The De unitate intellectus
2. This explanation, which has in its favor the force and the seductiveness of simplicity, has the disadvantage of not directly integrating the Tertia Pars. And Christ seems to survive " only as the means willed by God" to assure man's return to his end. Chenu concedes this himself: "To judge it abstractly," the Tertia Pars seems
"only to play the role of a piece added after the fact." H. Schillebeeckx was one of the first to point out this weakness and to emphasize sharply that the different parts of the Summa speak of only a single motus rationalis creaturae in Deum.25 But the most pertinent critiques against this scheme, which is too simple to take into account the complexity of the Summa's plan, were formulated by A. Patfoort.26 On the one hand, the movement of exitus is not identified with that of the Prima Pars, for the reditus begins before the end of that part, since Thomas already speaks there about aspects of the reditus that are common to all creatures, before specifying in the Secunda Pars and the Tertia Pars what concerns the human person. On the other hand, the reditus is not limited to the Secunda Pars, but extends well into the Tertia Pars, for what we have is a " reditus per Christum.'' There is thus simultaneously an overlapping of the notion of reditus in the different parts of the Summa and also a certain equivocation in that concept. Paffoort proposes, therefore, abandoning this scheme, which does not appear to him to be truly explanatory, and he himself makes diverse suggestions that would be closer to what Thomas did, but that we cannot enter into here.
3. According the M.V. Leroy, there is no reason to give up the exitusreditus scheme, but we must make it clear that it applies only to the "economic" part of the Summa. Before that, Thomas sets up another grand division that reproduces purely and simply the one established by the Fathers of the Church between "theology"
and "economy." The "theology" corresponds to the beginning of the Prima Pars (QQ.2–43), where we are dealing with God Himself; then the "economy" regroups all the rest of the Summa (beginning at Prima Pars Q.44). This ensemble of 393 questions is itself to be understood according to the scheme exitusreditus.27
In the second part of the Prima Pars (QQ.44–119), the dominant (but not unique) movement is still the exitus (even if for some creatures, namely the angels, the reditus is already evoked). As to the Secunda Pars and the
25. H. Schillebeeckx, De sacramentele Heilseconomie (Anvers, 1952), pp. 1–18.
26. A.M. Patfoort, "L'unité de la Ia Pars et le mouvement interne de la Somme théologique de S. Thomas d'Aquin," RSPT 47 (1963) 513–44 (reprinted in Les clés, pp. 49–70).
27. M.V. Leroy, RT 84 (1984) 298–303, a review of Patfoort's text in Les clés.
Tertia Pars, they speak only of the reditus, but in so far as it has something specific for the rational creature, which is to say, for man as the image of God. This movement finds its culmination when man arrives at a perfect resemblance in attaining communion with God (cf. Prol., Secunda Pars), through the mediation of Christ
" qui secundum quod homo via est nobis tendendi ad Deum" (Prol., Tertia Pars). Complete and nuanced, this explanation seems to correspond well to what Saint Thomas did. We must nevertheless add with Leroy that "before being Neoplatonist [this scheme] is quite simply Christian." Thomas explicitly emphasizes this elsewhere when he says with the book of Revelation that God is the Alpha and the Omega of the whole creation.28
The Place of the Mystery of the Incarnation
The explanatory value that Thomas attached to his construction of the Summa receives a double and interesting confirmation. The first confirmation is often used because it deals with the frequency with which this structure appears in diverse works: from the Sentences, where the choice is already rather clear,29 to the Summa, where all the prologues bear the more or less explicit trace of this option, to the Contra Gentiles.30 In fact, this schema imposes itself on all theology that allows itself to be structured by faith and the Creed: from God the creator to God who returns in Christ to take man with Him into glory. As Jean Tonneau has justly put it: "We do not think it useful to attribute to Saint Thomas the dubious honor of having imposed on the doctrine that he is expounding an internal structure, a sequence in the order of the mysteries, other than those of revelation and faith."31
28. Cf. Sent. I d.2, divisio textus; it is also perhaps because of this that this vocabulary, although present in the Sentences, is no longer found in the Summa; T. F. O'Meara, "Grace as Theological Structure in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas," RTAM 55 (1988) 130–53, who rightly recalls this, proposes to see in grace a reality present everywhere in the Summa—as a main thread—which gives it its properly theological form: in the first two parts and in each treatise there is a movement of crescendo that goes from esse to the life with God. We will see in our future book that we can (and that we must) admit this omnipresence of grace, without necessarily rejecting the movement from exit to return.
29. Cf. Sent.II Prol.: "Theologus considerat creaturas secundum quod a primo principio exierunt et in finem ultimum ordinantur qui Deus est"; we will return in our future book to the key text from Sent. I d. 14 q.2 a2.
30. SCG I9: "primo occurrit consideratio de his quae Deo secundum seipsum conveniunt: secundo vero, de processu creaturarum ab ipso; tertio autem, de ordine creaturarum in ipsum sicut in finem."
31. J. Tonneau, "Le passage de la Prima Secundae à la Secunda Secundae," Bull. du Cercle Thomiste de Caen (1975), no. 69, pp. 29–46, no. 70, pp. 21–31, after RLT 11 (1978), no. 655, p.
212.
The second confirmation has perhaps been a little neglected in this discussion; it stems from the fact that Thomas's thought is itself profoundly impregnated with this circular vision of the world, to such an extent that he does not hesitate to say that "the circular movement is the most perfect of all because it produces a return to the beginning. In order that the universe may attain to its final perfection, it must therefore return to its beginning."32 We can show that, philosophically, this occurs according to a triple plan:33 first in cosmology, then in metaphysics, and finally in the philosophy of knowledge.
It suffices to refer to the beginning of the Commentary on the Metaphysics to see that Thomas well understands Aristotle's assertion that "all men by nature desire to know." It is only in this way that they may rejoin their origin, and it is in that origin that their perfection consists; that is why the circular movement is perfectissimus.
Thomas develops this at length in his Contra Gentiles in explaining that man, the only being capable of an explicit reditio completa to its source through knowledge, finds his beatitude there.34
All this clearly does not take on its full meaning except in a Christian vision of man and the world. That is why we find the most remarkable illustration of it in the theology of the Incarnation. In the epigraph to the Prologue, which precedes his commentary on the Third Book of the Sentences, Thomas cites the celebrated biblical verse on the rivers that return to their source: "Ad locum unde exeunt, flumina reuertuntur, ut iterum fluant" (Ecclesiastes 1:7). From that image of the eternal return Thomas does not conclude, as the biblical author did, that all things are vanity; he links it to an opposite view: It is the mystery of the Incarnation that is signified by this return of the rivers to their source . . . These rivers are in effect the natural gifts which God has provided for his creatures: being, life, intelligence . . . and the source from which they come is God . . . Although they find themselves in a dispersed condition in all creation, these goods are regrouped in man, for he
32. SCG II 46, no. 1230: "motus circularis inter omnes motus, est maxime perfectus, quia in eis ad principium reditur. Ad hoc igitur quod universum creaturarum ultimam perfectionem consequatur, oportet creaturas ad suum redire principium."
33. Cf. J. A. Aertsen, "The CirculationMotive and Man in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas," in L'homme et son univers au Moyen Age, ed. Chr. Wenin (LouvainLaNeuve, 1986), vol.
I, pp. 432–39; idem., Nature and Creature. Thomas Aquinas's Way of Thought, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 21 (Leiden, 1988); idem., "Natur, Mensch und der Kreislauf der Dinge bei Thomas von Aquin," MM 21/2 (1991) 143–60.
34. Sent. super Metaphys, I, lect. 1, no. 4; cf. SCG III 25.
is a sort of horizon, the limit where bodily and spiritual nature meet; being a kind of center, he participates in the spiritual goods as in temporal goods. . . . That is why when human nature was reunited with God by the mystery of the Incarnation, all the rivers of natural goods returned to their source.35
Placed thus in the exergue to an entire book, this explanation is certainly not an obiter dictum. Also, when we find it stated more briefly elsewhere, we can believe that it expresses an option to which Thomas has committed himself:
The totality of the divine work finds its culmination when man, the last creature created, returns to his source by a kind of circle, when through the work of the Incarnation he finds himself united to the very source of things itself.36
It is a pity that Father Chenu did not have these texts in mind in his first essay, for they show with great clarity that in Thomas's thought not only does the Incarnation not introduce any disruption into the schema exitusreditus but, on the contrary, it is only through the Incarnation that this movement achieves its fruition.
It would be unjust, however, not to repeat that Chenu's undeniable merit remains in his having brought to light this profound movement of the Summa, and precisely apropos of Christ and of the Tertia Pars: "Saint Thomas's plan manifests clearly that he remains a master over the Platonic scheme at the very moment when he uses it. The Word incarnate of the Christian is not the creator Logos of Plotinus's emanationism; the Word is the object of history, while Plotinus evokes time as a sort of stain and God's liberty as unintelligible imperfection. The paradoxical result is a theology that knows how to link within a feeling for the transcendence of God both the knowledge of necessity and respect for the contingencies of an eternally free love. The Tertia Pars is an expression of this result."37
35. Sent. III Prol.: "Et ideo quando humana natura per incarnationis mysterium Deo coniuncta est, omnia flumina naturalium bonitatum ad suum principium reflexa redierunt"; see on this text: I. Biffi, "Misteri di Cristo, sacramenti, escatologia nello Scriptum super Sententiis di san Tommaso d'Aquino," La Scuola Cattol. 102 (1974) 569–623, cf. pp. 578ff.
36. Compendium theol. 201 (Leonine, vol. 42, p. 158): "Perficitur etiam per hoc quodam modo totius operis diuini uniuersitas, dum homo, qui est ultimo creatus, circulo quodam in suum redit principium, ipsi rerum principio per opus incarnationis unitus"; cf. also Sent. III d.2 q. 1, a. 1 resp.: "quia homo est ultima creaturarum, quasi ultimo creatus, cujus natura assumpta, ultimum conjunctum est principio per modum circuli, quae est figura peffecta . . . "
37. Toward, p. 320.
Finally, Thomas thus returns to the wellknown biblical theme of eschatology, which responds to protology, for only He has the mastery of the end Who has the mastery of the beginning. That intuition allows him to propose an ordo disciplinae, a manner of exposition for the whole of theology, thanks to which he was able to make a place for contingent truths in the history of salvation. He knew very well that theology is not a science of the necessary, in the way that Aristotle conceived it, but an organization of contingent data received from revelation, upon which the theologian labors to find the arrangement of God's design.38 This constrains him to proceed most often by arguments of fitness rather than by necessary reasons, but he can thus give full place to the history of salvation. In fact, we meet in the Summa large chunks of biblical theology—such as the work of the six days (Ia QQ.67–74), the treatise on the Old Law (Ia IIae QQ.98–106), the life of Jesus (IIIa QQ.27–
59)—that would not find any place in a overly deductive conception of theology. (It is with regard to these that Cajetan made his celebrated statement: Potius meditanda quam exponenda!) But precisely because of his utilization of the exitusreditus scheme, Thomas can integrate these biblical pieces with ease.
Theology, Life, and Prayer
The implications of Thomas's basic option cannot be drawn out very far here without trespassing into another book where we shall develop all this further. But at the risk of anticipating a little, we should already emphasize that this way of considering God as the beginning and the end of the theological enterprise has quite evident repercussions.
First, it has a profoundly unifying influence on theological knowledge itself. This thesis is clear from the very first pages of the Summa ( Prima Pars q. 1 a.4); sacra doctrina is a knowledge that is both one and unique (una scientia) for, in it, everything is found considered from God's point of view. This is confirmed from the two points of view from which we can regard it, as speculative knowledge or as practical knowledge.
