still unfamiliar with these in his commentary on the Sentences. It is therefore at his return to Italy that he made their acquaintance.27
More clearly still: Thomas knew Nicholas de Cotrone's Liber de processione Spiritus sancti et fide Trinitatis contra errores Graecorum, which Pope Urban IV
submitted for Thomas's examination, doubtless in 1263 or at the beginning of 1264. He will refute this work in his Contra errores Graecorum.28 All this corresponds well with what we know of the date of composition for the first three books of the Contra Gentiles.
As to the terminus ante quem of this fourth book and of the entire work, Gauthier believes he can strongly put forth 1265. Saint Thomas's intellectual evolution on the doctrine of the Word, as highlighted by H. Paissac,29 remains a keystone of the demonstration. It consists in evaluating two stages after the initial hesitation in the Sentences: the first is found in Contra Gentiles, Book I, 53 and Book IV, 11; the second in the De potentia, questions 8 and 9. After giving these references, Gauthier refines his historical statements: chapters IV, 11 and I, 53 are in reality contemporaneous because, according to the testimony of the handwritten manuscript, Thomas returned to the text of I, 53 when he was working on IV, 11. As far as the De potentia is concerned, we know that it was disputed in Rome, where Thomas had been assigned on 8 September 1265.30
We should add to all this that Thomas himself refers at times to the Contra Gentiles: in the De rationibus fidei several times;31 in the Com27. Cf. Geenen, "En marge du concile de Chalcédoine," Angelicum 29 (1952) 43–59.
28. Cf. Leonine, vol. 40, p. A 5–20, see p. A 19; chaps. 38 and especially 69 of Book IV testify that the Contra errores graecorum was already completed (since Book II, chap. 39 of the latter work is reproduced in the Contra Gentiles IV 69); cf. Leonine, vol. 40, p. A 9, and H.F. Dondaine, "Le Contra errores Graecorum de S. Thomas et le IVe livre du Contra Gentiles," in Les sciences philosophiques et théologiques (1941–42), pp. 156–62.
29. H. Paissac, Théologie du Verbe. Saint Augustin et saint Thomas (Paris, 1951).
30. We will return to the chronology of Thomas's Italian sojourn, but the date of the De potentia, already established by a series of indications, is confirmed further by the manuscript Subiaco, Bibliothàque de l'abbaye 211, f. 175r, from the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, which explicitly indicates: Questiones fratris T. de aquino quas disputavit rome, cf. Grabmann, Die Werke, p. 306.
31. Prol. 1, l. 63; chap. 7, 29–31; 10, 112;cf. Leonine, vol. 40, p. B 57, 66 and 73; for the date, cf. ibid., p. B 7.
pendium theologiae, where the relationship to the Contra Gentiles is manifest;32 in the commentary on the De anima he does so as well, where Thomas excuses himself from having to refute Averroes at greater length, for he has already done it amply elsewhere.33 Now, all these books can be placed very soon after 1265.
Basing himself on all the convergent data, Gauthier could conclude: ''It might be permitted to conjecture that Saint Thomas finished his Summa contra Gentiles before his departure for Rome in September 1265. Book IV therefore was composed, without doubt, in 1264–1265."34
Without basically disputing this conclusion—which had not yet been published in this form when he was writing—P.M. Gils believed it possible to propose an addition to Gauthier's thesis: considering the later revisions of which the manuscript bears traces, he would not reject "a hypothesis that maintains Thomas had added corrections to this privileged work even during his second stay in Paris. Even though they were only some semicolons!" We may admire here the scrupulous work of the paleographer, but we cannot conclude from it that Marc's thesis could be as true as Gauthier's; corrections of that type are evidently not substantial modifications that would call into question the earlier date proposed. In our view, Gauthier is right to put us on guard against a false interpretation that one might draw from Gils words: "Saint Thomas's teaching in Rome constitutes the terminus ante quem for the whole final version of the Contra Gentiles.35
The Purpose of the Contra Gentiles
If, therefore, the dates of the several stages of composition seem clear enough, the intention of this Liber de ueritate catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium—as some manuscripts begin—still remains the subject of rather lively discussions. Following the mention of the Gentiles in the title (a title without special authority given by the exemplar from around 1272) the received tradition—only from the sixteenth to the seventeenth cen32. "Captivating parallels," as J. Perrier says; Thomas sketched the Compendium with "the Contra Gentiles in front of him," adds A. R. Motte (Leonine, vol. 42, p. 8, note 3); as to the date, Father Dondaine allies himself with Van Steenberghen's proposition: "The De fide would be more or less contemporary with the De potentia," ibid., p. 8.
