The People Who Knew Thomas
it is useful, therefore, to do a brief retrospective on this subject in order not "to travel today with a map from yesterday." Once called (following Renan and Mandonnet) "Latin Averroism" this tendency was characterized afterward by Van Steenberghen as being instead a radical or heterodox (less happy qualifiers) Aristotelianism. But R.A. Gauthier has shown that these matters are rather complex.53
In the first place, as to the date of Averroes' entrance into the West, we must place it at least in 1225, which is to say at least five years earlier than the 1230
commonly accepted a short while ago; but we also have to look at the appreciation that thirteenthcentury writers showed for him. In a first phase, up until around 1250, the scholastics saw in Averroes a commentator on Aristotle who should be preferred to Avicenna. Avicenna had made the agent intellect a separate power, which is a mistake, while Averroes made it a power of the soul, which is the truth. During this entire period and beyond, a certain number of other theses from Arabic philosophy passed into use in the schools and would be so highly assimilated that their Averroist origin would be lost (which explains, among other things, how it is that Thomas frequently uses Averroes without quoting him).
But it was only in 1250, under an initially vague form in Albertus Magnus, then in 1252, in a more precise form in Robert Kilwardby, that Averroes will be accused of having said that there is only a single soul for all men. Meanwhile, Saint Bonaventure, in his commentary on Book II of the Sentences, will formulate in a definitive way the "Averroist" error: "There is only one intellectual soul for all men, and that not only quantum ad intellectum agentem, sed etiam quantum ad intellectum possibilem."54
As Gauthier says without much beating about the bush: "Everything invites us, therefore, to believe that 'Latin Averroism' is the invention of theologians. In effect, we admit more and more today that Averroes was not an Averroist."55 That "tendentious" reading spread very quickly, and (footnote continued from previous page)
"L'averroïsme latin du XIIIe siècle," in Gli Studi di Filosofia Medievale fra Otto et Novecento, a cura di R. Imbach and A. Maierú (Rome, 1991), p. 191–208.
53. R.A. Gauthier, "Notes sur les débuts (1225–1240) du premier 'averroïsme,'" RSPT 66 (1982) 327–74; "Préface" to the Sentencia libri De anima, Leonine, vol. 45/1, pp. 218*–35*.
54. St. Bonaventure, II Sent., d. 18 a.2 q.1, Opera II, pp. 446–47.
55. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. 45/1, p. 222*, with reference to S. Gomez Nogales, "Saint Thomas, Averroès et l'averroïsme," in Aquinas and Problems of his Time, ed. G. Verbeke and D.
Verhelst (Leuven, 1976), pp. 161–77, who says well: "Averroes is not Averroist. If it is true (footnote continued on next page)
Thomas, prepared by his Master Albert, took it from Bonaventure and denounced it in his own commentary on the Sentences. If one thinks that Siger of Brabant found this thesis in Saint Thomas, whom he read assiduously, and not in Averroes, the paradox is not minor: that "heresy" which did not exist before the theologians denounced it, exists from then on thanks to them.56
Had Thomas already heard some echo of the teaching of Siger and of his colleagues on monopsychism while he was still in Italy? Father H.F. Dondaine suggests this in referring to two articles of the Question De spiritualibus creaturis (a. 2 and a. 5) and two other articles of the Question De anima (a. 2 and a. 3).57
In reality, this seems hardly probable. If we recall the date of these two questions (1265–66 for the De anima; 1267–68, for the De spiritualibus creaturis) and remember that the Quaestiones in Tertium De anima by Siger are from the scholastic year 1269–70, Thomas certainly could not have known them before his return to Paris. It is scarcely plausible either, in the absence of any text, that Thomas would have known of these ideas through the reportationes of a student.
Furthermore, as Bernardo Bazán has shown, if we look carefully at how Thomas discusses Averroes' noetic in these articles, nothing permits us to suspect that he is thinking about contemporary authors.58 It is rather at his return to Paris, after reading the reportationes of the masters of the arts faculty (and not only of Siger), that he takes the measure of the danger and sketches his De unitate intellectus contra averroistas, justly considered pivotal to the controversy.59
(footnote continued from previous page)
that there have been Averroists who have admitted the unicity of the human intellect, that is not the case for Averroes himself, who admits the individual immortality of the human soul, even in the material intellect" (p. 177); see also the similar positions of M.R. Ruben Hayoun and A. de Libera, Averroès and l'averroïsme, Que SaisJe? 2631 (Paris, 1991), pp.
78ff.; opposed to them, B. G. Bazán, "Le Commentaire de S. Thomas d'Aquin sur le Traité de I'âme," RSPT 69 (1985) 521–47, thinks that Averroes' Grand commentaire indeed contains the error that the theologians denounce in it (cf. pp. 529–31).
56. Gauthier, Leon., vol. 45/1, p. 222*; for Siger as a reader of Thomas cf. R.A. Gauthier, "Notes sur Siger de Brabant. I. Siger en 1265," RSPT 67 (1983) 212–32, who retraces, with textual supports, the route that we have just described. On Thomas's use of Averroes, see the list compiled by C. Vansteenkiste, "San Tommaso d'Aquino ed Averroè," Rivista degli Studi Orientali 32 (1957) 585–23; and the briefer overview: L. Elders, "Averroès et saint Thomas d'Aquin," Doctor communis 45 (1992) 46–56. More specific and more ample, cf. J. M.
Casciaro Ramirez, Las fuentes arabes y rabinicas en la doctrina de Sto. Tomás sobre la Profecia (Rome, 1971).
57. Cf. reference to De unitate intellectus, Leonine, vol. 43, p 249.
58. Cf. Bazán, Siger de Brabant, Quaestiones in Tertium De anima, pp. 70*–74*.
59. The text of the De unitate intellectus contra averroistas is found in the Leonine edition, (footnote continued on next page)
Thomas did not think himself less well armed than his adversaries, and he followed them onto their terrain in a close discussion of the texts. Making use of the most recent translations of Aristotle and his commentators, he shows them how much "Averroes" (in reality, Averroes "reread" by the theologians) is opposed simultaneously both to Aristotle's doctrine and the Christian faith. He challenges them therefore to take into account this data of common experience: Hic homo singularis intelligit.60
The argument seems to have troubled them, Siger notably, since he was already a reader of the Thomas of the Sentences. Siger was led to read Thomas frequently, and seems to have evolved afterward toward less heterodox positions. We know that in his De anima intellectiva, which appeared after the De unitate intellectus, while continuing to pit his own exegesis of Aristotle against Thomas's, he names Thomas in company with Saint Albert as being, both of them, praecipui viri in philosophia and concedes that the intellect "intelligendo est operans intrinsecum ad corpus per suam naturam."61 Going still further, he will write in his Super De causis: "Intellectus . . . naturaliter est unitus corpori; . . . anima intellectiva est corporis perfectio et forma."62 This writing manifestly uses Thomas's Super De causis, as well as the Prima Pars and the Super Physicam.63
(footnote continued from previous page)
vol. 43, pp. 289–314; lacking that, one might use the edition by L. W. Keeler, S. Thomae Aquinatis Tractatus de unitate intellectus contra averroistas, Textus et documenta, Series philosophica 12 (Rome, 1936) (see the remarks by F. Van Steenberghen, "Corrections au textes du De unitate intellectus de Thomas d'Aquin," Bull. SIEPM 19 (1977) 65–67, especially à propos Keeler's edition); French translation by the Abbé Bandel, VrinReprise 3 (Paris, 1984); there are also translations in various languages (English, Spanish, Italian). See Catalogue at the end of the present volume. Since the French edition of this book, a firstrank book on this subject has appeared: Thomas d'Aquin, L'Unité de l'intellect contre les averroïstes, suivi des textes contre Averrès antérieurs à 1270, trans, and intro. A. de Libera (Paris: GFFlammarion, 1994).
60. This was already the argument in the Q. De anima, a. 2: "Si autem intellectus possibilis esset substantia separata, impossibile esset quod eo intelligeret homo."
61. Siger, De anima intellectiva, ed. Bazán, pp. 81 and 85; it was thought until a short while ago that there had been between these two writings a De intellectu, by Siger, directly addressed to Thomas, in which the author showed himself still to be very radical according to the fragments that were known of it (cf. Bazán, ibid., p. 75), but some serious doubts have recently emerged about the existence of this text, and the fragments in question seem to belong rather to the Tertium De anima. Cf. A. Pattin, "Notes concernant quelques écrits attribués à Siger de Brabant," Bull. de Phil. médiévale 29 (1987) 173–77.
62. Siger, Super De causis, ed. Marlasca, p. 106, quoted by Leonine, vol. 45, p. 250.
63. Cf. Bazáan, Siger, ibid., p. 74*–77*; H.F. Dondaine, Leonine, vol. 43, pp. 248–51; Van Steenberghen, La philosophie au XIIIe siècle, pp. 430–56 (2d ed. 1991, pp. 387–98). The Leonine gives the following chronology: (1) Thomas, Sentencia libri De anima; (2) Siger, In (footnote continued on next page)
These discussions, too briefly described here, are not of purely intellectual interest; they are also important to an understanding of Thomas's personality. The biographical sources underline Thomas's good will and his humility in confrontation with Pecham in spite of the latter's impetuosity, and it is true that Pecham himself (a propos of another episode?) emphasizes Thomas's humility.64 But we should also stress that in these controversies Thomas appears himself again: a battler who does not hesitate to fight when it is necessary and who is ready to respond to any challenge.65 Loyal and rigorous certainly, but also impatient in polemics when faced with adversaries who do not understand the weight of an argument, indignant when they question things involving the faith66 and even ironic, as when he addresses himself to them, paraphrasing Job 12:2, as if they were the only reasonable beings among whom wisdom had appeared.67
More than these character traits, however, which do not show Thomas in the best light but do translate in their way the ardor of the controversy and the concern of the believer at these questionings, we retain from all this Thomas's desire not to compromise the faith—under pretext of defending it—by ineffective argument. This occurs sometimes in theological circles, when the faith is surreptitiously invoked to give a force to arguments that they themselves do not always have. Thomas thinks about the image that theology gives of itself to some redoubtable dialecticians in the faculty of arts and, at the risk of rendering the task temporarily more difficult, he refuses to depreciate the demands of reason.
Thus he not only gives a proof of his intellectual loyalty but also elicits respect from his toughest adversaries, who will thus accept dialogue with him—Siger for example. He thinks also of God's transcendence, which inadequate apologists render ridiculous. This is not simply the attitude of (footnote continued from previous page)
Tertium De anima (1269–70); (3) Thomas, De unitate intellectus (1270); Siger, De intellectu (1270; but cf. above, note 52) [the Censure of the ten propositions (10 December 1270)]; (5) Thomas, Super De causis (1272); (6) Siger, De anima intellectiva (1273–74); (7) Siger, Super De causis (1274–76). For the relations between Thomas and Siger we should recall the important study by B. C. Bazán, "Le dialogue philosophique entre Siger de Brabant et Thomas d'Aquin. A propos d'un ouvrage récent de E. H. Wéber O.P.," RPL
72 (1974) 53–155, who pertinently discusses the theses of L'homme en discussion à l'Université de Paris en 1270. La controverse de 1270 à l'Université de Paris et son retentissement sur la pensée de S. Thomas d'Aquin, Bibl. thom. 40 (Paris, 1970).
64. Cf. above, note 21.
65. De unitate, conclusion.
66. De unitate IV, ll. 315–19; ibid. V, ll.422–30.
67. De aeternitate, Leonine, vol. 43, p. 88, l. 254; cf. pp. 86–87, ll. 115–17.
a thinker and professor, it is also that of a concerned preacher of the faith to a faithful people. In the sermon Attendite a falsis prophetis, which denounces illi qui dicunt quod mundus est aeternus, he puts on guard those who raise objections that they do not know how to resolve, for one thus gives over reason to the adversary: " Idem est dubitationem movere et eam non solvere, quod eam concedere."68
68. Sermones et opuscula concionatoria, ed. J.B. Raulx, vol. I (Paris, 1881), pp. 486–87 (ed. S. E. Fretté [Vivès], vol. 32, p. 676); cf. V. Serverat, "L' irrisio fidei chez Raymond Lulle et S. Thomas d'Aquin," RT 90 (1990) 436–48.
Chapter XI—
The Second Period of Teaching at Paris:
(1268–1272)
The motives for Thomas's return to Paris have led us to speak first of his engagement in contemporary controversies. It is important, nevertheless, not to commit a frequent error of perspective and to imagine that he was mixed up in these matters to such an extent that he dedicated all his time to them. Far from it! His principal occupation remained teaching sacra pagina, and it is to this period that we owe some of his most celebrated works: the scriptural commentaries and disputed questions.
I—
Scriptural Commentaries and Disputed Questions
We already know that we must situate during this sojourn the lectures on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, reported on by Peter d'Andria and Léger de Besançon, which to all appearances were the subject of Thomas's courses in the academic year 1269–70.1 It still remains for us to situate the two great works: the lectures on the Fourth Gospel and on the Epistles of Saint Paul. The questions about these works are numerous and they will remain so for a long time until the critical edition of the texts will have allowed us to replace hypotheses, if not always with certitude, then at least with more certain data.
1. Cf. above, our chap. IV.
The Lectura super Ioannem
It seems that we may attribute the Lectura super Ioannem with sufficient certitude to this second period of teaching at Paris. Unless we are mistaken, the majority of authors (Glorieux, Eschmann, Weisheipl), agree on this temporal framework, but without being any more precise than that. Mandonnet, who placed the In Matthaeum during the first period of teaching at Paris, and the Expositio in Job at the beginning of the second (according to him, January to June 1269), thought he could situate the Super loannem during the following two years, 1269 to 1271.2
The tentative chronology for the Super Matthaeum leads us rather to shift this proposal by a year. The course on Saint John, therefore, would have been given in 1270 to 1272.3 But the questions on this point are still more numerous than the answers. If as Mandonnet believed—he judged on the basis of the number of lectures as we find them in the printed editions—Thomas needed two years to teach Saint John, we would then have to shift the lectures on Saint Paul to the period at Naples.
This appears plausible, as we will see, but we should not base it on Mandonnet's reasoning. We know today that the divisions of the printed texts do not correspond to those that we find in the manuscripts; there would not, therefore, be anything constraining in the divisions, and we could envisage another way of viewing things.
It is true that the size of the Super loannem invites us at first to allow it more time, but it is also possible that this greater extension stems from a rewriting done either by Thomas (rather unlikely) or by Reginald (more likely).4 We know, through the testimony of the principal manuscripts, that Reginald reported on this course on Saint John at the request of certain confreres, especially the provost of SaintOmer. This passage is important enough to warrant translation: Here therefore is what I, Friar Reginald of Piperno, of the Order of Preachers, at the request of certain companions and particularly at the order of the reverend Father Lord Provost of SaintOmer, have gathered together in fol2. Mandonnet, Chronologie des écrits scripturaires, pp. 50–59.
3. We thus agree with C. Spicq's suggestion, Esquisse, p. 311, who suggests 1270–71 without, however, explaining himself; Weisheipl (p. 372) held to the framework 1269–72 without specifying further.
4. We can verify precisely this phenomenon of amplification in the case of the preaching on the Decalogue, where we see an increase, sometimes of twotoone, in comparing the rewritten text with the text of the reportatio. Cf. Collationes, ed. Torrell, pp. 17–18.
lowing Father Thomas Aquinas—just like he who gathers the grapes [left] after the harvest. Please God that it is not too inadequate to the work.5
The provost, identified elsewhere as having been Adenulf of Anagni, was at the time one of Thomas's students, and probably contributed to the incidental costs of the operation (parchment, recopying).6 As this labor of reporting was customary for Reginald and he was not always specific about it, we must doubtless understand in this reference that he not only took notes listening to his master but also clarified them at Adenulf's request. This would have been greatly facilitated for him further by the fact that Thomas had already composed the Catena on John, and Reginald drew massively on that work; that is also why we find the same patristic sources, Chrysostom and Augustine, in particular in the two works.7
We recall that Bartholomew of Capua and Tolomeo of Lucca state that this Reportatio was revised by Thomas. In light of his other occupations during this time (we will return to this later), this seems improbable enough; Reginald would not have failed to emphasize it and, if Thomas had done the revision, Reginald would never have dared to write utinam non diminute. The reason that ''we do not find a better" reportatio than this should rather be sought in the careful work that he carried out. If this hypothesis of an amplified revision is well founded, we can then generalize with an observation (to which we will soon return) about the frequency of the disputed questions. And we may suppose that, for the course on Saint John, Thomas adopted a lightened teaching load in order to reserve more time for his other works.
To all appearances, Thomas took the books of the New Testament in their canonical order. In passing directly from Matthew to John, he must have thought that Matthew took the place of the two other Synoptics, while John had something special to say. Furthermore, he is clear enough on 5. "Haec ergo sunt quae ego Frater Reginaldus de Piperno, ordinis Praedicatorum, ad preces quorundam sociorum et specialiter ad mandatum Reverendi Parris Domini praepositi Sancti Audomari post fratrem Thomam de Aquino, quasi qui colligit racemos post vindemiam, utinam non diminute, collegi" (colophon of ms. Paris, Mazarine, 801 (177), according to Mandonnet, Des écrits authentiques, p. 39, note l). The same text is transcribed a little more fully by Gauthier, Angelicum 51 (1974) 456.
6. Cf. Mandonnet, Chronologie des écrits scripturaires, pp. 56–58; Adenulf, nephew of Pope Gregory IX, canon of Notre Dame, master of theology in 1272, elected bishop of Paris in 1288, had himself carried, already ill, to Saint Victor, where he died in monk's garb in 1289. Cf. Lexikon des Mittel. 1 (1980), col. 149.
7. This matter has been established beyond all dispute by Conticello, San Tommaso ed i Padri, pp. 79–86.
this subject in his Prologue: "The other evangelists deal principally with the mysteries of Christ's humanity; in his Gospel, John puts first and in a special way Christ's divinity."
These few words furnish the reader with a precious reading guide, for this same statement returns at the end of the book. When he comments on the risen Jesus'
appearance to the apostle who had not believed up until then and who cried out "My Lord and My God," Thomas explains what had occurred to his patron saint thus:
"In confessing the true faith, Thomas immediately became a good theologian [ statim factus est Thomas bonus theologus, veram fidem confitendo] [who recognized] Christ's humanity . . . and his divinity." It was without doubt for the same reason that Thomas, at the beginning of his Lectura—following the whole tradition—presents the Apostle John as a very model of the contemplative, who has a sharp awareness of the insufficiency of theological discourse about Christ: The words and deeds of Christ are also the words and deeds of God. If someone wished to write them or to recount them in detail, he would not know how to do so. Indeed, the entire world would not suffice. An infinity of human words could not attain to the unique Word of God. Since the beginning of the Church, we have always written about Christ;
never enough however. Even if the world were to endure for hundreds of thousands of years, the books that we could write on this subject would never succeed in perfectly elucidating his deeds and words.8
It would be a bit foolish to try drawing up a ranking of Thomas's best scriptural commentaries, but it is certain that we could classify this one along with the commentary on Job or on the Epistle to the Romans as among the most fully finished and most profound that he has left us. Certain people do not hesitate to say that it holds among them a "unique place," and that we could even say that it is "the theological work par excellence by Saint Thomas." This statement can be explained if we recall that "John's gospel contains the ultimate in revelation."9
8. Super loan., finale, no. 2660: "Verba autem et facta Christi sunt etiam Dei. Si quis autem vellet eorum rationem per singula scribere vel narrare, nullo modo posset; immo etiam nec totus mundus hoc potest. Infinita enim verba hominum non possunt attingere unum Dei Verbum. A principio enim Ecclesiae semper scripta sunt de Christo, nec tamen sufficienter;
immo si duraret mundus per centum millia annorum possent libri fieri de Christo, nec ad perfectionem per singula, facta et dicta sua enuclearentur."