Regarding theology as speculative knowledge, Thomas emphasizes that God is the "subject" of his "science," since everything in this science is found to be treated from the point of view of God, whether God Himself,
38. See on this in particular the beginning of ST Ia q. 1 a.8; IIIa q. 1 a. 3: "ea quae ex sola Dei voluntate proveniunt . . . nobis innotescere non possunt nisi quatenus in Sacra Scriptura tradantur"; we should also refer to an exposition of the "ostensive" function of theology, for example, Yves M.J. Congar, "Théologic," in DTC 15/1 (1946) 451–62. J.P.
Torrell, La théologie catholique, Que saisje? 1269 (Paris, 1994), pp. 56–60.
or the realities that come from God or that are ordered to Him.39 This certainly does not prevent other realities from becoming objects of theological reflection, but they will be so only to the extent that the connection between origin and end is brought to light and its consequences evaluated in the alwaysclear consciousness of the first end, which requires the knowledge of God to be the only end of theology.
God, the " subject of theology," is certainly a technical expression. But without playing too much on the meaning of the word, it is also the spontaneous expression of a truth that should not be neglected: to speak of God as a subject is also to say that theology does not reduce Him to an object—not even to a purified mental object that the theologian can conceptualize. As subject, God is a person whom we know and love (because He has given Himself to be known and to be loved), a person whom we invoke and whom we meet in prayer. When Thomas says that theology is principally speculative, he means that it is in the first instance contemplative; the two words are practically synonymous in Thomas.40 This is why—we shall not be slow to see this operative in Thomas's life—research, study, reflection on God can find their source and their completion only in prayer. The Eastern Christians like to say of theology that it is doxology; Thomas would add some further clarifications to that, but he would not reject the intention: the joy of the Friend who is contemplated is completed in song.
Considered as practical knowledge (that is, theology as it directs Christian action—what is commonly called moral theology), theology does not lose its contemplative aim (Ia q. 1 a.4). It is still and always directed by the consideration of God, since He is the End in view of which all decisions are made and the Good in connection with which all other goods are situated. To speak of God as beginning and as end is not a purely theoretical option; it concerns the entire Christian life. If God is the source of all being and of every being, he is also the accomplishment of all desires and of all actions ( finis omnium desideriorum et actionum nostrarum, ST IIa IIae q.4 a.2 ad 3). We should not deceive ourselves. Thomas finds himself here closer to Augustine and his restless heart than to Freud and the infan39. "Omnia autem pertractantur in sacra doctrina sub ratione Dei, vel quia sunt ipse Deus, vel quia habent ordinem ad Deum, ut ad principium et finem. Unde sequitur quod Deus vere sit subiectum huius scientiae" (Ia q. 1 a. 7).
40. Cf. S. Pinckaers, "Recherche de la signification véritable du terme 'Spéculatif,'" NRT 81 (1959) 673–95; J.P. Torrell, "Théologie et sainteté," RT 71 (1971) 205–21, on the contemplative finality of theology, see pp. 206–12.
tile megalomania of desire. Thomas knows that the natural desire to see God cannot be vain, for it is God Himself who has put it in the human heart.
The upshot of all the preceding is that it is impossible, according to Thomas, to do theology independent from faith. Only faith permits us to receive the God who gives Himself and reveals Himself; faith is therefore the only thing able to give a real object to this knowledge. It is also the lumen sub quo—which is to say, the formal point of view under which everything is seen. This is also true for theology in its practical function: just as the speculative intellect becomes practical by extension, so faith would not know how to be itself if it did not act in charity. That is why we do not know in this perspective how to practice an ethic outside of the directing light of faith and its ecclesial context without reducing it to a purely philosophical enterprise.
This is not our direct purpose here, but it is not without value to say in concluding this presentation of the Summa that to imagine that this innovative project was accepted with enthusiasm, even by the Dominican confreres of our author, would be an error. For a long time, the Sentences were preferred to the Summa—not only because of university obligations—and in the Summa itself, the "special" moral part—better known under the name of Secunda Secundae—was far more widely diffused than the dogmatic parts.41
Even though it is to be regretted, the historian must declare that Thomas's masterwork did not itself directly reach a very large public. Its options in questions of moral theology would be circulated much better by some vulgarizers, such as John of Freiburg in his Summa Confessorum (1298), which was largely inspired by Thomas, and which, by that very fact, differs in inspiration from the manuals that preceded Thomas. By around 1290, the master of the order, John of Vercelli, had directed Galien de Orto, lector in the priory of Perugia, later in Viterbo, to make a summary of the Secunda Secundae. In the course of the fourteenth century, other manuals of the same type saw the light. These too were much better distributed than the Summa itself: the summary of John of Freiburg himself by William of CayeuxsurMer, who was the prior at SaintJacques and vicargeneral of the order a little after 1300; the simplified version of the Summa 41. See here again Boyle, The Setting, pp. 23–30.
rudium, around 1333; the alphabetically ordered summary under the name of Pisanella, after the name of its compiler, Bartholomew of Pisa, around 1338 (600
manuscripts).42
This was not at all the type of success that Thomas would have wished; it was perhaps in this way, however, that he slowly became, not without misunderstandings, the "common doctor."43
42. Cf. L. Boyle, "The Summa confessorum of John of Freiburg and the Popularization of the Moral Teaching of St. Thomas and of Some of His Contemporaries," in Commemorative Studies II, pp. 245–68, reprinted in Pastoral Care, Study 3.
43. An addendum to note 28 above: See also the more ample discussion of Thomas O'Meara's point of view by R. Cessario, "Is Aquinas's Summa only about Grace?" in Ordo sapientiae et amoris, pp. 197–209.
Chapter IX—
The Other Writings from the Roman Period
Viewed from a distance, it would seem that the composition of the Summa must have have taken up all of Thomas's energy and free time. In reality, it was far from being his only occupation. We only have to turn, for instance, to the Catena aurea; Thomas still had to finish it (Luke and John remained to be written). He also would have to dedicate himself to the students who had been entrusted to him. His first task was therefore their instruction. He was also occupied with a certain number of other writings.
As to the teaching, it is rather difficult to form an exact idea of what Thomas actually did. If he had indeed given alia lectura on the First Book of the Sentences, that means that he did not refuse (at least at first) to play the role of a bachelor of Sentences again for his students. We can allow that this would have taken up the first year of the Roman period (1265–66). But it is precisely here that we find the major difficulty that prevents us from fully pursuing Boyle's suggestion about Thomas's possibly teaching the Prima Pars to his Roman students. Given that the first book of the Sentences and the Prima Pars have exactly the same subject, it is difficult to see Thomas teaching the same material over two successive years to the same students.
Therefore, though we might accept that he gave a new course on the Sentences, since the lector did not have the same obligations as the master (although Tolomeo's text on the alia lectura does not say legit, but indeed
scripsit, and although this revision could only have been made in writing), it is less certain that the Summa itself became the subject of teaching. Nothing would have prevented Thomas from also fulfilling his responsibilities as a magister in sacra pagina. He may have returned to a mode of teaching with his Roman students that was rather close to what he had already used in Paris: offering close commentary on a book of Scripture (we do not know which one), as well as sessions—if not daily, at least frequent—of disputed questions.
The De Potentia "cum annexis"
The disputed questions De potentia are precisely situated in this period. To the series of indications that the scholars have made available to us that favor the Roman period, Martin Grabmann has added a manuscript from the end of the thirteenth century or the beginning of the fourteenth century, which clearly specifies: Questiones fratris T. de aquino quas disputavit rome.1 If the frequency of disputations was the same in Rome as in Paris, the 83 articles of this work would correspond to one year's teaching. But we may doubt this if we think about the rudes who made up Thomas's audience at the time. We may therefore imagine a somewhat slower pace, which would have permitted him to fit two other series of disputed questions into the three years of this Roman sojourn: the question De anima (21 articles) and the question De spiritualibus creaturis (11 articles) in addition to diverse opuscula. Though we cannot examine all these at length, we must try at least to situate these works in that time and say a few words about the most important of them.
In a pioneering article,2 Father Glorieux once proposed situating the question De anima at a time a little later, during the second Parisian sojourn (1269). He was then followed thirty years later by James Robb, an earlier editor of this text.3 Today, the scholars seem to agree in dating this 1. Ms. Subiaco, Bibl. de l'abbaye 211, f. 175r, in Grabmann, Werke, p. 306.
2. P. Glorieux, "Les Questions disputées de S. Thomas et leur suite chronologique," RTAM 4 (1932) 5–33; we note that Glorieux's suggestions (followed by Grabmann, etc.), proposing to distribute the De potentia and other questions between Rome and Viterbo, lose all their cogency the minute we acknowledge that Thomas never resided at Viterbo.
3. J. H. Robb, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas. Quaestiones De anima, A newly established Edition of the Latin Text with an Introduction and Notes (Toronto, 1968), pp. 27–37. Using the same old documentation, the author persists in this position, cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P., Questions on the Soul [Quaestiones de Anima], trans, with intro. by J. H. Robb (Milwaukee, 1984). Although we cannot follow him on this point, we can profit from his introduction about the contents of this disputed question.
Question to the Roman period. Thus the very elaborated researches of Bernardo Bazán, editor of the text for the Leonine Commission, allow us to situate the disputation of these questions during the year 1265–66 and their publication in Italy a little bit later. This corresponds perfectly to Gauthier's suggestion that we consider this question a ''preparatory exercise" to the composition of Questions 75 through 89 of the Prima Pars, which itself dates from this epoch.4 Bazán also proposes placing the Question De spiritualibus creaturis between November 1267 and September 1268 (Thomas having done, in the meantime, the commentary on Aristotle's De anima). This also corresponds to a similar remark by Gauthier, who had noted that "the question De spiritualibus creaturis is clearly more attentive to an exact usage of the Noua."5 That judgment is entirely confirmed by Bazán, who bases it on the study of the use of other translations of Aristotle. As to the publication of the De spiritualibus creaturis, it did not occur until the return to Paris.
We would emphasize with Bazán that, as sometimes happens, Tolomeo is relatively trustworthy here, since he places the two disputes in Italy, the first a little too early without doubt (between 1261 and 1264, under Urban IV), the second at a more exact date (between 1265 and 1268, under Clement IV), but relatively right in their chronology.6 By contrast, it is less certain that we ought to follow Tolomeo when he also places during this period in Rome the De malo (101 articles) and the De uirtutibus (36 articles), for Thomas's program would then have been too full. This is a question that we will examine further on.
Insofar as it is possible to discern a plan in the course of the De potentia, it seems that we can distinguish the first six questions from the last four.7 The first six in effect are grouped around the theme De potentia: (1) God's
4. B. Bazán, Introduction to Leonine, vol. 24 (forthcoming); Gauthier, Quelques questions, pp. 452–53, note 44 bis.; we note here the incisive comment concerning the question De anima: "doubtless too long to have been really [orally] disputed"; we have seen above (chap. IV) that we must consider this hypothesis.
5. Gauthier, Quelques questions, pp. 452–53; this is also not very distant from the dating of Glorieux (and others) who proposed: Viterbo, September to November 1268. We almost certainly must now say "Rome" and move up the date by several months, since Thomas left Italy around September. Until the text of the Leonine edition appears, cf. L. W. Keeler, ed., S. Thomae Aquinatis. Tractatus De spiritualibus creaturis (Rome, 1937); cf. the translation by M. C. Fitzpatrick, On Spiritual Creatures (Milwaukee, 1949).
6. Tolomeo XXII 38–39 (ed. A. Dondaine, p. 151): "Fecit etiam tune temporis (scil. Clementis IV) questiones de spiritualibus creaturis, de malo et de virtutibus."