33. Sentencia libri de anima III 1, ll. 353–55, Leonine, vol. 45/1, p. 207; cf. Introduction, pp. 227*–28*.
34. Somme contre les gentils, chap. II.
35. Somme contre les gentils, chap. I; Gils, Leonine, vol. 50, p. 208.
tury—sums it up thus: Thomas would have composed this book at the request of Raymond of Peñafort, with the intention of converting the Muslim world, still very much present in Spain. "Raymond would have asked his young confrere to equip the missionaries with the necessary intellectual weapons."36 Hasty readers have not noticed that Father Chenu formulated this position in the conditional, and that he refutes it formally two pages later: "The Summa [contra Gentiles] goes considerably beyond a missionary manual, even one that is fullbodied in order to meet the needs of elites. . . . Also, it does not aim particularly at Averroes; it is a collection of various errantes, pagans, Muslims, Jews, heretics, who are both examined and criticized."37
Would that everyone had read more carefully this great precursor! Without meaning to, he initiated an entire polemic that still endures and whose large lines we might recall, for it partly conditions our understanding of this book. Father Gauthier, one of the first scholars to do so, shows the fragility of the "missionary" tradition: the poorly documented text of the chronicler Peter Marsili speaks rather of the pagans than of the Arabs, and an examination of Thomas's text shows indeed that the Muslims are not at all the only infidels or heretics aimed at. He hardly concerns himself about them, and what he says of them shows that he knew their teaching quite poorly. The Contra Gentiles goes far beyond any direct missionary purpose—even if this is understood in the sense of the interior mission against the "averroistes"—
or even as an apologetic. We are dealing here with a theological work in its pursuit of wisdom as well as in its method; and "rarely was a work less historical" than this.38
Far from settling the discussion, Gauthier's judgment seems rather to have launched it on a new path. In 1964, A. C. Pegis raised doubts and proposed to identify the intended recipients of the text as Aristotelian philosophers: "[Thomas] wanted to show them the truths about Aristotle under the aspect of a living reality purified in the heart of Christian theology and to show in the world of revelation a vivifying food for these verities."39
Two years later, in 1966, F. Van Steenberghen proposed a promising
36. Chenu, Toward, pp. 247–48.
37. Ibid., p. 250.
38. Gauthier, Introduction, pp. 60–87, cf. p. 121; we refer to those pages for the prior scholarship; one should also read the Somme contre les gentils, chap. III: "Les erreurs des infidèles."
39. A. C. Pegis, ""Qu'estce que la Summa contra Gentiles?" in L'homme devant Dieu. Mélanges offerts au père Henri de Lubac, vol. 2, Théologie 57 (Paris, 1964), pp. 169–82, cf. p.
182.
formula: "Saint Thomas clearly wrote for Christian thinkers (theologians or philosophers) committed to their faith; it is not at all implausible that he conceived the Summa contra Gentiles specially for the use of persons destined to have contact with circles of 'unfaithful' intellectuals, principally in Muslim countries."40
The missionary intention, or at least the apologetic purpose, of the work was also defended in 1967 by P. Marc41 and in 1974 by A. Huerga.42 But in the same year, M. Corbin put forward his refutation of Gauthier and proposed seeing in the Summa contra Gentiles "the second theological discourse by Saint Thomas."43 In 1974, Q. Turiel explained his thesis that this was a work of apologetics for internal use, destined for cultivated believers as a "verification" of the Catholic faith.44 Without ignoring this discussion, in 1986 M. D. Jordan gave an entirely different reading: "The work is concerned to persuade its readers to the practice of the virtues of Christian wisdom, both acquired and infused."45
Nevertheless in 1983, A. Patfoort advanced "a middle solution" which—apparently without his knowing it—reproduces rather closely Van Steenberghen's position and, in his opinion, perhaps more completely accounts for all the data that exist. He proposes that we see here "a work ' thought for' some nonChristians, for some infidels, but ' addressed to' Christians themselves called to undertake contacts with the infidels, to respond to their objections, to present doctrine in a way that shows that it avoids the difficulties they see and coincides largely with their own convictions. In brief, the Summa contra Gentiles would be a school for presenting the Christian faith to the infidels, an ecumenical effort, before the fact, between Christians and infidels."46 Certain critics, wishing to return to a foursquare missionary intention, do not find this thesis persuasive enough,47 but these arguments "appear rather convincing" to others.48