9. M.D. Philippe in his full and beautiful preface to: Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Commentaire sur l'Evangile de saint Jean, VersaillesBuxy, 3 vols. now available (up to chapter Vlll) 1981, 1982, 1987; we recommend this translation, which was done with much care, and has benefitted from the corrections of the Leonine edition and thus improves upon the Cai edition (Marietti).
I will not linger on the point here. But we cannot recommend too highly a reading of the superb lectures on the mystery of the Incarnation as they pertain to John's Prologue, or the no less beautiful lecture concerning the Holy Spirit, regarding the "wind that blows where it will," and the "spring of living water that gushes from his breast," and the Paraclete in chapters fourteen to sixteen, who completes Jesus' work and lead us toward all truth. Thomas reveals himself here as one of the contemplatives of whom Saint John is the model.10
Disputed Questions:
De malo and Others
As to the disputations that Thomas began to hold again within the framework of his university activity, scholars are far from agreement. Not long ago, in light of Mandonnet,11 Weisheipl, who placed the De malo and the De spiritualibus creaturis at Rome, assigned to the second period of teaching in Paris the disputed questions De anima, De uirtutibus in communi, De caritate, De correctione fraterna, De spe, De uirtutibus cardinalibus, as well the question De unioni Verbi incarnati (which Mandonner put at Viterbo).12
This clump of titles allows us to see the difficulty that once existed in establishing the exact date of these disputes solely on the basis of internal criteria. Nevertheless, since the recent labors of the Leonine editors, we see here a little more clearly, and we know at least that we should place the questions De anima (1265–66) and De spiritualibus creaturis (1267–68) during the Roman period;13 but we must also undertake an examination of the date and place of the writing of De malo, which we left unresolved.
Tolomeo puts the De malo in Italy in the time of Clement IV (1265–1268);14 many historians have believed this statement, but we cannot trust ourselves to it blindly.
Without going over in detail the diverse positions,15
10. Numerous studies have appeared on this commentary; we note here studies of general interest: J. A. Weisheipl, "An Introduction to the Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John," in Saint Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John, Part I (Albany, N.Y., 1980), 3–19; S. Cipriani, "Riflessioni esegetiche su 'Super S. Joannis Evangelium lectura' di S. Tommaso," in Tommaso d'Aquino nel suo settimo Centenario, vol. 4 (Naples, 1976), pp. 41–59; A. Cirillo, Cristo Rivelatore del Padre nel Vangelo di S. Giovanni secondo il Commento di San Tommaso d'Aquino, Diss., Angelicurn (Rome, 1988).
11. Mandonnet, Chronologie des questions disputées, p. 354.
12. Weisheipl, pp. 307–12 and 365–66.
13. Cf. above, chap. IX.
14. Tolomeo, XXII 39 (ed. A. Dondaine, p. 151, 1. 50).
15.0 Cf. on this O. Lottin, "La date de la question disputée De malo de saint Thomas d'Aquin," in Psychologie et Morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, vol. VI (Gembloux, 1960), pp. 353–72: which was the status questionis at the time; now see Leonine, vol. 23, (1982), pp. 3*–5*.
we can say here that the discussion turns principally on the doctrinal evolution that Question 6 attests to and that permits us to propose the following reference points for a potential chronology. This Question 6 is prior to Questions 9–10 of the Prima Secundae and therefore to that entire part of the Summa. If the Prima Secundae had been begun in Italy, as is sometimes said, it would be necessary to situate the first six questions of the De malo before the departure from Rome.
But at the same time this very Question 6 is without doubt later than Quodlibet I, which generally has been dated to Easter 1269 (Pelster: Christmas 1269). And it is admitted that this question reflects the situation in Paris a little before or a little after the condemnation of 10 December 1270. We must therefore also admit that the Prima Secundae was not begun until after that date. This puts in doubt the date proposed by Glorieux,16 as we have said, but it leads in the direction suggested by Gauthier, for whom the massive use of Aristotle's Rhetoric in the Prima Secundae meant that it was begun after 1270.17
Without yet knowing Gauthier's suggestions, Father Bataillon had recommended caution: "A somewhat simultaneous composition of these two works would explain rather well both the disputed question and the Summa, which seems to give the final position of Saint Thomas's thought. "18 Bataillon distinguishes carefully the respective dates of dispute, redaction, and publication of the questions De malo. For the first, it is difficult if not impossible to be more precise, but for the editing there are some solid facts: because of the use of the Simplicius's commentary on the Categories in Q. l, we must place it after March 1266;19 the same goes for article 12 of Q. 16, which is situated after November 1267, since it cites Themistius's commentary on the De anima.20 As to Q.6, as we have just said, its redaction supposes the context of the December 1270 condemnation. It must therefore be placed a little before or after that event.21
16. Glorieux, Chronologie de la Somme, p. 94: he says it was begun upon the return to Paris in the beginning of January or a little bit earlier.
17. Cf. above, chap. VIII.
18. Preface to the critical edition to the De malo (by P.M. Gils), Leonine, vol. 23, p. 5*.
19. Cf. De malo; Q.1 a. 1 ad 2, 7, 11; for the date of the translation, cf. A. Pattin, ed., Simplicius, Commentaire sur les Catégories d'Aristote, Traduction de Guillaume de Moerbeke (LouvainParis, 1971), pp. xi–xii.
20. Cf. De malo, Q.16 a. 12 ad l; cf. G. Verbeke, ed., Thémistius, Commentaire sur le traité de l'âme d'Aristote, Traduction de Guillaume de Moerbeke (LouvainParis, 1957), p. lxiii.
21. Leonine, vol. 23, p. 4* note 7, connects proposition 3 and the De malo, Q.6, arg. 1, 1.4; prop.9 and ibid., arg. 7, 11. 60–63, and refers to A. San CristobalSebastian, Controversias acerca de la voluntad desde 1270 a 1300 (Madrid, 1958), pp. 13–20.
As to the date of publication, we also have some precise data, for the textual criticism carried out by the Leonine Commission has allowed us to establish that the whole manuscript tradition stems from a single Parisian copy. This already points toward a Parisian source for the work. Furthermore, the fact that the oldest manuscripts stop at piece 23 and contain only the first fifteen questions, invites us to think that the work had first circulated in this shorter form; Question 16 would have been added a little later with the author's permission, without doubt before his departure for Italy in the spring of 1272. In effect, the first taxation lists from the bookshops, around 1275–80, attest to the existence of the complete work in 28 pieces.22 Bataillon advances, therefore, as a strongly plausible hypothesis publication in two phases: one without doubt around 1270 for Questions 1–15; the other, probably 1272, for Question 16.
As to Question 6, which, it has been quite often pointed out, breaks the regular flow of the De malo, it is quite remarkable that it never circulated separately; "It is now certain that Thomas himself placed it where it is found in the series of these questions."23 There is nothing illogical in this, Father Bataillon remarks; it is even entirely comprehensible that, after having spoken about original sin, Thomas decided to bring the subject of free will up to date before passing to the examination of actual sin.
As these last reflections suggest, we should now say a few words about the content of this series of questions. The first question has given its name to the whole, but it is the only one that speaks explicitly of the problem of evil in general. We must therefore read it in connection with Thomas's other great explanations in order to have his full thought on the subject.24 Two questions then follow on sin and its causes ( De peccatis and De causa peccati, Questions 2 and 3), and two others on original sin and the punishment that followed it (Questions 4 and 5). Question 6, De electione
22. Chartul. no. 530, p. 646; Denifle situates this list between 1275 and 1286, but Destrez notes that it still does not show the Tertia Pars and that we must therefore bring it closer to the first of the two dates (cf. Leonine, vol. 23, p. 3, n.8); cf. Chartul. ll, no. 642, p. 108: the list for 1304.
23. Leonine, vol. 23, p. 5*.
24. See in particular Summa Theologiae, la qq. 48–49, with, for example, the annotations by A. D. Sertillanges in the edition of the Revue des Jeunes, with the appendix V, pp. 273–80;
Sent. 11 d.34 and 37; SCG 111 5–15, 71; Compendium theol. 114–18, 141–42. We refer also to the fuller work by L. Sentis, Saint Thomas d'Aquin et le mal, Foi chrétienne et théodicée (Paris, 1992), which studies Thomas's evolution beginning with the Sentences, passing through the Summa contra Gentiles, and the Summa; the De malo is studied on pp. 161–204, with some large translated extracts from Q. 1 (cf. however, the strict recension of S.Th. Bonino, in RT 95 (1995) 512–18).
humana, should also be read in the context of other great developments in Thomas on liberty,25 but this is a subject to which we will return. We then approach the question of venial sin (Question 7), followed by a general question on pride and the seven deadly sins (Question 8), which are presented in this order: vainglory, envy, sloth, anger, avarice, gluttony, luxury (Questions 9–15). Finally, question 16 offers the reader an exposition of demonology relatively complete in twelve articles.26
Until the critical edition is completed, we will be hampered in dating the other Disputed Questions in a more precise fashion; if we have tried to do so here, it is only through what seems plausible. Without neglecting the degree of uncertainty this entails, we can reasonably think that, since the questions De potentia, De anima, and De spiritualibus creaturis belong to the Roman period, this constitutes a supplementary indication to the already numerous data that orient us toward the second teaching period in Paris for the public dispute on the questions De malo. Thomas's other works saw very rapid publication, and there is no reason this one should have been an exception. With a single difference, we therefore find, by an entirely different route, the chronology once proposed by Palémon Glorieux.27
The question now is to know if we should put De malo at the beginning or the end of the period. Glorieux thought we should place the dispute De anima in Paris, between January and June 1269, and he placed the De uirtutibus and its thirtysix articles at the beginning of the scholastic year 1269–70.28 He was thus led to put Questions 1–5 of the De malo in the spring of 1270, while Questions 6–16 were spread from September 1270 to Easter 1272. By then, nothing more would have remained to be disputed
25. See on this Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Question 83 with its parallels and the annotations by S. Pinckaers, in the volume Les actes humains, Revue des Jeunes, vol. 2 (2d ed. Paris, 1966), pp. 249–73; see the same author's The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble (Washington, D.C., 1995), pp. 354–99; H.M. ManteauBonnamy,
"La liberté de l'homme scion Thomas d'Aquin. La datation de la Question disputée De malo," AHDLMA 46 (1979) 7–34.
26. There is an English translation, which was done before the critical edition: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Evil, trans. J. J. Oesterle (Notre Dame, 1983).
27. P. Glorieux, "Les Questions Disputées de S. Thomas et leur suite chronologique," RTAM (1932) 5–33; cf. pp. 22ff.; except for a few things (the De spiritualibus creaturis, which he wished to place at Paris, forcing him to shift the De malo a little bit), we have P. Synave's chronology here as well, Le problème chronologique, pp. 157–58.
28. This figure corresponds to the sum total of what has been divided in the printed editions between the questions De uirtutibus in communi, De caritate, De correctione fraterna, De spe, De uirtutibus cardinalibus.
than the De unione Verbi incarnati, in May 1272, before the return to Italy.
What we now know of the diffusion of the manuscript of the De malo (already beginning around 1270), seems to call more for situating the disputes that preceded redaction and publication to the beginning of this second Parisian period. Thus, the series De uirtutibus, followed by the De unione Uerbi, would be placed instead at the end. This would not change a great deal about the annual average of some forty disputes (identified in the articles) that permitted Glorieux to arrive at his division. If we take away the Question De anima, that average goes down by five, but this does not constitute an insurmountable obstacle if we think that the scholastic year 1271–72 was probably shortened. In any case, we are much below the average of more than eighty annual disputes, which had taken place for the De ueritate. We must therefore conclude about this that, in conformity with what we have already verified in Rome, in his maturity Thomas noticeably reduced the frequency of his ordinary disputes so as to reserve for himself a little more free time for his other occupations.
Among the advantages of the chronology proposed here, there is that formerly exploited by Glorieux (and Gauthier more recently in another form) to show how the writing of the various disputes and Aristotelian commentaries took place in parallel with the composition of the Summa theologiae. Friar Thomas was certainly a great and rapid worker, but he knew how not to disperse his concentration or his forces. If the De malo Q. 6 precedes the opening of the Prima Secundae a little, the De uirtutibus accompanies quite well some other passages from this part or from the Secunda Secundae.29
This is not to say that there is total simultaneity between the two elements of each of these parallels, but it certainly points us toward temporal proximity. Indeed, in this light, we believe that we can clarify the question of the date of the De unione Uerbi incarnati. We know the doctrinal issues involved from the anteriority or the posteriority of article 4 to the Tertia Pars q. 17 a.2: Did Thomas change his opinion and admit at the end of his life that there are two esse in Christ—one the principal esse, the other
29. Without entering into the details here, compare the Q. De anima with the Prima Pars, QQ.75–87; the De malo I and XVI with Prima, QQ.48–64; the De malo 11–VII with Prima Secundae, QQ. 71–89; the De malo 7–15 with Secunda Secundae, QQ. 35–153; the De uirtutibus I and V with Prima Secundae, QQ. 55–69; the De uirtutibus II–XV with Secunda Secundae, QQ. 17–33; and finally the De unione uerbi incarnati with the Tertia Pars, Q.17. These comparisons seem quite convincing; cf. the table in Glorieux, Les Questions Disputées, p. 33.
secondary—corresponding to his two natures (which is the teaching of the De unione)? Or indeed does he admit definitively only a single esse, as he had always said elsewhere and repeats in the Tertia? But then how shall we interpret the "fauxpas" of the De unione?30
We do not have to enter here further into this question, which has occupied Thomists for a long time (630 years, as Pelster told us in 1925). Some of them (Cajetan) say that the De unione is a youthful work and that Thomas retracted it; others (Billot) go so far as to declare it unauthentic. The Leonine Commission's labors no longer leave any doubt about its authenticity, since the text of this Question was already transmitted in manuscripts from the end of the thirteenth century and it is included in the works announced by the booksellers in the taxation lists of the most ancient catalogues.31
This question has experienced a considerable return to relevance in our century.32 If we stick to the simple question of dating and if we judge in the light of the parallels mentioned above, it is highly implausible that Thomas would have inserted this dispute in his teaching program, outside of any link with works then underway or foreseen for the immediate future.
The end of his Italian sojourn or the beginning of his last Parisian period do not lend themselves very much to this scenario; on the contrary, the spring of 1272—when the Tertia Pars was nearly ready to be written if not already begun—would fit better with these factors. Pelster considers as certain a discussion in Naples in 1272–
73,33 but the testimony of the catalogues does not leave any doubt: the third series of Thomas's disputes was held secunda uice Parisius.34 We incline rather to accept those authors who situate this question toward the end of the second period of teach30. See the principal places where Thomas spoke about this question: Sent. III d.6 q. 2 a. 2; Quodlib. IX q. 2 a. 2: Comp. theol. 1212; Q. De unione a.4; ST IIIa q. 17 a. 2. In all these passages, Thomas repeats unum esse in Christo, except in the De unione: "Est autem et aliud esse huius suppositi . . . in quantum est temporaliter homo factum. Quod . . . non . . .
est esse principale sui suppositi, sed secundarium."
31. Preface to the Leonine edition, vol. 24, in preparation.
32. The principal work on this is by A. Patfoort, L'unité d'âtre dans le Christ d'après S. Thomas. A la croisée de l'ontologie et de la christologie (Paris, 1964), in which we find the prior literature; see also the review by M.D. Philippe, Philosophical Studies 16 (1967) 291–99, and the "compterendu" by M. L.B. Guérard des Lauriers, BT 12 (1963–65) 5–168.
33. F. Pelster, "La Quaestio disputata de saint Thomas De unione verbi incarnati," Arch. de Phil. 3 (1925) 198–45; cf. the review by P. Synave, BT 1 (1926) 3, pp.[1]—[21].
34. The Prague List (Grabmann, Werke, p. 92); "aliam secunda vice Parisius, scilicet de virtutibus et ultra"; cf. Chartul. I, p. 646; II, p. 108 (booksellers list from 1275 [?] and 1304, which mentions only De uirtutibus, but the number of "pieces" witnesses that the De unione was included).
ing in Paris: before Easter, early in April (Weisheipl) or May (Glorieux) 1272.35
The Quodlibetal Disputes
To be complete, this scanning of the horizon should also mention the quodlibetal disputes that were added to the ordinary disputes. This academic activity, so characteristic of the medieval university, has been the subject of numerous studies and, without having yielded all its secrets, is now well understood.36 We know that these disputes took place two times a year, during Lent and during Advent (we currently say Easter and Christmas for convenience) and that they developed over two sessions. In the first, as the name indicates, those present, whether they were masters or students or even the simply curious, could raise all sorts of questions (de quolibet ad voluntatem cuiuslibet).37 The master normally let his bachelor respond and did not intervene unless he got into difficulty; the master reserved the right to give his magisterial determination in the second session, which took place either the next day or several days later.
Although reserved for masters, this activity did not, however, constitute an obligation for them. If it is an exaggeration to say that only the greatest figures dared deliver themselves over to this perilous exercise, it is true that not all of them submitted to it. It is furthermore well known that certain masters, for example, Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, John of Pouilly, etc., took pleasure in them and made the occasion a preferred form of expression. The undisputed champion in this format is Gerard of Abbeville, a secular master and rival of Thomas Aquinas, whom we have already met. We know of twenty quodlibets by him.38 As one can see in reading the lists of the proposed subjects, liberty to speak was real, but the exercise was not purely spontaneous. The master could himself propose certain questions and make certain persons—bachelors or students—in35. Weisheipl, pp. 307–12 (analysis of the contents of the Question) 365–66; Glorieux, Les Questions Disputées, pp. 30–31.
36. The pioneer in this field is P. Glorieux; among his numerous works, we recall La littérature quodlibétique de 1260 à 1320, Bibliothèque thomiste 5 and 21 (Paris, 1925 and 1935) (this subject is dealt with more briefly in Glorieux's L'enseignement, pp. 128–34); we can bring this up to date thanks to the remarkable synthesizing study by J. F. Wippel, "Quodlibetal Questions Chiefly in Theology Faculties," in B. Bazán, et. al., Les Questions disputées, pp. 151–222. Wippel updates and gives a survey of the literature prior to 1985.