7. Cf. M. Bouyges, "L'idée génératrice du De potentia de S. Thomas," Rev. de Phil. 31 (1931) 113–31; 246–68; with the discussion of A. Dondaine in BT 4 (1934–1936), no. 196, pp. 140–
42.
power in general; (2) the generative power of God; (3) His creative power;
(4) creation of matter; (5) the conservation of created things in being; (6) on the miraculous. The last four questions belong by contrast to Trinitarian theology: (7) the simplicity of the divine essence; (8) the relations within God; (9) the divine persons; (10) the procession of the divine persons. This simple description clearly suggests that the De potentia shows something analogous to what we found for the De ueritate: the title of the first question served to designate the whole series without being exactly applicable to each and every element.8
The connection between the De ueritate and the De potentia suggests itself for more than one reason: not only is there a series of questions disputed in both cases, but we are dealing with great texts by the Master. His disciples are happy to emphasize their metaphysical profundity and they consider them a highly important link in the evolution of his thought.9 Though not entirely unfounded, this kind of commentary leads to an inflationary spiral of praise, which immediately loses all credibility. It is simpler and truer to say that we cannot talk about certain points in the Thomist theology of creation or of divine government without recourse to the elucidations of these questions here, for they indeed are their heart.
It suffices to run through the titles to understand that reflection on the creation occupies a quite central place in the De potentia, where it appears at the heart of Thomas's work. He is certainly not the only Christian thinker to have developed a creationist view of the universe following the book of Genesis, but he has probably done it with the greatest rigor, not only in dealing with questions relative to the beginning of the world or to its eternity, but even more perhaps in unfolding all the implications that stem from the biblical teaching. To say that the world is created signifies that it is entirely, in each and every element, in a relationship of total dependence on God: everything that is, is from God, God giving to each existing thing not only being, but being what it is, and the power of acting according to the nature He has given it.
The originality of this thought—already present in the Contra Gentiles and to be found again in the Summa theologiae—is that this total depen8. The ancient catalogues are more exact in mentioning specifically: "De potentia Dei et ultra" (Prague Catalogue, in Grabmann, Werke, p. 92); or see: "De potentia Dei cum annexis" [ Ms. Vat. Borghese 120, quoted in BT 4 (1934–36) 142].
9. So Weisheipl, p. 200: "in fact, De potentia is chronologically and speculatively the immediate predecessor of the first part of the theological Summa."
dence is accompanied by an equally total autonomy, since God respects the proper constitution of each creature and allows it to act according to its own laws. This is not the place to develop further this Thomist theology of creation, but we should know that it contributes to the Thomistically inspired spirituality one of its clearest characteristics. It has been profoundly remarked that if we had to designate Thomas by a religious name, we could call him "Thomas a Creatore." Thus, we would express one of the most profound intuitions about his vision of the world.10
The Compendium theologiae
We should also speak more fully about the Compendium theologiae, written at the request of Brother Reginald, apparently during this period. Scholarly opinion has wavered for a long time over its date: after many different views, Mandonnet and Grabmann finally settled on the years 1272–73, dates suggested to them by the work's incompleteness; Thomas's death would have interrupted its composition. For Chenu, Motte, H. Dondaine, Perrier, and finally Gauthier, the resemblance of certain chapters in the Compendium to the Contra Gentiles is so striking that we should regard them as parallel compositions. More probably, the Compendium was done a little after the Contra Gentiles, which is to say, as we now know, in the years 1265–1267.11
In any case, H. Dondaine takes up a suggestion by Perrier, further worked out by F. Van Steenberghen, according to which we should distinguish between the two parts of the Compendium: the first ( De fide: 246 chapters) indeed goes back to this period; the second (De spe), interrupted immediately after the beginning of chapter X, may be from a later period. Other occupations would have forced Thomas to suspend his composition after the De fide; only after his return to Naples in 1272 would he have been able to return to it, again at the request of Brother Reginald. In effect, 10. G. K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas, in Collected Works, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 129; cf. J. Pieper, "Kreatürlichkeit. Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs," in L. OeingHanhoff, ed., Thomas von Aquin, 1274/1974 (Munich, 1974), p. 47. A good analysis of Q. 3 can be found in Weisheipl, pp. 200–211; in French perhaps one of the best works remains A.D. Sertillanges, L'idée de création et ses retentissements en philosophie (Paris, 1945). So far as we know, there does not exist a French translation of De potentia, but there is an English one: On the Power of God (Questiones Disputae De Potentia Dei), literally trans. by the English Dominican Fathers, 3 vols.
(London, 1932–34); in Italian, La potenza di Dio Quaestiones disputatae De Potentia Dei I–III, ed. A. Campodonico, introd, by L. Tuninetti (Florence, 1991).
11. Cf. above chap. 6; detailed references to the various essays mentioned here can be found in the introduction by H.F. Dondaine, Leonine, vol. 42, p. 8.
illness and death would have prevented him from completing this work. This conjectural hypothesis about the end of the opusculum might indeed correspond to the reality, but we must not overlook the first proposition: that the date of the Compendium in its first part (the De fide) is slightly later than that of the Contra Gentiles makes the Compendium probably contemporary with the De potentia.12
Rather improperly classified among the "opuscula," this work—"little" only in comparison with Thomas's great works (though unfinished, it takes up 125 pages in the Leonine edition)—is without doubt too little known. We discover here an unusual Thomas (certain people would even speak of a style Bonaventurian rather than Thomasian in the De spe). He is careful to be simple and brief; his short chapters rarely take up more than a column and frequently only a half column (even though chapter II 9 goes on for 12!). Thomas thus very honorably takes his place in the series of "abbreviators" of Christian doctrine who have not ceased to mark the centuries.
A comparison with Saint Augustine's Enchiridion suggests itself; doubtless, Thomas borrows from Augustine the idea of building his work on the three theological virtues. Also like Augustine, Thomas develops what concerns faith in its relation to the articles of the Creed; those on hope based on the petitions in the "Our Father";
the part on charity takes the Decalogue for a framework. This plan is rather natural to him: the De articulis fidei, too, follows the order of the Credo, and he uses the same distribution with the three great series of sermons on the Credo, the Pater, and the Decem precepta. We grasp here doubtless one of the spontaneous orientations of Thomas's pastoral theology.
There is also a kind of personal touch here that we should not fail to notice, for we can add to Thomas's spiritual portrait. He gives the title of nobility once and for all to the popularizer's task by explicitly putting his proposed brevity under the patronage of the kenosis of the divine Word, Who contracted His immensity to the limits of our smallness and placed
12. See the English translations, one by L. Lynch (New York: McMullen, 1947), the other by C. Vollert, Compendium of Theology (St. Louis University, 1947; St. Louis: B. Herder, 1952). There are two French translations of the Compendium: the first was made in the nineteenth century from the text of the Vivès edition, by the abbé Védrine, "Vrin
Reprise" (Paris, 1984); the second is the work of J. Kreit, Thomas d'Aquin. Bref résumé de la foi chrétienne, Docteur Angélique 6 (Paris, 1985); this however was not done from the critical Leonine edition text and we should mention that the missing part has been "completed" with various texts borrowed from Saint Thomas but originating in diverse periods.
within our reach in a brief "Summa" the entire breadth of doctrine in the books of the Bible.13 This is the familiar theme of the uerbum abbreuiatum, the "brief word,"
spoken by the Lord to the universe, which Thomas borrows from Saint Paul.14 In fact, he continues, salvation for mankind consists in three things: to know the truth, which is entirely contained in the articles of the Creed; to pursue a just end (intentio debiti finis), which the Lord taught us in the petition of the Pater; finally, to observe justice, which is summed up in the single commandment of charity. Saint Paul signifies this in his way by teaching that perfection in this life consists in the observation of the "three things that remain"; Saint Augustine says in his own way that through these three virtues God is truly honored.15
With this pronouncement, the general plan is entirely traced out. He can only follow the three virtues in their traditional order, "for love would not be right [ rectus] if the true end had not first been fixed by hope, and that is not possible without knowing the truth."16 Thomas therefore can conclude in an observation to his reader:
"You must first have faith in order to know truth; then hope, in order to fix your love on a true end; and finally charity, by which your love will be totally rectified."17
As to the internal order of the exposition on the faith, the author is not very prolix. Two large parts nevertheless can be discerned: the first deals with the diuinitas Trinitatis (chaps. 3–184). Its plan is rather systematic: first the unity of essence, then the trinity of persons, finally the effects of the divinity.18 The second part develops that which pertains to Christ's humanity (chaps. 185–246); its plan is closer to the articles of faith and therefore to the history of salvation. It begins therefore with recalling original sin and closes with the last judgment. The two ultimate terms will be the same in the Summa, but we do not feel in reading the Compendium the clearly perceptible difference that we see in the Tertia Pars between
13. Chap. 1, beginning: "Eterni Patris Verbum sua immensitate universa comprehendens . . . breue fieri voluit nostra breuitate assumpta . . . propter occupatos sub breui summa humane salutis doctrinam conclusit."
14. Cf. Romans 9:28; we encounter the same quotation beginning with the homilies on the Ten Commandments: Manifestly, not everyone can pass his time in laborious study. Thus Christ has given us a law whose brevity makes it accessible to everyone and, thus, no one has the right to be ignorant of it: such is the law of divine love; that "brief Word that the Lord spoke to the Universe" ( Collationes II, p. 26); cf. Torrell, La pratique, p. 235.
15. Cf. 1 Cor. 13:13; Enchiridion, chap. 3 (BA 9, p. 204).
16. Chap. 1: "Non enim amor rectus esse potest nisi primo debitus finis spei statuatur, nec hoc esse potest si veritatis cognitio desit."
17. Ibid.
18. Cf. the conclusion of chap. 2.
speculative Christology and what is usually called "the life of Jesus." Briefer and simpler, the Compendium at first sight appears better unified, and the result is undeniably seductive.19
Expert Opinions on Some Contemporary Questions
We can also situate in this period the first of the doctrinal consultations requested from Thomas by John of Vercelli, who directed the Dominican Order from 1264 to 1283. In the text known under the title Responsio de 108 articulis, Thomas gives his opinion as a theological expert on certain points of the teaching of his confrere Peter of Tarentaise. Before becoming pope, Peter, the future Innocent V, had divided his time between teaching in Paris and directing the Dominican province of France.20 Given his prominence, the dossier accusing him wound up in the hands of the master of the order.
We can hardly specify the date further than the general framework of the Roman sojourn. H. Dondaine repeats without questioning further the dates proposed by Mandonnet: 1265–1266; or by Martin: 1265–1267. We know nothing more of the identity of the person who had been disturbed about Peter of Tarentaise's orthodoxy; the attack may have come from outside, but it is not impossible that it came from a Dominican. In any case, Thomas is not very easy on the accuser (whom he calls the obiciens): "He has not understood the passage, he has understood askew; a number of his attacks are unjust; his objection does not stand, the major allegation is false, and another shows a profound ignorance. What is even worse, several of the extracts that he attacks are altered by tendentious omission or addition."21 We understand even better the sharpness of his reaction, because certain criticisms also touched Thomas himself directly.22 This is indeed the same man whom we encountered in the quarrel several years earlier between the mendicants and the seculars.
In order not to have to return to them, let us mention here the other two
19. Cf. P. Glorieux, "La Christologie du Compendium theologiae," Sc. ecclés. 13 (1961) 7–34; for the problems posed by overlapping of the two kinds of development, of. Gh.
Lafont, Structures et méthode, pp. 124–31; same author's, "Simbolo degli Apostoli e metodo teologico: il Compendium theologiae di San Tommaso," La Scuola Cattolica 102
(1974) 557–68.
20. Cf. above, the beginning of chap. VI.
21. Summed up by H.F. Dondaine, Préface, Leonine, vol. 42, p. 264, from whom we borrow many other details; the text is found pp. 279–94.