40. La Philosophie au XIIIe siècle, p. 323 (2d ed. 1991, p. 290).
41. P. Marc, Introduction, pp. 535–61.
42. A. Huerga, "Hypótesis sobre la génesis de la Summa contra Gentiles y del Pugio fidei," Angelicum 51 (1974) 533–57.
43. M. Corbin, Le chemin de la théologie chez Thomas d'Aquin (Bibl. des Archives de Phil., N.S. 16)(Paris, 1974), pp. 475–691.
44. Q. Turiel, "La intención de Santo Tomás en la Summa contra Gentiles," Studium 14 (1974) 371–401.
45. M. D. Jordan, "The Protreptic Structure of the ' Summa contra Gentiles,'" The Thomist 50 (1986) 173–209, cf. p. 208.
46. A. Patfoort, "La Somme contre les Gentils, école de présentation aux infidèles de la foi chrétienne," in Saint Thomas d'Aquin. Les clefs d'une théologie (Paris, 1983) ( = Patfoort, Clefs), pp. 103–30, here p. 105.
47. C. Vansteenkiste, RLT 19 (1986) 208: "Un manuale eccellente per i missionari."
48. M.V. Leroy, RT (1984) 303.
Though these scholars have not convinced R.A. Gauthier (who pertinently discusses the sense of conuincere advanced by Patfoort), he has been expressing himself in a more nuanced fashion as a result of their labors: he says that the Summa contra Gentiles has a "timeless ambition," which signifies that "it makes itself useful to all times" and not solely to its own. Its intention is not an " immediate and limited apostolate, but aims at wisdom of a universal apostolic bearing."49 We can agree with this last formulation, which is certainly closer to Saint Thomas's habitual manner.
The Summa contra Gentiles:
Method and Plan
As to the method and plan of this work, Thomas clearly explained them in a very beautiful passage that it is necessary to reproduce at length and to comment on carefully. For it is not only a condensation of his conception of theology (we might find very close parallels to it in other works, even earlier texts like the Super Boetium, or later texts like the Summa or the Quodlibet IV). But this is the place where Thomas permits us to understand clearly that he is undertaking a personal labor.50 After three years of regency, the young master, at the height of his powers and in perfect consciousness of what he wishes to do, begins his first synthesis: The intention of the wise man ought to be directed toward the twofold truth of divine things and at the same time toward the destruction of the errors that are contrary to this truth. For the one task, reason suffices; the other surpasses every effort of reason. I am speaking of a "twofold truth of divine things," not on the part of God himself, who is truth one and simple, but from the point of view of our knowledge, which assumes various modalities toward divine things.
To the hurried reader, this mention of double truth could lend itself to a mistaken impression, which Stephen Tempier will denounce later. But we see that Thomas immediately explains himself in a satisfying fashion. We might remark rather how these first lines correspond to a much more rapid formulation in chapter II on a more personal note:
49. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. 45/1, pp. 293* and 289*, note 2; Gauthier maintains this in his Somme contre les gentils, where, in addition, he regrets "several unhappy expressions in
[his] earlier introduction."
50. SCG I 9: in fact, the first nine chapters seem like a "discourse on method" and the ninth is a summary of it.
In the name of the Divine Mercy, I have the confidence to embark upon the work of a wise man, even though this may surpass my powers, and I have set myself the task of making known, as far as my limited powers will allow, the truth the Catholic faith professes, and of setting aside the errors that are opposed to it. To use Saint Hilary's words, " I am aware that I owe this to God as the chief duty of my life, that my every word and sense may speak of him."