37. Humbert of Romans, Opera de vita regulari, ed. J. J. Berthier, II, p. 260.
38. For his part, Thomas has only twelve of them; Godfrey and Henry fifteen; cf. Glorieux, L'enseignement, pp. 128–34.
tervene. He could also refuse to respond to this or that intervention if he judged it frivolous or out of place, but too frequent refusals clearly would have harmed his reputation.39
Given its very style, the quodlibetal literature is deeply rooted in actual university life; we have already seen this with regard to the quarrel between the mendicants and the seculars, as well as in the confrontation between Thomas and the Franciscans on the unicity or the plurality of forms, but these are only two questions among many others. We also find more down to earth questions that let us glimpse the more immediate concerns of the persons who are present. Made up in large part of clerics, this public allows its pastoral preoccupations concerning private morals or social and economic subjects to appear. Thus along with the life of the university, it is the entire life of an epoch that is reflected here and that in fact makes the quodlibets a fascinating subject of study.40
It would be impossible to enumerate all the subjects dealt with by Thomas in these public discussions without running the risk of tiring the reader (there are 260 such subjects, which gives an average of more than 20 for each session),41 but it is necessary to know that if questions of high speculation are well represented, practical problems are not at all absent. Boyle has drawn up an instructive list of these and has shown that it is in part thanks to these moral cases that Thomas's quodlibets found an entirely unexpected audience, far beyond the small circle of his listeners.
We find that among students of this second period of teaching in Paris, there was a John of Freiburg, whom we have already met as the vulgarizer of the Secunda Pars. When he was composing his Summa Confessorum in 1298, he drew largely on the teaching of his former master and notably inserted an entire series of twentytwo questions on practical morals coming directly from these quodlibetal disputes, each one among them being properly introduced by the same formula: secundum Thomam in quadam questione de quolibet. This disciple's work was much more widely distributed than the master's. Thus, it was by this indirect route that Thomas's ideas had a much broader diffusion.42
As to dates, after the first tentative steps, the researchers have reached agreement on dividing the quodlibets into two groups according to the two 39. Cf. Wippel, "Quodlibetal Questions," pp. 171–72; 199–201.
40. L. Boyle, "The Quodlibets of St. Thomas and Pastoral Care," in Boyle's Pastoral Care, Study 2 (which first appeared in The Thomist 38 (1974) 232–56).
41. Cf. the complete list in Glorieux, La littérature quodlibétique II, pp. 276–90.
42. Cf. Boyle, The Quodlibets, pp. 252–56.
Parisian sojourns: Quodlibets VII–XI belong to the first period, while Quodlibets I–VI and XII (the reportatio on this latter was not revised by Thomas) belong to the second. Apart from this general framework, there are still many differences among scholars about assigning them to Christmas or to Easter of one year or another.
Only the publication of the largest possible number of texts and a better knowledge of contemporary events will permit us to achieve little by little those certitudes that are still lacking to us. Table 1 sums up the principal positions.
We cannot leave the quodlibets without trying to see what they teach us about their author. Though carefully reviewed by him, these texts echo the discussions from which they came, and some clearly show Thomas's consciousness of his position as a master in theology. It is worth looking at the Easter 1269 quodlibet, which examines whether it is a waste of time to dedicate oneself to study or teaching.43
Thomas addresses these things from a great height and compares pastoral action to the construction of an edifice, for which both architects and manual laborers are needed; the first carry out a nobler task than the second and receive a better payment for their labor. The same is true in the construction of the spiritual edifice that is the Church:
There are those whom we can compare to manual laborers who are especially employed in the care of souls, for example, in administering the sacraments and in other similar tasks.
But those who are comparable to the architects here are the bishops who direct the task of the earlier group and arrange the way in which they ought to accomplish their office;
that is why, furthermore, we call them ''bishops," which is to say "superintendents." Similarly, the doctors in theology are also architects, who research and teach how others ought to work toward the salvation of souls.44 Speaking absolutely, it is better to teach sacra doctrina—and more meritorious, if this is done with a good intention—than to consecrate oneself to a particular care of this or that individual. This is why the apostle says of himself: Christ has sent me not to baptize but to preach (1 Corinthians l:17), although to baptize
43. Quodl. I q.7 a.2 [14] (cf. above chap. 5); see on this point the long note in the Leonine edition by Fr. Gauthier on the Aristotelian sense of architector (and not architectus, though a better Latin form), which is quite strongly seized upon, it seems, in the gloss on i Corinthians 3:10: not he who draws up the plan of the house, but "he who lays the first stone."
44. This comparison will be repeated several years later by a canon regular, Gervais (or Servais) of Mont SaintEloi: " ars disputatoria est architectoniea et predicatoria est manu operativa et ideo minus nobilis et minus meritoria, manu operativi minus merentur quam architectonici," Quodl. I q.40, ed. by J. Leclercq, "L'idéal du théologien au moyen âge. Textes inédits," RevScRel. 21 (1947) 121–48, cf. p. 130.
is the work most fitting for the salvation of souls. Saint Paul also says: Recommend the faithful who are capable of it to instruct others in their turn (2 Tim. 2:2). Reason itself demonstrates that it is more profitable to instruct in the knowledge of salvation those who can make progress in it, both for themselves and for others, than to instruct the simple who can profit only for themselves. However, in case of imminent necessity, bishops and doctors ought to leave their proper office to dedicate themselves to the salvation of particular souls.
This text doubtless contains something a little astonishing for a twentiethcentury reader, who perhaps risks being shocked at seeing the pastors of souls considered as simple manual workers, while the theologian is set up as an aristocrat, like a master of the work. The hearers of this proposition would hardly have been surprised; the text conveys not only the high social position of the masters of the University of Paris (let us recall that there were hardly a handful for all of Christendom); it also expresses the com
THE DATES OF THE QUODLIBETS
We have made use of the table drawn up by Father Boyle (p. 239) to which we add here Father Gauthier's proposals, which he has kindly communicated to us in anticipation of the publication of Volume 25 of the Leonine edition (Paris, 1996), which he has prepared.
The abbreviations used are as follows: E = Easter (the preceding Lent); C = Christmas (the preceding Advent). The complete titles may be found in the bibliography: Mandonner 1 = P. Mandonnet, Siger, vol. 1, 2911, p. 85–87.
Mandonnet 2 = P. Mandonnet, Chronologie sommaire, p. 148.
Destrez = J. Destrez, Les Disputes, p. 151.
Synave 1 = P. Synave, rev. by Destrez, BT 1 (1924) [32]–[50].
Glorieux 1 = P. Glorieux, Littérature I, p. 276–290.
Mandonnet 3 = P. Mandonnet, S. Thomas créateur de la dispute.
Synave 2 = P. Synave, L'ordre des Quodlibets VII à XI.
Pelster 1 = F. Pelster, Beiträge zur Chronologie.
Glorieux 2 = P. Glorieux, Littérature II, p. 272.
Van Steenberghen = F. Van Steenberghen, Siger II, p. 541.
Glorieux 3 = P. Glorieux, Les Quodlibets VII–XI.
Pelster 2 = F. Pelster, Literarische Probleme.
Isaac = J. Isaac, rev. by Pelster 2, BT 8 (1947–1953) 169–72.
Marc = lntroductio to the Summa contra Gentiles I, p. 412.
Weisheipl = J. A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas, p. 367.
Gauthier = R.A. Gauthier, Préface, Leon., vol. 25.
plementarity of tasks in the ecclesial body. Finally, by concluding this subject with the need to give a hand in the labor if the need arises, it reestablishes, without mincing words, the true hierarchy of values.
Thomas, therefore, did not fear to make the office of teacher and that of the bishop parallel. Far from being a slip, this appears frequently in his work and he purposely compares the cathedra pontificalis and the cathedra magistralis.45 For both, it is a duty to teach sacred Scripture; the difference 45. Cf. Quodl. III q.4 a.1 [9].
lies in this, that the first proceeds by virtue of the officium praelationis: he who preaches teaches and cannot arrogate that role to himself without a mandate. The second does so by virtue of the officium magisterii; the manner in which the masters in theology teach. But the task of one and the other, bishops and doctors, has the same final end, which was that of the authors of the sacred Scripture: to lead men to eternal life.46 This requires on either side a high morality,47 but on the side of the doctors it demands a greater university knowledge, for in that area, as is notorious, the prelates do not know very much.48
We would deceive ourselves if we viewed this as some sort of corporatist revenge of the "theologians" against the "magisterium," as was said later. To appreciate these proposals without anachronism, we must recall that Thomas still wavers over the sacramentality of the episcopal office.49 In his thought, bishops (or rather prelates as he says more currently) and doctors are equally subject to the judgment of the Church. What he expresses here is the very high consciousness he has of the duty of the doctor, and he cannot better emphasize it than by setting in relief its pastoral end.50
II—
Consultations and Diverse Works
The public activities of polemics and of teaching should not hide the intense personal work that the master of SaintJacques continued to accomplish. The years 1268–
72 are the ones when Thomas composed the enormous Secunda Pars of the Summa theologiae (probably between January 1271 and Easter 1272) and began composition of the Tertia Pars. He did not cease responding to the occasional demands on his intellectual charity during this time, which sometimes put his patience to the test. As was the case at Orvieto and at Rome, this last Parisian sojourn brought its share of personal consultations from which he doubtless could not extricate himself. We have already mentioned some of these, but we must now add several others.
46. Cf. Sent. IV d. 19 q.2 a.2 qc.3 sol.2 ad 4.
47. There is much to meditate on in the Quodl. V. q. 12 a.24: Utrum ille qui semper propter inanem gloriam docuit per penitentiam aureolam recuperet; a theme repeated by Rainier de Clairmarais, around 1295–96: Quodl. I q.2, in Leclercq, L'idéal du théologien, p. 143.
48. C. impugnantes 2, l. 449 f.: . . . doctrina scolastica cui praelati non multum intendunt.
49. Cf. above chap. 5, n. 46.
50. For additional reflections on this subject see Torrell, "La pratique pastorale," pp. 243–44.
De mixtione elementorum; De motu cordis
We first encounter two brief texts (153 and 259 lines) that in our time we would expect not from the pen of a master in theology but rather from a scientific writer. The De mixtione elementorum deals with the four elements (water, air, earth, and fire), their qualities (cold and hot, dry and moist), and the role that ancient medicine had them play in the theories of humors and of temperaments. In the Middle Ages, theology, queen of the sciences, could not be uninterested in these matters, and Thomas says nothing that would allow us to believe that his correspondent forces him to go beyond the limits of his knowledge. On the contrary, not only had he spoken about these matters several times51 (a number of his contemporaries also dealt with them), but the subject of pure physics, which appears to be without theological bearing, became the object of bitter discussion among partisans and adversaries of the unicity of substantial form.52 In any case, the text enjoyed an excellent diffusion, since we know of 117 manuscripts and 35 editions.
As to the De motu cordis, its central thesis is that the movement of the heart in animals and in men is a natural movementand not violent as Alfred de Sareshel held in his text of the same name. Without citing the latter, Thomas probably aims to rectify and go beyond it. He himself was interested in this subject in relation to the command that the will could exercise over the limbs of the body: if the heart escapes from this rule, he explained, this indeed is a proof that it has a natural movement.
The idea that he exploits here is that the movement of the heart in animals is the same as the movement of the heavens in the world.53 One sign of the interest that this text aroused: we know of 126 manuscripts and 33 printed editions.
Master Philip, the recipient of these two opuscula, was originally from Castrocielo, a commune very close to Roccasecca. He is known to us as 51. Cf. Sent, II d. 12 a.4; IV d.44 q.1 a.1 qc.1 ad 4; Super Boetium de Trin. q.4 a. 3 6; ST Ia q.76 a.4 ad 4; Quodl. I q.4 a.6 ad 3; Q. De anima a.9 ad 10.
52. Cf. the Preface by H.F. Dondaine, in his edition of the text: Leonine, vol. 43, pp. 135–37; this opusculum has scarcely been studied, but we take note of L. Robles, "Un opusculo ignorado de Tomás de Aquino, El 'De mixtione elementorum,'" Estudios Filosoficos 23 (1974) 239–59.
53. De motu cordis, ll. 164–65 (Leonine, vol. 43, p. 129): "Sic enim est motus cordis in animal sicut motus celi in mundo"; Thomas returns to this subject in ST Ia IIae q.17 a.9. See also on this text the probing study by E. Paschetta, "La natura del moro in base al De motu cordis di S. Tommaso," MM 19 (1988) 247–60.
a professor of medicine in Bologna and Naples and, according to Mandonnet, it is not impossible that he was Thomas's classmate at Naples during the time when the young Aquinas was studying there (1239–44). He would also have been his colleague when he returned there in 1272–74.54 If that was the case, we understand that it would have been difficult for Friar Thomas not to respond to a request from Master Philip.
We can hardly go further in trying to specify the date of these two opuscula. Since Mandonnet, the De mixtione has been placed during the second period of teaching at Paris, and since it shows no sign of polemics, we can believe it precedes the discussions of 1270 on the unicity of substantial form. As to the De motu cordis, the same author puts its composition a little later, at Naples in 1273, relying on the plausibility of the relationship between the two colleagues at that time. Father H.
Dondaine, editor of these opuscula for the Leonine edition, has accepted these propositions. Weisheipl, following Eschmann, places the De motu cordis as well as the De mixtione elementorum in Paris between 1270 and 1271.55
De operationibus occultis naturae
These "hidden operations of nature" clearly have something to do with magic, which Christian thought, for better or worse, has had to confront since its beginning.
Following Saint Augustine in particular,56 Thomas encountered the same problem in his own time, but his Aristotelian formation allowed him to approach it in a more rational way. He therefore tries to discern what amounts to the secret action of natural but hidden causes and what might be attributed to the intervention of an evil spirit. Thomas addresses what relates to the four elements, mixed bodies, living things, celestial bodies, and finally, separated substances. He can, therefore, conclude by denouncing the pretensions of astrology: the fact of being born under an astral conjunction or the recourse to amulets or to magic formulas connected with such constellations, cannot have any new effects. If these simulacra or formulas have extraordinary effects, we must attribute them to the intervention of spirits.
54. Cf. Mandonnet, "Les 'Opuscules,'" RT 32 (1927), pp. 137–38 (cf. p. Marc, introduction to the Marietti edition of the SCG, p. 418, no. 1, who reproduces the documents on which Mandonnet based his work); the whole is summed up by H.F. Dondaine, preface to De motu cordis: Leonine, vol. 43, p. 95.
55. Eschmann, "A Catalogue," pp. 419–20; Weisheipl, pp. 394–95.
56. Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei X xi; according to Gauthier, on Quodl. II q.7 a. l [13], the other major source for Thomas on magic is Alkindi, De radiis (Leonine, vol. 45/2, pp. 96*–
97*).
We know two parallel places for this exposition ( Quodl. XII q.9 a. 13; IIa IIae q.96 a. 2 ad 2), both dating from the second period of teaching at Paris. Mandonnet saw in this an invitation to date the opusculum to this period. If so, the Miles ultramontanus to whom it is addressed should be thought of as living in Italy; this would accord well enough with what we know elsewhere concerning the vogue of magical arts in that country in the thirteenth century, which was much greater, it seems, than in Paris or Oxford.57
De iudiciis astrorum
Even shorter than the preceding texts (56 lines), this letter—whose recipient may be Reginald (to judge from its familiar tone, not from the testimony of the manuscripts, which do not say anything of the kind)—shows how widespread, then as now, astrological superstitions were. But this is only an echo of the question that Friar Thomas amply treated elsewhere.58
Thomas does not dispute the influence of the stars on "corporal effects" in our world, and that is why it is useful to be aware of lunar phases in agriculture, in medicine, or in navigation. But he accords only a very limited value to explanations of the predictions that astrologers draw up from their observations of dreams, auguries, and geomancy: all that makes little sense ( hoc modicam rationem habet). On the contrary, he is quite firm (if there could be any doubt) in his defense of human liberty:
"The will of man is not subject to the necessity of the stars, for if free will were to disappear, we would no longer be able to impute merit to good works nor fault to evil ones. The Christian must therefore hold as very certain that what depends on the will—for example, human acts—is not subject to the stars by necessity."59
De sortibus
Giacomo de Tonengo, the recipient of this opusculum, is rather well known: chaplain to the pope, originally from Tonengo in the Piedmont 57. Cf. J. B. McAllister, The Letter of saint Thomas Aquinas De occultis operationibus naturae ad quendam militem ultramontanum (Washington, 1939) We must nevertheless say that while the term Ultramontanus was known in Italy at this time, it was still unknown in Gaul.
58. Cf. SGG III 82–87 and 154; ST Ia q. 115; Ia Ilae q.9 a. 5; Ila Ilae q.95 a. 2; De sortibus IV; for Thomas and astrology, cf. Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, II (2d ed. New York, 1929), pp. 608–12; Th. Litt, Les corps célestes dans l'univers de saint Thomas d'Aquin (LouvainParis, 1963), pp. 220–41.
59. De iudiciis astrorum, ll. 28–35, Leon., vol. 43, p. 20l; no indication allows us to fix a date for this; Mandonnet proposed 1269–72 (cf. Chronologic sommaire, p. 151).
province of Asti, he is mentioned several times in the registers of the curia in 1263 when Thomas also was at Orvieto.60 It must have been during this time, without doubt, that they formed the friendship to which Thomas alludes in his introduction. Following an ingenious hypothesis by Dondaine and Peters, we can, as a first approximation, situate the opusculum between November 1268 and September 1271, during the vacancy of the pontifical seat. The canons of the diocese of Vercelli, among whom was Giacomo de Tonengo, not arriving in time to agree on the election of their bishop and wearied from expecting an intervention by the Holy See (which could not arrive owing to the lack of a pope), reached an agreement to draw lots; it is on this proposal that Friar Thomas's friend would have consulted him.
He gave his response during the long vacations which left him, he says, a little free time.61 Reasoning within this general framework, then, we can presume that the opusculum was composed during the summer of 1270 or 1271.
In spite of the slightness of the subject, Thomas gave it very careful, and even new and original, study. In five chapters, he explores the reasons that one might have recourse to drawing lots, toward what end, in what way, what is their efficacy, and if, according to the Christian faith, it is licit to have recourse to them. The interest of this opusculum lies in the fact that Thomas develops here what he does not touch on elsewhere except briefly, and he does it on the basis of historical documentation of the best quality. This permits his editor to recommend it to the reader "not only in order to discover a minor dimension of the author's genius: this 'opusculum' is a model of its genre, and among the best by Saint Thomas."62
The most interesting thing for a reader today without doubt is chapter four, where Thomas delivers himself on what we might call the "critique of efficacy" on the use of lots to predict the future. He engages "an entire doctrine of free will in the face of chance in the order of the universe, and finally a doctrine of Providence; the theologian resumes his office here: a magnificent shortcut (4, 212–249) evokes the free play of Providence beyond all causes, all human projects, which does not scorn to reveal its will
60. Cf. A. Dondaine, J. Peters, "Jacques de Tonengo et Giffredus d'Anagni auditeurs de saint Thomas," AFP 29 (1959) 53–66; it is from this study that we borrow the following information, also reprinted by the Leonine edition, vol. 43, pp. 207–8.