22. This matter has been well established by A. Dondaine, "Saint Thomas et la dispute des attributs divins ( I Sent. , d.2, a.3)," AFP 8 (1938) 253–62; by the same author, "Saint Thomas atil disputé à Rome la question des attributs divins?" BT 3 (1930–33) 171–82.
doctrinal consultations that John of Vercelli requested from Saint Thomas. The first is the De forma absolutionis, probably dated 22 February 1269; this is an examination of an anonymous pamphlet whose author is disturbed at seeing an indicative formula of the sacrament of penance expanding within the order: "Ego te absolvo." Thomas's doctrine of the instrumentality of the minister in this sacrament makes it easy for him to respond to the difficulties raised in the name of the deprecative formula.23
The second of these doctrinal consultations for John of Vercelli, the Responsio de 43 articulis, is very well dated to Holy Thursday, 2 April 1271 (Thomas received a letter from his superior on the vigil during the High Mass). The story unfolds within a highly interesting context.24 Again, some points of doctrine are under discussion, but here cosmological problems occupy an important place (the action of the celestial bodies on terrestrial phenomena, action of the angels in this domain, the location of hell, etc.). Since the master of the order addressed himself at the same time to two other members of the order, Albertus Magnus and Robert Kilwardby, and their responses have been preserved, we can reconstruct with great exactitude the text of the incriminated articles, and simultaneously make some interesting comparisons about the respective ways the three masters approached these problems.25
For Thomas, this consultation for John of Vercelli had been preceded by another on the same subjects by the lector of the priory in Venice, Baxianus de Lodi. It is thus that we have a first Responsio de 30 articulis, addressed to the lector of Venice, of which 27 are found, more or less literally, in the 43 responses to John of Vercelli. But by an amusing circumstance that says a great deal about the climate of intellectual emulation at Venice, Baxianus's students wrote in turn to Thomas to submit some
23. Compare the edition of the text and the Preface by H.F, Dondaine in Leonine, vol. 40, pp. C 1–47; L. Ott, "Das Opusculum des hl. Thomas von Aquin 'De forma absolutionis' in dogmengeschichtlicher Betrachtung," in Festschrift Eichmann (Paderborn, 1940), pp. 99–135.
24. Cf. here again the edition of the text in the Preface by H.F. Dondaine, Leonine, vol. 42, pp. 295–346.
25. For Kilwardby's response, see M.D. Chenu, "Les réponses de S. Thomas et de Kilwardby à la consultation de Jean de Verceil (1271)," in Mélanges P. Mandonnet, vol. 1 (Bibl.
Thom. 13) (Paris, 1950), pp. 191–221, and his complete text in H.F. Dondaine, "Le De 43 quaestionibus de Robert Kilwardby," AFP 47 (1977) 5–50; for Albert, D. A. Callus, "Une oeuvre récemment découverte de S. Albert le Grand: De XLIII problematibus ad Magistrum Ordinis (1271)," and his text in J. A. Weisheipl, "The Problemata determinata XLIII ascribed to Albertus Magnus (1271),'' MS 22 (1960) 303–54 [second ed. corrected by the same author in Alberti Magni Opera omnia, ed. Coloniensis, vol. 17/1 (Münster, 1975), pp. 45–
64]. Numerous editions mention only 42 articles for Saint Thomas; it is important to correct this error.
supplementary difficulties. He then redid his own copy recasting four articles into two, and then adding five new ones, some arising from the response to John of Vercelli that had come in the meantime. Thus, the thirty articles from the earlier Responsio addressed to Venice become thirtysix in the second.26
As to the substance of these matters, a comparison of Thomas's response with those from the other two masters permits us to see that he does not engage the cosmological questions. While Kilwardby and Albert do not hesitate to do so, Thomas protests from the outset that the faith is not engaged in that material: "A number of these articles pertain more to philosophy than to faith. We do a great disservice to the doctrina pietatis, when we affirm or we reprove in its name things that do not belong to it as if they were related to sacra doctrina."27 He also does not see how the way of interpreting Aristotle relates to the doctrine of the faith.28 Whether hell is at the center of the earth or elsewhere, that does not concern faith; and for the rest, it is useless to worry about this type of question.29 Without spending more time on this, we should remark that Thomas rigorously observes the same attitude in his Responsio ad lectorem Bisuntinum de 6 articulis.30
The De regno ad regem Cypri
The problems posed by the De regno ad regem Cypri are relatively complicated. Simplifying questions about the addressee: theoretically we might choose between three contemporary kings of Cyprus. But a single name seems to fit with all the relevant data, Hugh II of Lusignan (1253–67). His premature death may have been the cause of the incompleteness of the work. This was the position of Echard, accepted by Mandonnet, which permitted them to situate the opusculum around 1267.
Eschmann's efforts (followed by Weisheipl) tried to move up the terminus ante quem to 1265, 26. These two texts have also both been edited by Father Dondaine (ibid.), to whom we also owe a debt for having so well disentangled their interspersed connections.
27. Resp. de 43 art. , introductory considerations, Leonine, vol. 42, p. 327, II. 21–29; Thomas will repeat at the end of his letter that obedience constrained him to respond to some subjects that went beyond the limits of the theology faculty (quamuis plures eorum sint prefer limites theologice facultatis), creating an obligation for him that his profession did not at all require: "ex uestra iniunctione factum est michi debitum quod proprii officii professio nullatenus requirebat."
28. Ibid., art. 34, p. 333.
29. Ibid., art. 32, p. 333.
30. Leonine, vol. 42, pp. 349–56; H.F. Dondaine allies himself with the proposal to date this writing to 1271; for its content, cf. Torrell, La pratique, pp. 224–25.
which does not seem acceptable today because the commentary on the Ethics that it uses is clearly later (1271). If that were the case, we would have to posit another addressee: Hugh III of AntiochLusignan (1257–84), whom Echard discarded, since he thought it unlikely that Thomas would have dedicated his work to Charles of Anjou's direct rival for the crown of Jerusalem. While we wait for future works that may bring us some new light on this subject, we must therefore here register a margin of uncertainty, which the Leonine editor also notes, following the indications of M. Grabmann.31
Without entering too deeply into these questions, we should remember here that the incomplete state of the work stimulated the zeal of Tolomeo of Lucca, who bestowed on it 62 supplementary chapters, with a view to making it correspond to the four books it announces. Thus for two centuries, from the invention of printing until Echard, who detected the intervention of a foreign hand, the Thomistic authenticity of this opusculum was frequently questioned because of historical inexactitudes and the doctrinal weakness of its chapters. These doubts still persisted not long ago, for such a scholar as Eschmann seriously questioned the authenticity of the work.32 Since the work of the Leonine Commission, this doubt is no longer in vogue, but it is important to know that Thomas's legacy in this work stops in the middle of chapter II 8 (formerly II 4).
According to the author's own words, he wanted to compose a work dealing with royalty, in which he would explain "the origin of royalty and what pertains to the duties of the king, according to the authority of sacred Scripture, and separating carefully the teaching of the philosophers and the example of the most highly praised princes" (Prol.). But we find that the content hardly corresponds to what Thomas says elsewhere concerning the best form of government. He usually recommends a mixed government, where the king collaborates with an aristocracy chosen by the whole people; here he recommends an absolute monarchy. We perhaps must see the reason for this in that he knew the special situation in Cyprus during the time he was writing. But we must also emphasize the incompleteness of the work, and that the author could not have reviewed it.
We cannot say much more about this without entering into developments that do not have their place here, but the reader will understand that it would be a bad methodology to permit oneself on the basis of this
31. Cf. H.F. Dondaine, Leonine, vol. 42, pp. 424–25.
32. Cf. Weisheipl, p. 213, note 6, and see above, chap. l, notes 65 and 67.
text aloneas has been sometimes doneto build up a political system ad mentem sancti Thomae. Father Chenu once said it quite well: "The De Regno is a pedagogical and moral treatise for the use of a prince, not an organic work of political theory."33 In response to the indiscreet commentators who would try to use this text in a unilateral fashion, it is useful to reproduce H. Dondaine's warning here: "Incomplete, perhaps of checkered background . . . this opusculum presents itself under some rather difficult conditions; those conditions call for prudence and discretion in recourse to the text as an expression of the thought of its author."34
The Sententia Libri De anima
Before leaving this Roman sojourn, we must mention one other activity of Thomas's. To all his numerous occupations, he found a way to add still one more, apparently disinterested, but which required considerable labor from him in the years to come: commenting on Aristotle. As G. Verbeke once showed, it is at the end of the Roman period that we must situate the commentary on the De anima.35 At the time when Thomas wrote it, he knew Themistius's paraphrase of this treatise. Now, William of Moerbeke did not complete the translation until 22 November 1267; Verbeke concludes from this that the entire commentary was after that date, but he believed we should push the terminus ante quem of this work to 1270. Thus, only the first book would date from the Roman period (in fact, he thought it was from Viterbo); Thomas's sojourn having been sharply curtailed, he would have had to finish books II and III in Paris.
Father Gauthier's more recent work confirms these initial results, but he also completes and corrects them.36 He emphasizes that this is the first time Thomas uses the Translatio noua, which is to say the revision that
33. BT II (1927–1929), no. 297, p. [334].
34. Leonine, vol. 42, p. 424; the text is found on pp. 449–71. In English there is On Kingship, trans. G. B. Phelan and I. T. Esehmann (Toronto: PIMS, 1949). The French translation by M.M. Cottier, Saint Thomas d'Aquin, du Royaume. De Regno (Paris, 1946), is from earlier than the critical edition; we mention also the translation by Cl. Roguet, Du gouvernement royal (Paris, 1931), with a preface by Charles Journet. In addition to the works mentioned in chapter 1, notes 64 and 66, we mention also: L. Génicot, "Le De Regno: spéculation ou réalisme?" in Aquinas and Problems of His Time, pp. 3–17; W. Mohr, "Bemerkungen zur Verfasserschaft von De regimine principum," in Virtus Politica, Festgabe . . . A. Hufnagel, ed.
J. Möller and H. Kohlenberger (Stuattgart, 1974), pp. 127–45, but these two works are prior to the Leonine edition.
35. G. Verbeke, "Les sources et la chronologie du Commentaire de S. Thomas d'Aquin au De anima d'Aristote," RPL 45 (1947) 314–38; by the same author, "Note sur la date du Commentaire de S. Thomas au De anima d'Aristote," RPL 50 (1952) 56–63.
36. R.A. Gauthier, Préface à Sentencia Libri De Anima, Leonine, vol. 45/1, pp. 283*–88*, notably.
William did of the Translatio uetus of the De anima. While Thomas still did not know the latter when he was writing his Summa contra Gentiles, he shows a firsthand knowledge of the Noua (although in a deficient text) in the works that appear around 1268, which is to say, in addition to the Sententia Libri De anima, the Prima Pars, and the Questions De anima and De spiritualibus creaturis.
To all appearances, William executed in parallel a revision of the Translatio uetus of the De anima and a translation of Themistius's paraphrase. Thus, before the close of 1267 Thomas could have made use of this new material, and it may indeed be this that would have awakened in him his vocation as a commentator. He must have performed the task vigorously, since this commentary was published in Italy before September 1268 (his departure for Paris); numerous manuscripts attest to its diffusion after that date and—a notable fact—we are dealing with the three Books in their entirety.37
We cannot exaggerate the importance of this last fact in the manuscript tradition; it reduces to nought many other previous hypotheses. First, it affects Verbeke's theory about the completion of the De anima at Paris, but also M. De Corte's.38 The latter, who first discovered that Thomas was quoting Themistius literally in his commentary, had also been struck by the clearly perceptible difference in the nature of the commentary between the first book on the one hand and the two latter books on the other hand: the first was more technical, the two others more doctrinal. To account for this, De Corte thought that Thomas had taught the De anima twice: first in Italy before 1268, and that we have only Books II and III from that period. According to De Corte, the Second time Thomas taught De anima would have been at Paris, from which we would have only Book I, in the reportatio of Brother Reginald. The publication of three books in Italy after 1268, therefore, seems to dispute the validity of this hypothesis, but even more, we know today that the commentaries on Aristotle were never the subject of Thomas's oral teaching. The difference in question is explained therefore simply by the character of Aristotle's books.39
37. Cf., ibid., pp. 285*–86*.
38. M. De Corte, "Themistius et saint Thomas Aquin," AHDLMA 7 (1932) 47–83.
39. See on this subject the full explanations by Gauthier, Leon., vol. 45/1, pp. 275*–82*; we can hardly enter here into the content of the De anima; see the English translation by K.