Often justy cited as one of the places where Thomas reveals himself a little, this passage has been commented on by RenéAntoine Gauthier with rare perceptiveness: What is proposed in these pages, what made Thomas write them neither at the head of the Sentences nor at the beginning of the Summa Theologiae, is not their content, which would have been appropriate there as here. It is their personal tone, it is the emotion contained, the fervor that causes Saint Thomas to confess that, out of his profession as theologian, he makes his life: the program became a confidence, and the Summa contra Gentiles is thus not a course, nor a didactic work, but an essay in personal reflection.51
We can also say that this text gathers together under two principal tasks the function that Thomas assigns to the theologian and that he had developed in a tripartite form in the Super Boetium a few months earlier.52 But we remain here within the same framework, which is at the same time resolute confidence about the use of reason in theology and clear awareness of what we cannot ask of reason:
The manifestation of the truth under the first modality therefore demands that we proceed by way of demonstrative reasons, capable of convincing the adversary. But such reasons are not valid for truth under the second modality; one should not have as a goal convincing the adversary by arguments, but resolving arguments that he advances against the truth, since natural reason cannot go against the truth of the faith. This particular manner of convincing whoever opposes such truth is drawn from the Scriptures, divinely confirmed by miracles. That which passes human reason we believe only through the revelation of God. With the aim of clarifying that truth, 51. Leonine, vol. 45/1, p. 290*.
52. Cf. Super Boetium de Trinitate, q.2 a.3.: " . . . in sacra doctrina philosophia possumus tripliciter uti. Primo ad demonstrandum ea quae sunt praeambula fidei . . . quae fides supponit.
Secundo ad notificandum per aliquas similitudines ea quae sunt fidei. . . . Tertio ad resistendum his quae contra fidem dicuntur siue ostendendo ea esse falsa siue ostendendo ea non esse necessaria."
we may, however, advance certain arguments that appear to be true, where the faith of the faithful finds matter on which it may operate and rest, without being of a nature to convince adversaries. For these latter the very insufficiency of these arguments would confirm them rather in their error, in giving them reason to think that we consent to the truth of the faith for these poor reasons.
The last two italicized phrases find their natural commentary in two passages that are too little known from the Summa theologiae. Echoing the first, Thomas reaffirms a principal datum with regard to the Incarnation: "What depends on the will of God alone and to which the creature has no right, can be known to us only in the measure in which it is taught in sacred Scripture, which allows us to know the will of God."53 Without a doubt the Word could have been incarnated even had man never sinned, but to reason thus would be to pour out a hypothetical theology where man, imagining "what would have happened if . . . " would substitute his own view of things for God's. More humbly, the truthful theologian wishes to remain a realist and to adhere more closely to given revelation; also, careful about reason and the synthesis that it gives, Thomas never forgets that his edifice rests on salvation history, that "economy" is the sole path to "theology.''
The conclusion of the text commented on is only the other face of the same truth and a new invitation to modesty; Thomas certainly knows the force of reason, but also its limits: "To dare to prove the Trinity by natural reason is to commit a double fault in faith. . . . First, one misapprehends the dignity of the faith itself, which has invisible things as its object, which is to say, those that go beyond human reason. . . . Further, one compromises the means to lead certain men to the faith. In effect, to bring as a proof of the faith reasons that are not necessary is to expose that faith to the scorn of the infidels; they think that it is upon these reasons that we base ourselves, and it is on account of them that we believe."54
Our plan being therefore to proceed according to the proposed method, we will try to show this truth that faith professes and that reason uncovers by producing some demonstrative and some probable arguments. Some of these will be provided for us from works of philosophers and others by saints [ sancti]. And they will help us to confirm the truth and to convince [ con53. ST IIIa q.1 a.3.
54. ST la q.32 a.1; cf. q.46 a.2.
uincere] the adversary. Passing thus from the more clear to the less clear, we will explain the truth that passes reason by refuting the arguments of the adversaries and in clarifying, as much as God permits, the truth of the faith through probable arguments and by authorities.
The sancti, we should know, are the Fathers of the Church; we will speak further along about the importance that Thomas recognizes in them. We should notice here also the word conuincere, which does not at all have the meaning that we normally give it: here it means not "persuading" but "convincing of error whoever has erred."55 That reason cannot demonstrate faith does not mean that it is impotent when faced with the objections of adversaries. On the contrary, Thomas shows a robust confidence in the capabilities of reason in the believer. "Since natural reason cannot go against the truth of the faith," it can at least show that the adversaries arguments are not true demonstrations but sophisms that can be ''dismantled."56
At the conclusion of this passage, Thomas therefore announces what he will treat in the fourth book of the Contra Gentiles: an explanation of the truth of the faith that is outside of the grasp of reason; here we meet only probable reasons and not necessary reasons, but Thomas does not decline to speak to this mystery. As he will explain it later, there are two types of theological disputes: one pushes back errors, the other makes truth intelligible. If one is content with the first type, the hearer will know without doubt what is true and what is false, but he will not have any idea of what the truth means which is proposed to him. He will go away with an empty head.57 The wellformed mind is already preferable to the wellfilled mind.