61. De sortibus, Prol., Leonine, vol. 43, p. 229: "intermissis paulisper occupationum mearum studiis, solempnium uacationum tempore."
62. We reproduce here H.F. Dondaine's judgment, who gives welldocumented reasons for it, Leonine, vol. 43, pp. 208–9.
by way of lots (4, 267ff.)."63 These are the principles for discerning the cases in which it is or is not permitted to resort to lots.
De secreto
Before passing to more extensive works, let us mention again this curious and littleknown text. It is not, properly speaking, one of Thomas's works, but rather a kind of compterendu from a consultation by John of Vercelli during the general chapter of Pentecost 1269; this was therefore just after Thomas's return to Paris. As Hyacinthe Dondaine sums it up: "It deals with six cases having to do with the limits of the power of a religious superior over the conscience of a subordinate who is accused of a secret fault or knows the unknown author of a misdeed."64 We may suppose that these were difficulties actually encountered and that John of Vercelli, as well as the capitularies gathered around him, desired to clarify their conduct by taking advantage of the presence among them of the order's intellectual elite.
In addition to Thomas, the commission to which had been assigned the examination of these questions included five other members, all masters from Paris: Bonhomme, Peter of Tarentaise, Bartholomew of Tours, Beaudouin de Maflix, and Gilbert de Ovis, or van Eyen.65 They pronounced themselves in total agreement except for Thomas, who became a "lone knight" on two questions. To question four, Thomas said that if it was a case of a judicial procedure, where a civil judge could demand an oath, the religious superior could prescribe it in the name of obedience. Question six concerned the unknown author of a misdeed discovered in the monastery (theft, fire): unlike the other masters, Thomas believed that the superior could issue a general precept to reveal the author of the misdeed in such a way that it would have bound in conscience anyone who knew about it. The first response conforms completely with Quodlibet I a. 16, which dates from the same period. The second has embarrassed commentators who find it "weak."66 We retain from this episode at least the double echo of Thomas's participation in the activities of the order, and of his independence of spirit.
63. Ibid., p. 209.
64. Leonine, vol. 42, p. 475; the text may be found on pages 487–88, ll. 95–101 and 117–21, for Thomas's response.
65. On these figures see Glorieux's comments, Répertoire I, and Käppeli's Scriptores.
66. Cajetan in IIa IIae q.69 a.2: " pro infirma habetur"; cf. Leonine, vol. 42, p. 476; Tugwell, p. 231, emphasizes, quite rightly, Thomas's originality here.
The Letter to the Countess of Flanders
This is another series of responses to questions that we find in the text published by the Leonine edition under the title Epistola ad ducissam Brabantiae, but which some manuscripts call, with Tolomeo, ad comitissam Flandrie. It is also still known, somewhat improperly, as the De regimine Iudeorum.67 This name is improper because, for more than half of its short length, this text speaks of the nonJewish subjects of the recipient and could be better called "De regimine subditorum."
The identity of the recipient has intrigued historians for some time: Pirenne saw in her Alix (or Adelaide) of Burgundy and proposed dating the letter after the death of her husband, Henry III of Brabant, in 1261 (his will contains some clauses about the Jews); for Glorieux, the recipient would be rather Margaret of France, daughter of Louis IX, wife of Duke John, and this would mean the year 1270. Summing up the research in 1979, Father H. Dondaine stated with his customary reserve: "The two hypotheses . . . have their plausibility and also their weakness, the latter in particular."68
In the same vein, Raymond Van Uytven published in 1983 the results of a serious investigation that permitted him to conclude resolutely in favor of Adelaide of Burgundy; the date of Thomas's text would therefore be determined by her rule (1261–67), but 1266 seems to be a terminus ante quem, the years 1263–65 being the most favorable.69 We ought to say that two elements seem strongly in favor of this position:70 first the precise parallels between the count's will and Thomas's letter;
then the fact that there were no Jews in Flanders at the time and Brabant is the only area in the region where the Jewish presence is adequately attested in this epoch.
Van Uytven unfortunately was unaware of the data provided by a study that appeared a little after his and that has notably modified the situation. Although in his first edition, Weisheipl had opted for the second hypothesis, he changed his mind in the second edition in order to follow Leonard Boyle's position, which had been published in the meantime.71 For the
67. Leonine, vol. 42, pp. 360–78, with a preface by H.F. Dondaine.
68. Leonine, vol. 42, p. 363.
69. R. Van Uytven, "The Date of Thomas Aquinas's Epistola ad Ducissam Brabantiae," in Pascua Mediaevalia. Studies voor Prof. Dr. J. M. De Smet, ed. R. Lievens, E. Van Mingroot, W. Verbeke (Leuven, 1983), pp. 631–43.
70. Cf. C. Vansteenkiste in RLT 19 (1986), no. 76, pp. 42–43, and 20 (1987), no. 11, pp. 423–24.
71. L. E. Boyle, "Thomas Aquinas and the Duchess of Brabant," Proceedings of the PMR
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latter, we are dealing with the daughter of Baudouin I, count of Flanders and first emperor of Constantinople, Margaret of Constantinople, who was countess of Flanders for 33 years (1245–78), a great and constant benefactress of the Dominicans. Thomas could have met her at Valenciennes in 1259, where she received the general chapter in a town in her county; this may explain why he addressed himself to her in a relatively familiar tone. If true, Thomas's text would be placed at Paris, in 1271, and this would explain (since the countess was already rather elderly) why he might have wished her to reign per longiora tempora.
This attribution—which was already made by Tolomeo and which QuétifEchard repeated without hesitation—is now confirmed in a new way, since Boyle has discovered a similar letter by John Pecham to the same person, properly identified, which responds to same questions, a single one excepted. Furthermore, Gilbert Dahan has noticed that the countess had also been written to by a secular jurist (perhaps Gerard of Abbeville) to whom she had posed the same questions.72 She therefore would have launched a rather large consultation and we can line up other pieces alongside Thomas's text.
It now remains to sum up briefly the contents of this text. The eight concrete questions to which Thomas had to respond hardly lend themselves to great developments and instead leave us glimpses of the preoccupations on the recipient's mind: ''Can she levy taxes on the Jews? Can she punish with a fine a Jew who is at fault, but who lives by usury? Can she accept a voluntary gift from a Jew? If he restores a sum greater than the Christian who has been harmed asks, can she accept it? Can she sell or pawn public offices; raise funds from Christians; use the monies irregularly extorted by ducal officers that come to her? Finally, is it proper to oblige the Jews to wear a sign that distinguishes them from others?"73
It would seem that, since John Pecham had dealt rather completely with the question, Thomas was not moved to respond to these requests; he does not hide that he has a great deal of other work and that he would have preferred that the duchess address herself to someone more competent in the specific subject. He therefore writes briefly and in a less careful way
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Conference 8 (1983) 23–35; among the other interesting contributions of this study, the text of the Leonine edition must be corrected and reestablished at line 242 (p. 378), potentiam in all the manuscripts that H. Dondaine thought ought to be modified into prouinciam.
72. G. Dahan, review of the study by Boyle in BTAM 14 (1986–90) no. 1121, pp. 530–31.
73. Summary by H.F. Dondaine, Leonine, vol. 42, p. 363.
than usual, it seems, without making any special efforts at originality. About the Jews in particular, he contents himself with reproducing the common doctrine of his time on the state of servitude that belongs to them. He underlines, however, that we must treat them with moderation and that if it is necessary to punish them for practicing usury, we should punish them just the same as all other usurers. In fact, the principal interest of these pages resides less in the treatment he reserves for the Jews than in the general principle that supports the legitimacy of taxes imposed by the prince, which is public utility (communis populi utilitas).74
The De substantiis separatis
In this category of works responding to a private request, we should also put the small incomplete book whose twenty chapters occupy forty or so pages in the Leonine edition.75 Though it does not explicitly say so, we might, with the ancient catalogues, identify the recipient as having been Friar Reginald himself. We can see an indication of this in the "confidential character" of the prologue where Thomas alludes to circumstances that only a close colleague would have known: "Since we cannot participate in the solemnities sacred to the angels, we must not let our times of devotion pass without doing anything; we must therefore compensate, with the labor of writing, whatever is taken away from the office of singing the Psalms. 76
Much commentary has been devoted to the reasons that might have prevented Thomas from being at the divine office; we might imagine some indisposition, but also a dispensation from the choir granted to the masters in theology by the Dominican constitutions. It seems that we should not press the invocation of angels, as if he were speaking of a specific liturgical feast; it is more probable, however, that, in preparing himself to write, Thomas would have remembered the monastic theme of the psalmody as an angelic office, something of which the Dominican tradition also was aware. 77
74. Among the numerous studies dedicated to this opusculum, see: H. Liebeschutz, "Judaism and Jewry in the Social Doctrine of Thomas Aquinas," The Journal of Jewish Studies 13 (1962) 57–81; B. Blumenkranz, "Le De regimine Judaeorum: ses modèles, son example," in Aquinas and Problems of His Time, G. Verbeke and D. Verhelst, eds. (LeuvenThe Hague, 1976), pp. 101–17.
75. Leonine, vol. 40, pp. D 41–80; ed. and intro, by H.F. Dondaine; an old French trans. by abbé Bandel is in the collection VrinReprise, vol. 3 (Paris, 1984), pp. 153–248 (the chapters are not the same as in the Leonine edition).
76. Prol, ll. 1–4: "Quia sacris angelorum solemniis interesse non possumus, non debet nobis devotionis tempus transire in vacuum, sed quod psallendi officio subtrahitur scribendi studio compensetur."
77. Humbert of Romans: conveniunt angeli sancti cum psallentibus ( De vita regulari II, ed.
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As to the author's design, it is quite clearly expressed in the prologue: he wants to speak about the holy angels, but he proposes to look first, in a conjectural way, at what antiquity thought about them. If he finds something in accord with the faith, he will make use of it, but he will refute whatever is contrary to Catholic doctrine.78
The two phases announced here are again quite clearly marked at the beginning of chapter 18: "Since we have shown what the great philosophers [Plato and Aristotle]
have thought on the subject of spiritual substances, their origin, the creation of their nature, their distinction, and the manner in which they are ruled, it remains for us to show now what is the teaching of the Christian religion about them. For this purpose we will make use primarily of the books of Dionysius who has dealt better than all the others with what concerns spiritual substances."79 The second part of his proposal was barely begun, since Thomas stops at chapter twenty, right in the middle of a passage on the sins of angels, about which he has just said that it presents many difficulties to reflection.
These brief indications suffice to show that his intention was primarily theological, and they explain also the waverings in the manuscript tradition, which sometimes speaks of this book as a De angelis. But we should also add that the importance of this treatise is not to be measured by its thickness; Eschmann speaks of it as "one of the most important metaphysical writings by Aquinas," while Henle considers what is said about Plato in the first chapter as the most developed Platonic synthesis in Thomas.80
As to the date, this treatise is not only later than May 1268, the date of the completion of Moerbeke's translation of Proclus's Elementatio theologica, which it cites at two points in chapter twenty, but also after the condemnation of December 1270, to which it makes several allusions; finally, he knows the Book Lambda of the Metaphysics as Book XII. We can then situate it after the first half of 1271, but it is not easy to be more precise or to decide whether it was written in Paris or Naples.81
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Berthier (1889), p. 83; cf. ibid., I, p. 174); Humbert himself refers to an expression by Saint Bernard ( In Cant., sermon 7, n. 4).
78. Prol. ll. 4–10: "Intendentes igitur sanctorum angelorum excellentiam utcumque depromere, incipiendum videtur ab his quae de angelis antiquitus humana coniectura aestimavit; ut si quid invenerimus fidei consonum accipiamus, quae veto doctrinae catholicae repugnant refutemus." Father Dondaine properly underlines the similarity of this twostage proposal with that of the Summa contra Gentiles (I 9).
79. De subst. separatis, chap. 18, ll. 3–12 (Leonine, vol. 40, p. D 71).
80. Cf. the references in Lescoe (following note), p. 51.
81. Cf. Leonine, vol. 40, pp. D 6–7; F. J. Lescoe's examination, written several years later,
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The Super Librum De causis
Although the Super de Causis is not a work composed "by request," it is right to speak of it here because of its probable date and its relationship with the De substantiis separatis. Having long been considered a work by Aristotle, despite several doubts, the De causis was designated in the faculty of arts as one of the Philosopher's works that had to be commented on over the course of seven weeks. 82 Even today, its author is not certain, but thanks to William of Moerbeke's 1268
translation of Proclus's Elementatio theologica—Proclus was one of Plato's last successors in the Athenian Academy—Thomas was the first to identify the author as an Arabic philosopher who borrowed from this work by Proclus.83
To comment on this text was, therefore, for Thomas to pursue a new dialogue with Neoplatonic philosophy, already slanted by the author of the De causis toward monotheism and moderate realism. As HenriDominique Saffrey has well said in his remarkable preface to the critical edition that he has produced, when he commented on this text, Saint Thomas had three books open in front of him: "The text of the Liber, a manuscript of the Elementatio, and Dionysius' corpus. The texts of these three authors are quoted ad litteram, the other authors used, principally Aristotle, are quoted ad mentem." In this resides the particular interest of the undertaking: "Saint Thomas's true intentio in this commentary is to compare the three texts. This is the whole argument of the work and it is perhaps a unique case in the Saint's entire oeuvre." Thus he will be able to value each one, position himself visàvis Proclus, author of the Liber, and Dionysius, "whose connections with Aristotle or Saint Augustine he emphasizes.'' Thus, he rejects separated forms and divine hypostases, which is to say Neoplatonic polytheism, as well as its emanationism and
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" De substantiis separatis: Title and Date," Commemorative Studies I, pp. 51–66, arrives at the same conclusions.
82. Chartul. no. 246, p. 278; Thomas himself, at the beginning of his career, also attributed this work to Aristotle, cf. Super Boetium De Trin. q.6 a. 1, Ulterius, arg. 2; going a little outside our subject, we can refer to E. P. Bos and P. A. Meijer, eds., On Proclus and His Influence in Medieval Philosophy, Philosophia Antiqua 53 (Leiden, 1992).
83. Prooemium (ed. Saffrey, p. 3): "Et in graeco quidem invenitur sic traditus liber PROCLI PLATONICI, continens ccxi propositiones, qui intitulatur Elementatio theologica; in arabico vero invenitur hic liber qui apud Latinos De causis dicitur, quem constat de arabico esse translatum et in graeco penitus non haberi: unde videtur ab aliquo philosophorum arabum ex praedicto libro PROCLI excerptus, praesertim quia omnia quae in hoc libro continentur, multo plenius et diffusius continentur in illo."
the priority of the one and of the good over being, "but he will also carefully preserve in his synthesis the great orders of creation. Being, living things, intelligences, and God over and above all."84
As to the date, it hardly presents a difficulty. The continual use of the Elementatio theologica, completed by Moerbeke on 18 May 1268, situates this work after that date; but the designation of the Book Lambda as Book XII of the Metaphysics also places it after the first half of 1271. These two characteristics, which are also found in the dating of the De substantiis separatis, led Father Saffrey to consider these two works as contemporary. Furthermore, a careful comparison of Quodlibet V q.4 a.7—disputed Christmas 1271—with the proposition 2 of the Super de causis suggests the priority of the quodlibet to the commentary. Saffrey therefore concludes that the latter should be dated to "the first half of 1272."85
In conclusion, if we attempt to establish provisionally where we are with regard to the texts presented in this chapter, we are certainly struck by their number, but even more perhaps by their diversity. Knowing his title as magister in sacra pagina, we would more or less expect to see in Thomas the man of a single book, the Bible.
He is certainly that, by profession and by predilection (his expositions on the New Testament remain at the heart of his activity), but we are also impressed by the variety of his output (the different short texts that we have mentioned testify to it) and by his presence in the midst of contemporary questions: whether it is a case of the seculars or of "averroism," we see Thomas active on all fronts and the quodlibets confirm it. To this range of activities, we must however add a final category: Thomas was also a commentator on Aristotle.
84. Sancti Thomae de Aquino super Librum De causis Expositio, ed. H.D. Saffrey, Textus philosophici Friburgenses 4/5 (Fribourg, 1954), Préface, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii.
85. Saffrey, ibid., pp. xxxiii–xxxvi; with the exception of the very last point, which seems to him too speculative; Eschmann, "A Catalogue," p. 407, accepts this line of argument; the same is true of Weisheipl, p. 383. The work has been carefully examined and we recall here several of the more recent studies: Thomas Aquinas, Commento al Libro delle Cause, a cura di C. D'Ancona Costa (Milan, 1986) (with an important introduction and bibliography); L. Elders, "Saint Thomas d'Aquin et la métaphysique du Liber de Causis," RT 89 (1989) 427–42; A. de Libera, "Albert le Grand et Thomas d'Aquin interprètes du Liber de causis," RSPT 74 (1990) 347–78. C. D'Ancona Costa, "Saint Thomas lecteur du 'Liber de Causis.' Bilan des recherches contemporaines concernant le 'De Causis' et analyse de l'interprétation thomiste,'' RT 92 (1992) 785–817, which appeared too late for inclusion in this discussion, has been reprinted in Recherches sur le Liber de causis, Etudes de philosophie médiévale, vol. 72 (Paris: Vrin, 1995), pp. 229–58.
Chapter XII—
The Commentator on Aristotle
The last major occupation during this third Parisian sojourn was Thomas's commenting on Aristotle. This activity, which Thomas had begun with the De anima in the last year of his sojourn in Rome, was continued in Paris at an accelerated pace. Since he could not have done it earlier, he first completed the De sensu et sensato sometime around 1269, which is to say before the De unitate intellectus. He must have continued this task without ceasing since the commentaries multiply beginning around this date. Apparently he did them alongside one another, because all the confirming evidence that we can find lead to dates that are very close. In what follows we will not see, therefore, a strict chronological order, which is very difficult to establish—if indeed one can ever be established at all.
The Expositio Libri Peryermenias
In the current state of research—thanks to Father Gauthier's reediting of the earliest volumes of the Leonine edition—the Expositio Libri Peryermenias appears to be one of the first commentaries from this period.1 The dedication of this work to Guillaume Berthout, provost of Louvain, furnishes us with a means of approximating its date. Berthout, then studying under Thomas at Paris, was named provost of SaintPierre in Louvain at the end of 1269 or 1270 (his predecessor died 18
November 1269 or 1270).
1. Usually this title is written in two words: Peri Hermeneias. We retain here the usage that was Thomas's own and has been restored by R.A. Gauthier, editor, Expositio libri Peryermenias, editio altera retracta, Leonine, vol. I*1 (Rome, 1989).