Foster and S. Humphries, Aristotle's De Anima with the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951); there is no French translation, but we can refer the reader to an Italian version: Tommaso d'Aquino, Commentario al " De Anima," translation, in
(footnote continued on next page)
Let us add in passing, for it is appropriate here, that Verbeke's and De Corte's hypotheses hold up very well for the De sensu et sensato. It was always thought that Thomas had commented on this little book in the course of the De anima, since it is the natural extension of the latter. Ever since Father Gauthier noticed that Thomas refers here to his own commentary on the De anima, we have been able to consider the later composition of De sensu et sensato as an established fact. There is another new element here: the De sensu was not diffused in Italy at the same time as the three books of the De anima. We only have a Paris university copy. We must conclude from this that, although this commentary may have been begun in Rome before September 1268, it was completed in Paris, sometime in 1269 (before 1270
in any case, the date of the De unitate intellectus).40
We will have to return later to Thomas's work as a commentator on Aristotle. But we should say here at least a few words on the meaning of the new role he began to fulfill from this date; we may thus add a decisive touch to his intellectual and spiritual portrait. From the first, we find here much intellectual curiosity and flexibility, to which Thomas had already given witness with regard to the Greek heritage of Christianity. After all, he already knew the De anima in the Translatio uetus and nothing prevented his continuing to use this text, which he had so long considered a good one. But on the contrary, he questions his knowledge—and rightly so for the first book—by systematically consulting Themistius's paraphrase—in the most radical fashion.
But, since he did not have to teach Aristotle and he had so many other tasks in hand, why did Thomas take up this new burden? If we follow Gauthier, the answer is simple and convincing: Thomas was composing Questions 75–89 of the Prima Pars at the time, and the questions De anima and De spiritualibus creaturis at almost the same time. All his thinking being then concentrated on problems of the soul, the appearance of Moerbeke's translation was an invitation to deepen his knowledge
(footnote continued from previous page)
troductory study, and notes by A. Caparello, 2 vols. (Rome, 1975). See also L. Elders, "Le commentaire de saint Thomas d'Aquin sur le De anima d'Aristote," in the same author's Autour de saint Thomas d'Aquin, vol. I (ParisBrussels, 1987), pp. 55–76.
40. R.A. Gauthier, ed., Sentencia libri De sensu et sensato, Leon., vol. 45/2; we know that this book consists of two treatises: De sensu exteriori and De memoria et reminiscentia. For the date, see the Preface, ibid., pp. 127*–28*; Thomas's reference to his own commentary on De anima (II 20, ll. 24–88, pp. 152–53, Leon., vol. 45/1) is found in De sensu I 4 (l. 163, Leon., vol 45/2, p. 30). On this edition, cf. R. Wielockx, "Thomas d'Aquin, commentateur du De Sensu," Scriptorium 41 (1987) 150–57.
of Aristotle. He did not put aside composition of the Summa; rather, he was given the means to it carry out: "Saint Thomas will find this formula so useful that he will apply it again when, in the margin of the Secunda Pars of the Summa theologiae, he will write his commentary on the Ethics."
Other activities of this kind may have been asked of him owing to diverse circumstances, but we should emphasize that this work in its origin was "born of the practice of his profession of theologian": "Texts for refining the instruments of theological reflections, the commentaries on Aristotle form an integral part of the work of the theologian, and this is particularly true of the commentary on the De anima." Gauthier is right to say: "Saint Thomas's whole work, including his commentaries on Aristotle, is therefore by its very nature apostolic, and it is apostolic in its entire development, an explanation of the truth as a refutation of error."41 Without knowing Gauthier's work, Weisheipl nonetheless entirely agrees with it in emphasizing that Thomas would have never dedicated his time and energy to these commentaries if he had not seen in them an urgent apostolic task.42
William of Moerbeke
William of Moerbeke's name has already been mentioned several times in the course of these last pages. His name is usually linked a little too closely by the historians with the name of Thomas Aquinas, which calls for an explanation. Furthermore, though the man is now a little better known, some historiographical commonplaces, now quite dated, continue nevertheless to haunt people's memories.
The Flemish Dominican William of Moerbeke is a celebrated figure, since he was one of the most eminent and most productive of the translators from Greek into Latin of the numerous philosophical and scientific works that were written from the fourth century before Christ to the sixth century of our era. One of his biographers emphasizes that the thirteenth century owes "a spectacular widening" of its knowledge of the treasures of Greek civilization to William's abilities and his tireless labors.43 In fact, the list
41. Leon., vol. 45/1, pp. 288*–94*; the quotations refer to pp. 288*–90*.
42. Weisheipl, pp. 310–11.
43. L. MinioPaluello, "Moerbeke, William of," Dict. of Scientific Biography 9 (1974) 434–40, cf. p. 434: "A spectacular widening and increase of the Greek sources . . . were due to Moerbeke's insatiable desire to pass on to Latinreading students the yet undiscovered or rediscovered treasures of Greek civilization, his extensive linguistic knowledge, his indefatigable search . . ."
of his translations is impressive, and their diffusion underlines their importance.44
Without entering into minute detail, we should recall the few things that we know of his life, for dates and places will have a decisive importance here. William was born between 1220 and 1235; in the spring of 1260 he was at Nicea (or at Nicles, in the Peloponnesus); in the autumn of the same year, he was at Thebes, where the Dominicans had been since 1253 and where he dated his translation of the De partibus animalium. His presence is attested at Viterbo, at the time the papal residence, from 22 November 1267, the date when he signed the translation of Themistius's commentary on the De anima of Aristotle, then again in May 1268. On 15 June 1271, still at Viterbo, he signed his translation of Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's De caelo with the title of apostolic penitentiary; it is possible that he exercised this function beginning in November 1267, but this is not supported by any document.
As penitentiary and chaplain to the pope, his presence is attested in 1272 at Orvieto, where the papal court was then located. His knowledge of Greek enabled him to take an important part in the council of Lyon in May–July 1274. From April 1278 to his death, which was probably several months before 26 October 1286 (the date of the nomination of his successor), he would be archbishop of Corinth, but he did not die in that city. We find him again in Italy at the end of 1283 and perhaps earlier: given a mission on 30 December of the same year by Martin IV, his presence is attested at Perugia in January 1284; he probably died there at the papal court.45
These meager biographical data, which were even more skeletal at the beginning of this century, forced earlier historians to erect hypothetical scaffoldings about this figure; one of them quickly became a kind of official truth, repeated without verification for several generations. According to this story, Thomas would have been appointed to Orvieto at the request of Urban IV, not only so that he might teach in the Roman curia, but also in order to collaborate in the great design that the pope had conceived of
44. A scholarly conference brought this subject up to date, and many details that we cannot go into here may be found in J. Brams and W. Vanhamel, eds., Guillaume de Moerbeke. Recueil d'études à l'occasion du 700e anniversaire de sa mort (1286), Leuven, 1989.
45. We borrow this summary from A. ParaviciniBagliani, "Guillaume de Moerbeke et la cour pontificale," in Guillaume de Moerbeke, pp. 23–52; cf. same author's "Nuovi documenti su Guglielmo da Moerbeke OP," AFP 52 (1982) 135–43; E. Panella, "Nuove testimonianze su Guglielmo da Moerbeke," AFP 56 (1986) 49–55.
laying the foundations of a Christian Aristotelianism. Toward that end, the pope would have caused Thomas's collaboration with William of Moerbeke, which continued later at Viterbo.46 In this scenario, therefore, it would have been Thomas himself who pushed William into his translation enterprise, in order to have at hand the necessary pieces for this great work.47
After everything that has been said up to this point, it is easy to perceive the weak points in such a supposition. In the first place, we know that Thomas was assigned, not to be lector at the pontifical curia in Orvieto,48 but to perform the function of conventual lector among his brothers there. The pope certainly had recourse to him, but in a more occasional fashion. Furthermore, in 1267, the period in which we know that Moerbeke was at Viterbo, Thomas had been assigned to Rome for two years, and no document allows us to say that he would have stayed at Viterbo before his return to Paris.
In addition, we know that Moerbeke had begun his translation work long before coming to Italy, and he continued it well after Thomas's death. Though it is certainly true that Thomas used certain translations by Moerbeke (but far from all of them) as soon as they were done, he resembles in this many other authors of his time. But the most notable thing for our purpose has been pointed out by Gauthier with regard to the commentary on Aristotle's De anima. Thomas was indeed one of the first to use the Translatio Noua, which Moerbeke made of this text, but he had at his disposal only an imperfect copy, which led him into error on several, sometimes important, points.49 Nothing would have been easier for Thomas
46. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'averroïsme latin au XIIIe siècle, lère Partie: Etude critique, 19112, pp. 39–41.
47. We already find this affirmation in a list of Thomas's works dating probably from 1312: "Fr. Wilhelmus Brabantinus, Corinthiensis, transtulit omnes libros naturalis et moralis philosophiae de graeco in latinum ad instantiam fratris Thomae" ( Catalogus Stamsensis, ed. G. Meersseman, MOPH 18, 1936, p. 62, no. 33); although he does not mention William by name, it is probably from this text that Tocco borrows his information: "procurauit [Thomas] quod fieret nova translatio que sententie Aristotilis continet clarius ueritatem" ( Ystoria 18, p. 252; Tocco 17, p. 88).
48. Cf. above chap. VII, notes 4–6.
49. Cf. the list and the commentary on these errors, Leon., vol. 45/1, pp. 176*–99*, and the eloquent schema on p. 175*. We know that the manuscript tradition of Moerbeke's works, frequently revised by him, is one of the most complicated; cf. the illustration given about this in R. Wielockx, "Guillaume de Moerbeke réviseur de sa révision du De Anima," RTAM 54
(1987) 113–85; cf. J. Brams, "Guillaume de Moerbeke et Aristote," in J. Hamesse and M. Fattori, eds., Rencontre de cultures dans la philosophic médiévale. Traductions et traducteurs de l'antiquité tardive au XIVe siècle, LouvainlaNeuveCassino, 1990, pp. 317–36.
than to consult Moerbeke if had lived in Viterbo at the same time as William did.
Despite the recent attempts by C. Steel to save what can be saved from Mandonnet's hypothesis by showing that there was, all the same, a privileged relationship between the two men,50 we must state that we have no historically trustworthy proof of any such collaboration between William and Thomas. We have to admit, with MinioPaluello and Gauthier, the possibility of occasional contacts during the brief trips that Thomas made to Viterbo in July 1267 while going to the general chapter of Bologna and in May 1268, during the chapter of the Roman province, which William attended as an apostolic penitentiary.51
The question that still remains to be resolved (but according to the experts it is still unsolvable) is whether Moerbeke exercised a real influence on Thomas. On a doctrinal level, we would have to prove that one or another of his corrections to the alreadyexisting translations had an effect on a position taken by Saint Thomas. As to the Aristotelian commentaries, except for Moerbeke's original translations, which added something new, we would have to establish that one of these corrections had some impact. In both cases, the verification remains to be made; to be comprehensive, it also ought to try to make sure that the influence exercised was, indeed, toward the authentic Aristotle, for, according to Father Gauthier, the corrections made by Moerbeke—who was already impregnated with scholasticism—are not always felicitous.