We propose therefore to follow by way of reason that which the human reason can discover of God; we will have to study first what belongs to God in himself, we will then study the emergence of creatures from God. In the third place we will see the ordering of the creatures to God as to their end.
55. On this point see the arguments of Gauthier, Leonine, vol. 45/1, pp 290*–92* (against Patfoort, Clefs, p. 114); Somme contre les gentils, chap. IV: "La double tâche du sage."
56. ST Ia q.1 a.8: "Cum enim fides infallibili veritati innititur, impossibile autem sit de veto demonstrari contrarium, manifestum est probationes quae contra fidem inducuntur, non esse demonstrationes, sed solubilia argumenta."
57. Quodlibet IV q.9 a.3 [18]; note the end of this text: "Quaedam vero disputatio est in scholis, non ad removendum errorem sed ad instruendum auditores ut inducantur ad intellectum veritatis quem intendit, et tunc oportet rationibus inniti investigantibus veritatis radicem et facientibus scire quomodo sit verum quod dicitur; alioquin si nudis auctoritatibus magister quaestionem determinet, certificabitur quidem auditor quod ita est, sed nihil scientiae vel intellectus acquiret sed vacuus abscedet."
These last words sketch therefore the plan for the first three books, which are dedicated to truths accessible to reason—by which we should understand, truths that find support in Aristotle, however distant: " Primo . . . de his quae Deo secundum seipsum conveniunt [the existence of God and the divine perfections]; secundo vero, de processu creaturarum ab ipso [the creative act in itself and its effects]; tertio autem, de ordine creaturarum in ipsum sicut in finem [providence and God's government]." This plan clearly prefigures the one that Thomas will also use in the Summa theologiae, passing from the Incarnation to the Parousia, by way of the sacraments. In the first three books, he excludes the Trinity and the work of salvation; he reserves that material for Book IV, which is dedicated "ad illius veritatis manifestationem . . . quae rationem excedit," which is to say, to what the Fathers of the Church call properly theologia and oikonomia. The resemblance and difference between the two works should be noted: Thomas is thus already in possession of a circular plan whose fertility he will again exploit; but for reasons that partly escape us, he did not perfectly succeed here in emphasizing the unity of the divine plan.58
The Contents of the Summa contra Gentiles
If we now wish to form an idea of the material treated by our author, we must follow it closely through all four Books. As in all his other works, the structures are of a perfect clarity and we do not have any difficulty in discerning the arrangement of the various sections. A comparison with the Summa theologiae also permits us to clarify these two works, the one by means of the other.
In accord with the "discourse on method" that we have just examined, Book I comes immediately to the existence of God (10–13). As this existence is not evident in itself for us, it must therefore be established, for
58. There are translations of the Contra Gentiles in almost all the European languages. In English, the Blackfriars edition, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. English Dominican Fathers (London: Burns, Oats, and Washbourne, 1934); Of God and His Creatures, trans. J. Rickaby (Westminster, Md.: Carroll Press, 1950); Saint Thomas Aquinas, on the Truth of the Catholic Faith, A. C. Pegis, J. F. Anderson, J. Bourke, C. J. O'Neil, eds. (New York: Doubleday, 1955–57), 5 vols. In French, while we await the one to which Gauthier has written a new introduction, the best remains BernierCorvez. In addition to the studies mentioned in the course of this chapter, see: B. Montagnes, "Les deux fonctions de la sagesse: ordonner et juger," RSPT 53 (1969) 675–86; A. C. Chacon, "El tratado sobre la gracia en la Summa contra Gentiles," Scripta theologica 16 (1984) 113–46; N. W. Mtega, Analogy and Theological Language in the Summa contra Gentiles. A Textual Survey of the Concept of Analogy and Its Theological Application by St. Thomas Aquinas (New York/Berne, 1984); J. R. Mendez, El amor fundamento de la participación metafisica. Hermeneutica de la " Summa contra Gentiles," Diss. Later. (Rome, 1985) [cf. RLT 21 (1988), no. 88, pp. 56–60].