Since Thomas alludes to the errors of the moderni on free will (I 14), which were condemned on 10 December 1270, the opening of his book must be later than the condemnation and almost contemporaneous with Q. 6 of the De Malo and of QQ.9–13 of the Prima Secundae. As to the moment when the composition ceases, we need to situate it before the end of 1271, which was when Thomas adopted the numbering of the books of the Metaphysics of William of Moerbeke's translation.2
We can take a further step and situate the end of composition toward the middle of October 1271; on 15 October, Guillaume Berthout was probably in Louvain for business. It is likely that Thomas took the occasion of his departure to abandon this task, which he seems to have undertaken against his will,3 and it is thus that this commentary remained unfinished. Thomas however took the manuscript with him to Naples; after his death this text was sent from Naples back to Paris, along with the exposition of the Posterior Analytics, at the request of the masters of the arts faculty who had wished to possess these two books. This explains why there was no Italian edition, but only a Parisian one of these two works that were hardly known until 1275.4
The masters in arts in Paris had some reason for claiming these commentaries; they recognized in them the technique of exposition that 2. This fact is too little known by the average reader of Saint Thomas, but its importance is great. Until Moerbeke's translation, one referrred to the Metaphysics according to the translation by Michael Scot or according to the Translatio media, which was anonymous; both having omitted book Kappa, the book designated Lambda was also referred to as book XI.
William of Moerbeke is the first to translate book Kappa, which in his translation will become XI, while the book Lambda will become book XII. This criterion has permitted us to divide Saint Thomas's works into two series, the one which dates before the Moerbecana, where the book Lambda is called XI, the other which dates from after the Moerbecana, when book Lambda is called XII. The exposition of the Peryermenias belongs in the first series, which also includes the first works from Saint Thomas's second period of teaching at Paris: the De unitate intellectus, the questions De malo, the Prima secundae in its entirety. The second series includes the Secunda Secundae (beginning with q, 1, a.8, arg. 1), the Commentary on the Ethics (beginning from 16), a part of the Commentary on the Metaphysics, the commentaries on De causis, De caelo, and De generatione, the De substanciis separatis and the Tertia Pars. The key date, which is to say the date when Saint Thomas knew the Moerbecana of the Metaphysics, is situated toward the middle or the end of 1271.
(R.A. Gauthier, Préface to the Expositio libri Peryermenias, Leonine, I*1, pp. 85–86; see also on this point the Somme contre les gentils, introduction, chap. II, pp. 62–67, where the author recommends the flexibility necessary in using this criterion).
3. After everything that we have said, it will be understood that the evocation in his dedication of multiplices occupationum mearum sollicitudines may not be a simple figure of speech.
4. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. I*1, pp. 85*–88*.
Thomas had borrowed from them (something he had already done in the Sententia libri De anima). Here, in any case, the sententia, which consists of a simple doctrinal summary, gives way rather frequently to the explication of the letter (this is without doubt why, in his dedication, he himself designates his work as an expositio).5 As to the content properly speaking, it is not possible to sum up a treatise of logic, but we could say that, with some exceptions, Thomas entrusted himself to two principal sources, Boethius and Ammonius, whom he docilely follows without ever naming them, except when he departs from their views—faithful in this to the custom of all his contemporaries. He adds to them sometimes certain things from his own genius: "In the first place concision and clarity . . . [but] particularly a coherent philosophy, which everywhere underlies the technical explanations and assures their intelligibility."6
The Expositio Libri Posteriorum
This book is situated in the immediate temporal neighborhood of the commentary on the Peryermenias. Father Gauthier has been able to establish that chapters I 1–
26 of the commentary on the Posteriora still use the ancient text by James of Venice, but that Thomas had already begun to familiariaze himself with Moerbeke's translation. To all appearances, he must have received the translatio moerbecana of the Posterior Analytics almost at the same time as the translation of the Metaphysics, toward the middle of 1271. We can therefore date from this moment the beginning of this new commentary, and perhaps it is not too artificial to see it immediately succeeding the Peryermenias (halted in October, let us recall). As he hardly had leisure to work on it, the commentary was not at all advanced when he had to leave Paris for Naples at Easter 1272 (24 April).
Though we cannot provide certain proof, it seems that the change of place also led to a change in the translation being used: from I, 27 to II, 20, Thomas comments on Moerbeke's text. Thus the composition of the work extended from the end of 1271 in Paris to the end of 1272 in Naples.
5. For the differences among lectura, sententia, and expositio, we refer to R.A. Gauthier, "Le cours sur l' Ethica noua d'un maîtres ès arts de Paris (1235–1240)," AHDLMA 43
(1975) 71–141, cf. pp. 76–77.
6. Gauthier, ibid., pp. 82*–84*; to complete this brief presentation, see J. Isaac, Le Peri Hermeneias en Occident de Boèce a saint Thomas, Bibl., thom. 29 (Paris, 1953) (Gauthier has reservations about pp. 148–51, which gives a "displeasing image of Thomas"); G. Mura, "Ermeneutica, gnoseologia e metafisica. Attualità del commento di S. Tommaso al Perihermeneias di Aristotele," Euntes Docete 40 (1987) 361–89.
It was from Naples, too, that, toward 1275, the commentary was sent to Paris at the request of the masters of the arts faculty, who took it upon themselves to have an exemplar made, which would assure its diffusion.7
Despite their technical character, or perhaps even because of it, these two works found a rather large audience: twentyone manuscripts more or less complete for the Peryermenias; more than fiftyfour for the Posterior Analytics; as to the editions that have very often put them together, they number thirtyone (including the one in the Index Thomisticus).
The Sententia Libri Ethicorum
Trusting in some indications in Tolomeo, historians for a long time attributed this commentary to Thomas's Roman period. Progress in research has taught scholars to be wary of Tolomeo's information, and more than forty years ago Father Gauthier, in a radical change of perspective, proposed situating this commentary during the second period of teaching in Paris.8 The monumental edition that he has done since9 permits us to confirm and specify further his first judgment: the commentary on the Ethics was composed in Paris in 1271–72, as the specialists have now agreed.10
We do not need to go over here the details that led to this dating to understand that it is Thomas's adoption in Paris of the numbering of the Translatio Moerbecana's books of the Metaphysics and the parallelism between certain passages of the commentary on the Ethics and the Secunda Secundae that have been the decisive elements. Perhaps we might add—taking into account some of Gauthier's later propositions about the beginning of the composition of the Prima Secundae in 1271—
that the Secunda
7. Cf. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. I*2, pp. 50*–54' and 73*–77*; cf. above, what we have said about the Peryermenias, which followed the same course. This commentary by Saint Thomas has scarcely been studied in itself; we note the recent thesis presented by C. Marabelli, "Note preliminari allo studio del commento di S. Tommaso ai 'Secondi Analitici' di Aristotele," DTP 88 (1985) 77–88 (unfortunately prior to the new Leonine edition).
8. R.A. Gauthier, "La date du commentaire de saint Thomas sur l'Ethique à Nicomaque," RTAM 18 (1951) 66–105; a summary of prior hesitations on the point may be found there, but also some views that have been modified a bit by what followed.
9. Cf. Sententia libri Ethicorum, Leonine, vol. 47/1 and 2, 1969; for anyone who would have difficulty in mastering the learned Latin of the Preface, we refer to the summary of it that the author has given in the Leonine, vol. 48, pp. i–xxv, "Saint Thomas et l'Ethique à Nicomaque."
10. Cf. O. Lottin, BTAM 6 (1950–1953), no. 1799, p. 550; L.J. Bataillon, BT 9 (1954–56) no. 120, pp. 89–91; Eschmann, A Catalogue, pp. 404–5; Weisheipl, p. 380. C. Vansteenkiste, RLT 4
(1972) no. 58, pp. 29–30, leans toward a more ancient date (with a review of the diverse earlier opinions).
Secundae probably was not begun before the long vacations of that same year.
We cannot enter here into the contents of the commentary without being led to trace the outlines of Thomist moral teaching, and that would cause us to encroach on our future volume. The work is indeed a Sententia, which is to say a summary and rather doctrinal explication, and not an expositio, an indepth commentary with textual discussions. This is important, we hasten to say, if we are to appreciate correctly Thomas's effort visàvis Aristotle: he did not wish to make a critical commentary, and his title sufficiently indicates as much.
But if we wish to avoid equivocations, we must also add that as a commentator Thomas does not leave Aristotle to himself. It has too often been said that Thomas was the most faithful and penetrating of the commentators on Aristotle; this is to forget that between their two moralities lies the entire difference added by the Gospel.
While Aristotle moves in the order of a deeply pagan ethic, Thomas places himself explicitly in the Christian perspective and arranges things so as to have the Philosopher speak of the contemplative finality in which Thomas himself sees the happiness of beatitude.11 Father Gauthier explains better than anyone else what has happened: "So that Aristotle's ethics, which hardly speaks of anything other than man, can speak of God, Saint Thomas, without wishing it, without his even noticing it, had to transform it profoundly. If he had wanted to perform the work of a historian or of a critic, a historian or critic would have been right to judge his work and to find it wanting. But Thomas wanted only to compose a work of wisdom."12
We will doubtless better understand what Thomas wanted to do if we recall that these commentaries were not courses he would have given to his students. They are rather the equivalent of a personal reading made with pen in hand to constrain himself to penetrate the text of Aristotle in order to prepare himself for the composition of the moral part of the
11. This had already been properly seen by F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. II: Mediaeval Philosophy. Augustine to Scotus (London, 1959), chap. 39, PP. 398–411. On this see also A. Thiry. "Saint Thomas et la morale d'Aristote," in Aristote et saint Thomas d'Aquin, pp. 229–58; L. Elders, "Saint Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics," in same author's Autour de saint Thomas, pp. 77–122.
12. Leonine, vol. 48, pp. xxiv–xxv; we also refer with the author to the deliberately paradoxical pages where he shows that the affirmation of God as the highest end of man led Thomas to turn the Aristotelian doctrine of phronesis upside down, R.A. Gauthier, Aristote. L'Ethique à Nicomaque (2d ed., Louvain, 1970), vol. I, 1, pp. 273–83; see ibid., pp. 128–34, for the radical change between Aristotle and Thomas as well as the reason for the attacks by St. Bonaventure against the Nicomachean Ethics read by the masters in arts.
Summa theologiae. He had already used this procedure with the Sententia libri De anima; with a firm constancy he continued his effort until the end. There is here in any event a new element testified to by a rather little known work.
The Tabula Libri Ethicorum
We have already spoken briefly of this Table with respect to the attention that Thomas continued to devote to the literary output of his master, Albert. It is not idle to return to it here, for it is rich in teachings that enable us to achieve a better familiarity with our author.
This curious little work posed a unique problem to the editors of the Leonine edition: never published prior to 1971 and totally forgotten since the fifteenth century, it was not mentioned by any historian either. It appears however in a good place in one of the most ancient (25 February 1304) bookseller's lists of Thomas's works as an exemplar in eight pieces, that could be borrowed for the sum of five deniers.13 Furthermore, it furnished Stephen Tempier with the material for one of the propositions he condemned in 1277. We have thus from two different sources a double confirmation of its authenticity and its ancient diffusion.14
As its name indicates, this is a table of contents and, more precisely, what we would call today an index of the principal themes (index rerum notabilium) of the Nicomachean Ethics and the commentary that Albert the Great had once made on it. At the time when he was preparing himself to compose the moral section of the Summa theologiae, Thomas returned to these things in depth: he proceeded with a written commentary on this work by Aristotle; he also reviews the commentary of his former master, Albert, and has his secretaries compile files that indicate the principal references in both authors. That this work first took the form of files is clear enough from the fact that we can find some repetitions, some sentences out of place, and other anomalies that would certainly have been noticed and eliminated if the author had been able to supervise the clean copy.15
This work remains incomplete, and it is plausible that his own work
13. Chartul. II, no. 642, p. 108; cf. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. 48, pp. B 5–6.
14. The condemned proposition was no. 178: "Quod finis terribilium est mors" ( Chartul. no. 473, P. 553); cf. R. Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles, pp. 304–7 (proposition 213 in his set). Note in Leonine, vol. 48, the addition by Gauthier to the list of the Addenda et emendanda (B 50), where he emphasizes that this expression is common in Thomas, who uses it seven times outside of the Tabula; the context of these seven uses takes away any possibility of a bad interpretation; it is therefore from the Tabula that the condemned proposition would have been extracted.
15. Cf. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. 48, pp. B 45–47.
had convinced Thomas that he no longer needed to depend on the master who had guided his first steps. Such as it is, however, it is not only a revelation of the seriousness with which Thomas was preparing to write the Secunda Pars; it also casts a precise light on his work methods. Studying the files of the Tabula confirms what we had sensed during the composition of the Catena aurea: Thomas's secretaries were not simple copyists writing under dictation or pure executants. He allowed them a certain liberty, reserving to himself the final touch when it came time to put things in definitive form. In the present case, this method explains not only the blemishes that we have noticed but, in addition, certain things that Thomas himself could not have written, such as a repetition of exegeses that he had already chosen to discard. That these have come down to us shows only that he was not able to reread this work, and even perhaps that it was not intended for publication.
This Table interestly is the second example of this genre that we know of. Before the summer of 1259, at the time of his first teaching assignment in Paris therefore, Thomas had had copied for his own use a Corpus of the Parua naturalia by Saint Albert. Now the first notebook of this volume contains precisely a table of Albert's commentary on the Physics, written by the person designated as secretary D, for lack of knowledge of his name. Perhaps Thomas had other labors of this kind carried out for him; these suffice to show that Thomas did not disdain using those work instruments that have remained our own.16
This new stroke to Thomas's portrait is perhaps less surprising than those that come from his writing, but it does not contradict them. Well before Gils's conclusions were known, and solely on the basis of the particularities of the Tabula's composition, Gauthier felt himself entitled to write that he had found in this work all the characteristic traits of our author: "His text of Aristotle, his devotion to Saint Albert, the expressions that were common to him and more generally that mixture of carefulness and of negligence, of clarity of thought and liberty of form, which characterize his intellectual physiognomy, those thousand details that a counterfeiter could not have copied."17
As to the date of the composition of the Tabula, Gauthier thinks "in the neighborhood of 1270"; this springs from everything that the text of 16. Cf. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. 48, pp. B 51–55; for secretary D, see A. Dondaine, Secrétaires de saint Thomas, pp. 26–40 and 185–98.
17. Ibid., p. B 51; our emphasis.
Aristotle used for this work suggests. But it is also consistent with everything we know otherwise. The date would also have the advantage of responding to the question posed by the long interval separating the Prima Pars from the Prima Secundae. If Thomas's numerous other occupations did not permit him to devote himself to the composition of the Summa between September 1268 and the beginning of 1271, he nevertheless did not cease thinking about it, and the composition of the Tabula libri Ethicorum is an eloquent indication of this.
Commentaries on the Physics and the Metaphysics
We cannot deal fully with the numerous commentaries that date from this period; we must, therefore, speak briefly of them, for the astonishing multiplication in Thomas's literary output—one perhaps ought to say his "explosion"—poses a problem to the researcher. Not only the problem of their order—since we must conceive of their composition as almost simultaneous, the dates necessarily overlap one another—but indeed we must question the very possibility of so many publications within the given time.
The commentary on the eight books of the Physics had once been assigned by Mandonnet to the Roman period, in 1265, prior to the Prima Pars. But he was little followed in this view. Several authors doubted the dating (Grabmann, Castagnoli, Mansion), and Eschmann proposed situating the commentary in Paris between 1268
and 1271. More recently, Weisheipl has maintained that, in this work, Thomas refers indifferently to book Lambda of the Metaphysics as Book XI or XII; this would signify that he had learned of the existence of the Book Kappa while writing the commentary and would invite us to situate its composition during the year 1271, since it is toward the middle of that year that this change in title began to appear.18 Surprised by this affirmation, Father Gauthier was kind enough to perform for us a provisional search of the manuscripts, from which it is clear that Thomas speaks only of a Book XI; the error came in with the printed edition. Gauthier proposes the scholastic year 1268–69 as the date, perhaps the beginning of the second period of teaching in Paris.19 Thomas's motives for these labors are certainly to be found in the
18. Weisheipl, pp. 375–76, a correction from in 1983, but without other proof for this affirmation.
29. Leonine, vol. 45/1, p. 270* a, with the reference to a more comprehensive study by Mansion; once again I thank Father Gauthier for the research he performed on this occasion.
interest of Aristotle's work in itself; we recall that it opens with an entire book dedicated to disengaging the principles of becoming and of natural beings, and it closes with the demonstration of the existence of the Prime Mover.20
In preparation for many years, the Sententia super Metaphysicam poses several formidable problems for the editors: its size, the versions of the text of Aristotle Thomas used (not fewer than five it seems), and also its date. The examination of the original manuscript allows us to understand that Thomas could not have followed the order of Aristotle's books in the commentary and that, in addition, he returned to the parts already composed to make some corrections.
Even less than in other cases, we cannot enter here into these questions, which are highly complex; suffice it to say that the way of quoting book Lambda of the Metaphysics always serves as a valuable criterion for establishing the date of composition. Greatly simplifying the most reliable results at which researchers have arrived, we have said that Thomas began to designate book Lambda as Book XII beginning with the commentary on Book VII and that he does not change until the end of Book XII; this part cannot therefore have been composed before the beginning of 1271. The beginning of the commentary could therefore date from the university year 1270–71, but Books II and III pose a special problem; they could be the fruit either of selfcorrection or even of a second redaction, after the change in the name of Book Lambda went into effect (thus, toward the end of 1271 at the earliest). If we retain these dates—adapted from those proposed by Duin21—
composition could have occurred in Paris, at least in part, but authors such as Eschmann and Weisheipl also think it may have been Naples.22 James Doig also leaves open this hypothesis, which
20. The text may be found in Leonine, vol. 2, 1884 (although the Latin text of Aristotle may not be the one that Saint Thomas knew) reproduced with some changes in the presentation by P.M. Maggiolo (Turin, 1954). An English translation exists: Thomas De Aquino, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, trans. R. J. Blackwell, R. J. Spath, and W. E.
Thirlkel, intro, by V. J. Bourke (New Haven, 1963). For the contents of this work, we refer to the rapid but precise presentation by L. Elders, "St. Thomas Aquinas' Commentary on the Physics of Aristotle," in Autour de saint Thomas, vol. 1, pp. 23–63; of. B. Harkins, God in St. Thomas' Commentaries on Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics, diss. Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Rome, 1986); J.M. Vernier, "Physique aristotélicienne et métaphysique Thomiste," RT 91 (1991) 5–33; 393–413.
21. J. J. Duin, "Nouvelles précisions sur la chronologie du Commentum in Metaphysicam de S. Thomas," RPL 53 (1955) 511–24; this highly technical study sums up and renders more precise the previous labors by Th. Käppelli and A. Dondaine on the Naples manuscript.
22. Eschmann, "A Catalogue," p. 404; Weisheipl, pp. 412–13.
does not exclude the possibility of a first version going back to the Roman period.23 As long as the critical edition remains unpublished, we cannot hope for anything better than these approximations.24 The only, thing that researchers are entirely certain of is that the commentary on the Metaphysics is prior to the commentary on De caelo et mundo.