Thus we complete our description of the three years passed by Friar Thomas Aquinas at Rome. Sent there under obedience ("for the remission of his sins"), not only was he concerned with teaching the friars who had been entrusted to him, but he showed how seriously he took to heart his task as a teacher and how deeply he sought the restructuring that his responsibilities called for. It is ultimately to his concern as an educator that we owe the Summa theologiae, which would immortalize his name. At
50. C. Steel, "Guillaume de Moerbeke et saint Thomas," in Guillaume de Moerbeke, pp. 57–82.
51. Father Gauthier has returned several times to this subject; cf. esp. Leonine, vol. 47/1, pp. 232*–34* and 264*–65* (which MinioPaluello calls the "best critical assessment" on the question); vol. 48, pp. xviii–xx (French version of the preceding text); "Quelques questions à propos du commentaire de S. Thomas sur le De anima," Angelicum 51 (1974) 419–72, cf.
pp. 438–42, where he demonstrates that Thomas never lived at Viterbo (we must therefore correct his earlier text). His last return to this point is in Nouvelle introduction, chap. II.
the same time, he remained available for more occasional tasks, and though we might suspect that these tasks were sometimes a burden for him, we must also recognized that he honestly forced himself to satisfy those who appealed to him. Finally, during this period he also launched himself into the work of commenting on Aristotle, which was going to become a considerable part of his activity. And this occurred because of his concern better to fulfill his principal profession in the service of truth. If we recall that he also preached at this time,52 we must recognize that his extraordinary gifts did not remain unused, but we also understand perhaps a little better the state of exhaustion in which he found himself less than ten years later.
52. We have at least one example: Tocco ( Ystoria 53, p. 365; Tocco 53, pp. 126–27) reports that Thomas preached at Rome one Holy Week; after his preaching on Easter day, a woman suffering from a flow of blood was freed from her illness after touching the holy doctor's cape, and she went from Saint Peter's to Santa Sabina to recount this fact to Brother Reginald;cf. Naples 75, p. 369: Leonardo of Gaeta reports the same thing, which he says he got from Reginald himself, but he places the sermon at Santa Maria Maggiore.
Chapter X—
The New Sojourn in Paris:
Doctrinal Confrontations
Thomas's occupations during the years in Rome, as well as at Orvieto, were numerous, as his works exist to testify. Yet his literary output reflects a calm and serenity that have always struck observers. We suspect that he is sometimes overburdened, but he is neither impatient nor irritated with his direct interlocutors. If he is sometimes angered by certain errors—in the Summa contra Gentiles or in the commentary on De anima—it is over a conflict of ideas with some philosophers of the past. He does not have contemporary adversaries confronting him who directly menace the Christian faith. But things began to change upon his return to Paris; the works from this new period attest to an agitation that impinges on the peaceful tone of the works from the previous period.
Date and Place of Thomas's Departure for Paris
When did Thomas return to Paris? Historians have long wavered about this matter. Many historical essays dealing with this subject are still in circulation, although they are now mostly out of date. But it will not be useless to review here for the reader some of the scholarly give and take.
In 1910, Mandonnet summed up with great perspicacity the results of his inquiry: ''All the positive data that we have establish, therefore, that Saint Thomas Aquinas resumed his professorial duties at the University of Paris probably in autumn 1268 and certainly before Easter 1269. And it is in this capacity that he undertook his first quodlibetal dispute, if not at
Christmas, then just before Easter of the same scholastic year."1 Today's historians have tested and further sharpened this intuition, but they have also confirmed it.
The problem with Mandonnet's assertion is not so much the date of return as the point of departure for Thomas's journey. This question is important, for it reflects on Thomas's place of residence during his last year in Italy. An admonition of the general chapter of Bologna (July 1267) recommends that the Roman province watch carefully that the priory of the city where the pope is be peopled with intellectually capable friars.2 On that basis, Mandonnet had concluded that Thomas must have been assigned to Viterbo soon after this chapter, since the pontifical curia was there. In fact, as Gauthier recalled and as we can see in the passage itself (see note 2
below), the text in question speaks neither of Thomas nor of Viterbo. And the conclusion that he was there, arrived at by a purely imaginary inference, is not supported by any document.3
Although Mandonnet's position was adopted by a number of historians,4 nothing allows us to think that Thomas left Rome for any reason other than the short absences required by the chapters in which he had to take part; we must therefore conclude that he remained at Rome until his departure for Paris.5
No text allows us to specify exactly the date of this return to Paris. Mandonnet, who had this journey leaving from Viterbo, situates the de1. Mandonnet, Siger I, p. 88 (see also preceding pages).
2. MOPH, vol. 3, p. 138: "Prior provincialis Romane provincie. diligenter provideat. ut conventus. ubi curia fuerit. fratres ydoneos habeat secundum exigenciam curie. priorem specialiter et lectorem."
3. Gauthier, Quelques questions, pp. 438–42, has retraced the rather instructive history of this "sojourn" at Viterbo; it was the German scholar J. A. Endres who first spoke of it (in 1910) thanking Father Mandonnet for having revealed to him the meaning of this text from the Bologna chapter; for Mandonnet the issue was settled from that point on and, without giving further proof, he summed up the situation thus: "At the behest of Clement IV, he was recalled [from Rome] to the curia and resided at Viterbo from autumn 1267 to November 1268, when he was suddenly sent to teach a second time at the University of Paris" ( Chronologie sommaire, p. 144); we can see in reading this page that the determining element for this theory was Thomas's (supposed) position as "lector to the pontifical curia"; in this capacity, he was supposed to have resided at Anagni before arriving in Orvieto during the years 1259–61, although no document can be quoted in support of this deduction.
4. WN, p. 147; Weisheipl returned to this subject in his revised edition (pp. 230, 473) While he expresses the position in a hypothetical fashion, he does not seem to have perceived the force of the arguments against his view.
5. We might add to the account of these brief departures from Rome a visit for a Christmas feast to the castle of La Molara on the via Latina a little beyond Grottaferrata, at the invitation of Cardinal Richard De Annibaldis; Thomas's preaching caused the conversion of two of the cardinals' Jewish guests (Naples 86, pp. 389–91).
parture in midNovember 1268 and the arrival in January.6 Since Thomas preached two sermons for Advent in Bologna and Milan, Mandonnet proposed situating them in December 1268, on the way back, before Thomas took the route through the Alps to France.
Walz and Verbeke long ago expressed doubts on the dates proposed for these sermons and the plausibility of this crossing of the Alps in the dead of winter;7 people generally chose a better season to confront this route. As to the Advent preaching in Bologna and Milan, this can be situated quite well, as Tugwell suggests, in December 1259, which is to say several years earlier, at the time when Thomas was returning to Italy after his first teaching assignment at Paris.8
After reexamining the evidence, Father Gauthier arrived at the conclusion that the departure from Rome (and not from Viterbo), could well have taken place several months earlier. The commentary on the De anima having been completed, since it had already been published in Italy in the autumn of 1268, nothing prevents us from thinking that Thomas could have left at that time (probably in September).9
Gauthier thus came to the position that G. Verbeke had already reached by an entirely different route (although the details in his argument cannot be maintained any longer). He also thought that we could say that Thomas must have departed before 12 September 1268. We may add to these considerations the invasion of Rome by Conradin in July 1268 (Santa Sabina was pillaged at the time), which provides an additional motive for the earlier departure date.10 For Gauthier there is no doubt;
Thomas left Rome in that period and travelled by boat (the story about a storm that he and his companions endured may be explained quite well as an equinoctial storm).11
This solution would have permitted Thomas to save time and fatigue (Thomas could have embarked at Civitavecchia, disembarked at AiguesMortes, and sailed up the Rhone by boat). It also presents, in our view,
6. Lecteur, pp. 26–31.
7. A. Walz, "Wege des Aquinaten," Historisches Jahrbuch 77 (1958) 221–28, cf. p. 135; cf. WN, p. 151; G. Verbeke, Jean Philopon Commentaire sur le De Anima d'Aristote (Louvain
Paris, 1966), pp. lxxiii–lxxv, note 9.
8. Tugwell, p. 221.
9. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. 45/1, p. 286*–87*.
10. Cf. A. Fliche, C. Thouzellier, Y. Azais, La chrétienté romaine (1198–1274), Hist. de l'Eglise 10 (Paris, 1950), pp. 442ff.
11. Ystoria 38, p. 321 (Tocco 38, pp. 111–12); Le BrunGouanvic lists a series of authors who call this third trip to Paris a voyage by sea.
the advantage of filling in a lacuna of several months in the occupation of the second Dominican chair at Paris. Mandonnet and others attribute this chair to Thomas at his arrival in January 1269, but we cannot say who occupied the chair for the beginning of the university year 1268–69. Mandonnet had believed it possible to place Master Gerard Reveri in it, of whom we know scarcely anything other than the fact that he died at SaintJacques while he was regent. It would have been his death that caused Thomas's earlier return; but in fact, his death was some ten years earlier!12
The hypothesis that Thomas left as early as possible and by way of the most rapid means of travel would therefore allow him to arrive at Paris a little after 14
September, the official opening of the school year. This would finally return to Mandonnet's first intuition, but free of the additional inventions that have obscured his position somewhat. Thus, it seems we can say with reasonable historical certitude that Thomas taught almost an entire year, and we should speak of 1268–72 (rather than 1269–72), for this second stint of teaching in Paris.13
The Motives for Thomas's Return to Paris
We can only guess at the reasons that might have motivated Thomas's recall to Paris. For Mandonnet, the Averroist crisis was the principal reason; Weisheipl thinks instead that it was a new flareup in the secular agitation against the mendicants.14 Verbeke sums up this situation very well and adds a third motive: at his return to Paris, Thomas would have to "struggle on three fronts simultaneously: he would have to battle the conservative minds in the theology faculty who saw in Aristotle only a danger for the Christian faith; in the other direction, he would have to oppose the Averroist monopsychism; and finally, he would have to provide an apology for the mendicant orders against the seculars, who wished to exclude them from university teaching."15
It is rather striking to note that, in this same year of 1268 Saint Bonaventure, speaking about certain errors that threaten the Christian faith, denounces on his own part a triple danger: the eternity of the world; the necessitas fatalis, which is to say, the determinism of the will by the stars;
12. Mandonnet, Lecteur, p. 33; the text of the epitaph that Mandonnet quotes in support of his hypothesis still stands, however: MCCLIX die . . . februarii; Glorieux speaks of February 1260, cf. Répertoire I, and the inset between 228–29 and no. 23, p. 123: "Gérard Reveri."
13. Tugwell, p. 221, and notes 249–50, p. 317, himself comes to the same conclusion.
14. Mandonnet, Siger, vol. I, p. 88; Lecteur, pp. 31–38; Weisheipl, p. 237–38.
15. Verbeke, Jean Philopon, pp. lxxiv–lxxv.
and the unicity of the intellect for all men. This last error is the worst, adds Bonaventure, for it contains the other two.16 Bonaventure is probably not speaking about contemporaries, but we are very close to the errors that Thomas will address. Given all the work that he already had underway, this was, despite his capacity for work, his astonishing concentration, and his ability to dictate to three and even four secretaries at a time,17 more than enough to occupy him and his assistants.
The first front on which Thomas had to battle was the defense of the mendicant religious life. Since we have already spoken amply about this earlier, we recall here simply that this is the period of the De perfectione spiritualis vitae (early 1270) and of the Contra retrahentes (between Lent and summer 1271). We can also add here that Thomas used all the means at his disposal: these writings were accompanied by taking positions, at first oral and then written, in the quodlibetal disputes (Quodlibet II to V, between Christmas 1269 and Christmas 1271) and in the university sermons, notably Osanna filio David (December 1270) and especially Exiit qui seminar (February 1271), which contains some arguments repeated in the Contra retrahentes.18
In this first battle, Thomas, and the Dominicans in general, as well as the Franciscans, fought against the seculars, their common enemy, who saw scarcely any difference between the two orders. One testimony among many others is provided for us by the refutations of Nicholas of Lisieux, who will respond simultaneously both to John Pecham's Quaestio on the evangelical perfection of poverty and Thomas's Contra retrahentes. Although the two responses have their own titles, they follow one another in the manuscripts and are sometimes designated by the common title Contra Pecham et Thomam.19 There is a certain irony in this, since the English Franciscan John Pecham, who began his teaching in Paris a little after Thomas's return and who would later become archbishop of Can16. St. Bonaventure, Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti VII, no. 16–19, Opera, vol. 5 (Quaracchi, 1891), pp. 495–96.