Uncompleted Works
Sententia libri Politicorum
Ever since Tolomeo,25 it has been known that this work was left unfinished; completed by Peter of Auvergne, its authentic portion ceases at Book III 6. However, all of the printed editions up until the Leonine version in 1971 have transmitted a ''complete text" in eight Books, which can be explained because they all go back to the edition done in Rome by Louis of Valencia, in 1492. This is a first reason to be wary of current editions, but there is a second that prevents us from using even the first three Books with confidence: the first editor pitilessly mutilated Thomas's text, eliminating Greek words that Thomas had obtained from William of Moerbeke's translation as well as their explanations and "improving" the author's Latin to render it more in keeping with the taste of Renaissance humanists.26 The Leonine text is therefore not just recommended here, it is indispensable.
After the research performed by the Leonine editors and in the current state of the documentation (which is to say, while the critical edition of Albert's commentary on the Politics remains undone), it seems indeed that
23. J. C. Doig, Aquinas on the Metaphysics. A HistoricoDoctrinal Study of the Commentary on the Metphysics (The Hague, 1972); this book is the first important historical monograph dedicated to the whole commentary and focuses notably on comparing Avicenna's exegesis, Averroes's and Albertus Magnus's, with Thomas's who takes his position in relation to them. Rather cavalierly treated by V. J. Bourke [ The Thomist 37 (1973) 241–43], the author has defended the seriousness of his work (ibid., pp. 826–42), but his interpretation of Thomas's metaphysics has been questioned by other authors ( RLT 7, 1975, no. 557, pp. 208–18, in part by G. Perini, who returns to the point at greater length in DTP 77 (1974) 206–45).
24. This book has been less studied than one would expect. We mention here several of the more recent studies: S. Mansion, "L'intelligibilité métaphysique d'après le Prooemium du Commentaire de saint Thomas à Métaphysique d'Aristote," RFNS 70 (1978) 49–62; L. Elders, "St. Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle," in the same author's Autour de saint Thomas d'Aquin, vol. 1, pp. 123–45; J. F. Wippel, "The Latin Avicenna as a Source of Thomas Aquinas's Metaphysics," FZPT 37 (1990) 51–90.
25. Tolomeo XXIII 11 (ed. Dondaine, p. 125): "Scripsit etiam super physicam, et super de caelo, et super de generatione sed non complevit, et similiter politicam sed hos libros complevit magister Petrus de Alvernia fidelissimus discipulus eius."
26. Cf. C. Martin, "The Vulgate Text of Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Politics," Dominican Studies 5 (1952) 35–64; Préface to the edition of the text in the Leonine, vol. 48, pp. A 15–18.
Thomas's commentary is later than Albert's, and that he had a certain knowledge of his master's text and drew certain advantages from it. To all appearances, this commentary is connected to the same period in Paris as the preceding works. As the indications in the manuscript tradition do not provide us with certainty, it is the frequent quotations from this book in the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae that led Eschmann to propose a more or less simultaneous composition of a paraphrase of Aristotle and of that part of the Summa; the Leonine editors align themselves with his proposition.27
De caelo et mundo
For this work we have the good fortune of knowing with certainty the terminus post quem of Thomas's commentary. He used Simplicius's commentary on this book of Aristotle's in the version that William of Moerbeke had provided, and Moerbeke dates his translation 5 June 1271. Thomas's text is therefore necessarily later than that date, but in addition, he shows himself much more familiar with this work by Simplicius than he was when he commented on Book Lambda of the Metaphysics, where he still makes certain errors concerning the ancient astronomers. The latter circumstance permits us therefore to situate it after the Metaphysics and probably in Naples in 1272–73.28 Did illness and death prevent Thomas from completing this commentary? Perhaps it was simply overcommitment. In any case, while Aristotle's work numbers four books, Thomas's stops a little after the beginning of Book III.29
As to the subject, it deals with cosmology and we find in it some quite probing considerations, without interest for our immediate purposes, on the universe, celestial bodies, their incorruptibility, the divinity of the heavens, their animation, eternity, etc. It is clear that, here more than elsewhere, Thomas reinterprets Aristotle in the direction of the Christian faith, and we can see this quite well when he again takes up the question 27. Cf. Eschmann, "A Catalogue," p. 405; Leonine, vol. 48, p. A 8, with reference to the different authors; as to the contents, we must wait for studies based on the new edition, but we can consult H. Keraly, Préface à la Politique, AvantPropos, trans, and explanation (Paris, 1974); J. Quillet, "L'art de la politique selon saint Thomas," MM 19 (1988) 278–85.
28. The fact that the masters of arts, in their letter to the general chapter after Thomas's death, claim the Simplicius text that he had promised them presupposes that this book was not to be found in Paris, of. Chartul. , no. 447, P. 505.
29. See the text in the Leonine, vol. 3 (1886), reprinted in the edition of A. Spiazzi (Turin, 1952) (on vols. 2 and 3 of the Leonine, already better than vol. 1, cf. Bataillon, L'édition léonine, pp. 456–57); for questions of dating, of. Eschmann, "A Catalogue," p. 402; Weisheipl, pp. 376–77.
of the eternity of the world. All this testifies to the knowledge and erudition of our author, but this Aristotelian cosmology would have for us only historical interest if Thomas had not completed it with his own metaphysical views, which still deserve to be better known.30
De generatione et corruptione
This, too, is an incomplete commentary, barely begun, one ought to say, since Thomas did not even finish the fifth chapter of Book I (there are two books in Aristotle's text).31 The text is certainly later than the commentaries on the De caelo and on the Physics since Thomas refers explicitly to these two works.32 In his deposition during the process in Naples, William of Tocco says that he saw the saint in the process of writing this book and he even thought that it was his last work in philosophy.33 Everthing agrees therefore in situating this work in Naples in 1272 or 1273, in the last month of the master's activity (before December 1273).
Super Meteora
Although it too was not finished, the Super Meteora does not permit any precise conclusions as to its date of composition. The translation of Aristotle's treatise by William of Moerbeke, completed in 1260, was already known among the Latins in 1267. Thomas's commentary theoretically could have been done around that date;
but the majority of authors situate it during his second period of teaching in Paris, or even after his return to Naples, sometime between 1269 and 1273.34 A new element, however, has to be placed in the file, since it has been noticed that Thomas's text was used by Mahieu le Vilain in his translation of the Meteora, a work that his editors inclined to place before 1270. If that date were certain, this would invite us to place Thomas's commentary even 30. We can get a more complete idea of this book thanks to J. A. Weisheipl, "The Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas on the De caelo of Aristotle," Sapientia (Buenos Aires) 29
(1974) 11–34; L. J. Elders, "Le commentaire de saint Thomas d'Aquin sur le De caelo d'Aristote," in Proceedings of the World Congress on Aristotle (Thessaloniki August 7–14, 1978) vol. II (Athens, 1981), pp. 173–87; A. Caparello, "La terminologia greca nel Commentario al De caelo: Tommaso d'Aquino e lingua greca,'' Angelicum 55 (1978) 414–57.
31. The text from the Leonine, vol. 3, PP. 261–322, is reprinted by Spiazzi (Turin, 1952); in the two volumes we find in addition the apocryphal texts, inspired by Saint Albert, with which Thomas's text had been completed.
32. De generatione, lect. 7 (Spiazzi, no. 52): manifestavimus in VIII Physic. et in I De caelo.
33. Naples 58, p. 345: "vidi eum scribentem super librum 'De generatione et corruptione', quod credit fuisse ultimum opus suum in philosophia."
34. Cf. Grabmann, Werke, p. 278; Eschmann, "A Catalogue," pp. 402–3; Weisheipl, pp. 377–78.
earlier. The only plausible thing here would be its priority in connection to Mahieu, but we cannot go much further with this investigation until the critical edition is completed.35
The text circulated in printed editions up until the end of the nineteenth century was rather gravely deficient, for it was the edition that appeared in Venice in 1532 and attributes to Thomas a complete commentary on the four books. We have known for some time that he commented on only two of them. The edition produced by the Leonine commission in 1886 cleared the text of these inauthentic additions, but it suffers in turn from the narrowness of its documentary base (only two manuscripts were used); it takes too much away from the Venetian edition and does not reproduce Thomas's text in its integral character.36 Dondaine and Bataillon's work on the manuscript tradition—"perhaps the most disordered among those which have transmitted Saint Thomas's works to us"—allowed them to consult about a dozen other manuscripts and to restore to our author three supplementary lessons. This permits them to assure us that "Saint Thomas explicated the Meteora up until the next to last chapter of Book II."37 In any case, a revised the edition, which would take into account these new data, remains to be done.38
Thomas and Aristotle
In and of itself, this list of commentaries on Aristotle's works would suffice to testify to the intensity of the work Thomas carried out and to its rapidity. As to its quality, opinions differ. Soon after his death, his adversaries very seriously put in doubt his fidelity to Aristotle on some specific points, as well as the way in which he applies the notion of scientia to theology. On this point Thomas's followers have to concede that their master had to "extend" the Philosopher.39
35. Cf. K. White, "Three Previously Unpublished Chapters from St. Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Meteora: Sentencia super Meteora 2, 13–15," MS 54 (1992) 49–
93, cf. pp. 67–68, notes 43–45, referring to Mahieu le Vilain, Les Metheores d' Aristote: Traduction du XIIIe, sièle publiée pour la première fois, ed. Rolf Edgren (Uppsala, 1945), pp. viii–xvi.
36. Leonine, vol. 3, PP. 323–421 (the apocryphal text of Books III and IV is reproduced in an appendix in the same volume); the same remarks apply to the edition by Spiazzi, who reprints this volume from the Leonine edition.
37. A. Dondaine and L.J. Bataillon, "Le commentaire de saint Thomas sur les Météores," AFP 36 (1966) 81–152.
38. K. White, who has published these three supplementary readings (see above, note 35), is also preparing this new Leonine edition. Until that edition is ready, all technical studies on Thomas's Greek remain hampered by uncertainty, cf. A. Caparello, "Terminologia greca tomista nel 'commentarium ad Meteorologica,'" Sacra Doctrina 23, no. 87 (1978) 243–87.
39. Cf. C. Dumont, "La réflexion sur la méthode théologique. Un moment capital: le dilemme posé au XIIIe siècle," NRT 83 (1961) 1034–1050; 84 (1962) 17–35; cf. p. 30.
Without going over this whole history once again, let us recall the way in which Martin Grabmann synthesized it threequarters of a century ago.40 On the question of the use that can be made of these commentaries to reconstruct Thomas's thought, the Thomists have responded in three different ways. The first group has emphasized the objectivity and fidelity of the commentator, whose personal opinion always remains in reserve. To put it in the words of Charles Jourdain, "Saint Thomas's commentaries . . . rarely offer a trace of his own opinions. He speaks in them almost always according to Aristotle, rarely as himself: we could count the passages where he departs from that rule." Grabmann noted that, while this is applicable to a certain extent for certain commentaries, we must not extend it to other texts without qualification.
Contrary to this first position, another group (among its members L. Schütz and E. Rolfes) emphasized that Thomas does not refrain at all from expressing his personal point of view, rectifying and amplifying Aristotle when he thinks it necessary; thus we can depend on these commentaries to reconstruct Thomas's thought. Between these first two groups, a third has tried to find an intermediary position that is less summary: it maintains that there is basically an objective fidelity in the interpretation, but since Thomas also expresses his point of view, we can use these commentaries to reconstruct his thinking each time that it matches a doctrine expressed in other works. Grabmann places himself in the third group, but we can also count among authors of this type Eschmann, Chenu, or Gilson, for example.
This way of posing the problem had already run its course in the second quarter of the twentieth century;41 without losing all relevance, this approach gave way long ago to more radical questions among many contemporary authors who question not only the originality of the Thomist exegesis, but even more its fidelity.
As to the originality of the method and the technique, the reason for these has been understood for a long time: from the first labors of Dom Lottin to the more recent research by Father Gauthier, no one maintains any longer, as Mandonnet once did, that Thomas was the inventor of literal exegesis of this material. Far from being particularly original, he does
40.M. Grabmann, "Die Aristoteleskommentare des heiligen Thomas von Aquin," in same author's Mittelalterliche Geistesleben I (Munich, 1926), pp. 266–313; cf. pp. 297–300 for a summary of the three contending positions.
41.See an illustration of this in the study by T. R. Heath, "St. Thomas and the Aristotelian Metaphysics," NS 34 (1960) 428–60, and the further refinements of W. H. Turner, "St.
Thomas's Exposition of Aristotle. A Rejoinder," NS 35 (1961) 210–24.
only what others had been doing in the arts faculty in Paris since around 1230.42 This does not take away all merit from him in this field, since Thomas knew how to get rather remarkable results out of this instrument, but it leads us closer to the truth about the facts.
As to the fidelity of this exegesis to Aristotle, the historians have generally become more and more critical. The commentary is certainly recognized as both intelligent and profound, frequently literal, but it has nonetheless slanted Aristotle's teaching on certain decisive points, such as where the commentary on the Ethics is guided by the explicitly Christian idea of the beatific vision,43 or where the Metaphysics is oriented toward a metaphysics of being, which would have been entirely foreign to Aristotle.44 This is to say nothing of the creationist metaphysics or the abandonment of polytheism! As it was once pleasantly put by one of the most profound contemporary interpreters, Thomas "baptized" Aristotle,45 unless one prefers to say with Gauthier that Thomas inherited an Aristotle "already entirely Christian" and that his effort was to give him a certain purity, to make him a new instrument of his own theological reflection.46 Even those who today want to defend Thomas's substantial fidelity to Aristotle must admit that it takes place by means of a ''deepening and surpassing of Aristotle's text."47
To our way of thinking, many errors can be avoided if we take into account Thomas's real intention. According to a formula that he frequently repeats—and not only about Aristotle—he wishes to uncover the intentio auctoris. That is one of the rules of the expositio reuerentialis, let us say of the medieval hermeneutic, whose end is to find what the author "wished to say." In order to understand Aristotle we must therefore exert ourselves to find the overall movement of his thought and to recall the truth in search of which he set out and that he seeks, more or less clumsily, to express. At this precise point, Thomas feels himself authorized to substitute for Aristotle in order to "extend" him and make him say some things
42. In 1934, Dom Lottin wrote: "It is capricious to see in S. Thomas Aquinas the creator of literal exegesis on these subjects"; see Psychologie et Morale, vol. 6, p. 230.
43. Cf. H. V. Jaffa, Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics (Chicago, 1952).
44. Thus J. Owens, "Aquinas as Aristotelian Commentator," in Commemorative Studies I, pp. 213–38.
45. L.B. Geiger, "Saint Thomas et la métaphysique d'Aristote," in Aristote et Saint Thomas d'Aquin (ParisLouvain, 1957), pp. 175–220, especially p. 179; see in the same volume the important study by D. A. Callus, "Les sources de saint Thomas," pp. 93–174.
46. R.A. Gauthier, Introduction à Anonymi Lectura in Librum De anima, p. 22.
47. The expression is from L. Elders, "Saint Thomas d'Aquin et Aristote," RT 88 (1988) 357–76.
that he would not even have been able to think. The exact historical reconstruction of Aristotle's thought does not interest him in itself. Even if his scholarly resources were less great than those of a historian today, he knew quite well what to hold on to most of the time. But he also wanted to go along further within Aristotle's aim and to lead to its fruition the intuition that he thought had been Aristotle's. Aristotle was incapable of verifying such things, owing to a lack of the light of Christian revelation, Thomas thought, but this is what he "wanted to say."
At first sight, the historian of doctrine, formed according to the rigorous methods that are now ours, can only judge this enterprise severely. But can we expect without anachronism that Thomas would conduct himself as a twentiethcentury historian of doctrine? . . . We cannot ask from him what he does not claim to give. Without engaging in a shameless apologetic that finally does a disservice to his cause, we can say that we will appreciate his work more equitably if we remember that he undertook these commentaries in an apostolic perspective in order better to carry out his job as a theologian, and better to accomplish his labor of wisdom such as he would understand it in the double school of Saint Paul and Aristotle: to proclaim the truth and refute error.48
It certainly would not be out of place to invoke in conclusion the reflection that he made elsewhere à propos of the first steps and hesitations of the great philosophers of antiquity concerning the ultimate happiness of man. In short, with a burst of true intellectual charity, he shared the "anguish of these great spirits" who did not know that we await final felicity after this life in our knowledge of God.49 In trying to express what they had "wished to say," Thomas showed what they really sought without knowing it—as Saint Paul at Athens had met his interlocutors on the Areopagus.
Thomas and His Secretaries
The conclusion of the chapter on the Roman period emphasized the large quantity of work Thomas did during those three years. If we now cast a retrospective glance on his productivity during the second Parisian
48. For fuller developments of this subject, we refer to the enlightening explanations by Father Gauthier, Leonine, vol. 45/1, pp. 288*–94*.
49. SCG III 48. In a valuable little book which came into my hands too late to be utilized here ( Thomas von Aquin. Prologe zu den Aristoteleskommentaren, edited, translated, and introduced by F. Cheneval and R. Imbach [Frankfurt/Main, 1993]), the authors have gathered together and translated the twelve prologues to the commentaries on Aristotle, as well as the prologue to Super De causis. The careful reading of these texts is enlightening for the intentio of Thomas himself and perfectly justifies the opinions of the authors (pp. lx–lxiv), who emphasize that his purpose is to not only explain the Philosopher, but indeed to seek the truth.
period, we can only be struck with astonishment. A summary of the works probably from that epoch renders the following list: Lectura on Matthew, Lectura on John, and also, perhaps, a course on the Epistle to the Romans; the Secunda Pars of the Summa theologiae in its entirety, plus some twentyfive questions of the Tertia; a dozen or so commentaries on Aristotle, some of them unfinished, others quite huge, to which we must add the Super de causis; the Questions De malo (101 articles), De uirtutibus (36 articles), De unione Verbi incarnati (4 articles); seven series of quodlibets (176 articles); a series of 14 "opuscula," among them the De aeternitate mundi, De unitate intellectus, De perfectione uitae spiritualis, Contra retrahentes, De substantiis separatis, to mention only the most important ones.
If the historical probabilities—and sometimes the certainties—were not so strong, it would be not mere astonishment that this list would provoke but sheer incredulity.
It has been necessary, therefore, to ask and try to verify if this thing was materially possible and under what conditions. We will run through several numerical calculations that we hope will be excused by the fact that we have kept them to a bare minimum. They may be taken cum grano salis given our uncertainty on the exact dates of composition. But the accounting in the Index Thomisticus being otherwise very precise, the degree of approximation is, in short, not large.
A numerical evaluation of Thomas's work during the period that runs from October 1268 to the end of April 1272, i.e. around 1253 possible work days,50 gives a total of 4061 pages according to the Marietti manual edition (which corresponds except for a few things to as many columns of the Opera omnia in R. Busa's edition for the Index Thomisticus 51). This corresponds to an average of 3.24 pages a day, or to a daily word count of 2403 (742 words per page). If we only consider the sixteen months of the final period (1271–72)—keeping in mind the fact that certain works straddle 1 January 1271—the number rises to around 2747 pages composed in 466 days, or a daily average of 5.89 pages, clearly superior to the earlier figure.52 A final figure perhaps will help to visualize the work ac50. We have chosen—perhaps a little arbitrarily—350 work days per year, in order to take into account possible indispositions or obstacles. We can be certain that Thomas kept these to a minimum.
51. The texts commented on (the Bible or Aristotle) or the editor's notes being carefully excluded from the Marietti text, a column in Busa = 1.024 Marietti pages.
52. If we must withdraw the commentary on the Epistle to the Romans from the Parisian period and situate it at Naples, as we will see in the following chapter, the averages should be (footnote continued on next page)
complished: a typical sheet of paper in Europe today will hold around 350 closely typed words. Thomas wrote 12.48 of them a day.
This result cannot be explained by Thomas's labor alone. Several times earlier, we have had to mention the team of secretaries he had at his disposal. They became here a palpable necessity. They are already mentioned during the first stay in Paris, and their presence is discovered constantly afterward. Reginald's hand, for example, is recognizable in different manuscripts, Jacobinus of Asti's also perhaps. Though we cannot always identify their handwriting, we know the names of several secretaries: Raymond Severi, Nicholas of Marsillac, Peter of Andria were, all three, Dominicans. Evan Garvit, a secular cleric of whom we will soon have to speak again, may have been a professional secretary, while Léger of Besançon, the reporter on the Lectura super Matthaeum, seems to have been only Thomas's student.53
Tocco frequently repeats that Thomas spent most of his time writing or, better, dictating.54 We may suppose that the second occupation came to predominate with time, for the rare autographs that have come down to us are of works that belong to the first part of his career ( Super Isaiam, Super Boetium, Sentences III). The Contra Gentiles seems to be the last known example. Perhaps Thomas noted that his own handwriting was too difficult for the average scribe to decipher, but we have proof of the existence of secretaries from his start as a teacher. And we also know that he had the habit of dictating to several persons simultaneously.
Thus Bartholomew of Capua, recounting the way in which Thomas had organized his days, reports that after having celebrated Mass and given his course, "he began writing and dictating to several secretaries."55 Tocco also echoes the same fact that he claims to have learned from the "true relation of his socius, from his students and his secretaries." According to these witnesses, the master "dictated at the same time on diverse subjects (footnote continued from previous page)
modified as follows: for the whole period 1268–72, we then have a total of 3896.3 pages and a daily average of 3.10 pages (2298 words); for the last sixteen months, we would have a total of 2581 pages and the average would be 5.50 pages a day (or 4081 words; 11.65 close pages in today's typical typed format).
53. We should refer here to the master work by A. Dondaine, Secrétaires de saint Thomas (Rome, 1956), particularly chaps. I 1, pp. 1–25, and II 4, pp. 186–208, and to the important study by H.D. Saffrey, "Saint Thomas d'Aquin et ses secrétaires," RSPT 41 (1957) 49–74. See also G. Cappelluti, "Fra Pietro di Andria e i Segretari di S. Tommaso," Memorie Domenicane 6 (1975) 151–65.
54. Ystoria 28, p. 291; 29, p. 295; 30, p. 299 (Tocco 28–50, pp. 102–5).
55. Naples 77, P. 373: "ponebat se ad scribendum et dictandum pluribus scriptoribus."
to three secretaries and sometimes four."56 Tocco continues with an anecdote from Thomas's secretary (scriptor suus) Evan Garvit, a Breton from the diocese of Tréguier, according to whom "after dictating to him and to two other secretaries that he [Thomas] had, sitting to rest for a bit, he fell asleep and continued dictating even while sleeping."57 Whatever interpretation should be given to this strange way of dictating, the story is rich in information: we would retain from it another testimony to a multiplicity of simultaneous secretaries, of whom one, the secretary named, was a secular cleric.58 But we also see Thomas's weariness.
Simultaneous dictation to several secretaries is not unknown in history. The fact is reported of Caesar and of Napoleon. In our day, we are not astonished to see chess players able to play several games simultaneously. Examples of this kind doubtless help us to understand something of what may have happened in Thomas's case. His legendary abstractio mentis was then the indispensable condition to carry out all these works. But we are also led to think he had established a real organization and a well thought out method to speed up his work. We glimpse it in the composition of the Catena aurea and the considerable documentary research that it presupposes. We approach even closer to it with the De ueritate—where the files Thomas used are mentioned. And we touch it with our finger, so to speak, with the Tabula Libri Ethicorum, which we have, almost in the rough state of the work of the secretaries, prior to the master's revision.59
A curious example will perhaps cast some additional light on Thomas's work methods. It has been long noted that the text of the IIa IIae q. 10 a. 12 (Utrum pueri Iudaeorum . . . sint inuitis parentibus baptizandi) is a literal repetition (including both arguments and responses) of Quodlibet II q. 4 a. 2 [7], with the exception of an omission through homoeoteleuton
56. Ystoria 18, p. 253 (Tocco 17, p. 89): "Nam ut uera relatione sui socii et suorum studentium et scriptorum ueraciter est compertum, predictus doctor de diversis materiis tribus scriptoribus et aliquando quatuor in sua camera . . . dictabat."
57. "De quo (Thoma) retulit scriptor suus, quidam Bricto, Euenus Garuith Trecorensis dyocesis, quod postquam dictauerat sibi et duobus aliis scriptoribus quos habebat, tanquam fessus pre labore dictandi, ponebat se dictus doctor pro pausationis gratia ad quietem, in qua etiam dormiendo dictabat." Note the Garuith (usually Garnit according to Prümmer).
There were also doubts about his home diocese: Tréuier in Brittany, or Cork in Ireland. Le BrunGouanvic (in a note on this passage) has reestablished the correct orthography of his name and says that no MS has the reading Crocarensis.
58. We should not be surprised to see a secular in Thomas's service. It was expressly provided that seculars could be employed as secretaries. Cf. Humbert of Romans, De vita regulari, II, pp. 267–68.
59. Tugwell, p. 616, expresses his incredulity on this. In our opinion, he has not sufficiently explored the way we should read these data.
and some small copyist's errors. We might think here that Thomas gave the text to one of his assistants to be recopied and did not reread it. Without always using exceptional cases like this one, we may suppose that the secretaries also frequently prepared materials that the master only had to put into proper form. Every professor who has benefitted from the collaboration of a competent assistant will easily understand the procedure. We would not be going too far, therefore, we believe, in portraying Thomas's collaborators as organized into a veritable workshop for literary production—according to the wellknown example of the schools of painting, to say nothing of the "ghostwriters"well known in literary circles. There is hardly any other plausible way to explain Thomas's productivity.
The text quoted on the preceding page that draws attention to Thomas's fatigue underscores another aspect of these matters too little noticed: only late evenings or even allnight work permitted Thomas to address all these fronts at the same time, and that clearly left him subject to the consequences of excess. Falling asleep wherever he happened to be was the most benign form this took. Accidents ensued sometimes—we have a memory of Thomas burning himself with a candle without noticing it while he was dictating something on the Trinity.60 Reginald also remembered having been awakened during the night to hear dictated a passage on Isaiah.
But while Reginald slept, Thomas was awake and prayed or reflected aloud.61
Though well known, these stories are often discounted because of their anecdotal aspect or the pious interpretations that accompany them. It would be a shame because of these factors to neglect the real facts that they report, though we need not put them in the foreground. Mentalité history has recommended for a long time that researchers read miracula as if they were palimpsests.62 If we keep all that in mind, we will easily understand that Tocco's story about the last days in Naples only relates the strict truth and that Thomas's regime then was probably the same that he had followed for a long time: 60. Ystoria 47, P. 348 (Tocco 47, P. 121). This doubtless refers to the Super Boetium De Trinitate, and therefore takes us back to the first stay in Paris.
61. Ystoria 31, p. 302 (Tocco 31, P. 105); Naples 59, P. 346; 93, P. 399. John Giudice, who lived close by Thomas's cell, reports a similar fact: "frequenter audiuit ipsum loquentem cum aliquo et sepius disputantem, cum solus et sine socio in ipsa (cella) maneret" ( Ystoria 31, P. 304; fourth version of Tocco: not in the Fontes).
62. Cf. G. Bedouelle, L'histoire de l'Eglise. Science humaine ou théologie? (Paris, 1992), pp. 44ff.
Every day, Friar Thomas celebrated Mass early in the morning in the chapel of Saint Nicholas. Another priest immediately followed him, who celebrated mass in turn. After having heard it, [Thomas] took off his [priestly] vestments, and immediately gave his course. That done, he began writing and dictating to several secretaries. After that, he ate, returned to his room where he attended to divine things until rest time. After rest, he began again to write, and it was thus that he ordered his whole life to God.63
Certainly, there is nothing here but what was very ordinary for a religious of that time, but it is hardly necessary to question the text to understand that Thomas did not lose a minute from morning until evening. When the biographers mention his massive productivity, they willingly see something miraculous in it. If there was a miracle, it should perhaps be seen in the fact that he kept this pace with increasing intensity for some twentyfive years.
At the end of this second period of teaching in Paris, so rich in controversies, in publications, in Thomas's own labors—doubtless in human contacts also, but contacts that escape us and that we can only suspect—we glimpse a man at the height of his powers, in full mastery of his knowledge, overflowing with activity and projects.
We already know from his reactions in the controversies he got mixed up in that he remained true to himself, lively and impatient, without overindulgence for the bad faith he detected in some adversaries or for their intellectual limitations. However, if we do not wish to rest content with appearances, we must try to see behind all this to what may still reveal something of his personality to us. In that period, we may remark in his writings a rather clearly perceptible change in his positions in several areas. And this perhaps allows us to see a certain modification in his spiritual physiognomy.
Dom Lottin had already noted this shift with respect to Thomas's views on free will between Question 6 of the De malo and Questions 9 and 10 of the Prima Secundae,64 where we see a much more nuanced explanation of the causes that result in the free act. While earlier, reason alone seemed involved—the freedom of the deliberative will being based on the indeterminacy of the preceding judgment—Thomas henceforth underscores the confluence of four factors: reason as formal cause;
the passions of the
63. Bartholomew of Capua: Naples 77, P. 373.
64. O. Lottin, Psychologie et morale, vol. 1, pp. 225–62.
sensitive appetite, which influence the way in which the object is presented to the will; the will that moves itself because of the end that it pursues; and finally God Himself. An exterior event may have played a role here, since the December 1270 condemnation of theses denying liberty had intervened (some of Thomas's teachings may have been implicated in the condemnation). But we must also see a maturation in Thomas's positions, which springs from a much more complex grasp of human reality than the one suggested by the earliest analyses.
Father Ramirez, with an excellent knowledge of the Secunda Pars, trying to find the exact place Thomas occupied in the two great schools of the thirteenth century—
one "affective" of Augustinian tendencies, the other "speculative" of Aristotelian orientation—was led to emphasize the evolution in the way Thomas spoke of the theological virtue of faith and, as a consequence, of the gifts of intelligence and wisdom that accompany it. While faith was considered a purely speculative virtue in the De ueritate, with scant value in the practical order, except for the remote occasion of acting well (occasio remota aliquid operandi),65 everything changes in the Secunda Pars. First Truth, the proper object of faith, being also "the end of all our desires and of all our actions," faith must work through charity. Initially contemplative, faith therefore becomes practical, as does the speculative intellect, by extension.66 Ramirez saw here, as in many other places, an increasing influence of Saint Augustine in Thomas's thought as it comes into its maturity.67 In fact, Thomas refers explicitly to him in this passage, but he also refers to Aristotle. If the former furnished him with the auctoritas needed, the latter gave him the technical means to take it into account.
We could extend these enquiries with Father Gauthier's observation of an analogous evolution concerning the seat of continence and of perseverance. Throughout the first part of his career, up to and including the Secunda Secundae, Thomas placed them in the reason in the strict sense of the word. Beginning with Question 155 of the Secunda Secundae, he
65. De ueritate, q. 14 a. 4, line 114 (Leonine, vol. 22/2, p. 450.).
66. ST IIa IIae q. 4 a. 2 ad 3: "Sed quia ueritas prima, quae est fidei obiectum, est finis omnium desideriorum et actionum nostrarum, ut patet per Augustinum in I De Trinitate, inde est quod per dilectionem operatur. Sicut etiam intellectus speculatiuus extensione fit practicus, ut dicitur in III De anima."
67. J. M. Ramirez, De hominis beatitudine. Tractatus theologicus, vol. 3 (Madrid, 1947), pp. 192–93. For intelligence and wisdom, gifts of the Holy Spirit, compare Sentences III d. 34 q.
1 a. 2, and Ia IIae on the one hand, with IIa IIae q. 8 a. 6 and 3 on the other hand.
will thereafter place them in the will. According to Gauthier, this evolution consists in allowing the morality of the Ethics to benefit from the enrichments of the Aristotelian psychology in De anima. We must see here the sign of a mitigation of "the excessive intellectualism that he had first professed."68
Is it necessary to go further and evoke, as Weisheipl does, Eschmann's perplexity, who declared himself unable to account for the change in tone between the first two parts of the Summa? Contrary to the coolly metaphysical, dry and intransigent style of the Prima Pars, the Secunda Pars would show itself profoundly human, full of delicacy and nuance. Weisheipl, who reproduces these remarks on his own authority, suggests seeking the cause of the change in some deep spiritual experience that affected Thomas's personality, his perception of reality, and, as a consequence, his writings.69
This cannot at all be excluded, and we have emphasized in the Orvieto period the turning point the composition of the Office of the Blessed Sacrament seems to have represented. But there is surely no place to harden into opposition the difference that we can see between the Prima and the Secunda Pars. We must rather notice several converging factors that may already explain, humanly speaking, this evolution. First, the material itself calls for an entirely different treatment. It is normal to call upon experience when we are dealing with the laws of human action. We might note an analogous change in Aristotle as he goes from the Physics or the Metaphysics to the Ethics and the Rhetoric. Furthermore, the first two parts of the Summa are separated by an interval of almost three years. Thomas had time to change during that period. Finally, that time had been spent in part on the commentary on the De anima and in a better knowledge of the Rhetoric and the Ethics, so abundantly used in the Secunda Pars. There is hardly any doubt that, despite the modifications that he made to Aristotle's morals and psychology, Thomas himself was influenced by them in return.
These attempts at explanation are partial and hypothetical, and they perhaps do not entirely suffice to account for the phenomenon. But we can hardly go any further until there is a full study of this evolution. For a better knowledge of Saint Thomas, it would be important to spell out its breadth and depth.
68. Gauthier, La date de l'Ethique, pp. 98–104.
69. Weisheipl, pp. 244–45.
Chapter XIII—
Last Period of Teaching:
Naples (1272–1273)
Thomas left Paris in the spring of 1272, after a sojourn of almost four years. Since Lent, the university had been living again through a period of agitation: a conflict not at all clear for us pitted the masters against the bishop of Paris, and a strike had been announced that was supposed to last from Lent until the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, which is to say, the end of the scholastic year. In fact, only the law faculty would observe it to the end; the other faculties—or at least the chairs of the regulars—do not seem to have been involved to the same extent.1
As is often the case when it is a matter of dates, we must confess here to relative uncertaity. It is certain that Thomas had been able to hold his quodlibetal dispute for Lent of 1272,2 a sign that for him university activity was not totally suspended, or at least that the strike did not affect the theology faculty. However, a little after Pentecost of that very year (12 June 1272), the chapter of the Roman province, meeting in Florence, gave him the task of organizing a studium generale of theology, and left him the free choice of the site, the staff, and the number of students.3
This decision is an indication of the fact that he had already returned,
1. Chartul., no. 445, pp. 502–3; cf. Mandonnet, Siger, pp. 202–6.
2. According to Gauthier, this is Quodlibet XII, whose reportatio had not been reviewed by Thomas; Tugwell, pp. 318–19, note 262, also held this opinion.
3. MOPH 20, p. 39: "Studium generale theologie quantum ad locum et personas et numerum studentium committimus plenarie fr. Thome de Aquino."
or was on the point of returning to Italy. We can base this on a letter, written after Thomas's death to the chapter general meeting at Lyon two years later, in which the masters of the arts faculty recall that they had then asked at the general chapter of Florence (it, too, Pentecost 1272) for his return to Paris.4 The Parisian masters asked the chapter to have sent to them certain books that Thomas had promised them and—sign of the great esteem that they bore him—to give them at least relics of the person they had been unable to retain while alive. Paul Synave interprets differently the 1272 request to which this letter makes allusion: he sees in it an ultimate attempt to retain Thomas in Paris, for if he had already left the IledeFrance, the request would not any longer have had a chance of arriving and the hope of seeing him return would have been vain.5
If we apply here the criterion used on other occasions, we may doubt that this voyage would have been undertaken after the scholastic year, which is to say during the hottest part of the summer; it seems, therefore, more natural to situate it in spring, a little bit after Easter. Thomas would have taken the time to install his successor, Romano of Rome, who had been his bachelor of Sentences from 1270 to 1272 and would die less than a year later, before 28 May 1273.6 But he must have left Paris for Naples shortly after. Whatever the means of travel chosen, through the Alps or by sea, he could have been in Italy at Pentecost. Several documents of which we will speak again attest to his presence at Naples by 10 September 1272.7
Contrary to what one might believe, the choice of Naples as a place for the new center of studies that he had been charged with was not a subjective matter for Thomas. This place had already been designated for that purpose by a previous provincial chapter, which had decided on the creation of two studia generalia for the Roman province, one at Naples, the other at Orvieto;8 this decision, made in 1269, which is to say three years earlier, had without doubt at least begun to be executed: a minimum of organization must have been in place to receive the students sent by the priories 4. Chartul., no. 447, p. 504, letter dated 2 May 1274.
5. P. Synave, Le problème, p. 159.
6. Romano Rossi Orsini, the younger brother of Gardinal Matthew to whom we will return, cousin of the future Nicholas III; his commentary on the first two books of the Sentences and some sermons have been preserved, of. Glorieux, Répertoire I, no. 28, p. 129; Käppeli, Scriptores III, pp. 332–33. Tocco reports a vision that Thomas had of Romano after the latter's death ( Ystoria 45, PP. 342–44; Tocco 45, PP. 118–19).
7. Documenta 25–28, pp. 575–80.
8. MOPH 20, p. 36.
of the province. Furthermore, some other completely objective reasons imposed such a choice, inasmuch as, among the possible cities, Naples was the residence of the most powerful Italian prince and was the only such city to possess a certain university tradition since the foundation by Frederick II and the attempt at restoration by Charles I.