17. This is a subject to which we will have to return, see the section in chapter 12 titled "Thomas and His Secretaries."
18. Cf. Käppeli, Una raccolta, pp. 65–68 and 72–88; Leonine, vol. 41, p. C 7.
19. To our knowledge, they are still unpublished, but the accompanying letter from Nicholas to William of SaintAmour can be seen along with the response of the latter in Chartul, nos. 439–40, pp. 495–99; see also I. Brady, "Jean Pecham," DS 8 (1974) 647; Leonine, vol. 41, p. C 5; we recall also P. Glorieux, "Une offensive de Nicolas de Lisieux contre saint Thomas d'Aquin," BLE 39 (1938) 121–29, who edited the extract made by Nicholas of the errors contained in the De perfectione and the Quodlibet III from Easter 1270.
terbury, was also one of Thomas's fiercest adversaries, the type perhaps of the conservative Augustinian tendency that opposed the new Aristotelian ideas. History has preserved two unambiguous testimonies of Pecham's opposition to Thomas: unfavorable witness from the Dominicans,20 favorable when Pecham himself speaks.21 We can consider the case of the De aeternitate mundi as emblematic of this situation.
The De aeternitate mundi
This brief is currently much studied by the specialists, with regard as much to the historical situation of the opusculum as to its content, for in the absence of decisive external arguments, it is to questions of internal criticism that we must have recourse.22
The question of the eternity of the world was the order of the day after the introduction of Aristotle's philosophy had placed it at a high level of importance.23 We know that the majority of theologians at that time, among them Bonaventure and Pecham, declared that it was unthinkable and that it was easy to prove by very effective arguments that the world began.24 For Thomas, on the contrary, only faith can make us hold that the world began, and it is not possible to prove the contrary: mundum non semper fuisse sola fide tenetur, et demonstrative probari non potest: sicut et supra de mysterio Trinitatis dictum est.25 This clearly does not prevent us from believing in the fundamental and permanent dependence of the
20. Bartholomew of Capua learned from several Dominicans that John and Thomas confronted each other in a dispute at Paris and that "dictus frater Iohannes exasperaret eundem fratrem Thomam verbis ampullosis et tumidis, nunquam tamen ipse frater Thomas restrinxit verbum humilitatis sed semper cum dulcedine et humanitate respondit" ( Naples 77, p.
374; cf. Ystoria 26, pp. 284–85; Tocco 26, pp. 99–100).
21. We possess three letters in which Pecham speaks about Friar Thomas bone memorie and even sancte memorie and praises his humility ( Chartul., , nos. 517, 518, 525, pp. 624–27, 634–35).
22. Independent of the discussion here, let us mention the symposium held at Nimègue in 1986: The Eternity of the World in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas and His Contemporaries, ed. J. B. M. Wissink (Leiden, 1990), which is a good testimony to current interest.
23. We refer to L. Bianchi, L'errore di Aristotele. La polemica contra l'eternità del mondo nel XIII secolo (Florence, 1984), as well as R. C. Dales, Medieval Discussion of the Eternity of the World (Leiden, 1990).
24. See Pecham's text edited by Brady (above, note 29) or in R. C. Dales and O. Argerami, eds., Medieval Latin Texts on the Eternity of the World (Leiden, 1991), pp. 69–87; this volume gathers together about fifteen texts, from William of Dorham (end of the 1220s) to John of Jandun (1315), without selections from Thomas or Bonaventure. This selection should be complemented with S. F. Brown, "The Eternity of the World Discussion in Early Oxford," MM 21/1 (1991) 259–80, which studies Robert Grosseteste, Richard Fishacre, Richard Rufus, and prints a text by Rufus ( In II Sent. d. 1 q. 1).
25. ST Ia q. 46 a. 2.
world on its relationship to God. It is therefore this thesis, which Thomas already held in the Sentences and never abandoned afterward, that is summed up forcefully and in a new light in the De aeternitate mundi.26
The date of this work has been highly debated by the scholars for many years. Given the context that we have already noted, Mandonnet situated it at first during the second period of teaching in Paris and, more precisely, during 1270. That period saw increased acrimony in the controversy that temporarily culminated in the condemnation of 10 December 1270, pronounced by the bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier.27 Mandonnet admitted, however, that this opusculum might be situated one or two years later.
The plausibility of this position has led the great majority of specialists—except for some dissenting voices (F. Pelster, F. Hendrickx and Th. P. Bukovski, who wished to move this text to a much earlier date, between the Sentences and the Summa)—to adopt it. While recalling the contrary opinions, the Leonine edition also accepts this theory.28 But in searching for a more precise context, Ignatius Brady published an original essay on the occasion of the seventh centenary of Saint Thomas's death.
He proposed there that De aeternitate mundi be considered as a reply directed against John Pecham and be seen as the result of the dispute that Tocco and Bartholomew of Capua mention.29
During his inaugural lecture, in the presence of Gerard of Abbeville and Thomas Aquinas, Pecham in effect would have passionately upheld the thesis opposed to Thomas's about the eternity of the world. Out of respect for the candidate for mastership, Thomas kept silent; but upon leaving the ceremony, his indignant students pressed him to intervene. The next day, therefore, during Pecham's resumptio of the thesis expounded the previous evening, Thomas intervened calmly but firmly in 26. Cf. Sent. II d. 1 q. 1 a. 5, which responds to Bonaventure; SCG II 32–38; De Pot. III 17; ST Ia q.46 a. 2.
27. Chartul. , no. 432, p. 487, prop. 5: "Quod mundus est eternus."
28. Leonine, vol. 43, pp. 54–58 (for the introduction of H.F. Dondaine, with earlier bibliographical references up to 1976) and 85–89 (for the text); trans. Abbé Bandel, in Opuscules de S.
Thomas d'Aquin, VrinReprise 6 (Paris, 1984), Bukovski returned to this subject at a later date, notably in "Rejecting Mandonnet's Dating of St. Thomas's De aeternitate mundi,"
Gregorianum 71 (1990) 763–75.
29. I. Brady, "John Pecham and the Background of Aquinas's De Aeternitate Mundi," in Commemorative Studies II, pp. 141–78, with the edition of Pecham's text; cf. Ystoria 26, p. 284–
85 (Tocco 26, pp. 99–100); Naples 77, p. 374; we should add that the agreement among the disciples who pressed Thomas to intervene did not include his own bachelor of the Sentences who, that same year (1270–71), found the reasons given not cogentes, preferring himself to maintain the common opinion (opposed to Thomas's view), cf. Leonine, vol. 42, p. 56, note 10.
order to show his opponent the fragility of his position. Nothing remains from that oral intervention, but a little later Thomas wrote De aeternitate mundi. To all appearances, this opusculum repeats the same arguments that had been developed orally, for Thomas refutes Pecham's arguments step by step.
After first accepting Brady's proposition on this subject, Weisheipl began his own detailed examination.30 Weisheipl arrived at several conclusions, the first somewhat off the main line of the discussion but not without interest, since it emphasizes that this opusculum is not a philosophical but rather a theological text.31 Second, Weisheipl thinks that we should look not for a direct refutation of anything but simply the manifestation in broad daylight of an opinion that had come to maturity. If we recognize Pecham's arguments here, Thomas in fact strikes, without specifying, all who oppose his position. In reality, the same reasons are found as a commonplace among all those whom the overly strong presence of Aristotle in this field had disturbed.
As to the date, Weisheipl draws on a study by John F. Wippel, which had put all the texts where Thomas speaks of the subject in chronological perspective.32 Wippel remarked that Thomas had not always held exactly the same position; at first, influenced by Maimonides, who had strongly contested Aristotle's thesis, Thomas believed that the Philosopher himself considered his arguments as only probable; not wishing to give them a greater force than their author had, he therefore contented himself with saying that it was not possible to prove peremptorily the beginning or the nonbeginning of the world. But after having commented himself on Book Eight of the Physics, Thomas perceived that Aristotle's conviction was much more constraining than he had previously thought.33 This new cer30. J. A. Weisheipl, "The Date and Context of Aquinas's De aeternitate mundi," in Graceful Reason. Essays . . . Presented to Joseph Owens, ed. L. P. Gerson (Toronto, 1983), pp.
239–71, with a very careful status quaestionis.
31. Weisheipl is supported here, and rightly it seems to us, by F. J. A. De Grijs, "The Theological Character of Aquinas's De aeternitate mundi," in Wissink, The Eternity, pp. 1–8; this position is disputed by J. A. Aertsen, "The Eternity of the World: The Believing and the Philosophical Thomas. Some Comments," ibid., p. 9–19.
32. J. F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, Washington, 1984, p. 191–214: "Thomas Aquinas on the Possibility of Eternal Creation"; this study had appeared earlier under the title: "Did Thomas Aquinas defend the Possibility of an Eternally Created World? (The De aeternitate mundi Revisited)," Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (1981) 21–
37; with a detailed record of the various positions.
33. In VIII Physic. , lib. 8, lect. 2 (ed. P. M. Maggiolo) (Turin, 1954), no. 986: "perpetuitate temporis et motus quasi principio utitur (Aristoteles) ad probandum primum principium esse, et (footnote continued on next page)
titude found expression in the opusculum we are considering: not only has the noneternity of the world not been demonstrated; not only can it not be demonstrated; but indeed, a world eternally created is possible.34
The interest of this development for our inquiry is that it places the De aeternitate mundi a little after the commentary on the Physics (1268–69). And it confirms, therefore, its late date, if not exactly in the same terms as Mandonnet, at least with a new force, since we can thus show that it is situated at the end of an entire evolution in Thomas's thought. In our understanding, contrary to what Weisheipl believed, this does not at all force us to renounce Brady's reading, which has the merit of giving the opusculum a plausible context.35 The debate with Pecham would have been the spur to Thomas's expressing with full clarity the certitude at which he arrived by his frequent recourse to Aristotle.36
The Unicity of Substantial Form
After what we have just seen, we understand how Pecham retained a stinging memory of his meeting with Thomas; but what set these two masters at odds was much more serious than a simple question of personal opinion. We have spoken of Augustinianism against Aristotelianism; that is only partly true. Today it is widely recognized that the partisans of the plurality of forms claimed themselves to be in the school of Aristotle; as to Thomas, he could have placed himself in an authentic line of descent from Augustine.37 With much truth, Saint Bonaventure had already seen in these contrasting intellectual positions a reflection of the differences in spirit between the two great orders: "The first [certainly the preachers], apply themselves first to speculation, from which they even take their (footnote continued from previous page)
hic in octavo et in XII Metaphys.; unde manifestum est, quod supponit hoc tanquam probatum"; see on this C. Stroick, "Die Ewigkeit der Welt in den Aristoteleskommentaren des Thomas von Aquin," RTAM 51 (1984) 43–68.
34. See the texts reviewed by J. F. Wippel: Sent. II d. 1 q. 1 a. 5; SCG II 31–38; De Pot. III 17; Compendium theol. I 98–99; ST Ia q.46; Quodl. III q. 14 a. 2; De aeternitate mundi; Quodl.
XII q.6 a. 1 (we will reestablish the most probable chronological order in our view). This position of Wippel's has been contested by T. Bukovski, "Understanding St. Thomas on the Eternity of the World: Help from Giles of Rome," RTAM 58 (1991) 113–25, in whose opinion Thomas held the same position throughout his career.
35. Wippel accommodates it quite well, cf. p. 213.
36. Weisheipl, "The Date," p. 249, uses certain inexactitudes in Tocco to conclude that this cannot be Pecham's resumptio; Brady responded to that objection in advance by emphasizing that we cannot take Tocco's story literally, since he is notoriously uninformed about the practices of Paris universities.
37. Cf. L. Elders, "Les citations de saint Augustin dans la Somme Théologique de saint Thomas d'Aquin," Doctor communis 40 (1987) 115–67.
name, and in the second place to unction; the others [the friars minor] aim first at unction, then at speculation."38
Even this does not suffice to explain the violence of the confrontation, for many Dominicans also opposed Thomas on the same subjects, such as Robert Kilwardby.
There was the conviction that Thomas's thesis on the unicity of substantial form and on the eternity of the world put the faith in danger pure and simple. As to the eternity of the world, we have seen, Thomas was not at all convinced of it and persevered in his position until the end. With the unicity of substantial form, the debate moved from the domain of creation theology to the domain of anthropology.
Far from being novel to our epoch, this problem occupied minds for over fifty years. Dom Lottin once thought he could conclude that around 1230—among thinkers such as Roland of Cremona and Philip the Chancellor, John de La Rochelle and even Alexander of Hales—there existed veritable unanimity against the plurality of the forms, and that one would not dream of citing the authority of Saint Augustine in its favor. Rather, according to Lottin, it was thought characteristic of the Jewish philosopher Avicebron (Ibn Gebirol).39
Numerous other works since40 have modified this first approach and show on the contrary that the greatest diversity reigned during the first scholasticism. The partisans of the plurality of forms made use not only of Avicebron's name, but also especially of Avicenna's and, through him, of Al Farabi.41 As to Saint Augustine, the uncertainty of his position on this subject led those who wished to use his name to try to reconcile him with the Aristotelian doctrine. Thus scholars were led to identify the traditional doctrine before Saint Thomas as an eclectic Aristotelianism,42 or
38. "Alii principaliter intendunt speculationi, a quo etiam nomen acceperunt, et postea unctioni. Alii principaliter unctioni et postea speculationi" ( In Hexaemeron, XXII 21, Opera, ed. Quaracchi, vol. V (1891), p. 440).
39. O. Lottin, "La pluralité des formes substantielles avant saint Thomas d'Aquin," RNS 34 (1932) 449–67, with a review of the previous studies.
40. In addition to Zavalloni and Bazán, cited above, we mention only D. A. Callus, "The Origins of the Problem of the Unity of Form," The Thomist 24 (1961) 256–85; we refer especially to E.H. Wéber, La personne humaine au XIIIe siècle, Bibl. thomiste 46 (Paris, 1991) 17–119 (for the period before Thomas), 120–98 (Albert and Thomas); the bibliography is fairly up to date, but see also note 63 below.
41. R. Zavalloni, Richard de Mediavilla et la controverse sur la pluralité des formes. Textes inédits et études critiques, Philosophes médiévaux 2 (Louvain, 1951); while agreeing on a number of points with this fundamental study, B. Bazán, "Pluralisme de formes ou dualisme de substances. La pensée préthomiste touchant la nature de l'âme," RPL 67 (1969) 31–73, thinks that it is better to speak of a dualism of substances to characterize the preThomist epoch.
42. Both labels can, without doubt, be discussed, but the way in which Zavalloni sums up
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in even a more nuanced fashion, eclectic neoPlatonizing Aristotelianism, emphasizing again Avicebron's influence on it.43
Already lively on the strictly philosophical level, the discussion became even sharper in passing into the theological domain. The point of crystallization for the quarrel was one of those questions to which the scholastics had the secret.44 It recurs under diverse forms in the quodlibets that Thomas was obliged to undertake during Lent and Advent in the years 1269–70. At the beginning one question appears that seems harmless at first: ''Are the preceding forms annihilated by the arrival of the intellectual soul?" The first question brings with it a series of others that are apparently gratuitous: "Did Christ remain man during his three days in the tomb?" or even frankly outlandish: "After His death, was Christ's eye 'really' an eye or only in an equivocal fashion?" right down to the question on which we must pause for a moment:
"Did Christ's body remain numerically the same on the Cross and in the tomb?"45 The constant return of these questions indicates the preoccupation of certain minds;
they appear futile to a modern person. But they really raise the most fundamental problems of
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the diverse positions has at least the merit of nuancing in a sensible fashion an overly Manichean vision of the situation: "The doctrinal debate of the thirteenthcentury scholastics is not involved in choosing between Augustinianism and Aristotelianism, but in choosing between the traditional doctrine and the Thomist doctrine. The traditional doctrine grafts itself, as does the Thomist doctrine, onto some conceptions of Aristotelian origin. The expression that might best characterize the traditional doctrine would be an eclectic Aristotelianism, to oppose it to the radical Aristotelianism of Siger of Brabant and to the personal Aristotelianism of Saint Thomas. Eclectic Aristotelianism presents a different tint in various authors according to the predominant influence that they have undergone. Thus we can speak of a neoPlatonizing Aristotelianism in Roger Bacon, an Augustinianizing Aristotelianism in Thomas of York, Saint Bonaventure, and Roger Marston, and of an AugustinoAvicennicizing Aristotelianism for Richard of Mediavilla" (Zavalloni, Richard, p. 472).
43. This is Bazán's position (above, note 41), who agrees in using this label with F. Van Steenberghen, La philosophie, pp. 181ff. (2d ed. 1991, pp. 169ff.).
44. For the debate prior to Thomas, see A. M. Landgraf, "Das Problem Utrum Christus fuerit homo in triduo mortis in der Frühscholastik," in Mélanges Auguste Pelzer (Louvain, 1947), pp. 109–58.
45. Cf. Quodl. I q.4 a. 1 [6] (Lent 1269): "Utrum formae praecedentes corrumpuntur per adventum animae?"; II q. 1 a. 1 (Advent 1269): "Utrum Christus idem in triduo <mortis> fuerit homo?"; III q. 2 a. 2 [4] (Lent 1270): "Utrum oculus Christi post mortem fuerit oculus equivoce?"; IV q.5 a. 1 [8] (Lent 1271): "Utrum corpus Christi in cruce et in sepulcro sit unum numero?"; we recall that these titles were not given by Thomas himself, but are taken from the text of the question. Zavalloni (pp. 487–89) believes he can detect an evolution between Quodl. III and Quodl. IV, which are found on one side and the other of the episcopal condemnation in December 1270. As to the first case, Thomas concluded that Christ's eye was not an eye in an equivocal fashion, as a dead eye; the condemnation led him to "insist further on the identity of the living body of Christ and of his cadaver." Doubtless, but we ought to add with Zavalloni: more a verbal than a doctrinal difference.
christological anthropology. And whoever goes through Q. 50 of the Tertia Pars, for example, will easily see it.46 In article 5, Thomas returns to the question which had already been put to him in diverse forms during the quodlibets: "Did the body of Christ remain numerically the same before and after his death?"
To sum up these matters in a somewhat simplistic fashion, for Thomas—in accord with the hylomorphic doctrine he got from Aristotle—the intellectual soul is the only substantial form of the human composite, and it exerts this function at different levels of the life of that composite: vegetative, sensible, intellectual. His adversaries held, on the contrary, for a plurality of forms according to the different levels and, in the eyes of these adversaries, Thomas's doctrine was heretical, for it put in doubt the numerical identity of Christ's body before and after his death. In effect, the soul being the unique form of the body and Christ's body being deprived of it temporarily by death, one could no longer say that the body in the tomb was the same as the body of the living Christ. It was necessary therefore to admit in addition to the soul, a
"corporal form" (or forma corporeitatis) that remained the same, inhering in the body before and after death, and thus was able to assure the continuity and the unity between these two states of Christ's body.
No more than his adversaries did Thomas doubt the numerical identity of Christ's body before and after his death; for him nevertheless it is not a corporal form that conserves it but, indeed, the hypostatic union. A being remains numerically the same, he explains, when it has the same supposit, which is to say the same hypostasis.
Now it has been well established that Christ's body, living or dead, had never had another hypostasis than that of the Word, for the hypostatic union of the person of the Word with his soul and his body did not cease at Jesus' death. The body and soul of Jesus thus conserved their relation to the unique person of the Word. And it was this that maintained their numerical identity. There is therefore no need to invoke a hypothetical corporal form here when we have the guarantee of an entirely certain dogmatic datum, defined at the time of the struggle against the Apollinarians: the permanence of the hypostatic union beyond death.47
46. It was precisely with this question that Pecham quarreled in his Quodl. IV, q. 2, responsio [ed. G. J. Etzkorn (Grottaferrata, 1989), pp. 197–98; cf. L.J. Bataillon, RSPT 75 (1991) 510].
47. Cf. ST IIIa q. 50 a. 5, with the responses to the objections; a useful summary of the question and its role in the debate comes from the pen of P. Synave, S. Thomas d'Aquin, Somme (footnote continued on next page)
The De unitate intellectus
On the front opposite to the conservatives, Thomas also had to battle what was once called "Averroism." In the 10 December 1270 condemnation of the errors of this heterodox tendency, Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, assembled thirteen propositions, which we can sum up under four principal points: the eternity of the world, the denial of God's universal providence, unicity of the intellectual soul for all men (or monopsychism), and determinism.48 Representatives of these views were found primarily in the arts faculty, and we can easily bring forward Siger of Brabant as the best known.49 Recent works have established that we have perhaps emphasized Siger too much. He began publishing in 1265. And if he furnished the largest part of the propositions condemned in 1270 and 1277 by the bishop of Paris, he is far from being the only one involved. Furthermore, the lack of published documents should not lead us into an error of perspective.50 As we gradually come to know the period better, we see that Boethius of Dacia and others were also targets, and Boethius no less than Siger.51
In fact all our knowledge of this period has been deeply advanced by comparison with where it stood at the beginning of the twentieth century;52
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Théologique ("Revue des Jeunes"), Vie de Jésus, vol. IV (Paris, 1931), pp. 345–54, Appendix II: "Le corps du Christ pendant les trois jours de sa mort"; cf. also L.B. Gillon, "La pluralité des formes," "Thomas d'Aquin," DTC 15/l (1946), cols. 678–84.
48. Chartul. , no. 432, pp. 486–87.
49. In addition to the Siger by Mandonnet (1911), cf. F. Van Steenberghen, Maître Siger de Brabant (LouvainParis, 1977); B. Bazán, ed., Siger de Brabant. Quaestiones in Tertium de anima. De anima intellectiva. De aeternitate mundi (LouvainParis, 1972); cf. also the editions of the different reportationes on the Metaphysics by W. Dunphy, Siger de Brabant, Quaestiones in Metaphysicam (LouvainlaNeuve, 1981), and by A. Maurer, Siger de Brabant, Quaestiones in Metaphysicam (LouvainlaNeuve, 1985).
50. Cf. R. Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277 (Philosophes médiévaux 22) (LouvainParis, 1977); we also note that, in 1277, Siger had already retired from teaching (and converted!). He was at Orvieto, perhaps for something to do with the chapter of Liège, when he died, stabbed by his secretary (clericus), who had gone mad, during the papacy of Martin IV (1281–85).
51. Boethius of Dacia (or of Denmark) is not well known; all that we know is that he was a master in the arts faculty from 1270 to 1280 and that he is designated in certain manuscripts as principalis assertor of the propositions condemned in 1277. He left relatively abundant writings, the critical edition of which has now been completed in the Corpus Philosophicorum Danicorum Medii Aevi; we can also recommend the Modi significandi sive quaestiones super Priscianum Maiorem, ed. J. Pinborg, H. Roos, S. S. Jensen (Copenhagen, 1969) (vol.
IV/I), and, more important here, the De aeternitate mundi, ed. N. G. GreenPedersen (Copenhagen, 1976) (vol. VI/II); cf. also G. Sajó, Un traitérécemment découvert de Boèce de Dacia De mundi aeternitate (Budapest, 1954).
52. See here the instructive retrospective on the historiography of Averroism by R. Imbach,
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