Thus, although it is not impossible that Thomas left Paris for the simple reason that he had already taught there for four years and the policy of the order always favored a rapid rotatation of masters, it remains quite possible—and even seems likely— that Charles of Anjou was at the bottom of this return and that he exerted pressure that his capital be chosen and a wellknown master be installed there at the head of this new center of theology. In fact, in a letter of 31 July 1272, he tried to profit from the strike at Paris and invite masters and students to come to his city—whose charms and amenities he vaunts—so that they can continue their studies.9 We know at least three masters who allowed themselves to be tempted,10 and we know also that Thomas will receive from the king an ounce of gold a month as a salary for his teaching.11
We know nothing about what had been done before his arrival, nor anything about the concrete organization that he put in place. But we can say that this new foundation was not simply a ''more eminent center after the fashion of the Roman province."12 The decision of the province must be placed in the context of similar decisions taken by the general chapter of Florence (1272) and Budapest (1273), which wanted to bring up from four to six the number of studia generalia for the entire order.13 In refusing the third approval required, the 1274 chapter of Lyon interrupted the process thus begun, but this permits us to understand the overall direction of the new foundation.14 Without having the importance of the one in Paris, the mendicants in the studium in Naples, for practical purposes, constituted the faculty of theology of the university, there as in Bologna, Padua, or Montpellier.
9. Chartul., no. 443, pp. 501–2: Naples is "aeris puritate salubris, loci amenitate conspicua, ubertate rerum omnium opulenta."
10. Peter of Blois, Robert of Courton, and John of Centenovilla, ibid., p. 502 note.
11. Documenta 28, pp. 579–80; we will return to this point in the following chapter.
12. Contrary to WN, p. 175, which Weisheipl accepted, p. 295–96.
13. Cf. MOPH 3, pp. 164 and 167.
14. It was only in 1303 that Naples got a full studium generale, but at the time the south of Italy would be constituted into a province independent from that of Rome; it is indeed remarkable that the chapter of Besançon, which made this decision, makes it ad instanciam domini regis Cicilie ( MOPH 3, P. 325).
The Course on the Pauline Letters
As to the material taught during these last months of Thomas's life, all indications that we have today point toward a course on the epistles of Saint Paul, and more precisely on the Epistle to the Romans. For a long time doubt had been the rule among the researchers on this subject. We can even say that, from Mandonnet to Weisheipl and passing through Glorieux, the greatest diversity reigned and the most ingenious hypotheses were formulated. Although it became necessary to revise them completely in the light of the achievements of the most recent research—to which we have had access thanks to the works of the Leonine Commission15 —we can still perhaps profit from some of their suggestions.
According to Mandonnet, Thomas taught Saint Paul in two phases: the first time in Italy (OrvietoRome) from 1259 to 1268; a second time at Naples, from October 1272 to December 1273; the motive the second time would have been Thomas's dissatisfaction about his first course, but the new enterprise was interrupted by his death. From the second series solely the expositio sketched by Thomas himself on the epistle to the Romans has come down to us and the first part of 1 Corinthians.
From the first series we have only Reginald's reportationes beginning from chapter XI of the first letter to the Corinthians, for the existence of the more complete expositio would have made him neglect the corresponding parts, which were solely reported.16
Starting from this way of looking at things, there are some confirming indications from the catalogues, which draw a neat distinction between the Super epistolam ad Romanos and the Super primam ad Corinthios capitula XI (or X), on the one hand, which are ranged in the first category of works attributed to Thomas, and the Lectura super Paulum a XI capitulo prime ad Corinthios usque ad finem, on the other hand, which takes its place among the reportationes made by Reginald of Piperno.17 This fact doubtless explains in part why, despite many criticisms of detail, the gen15. We warmly thank Father Gilles de Grandpré of the Canadian section (Ottawa) of the Leonine commission, who is preparing the edition of the commentaries on Saint Paul, and who has generously communicated to us some of this information first hand.
16. Mandonnet, Chronologie des écrits seripturaires, pp. 70–93.
17. There are concordant indications from the two lists of Prague (Grabmann, Werke, pp. 92– 99) and from Bartholomew of Capua ( Naples 85, pp. 388–89); Tolomeo (XXIII 15, p. 155) expresses himself differently, but underlines the difference between Romans (not Corinthians) and the rest of the epistles. Romans apart, none of these texts speaks of an expositio in its own right (Prague 2: glosas).
eral framework proposed by Mandonnet has been kept by numerous researchers.18 To our knowledge, the only exception was Weisheipl, who wished to place the lectura on the Romans in the second Parisian period. But that is difficult to sustain, given the diffusion of the manuscripts of this work, which seems to have originated in Italy.19
Accepting this hypothesis, many specialists have thought they could support it by some internal criticism: the teaching of the commentary on the Romans would testify to a rather advanced doctrinal evolution compared with what is evident in the remainder of the commentaries on the epistles (on the sin of drunkenness, the salvation of infidels, or the gifts of the Holy Spirit).20 Certain thinkers believed they had found the reason for this in the fact that this part had been composed directly by Thomas;
but that does not seem to suffice, and the incontestable doctrinal evolution supposes a rather long temporal interval between Reginald's reportatio and this new redaction.
Though this general framework is perhaps still viable, Mandonnet's views call for serious reworking on certain points. Thus no one today holds any longer what appeared to Mandonnet evident: that Thomas commented in a parallel way on two books of the Bible, one from the Old and the other from the New Testament. But of even more direct relevance, we do not know what Thomas did from 1259 to 1261; further, we know that the period at Orvieto (1261–65) was the time of the Expositio in Job (Mandonnet, whom we have just seen put it in Paris, was not bothered by this); it was also the period of the completion of the Contra Gentiles and of beginning composition (on Matthew, at least) of the Catena aurea. Would it have been physically possible for Thomas to teach simultaneously on Saint Paul? This is why, if we must retain the hypothesis of a first teaching on Saint Paul in this epoch, we would be inclined to think that the period that would best fit was the Roman soujourn (1265–68).21 But for that it
18. Suffice to enumerate: Spicq, Esquisse, pp. 305–6; Glorieux, "Les commentaires scripturaires," pp. 254–58; Eschmann, "A Catalogue," p. 399; Weisheipl, pp. 372–73.
19. It is true we might think of some presentation of this course on Romans during the second Parisian year and its diffusion at the place where it was given would have been hindered by the Thomas's departure (more or less hasty) to Italy.
20. See on this in particular H. Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d'Aquin. Etude historique, Théologie 1 (Paris, 1944), pp. 225–41: "Date du Commentaire de saint Thomas sur l'épître aux Romains."
21. We agree here with an indication from P. Synave, "Les Commentaires scripturaires de saint Thomas d'Aquin," VS 8 (1923) 464, cf. 455–69, who does not give any reason for it, however.
would be necessary to accept the hypothesis suggested above, that neither the alia lectura on the Sentences nor the Prima Pars were used in teaching and that Thomas continued to give his daily lecture on Scripture; Paul's epistles could then have furnished the material for them, but nothing is less certain.22
In addition to the data in the catalogues, which can be read in this way, the sole external datum that permits support for the preceding hypothesis is the difficulty that we would have in placing all these courses on Saint Paul in those few months of the last period of teaching at Naples. But until future labors on the critical edition are completed, it is impossible to verify the validity of these views more fully.
Research is, however, rather advanced on the Epistle to the Romans and enable us to say that the two major witnesses to the text had a direct access to the documents left by Thomas.23 The first eight chapters carry traces of numerous editorial interventions, whose frequency diminishes very rapidly in what follows. These are not arbitrary interventions owing to the copyist or to the editors who guided their work, as often happens, but some rapid corrections by the author that the perplexed scribes had a hard time introducing in their exact places, for they were poorly indicated. In support of the observations to which the two manuscripts concerned lend themselves, we can bring forward the testimony of Tolomeo. When he speaks of the postille super omnes epistolas Pauli, he reserves a special place for the parts on Romans in adding: "preter epistolam ad Romanos quam ipsc notavit, quas ego vidi et legi." This formula ceases to appear strange if we think of the original manuscript with the corrections by Thomas himself that the scribes from Naples and Dubrovnik had a hard 22. One or two other difficulties come into play against this dating, according to Henle, Saint Thomas and Platonism, pp. 47–48. The commentary on Colossians (I, lect. 4, no. 39–
41), would contain a rather long passage that draws on the Elementatio theologica of Proclus (Props. 101 and 103); now the translation of this text was only finished by Moerbeke on 15 May 1268; it would have had to come into Thomas's hands very quickly for him to utilize it while he was still in Rome; this does not seem at all impossible, and should not be considered an absolute impossibility, and furthermore it does not appear to us to be evident that the Elementatio theologica is in question here; Dionysius and the Liber de causis would suffice to explain this passage. As to the allusion to the Prima Pars, which we find in the commentary on the Letter to the Hebrews (4, lect. 1, no. 203), if it is not an interpolation, it could be explained without difficulty, since in that period the Prima Pars was already written.
23. See the manuscript Naples, Bibl. Naz. VII. A. 17 (Shooner, Codices, III, no. 1907)and the manuscript Dubrovnik, Dominikanska Bibl., 11 (36–III–4),(DondaineShooner, Godices, I, no. 670), which must be retained until the critical edition by G. de Grandpré appears; many details of my text originate in documentation that he had sent to me (March 1992).
time deciphering and that Tolomeo may well indeed have had in his own hands. We have no reason to doubt his insistence.
Without being able to say, properly speaking, that what we have is a "revision," for the labor would have been done in a rather negligent fashion, everything seems to indicate that Thomas indeed gave a course at Naples on Romans, of which he rapidly corrected the first eight chapters, but the rest has come down to us in the condition of notes from the course—a reportatio. Probably the text was diffused from Naples, as was the case without doubt for the rest of the Pauline corpus.24
There is no indication in the manuscript tradition in any case that the texts were diffused from Paris (this is the main argument that weakens Weisheipl's thesis).
In support of this reading, we might again invoke—with the usual reservations—the stories of the biographers: the tradition maintains a memory of Thomas teaching Saint Paul in Naples. Tolomeo reports a highly significant anecdote under the form of a dream that a holy friar from that priory had. Thomas was seated in his magisterial chair, in the process of commentingon the epistles, when, behold, the Apostle himself entered the lecture hall, which was already filled with a distinguished crowd. Thomas interrupted himself to give witness to his reverence for the Apostle and, after a few casual words of conversation, asked him if he was explaining Paul's text according to the meaning that he had wanted to give it. To this question the Apostle responded that Thomas indeed was teaching what could be understood from his epistles during this life; but a time would come when he would understand them according to their whole truth. Saying this, he took him by the cape and dragged him along with him. Three days later Thomas's death became known at Naples.25 The premonition in this dream has less importance here than the identification of Thomas as a commentator on Paul by his contemporaries in the last months of his life.
It is true that the hagiographical tradition has also transmitted a memory of lessons on Saint Paul at Paris. In recalling that Thomas was recommending the study of the epistles in preference to all the other books of Scripture, with the exception of the Gospels, Tocco adds that it was while 24. We might mention here also the diffusion of the Commentary on Job, which is not without analogy to the diffusion of the Pauline corpus, cf. Leonine, vol. 26, pp. 18*b–9*a.
25. Tolomeo XXIII 9 (Ferrua, no. 177,PP. 362–63); Tocco knows the name of the visionary (Paul of Aquila, inquisitor in Naples in 1274), but except for a few things, reports the same story: Ystoria 60, pp. 385–86 (Tocco 60, pp. 133–34).
he was giving the expositio at Paris that he would have had a vision of Saint Paul.26 It is difficult, however, to accord the same weight to this story as we have given to the previous one, for no testimony in the textual criticism comes to the support of this second case. If it is not merely an attempt to correct an inopportune impression (Thomas had not taught at Paris solely on Matthew and John, but also on Paul), we must see here simply one of those errors of localization quite frequent in stories of this type.27
For the other epistles, things are a little less clear. We know effectively of two versions for the first seven chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews and for chapters 11 to 13 of the First Letter to the Corinthians,28 but the specialists are hardly inclined here to speak of a revision. For the Epistle to the Hebrews, the second version—
longer than the first (the Marietti edition gives extracts from it in small letters)—presents this particularity, of being the one that Reginald of Piperno uses by choice.
Antoine Dondaine thought that this version was Reginald's own reportatio.29 As to the double version of chapters 11–13 of 1 Corinthians, it may be due simply to the momentary presence of a second reporter.
If, despite all the uncertainties that we have spoken of, we now try to sum up what seem to be the best explanations currently available, we might characterize the state in which Thomas's Pauline corpus presents itself thus:
(1) The part where his hand seems rather directly perceptible comprises the first eight chapters of Romans; the rest of this commentary on Romans has not been corrected; in all probability this course dates from the last years of Thomas's life, which is to say, from Naples in 1272–73.
(2) We cannot say anything precise concerning the course on chapters 1–10 of the First Letter to the Corinthians, which the catalogues treat separately, if only because, for an unknown reason (perhaps simply because of the absence of the reporter) Thomas's commentary on 1 Corinthians from 7:10 to the end of chapter 10
is lost; it was replaced very early in the manuscripts and the
26. Ystoria 18, p. 251 (Tocco 17, p. 88): "Scripsit super epistolas beati Pauli omnes, quarum scripturam preter evangelicam super omnes alias commendabat, in quarum expositione Parisius uisionem prefati apostoli dicitur habuisse."
27. Tugwell, pp. 247–48, takes support from the repetition of this anecdote to suggest that Thomas could have taught on Saint Paul at Paris and Naples; we were ourselves tempted by this hypothesis but the information obtained through examination of the manuscript tradition has led us to abandon it.
28. Cf. H.V. Shooner, reviewed by Stegmüller, BT 10(1957–59), no. 180, p. 111; A. Dondaine, Sermons de Réginald, pp. 390–94.
29. A written communication from Father Bataillon (7 May 1992).
printed editions with the text borrowed from Peter of Tarentaise (in a version attributed to Nicholas Gorran).30
(3) The reportatio by Reginald of Piperno extends from 1 Corinthian 11 up to the Epistle to the Hebrews inclusively; this could be the fruit of Thomas's teaching from the years 1265 to 1268 in Rome. We know of two editions of the first seven chapters of the commentary on the Hebrews, and the second seems to be Reginald's.
There are also two editions of the course on chapters 11–13 of 1 Corinthians, but we cannot draw from that any conclusion.31
Despite the heterogeneity of these pieces, it is nonetheless certain that Thomas thought of his commentary as a whole. The proof of this is given in the Prologue that he placed at the head of this whole. He proposes there a general plan of the Pauline epistles, according to which each one corresponds to a precise design. Certainly, he could have placed this here at the time of a second version, but in fact he refers to this plan at the start of each epistle, which shows quite well that he was conscious of the unity of his intention, even for the parts simply reported on. We will translate a rather lengthy passage from this text, for it is both very clear on this global vision and significant, at the same time, for his method:
The Apostle wrote fourteen epistles: nine of them instruct the Church of the Gentiles; four the prelates and princes of the Church, as well as kings; the last is addressed to the Hebrews, the sons of Israel. The teaching bears entirely on Christ's grace, which we can consider under a triple modality.
In the first place, according to its existence in the Head himself, Christ, and it is thus that we find it in the Epistle to the Hebrews; then, as it is in the principal members of the mystical body, and it is thus that we find it in the epistles addressed to the prelates [the pastoral epistles]; finally, according as it is in the mystical body itself, which is the Church, and it is thus that we find it in the epistles addressed to the Gentiles.
30. Cf. Mandonnet, Chronologie des écrits scripturaires, pp. 89–92; H.D. Simonin, "Les écrits de Pierre de Tarentaise," in Beatus Innocentius pp. V (Petrus de Tarentasia O.P.), Studia et Documenta (Rome, 1943), p. 228, note 53; in the Cai edition (Marietti), this apocryphal part extends from no. 336 to no. 581 inclusive. There are in fact two editions of this text by Peter of Tarentaise; it is the second that we find in the printed editions; the first is transmitted by three other testimonies.
31. According to Father de Grandpré—from whom I take several indications—except for the manuscript tradition of Italian origin, which presents the Pauline corpus in a uniform fashion, we must distinguish, from the point of view of textual criticism, four blocks: (1) Rom. ( + 1 Cor. 1–7); (2) (1 Cor. 1–7 +) 1 Cor. 10 + 2 Cor. + Gal. + Eph.; (3) Phil. + Col. + 1–2 Thes.
+ 1–2 Tim. + Tit. + Philem.; (4) Hebr.; but these are only the exterior characteristics of the manuscript transmission and we must add, "the place of each of the sections in the more vast whole of the Pauline corpus is evident and each one of the sections is an integral part of the corpus inseparably, on questions of date, of authenticity, etc."
[In the last instance,] there is another distinction, for Christ's grace is susceptible of a triple consideration. First, in itself, as in the Epistle to the Romans. Second, in the sacraments of grace, as in the two epistles to the Corinthians—of which the first treats of the sacraments themselves and second of the dignity of their ministers—and in the Epistle to the Galatians, in which are found excluded superfluous sacraments [ superflua sacramenta] against those who wish to add the ancient sacraments to new ones [ uetera sacramenta nouis adiungere]. Third, Christ's grace is considered according to the work of unity that it realizes within the Church.
[From this last point of view,] the apostle therefore treats first of the foundation [ institutio] of ecclesial unity in the Epistle to the Ephesians; then its confirmation and its progress in the Epistle to the Philippians; then its defense: against errors in the Epistle to the Colossians, against the present persecutions in the first letter to the Thessalonians, against future persecutions and, above all, persecutions in the time of the Antichrist in second Thessalonians.
As to Church prelates, it instructs equally the spiritual as well as the temporal. For the spiritual, he speaks of the foundation, of the construction, and of the government of ecclesial unity in the first letter to Timothy; of firmness against persecutors in the second; of the defense against heretics in the Epistle to Titus. As to temporal lords, he instructs them in the Epistle to Philemon.
Here therefore are the reasons for the distinction and the order of all the epistles.32
Today's reader, used to an entirely different approach to the Bible, whether scientific or pastoral, cannot help but be surprised at this systematic exposition. Thomas does not seem to realize that Paul's letters are nothing more than occasional writings and that nothing was further from the Apostle's thinking than to wish to transmit so strongly constructed a teaching about Christ's grace. We must, nonetheless, not think Thomas more naive than he was, nor that he imagined himself to have discerned all the richness of Paul's text.
This long text does not emphasize solely the unity of Thomas's purpose; it also shows to what extent the ecclesial perspective is present in his thinking. This will be precious for us later in understanding something about his spiritual theology. One need only skim his commentary to find numerous indications in this regard. Before returning more fully to this in
32. Prol., ed. Cai (TurinRome, 1953), no. 11; we translate here from the critical text by Father de Grandpré.
our next volume, and by way of example and invitation, we will translate here some lines on the Holy Spirit as a pendant to the text on Christ quoted above. This is a propos of Romans 8:2: "The law of the Spirit, who gives life in Jesus Christ":
In a first sense, this law is the Holy Spirit itself. So that by the law of the Spirit we must understand the law that is the Spirit. The proper quality of the law, in effect, is to incite man to do the good. According to the Philosopher . . . the legislator's intention is to produce good citizens; now human law can do this only in making them know the good and the necessity to do it. The Holy Spirit Himself, who abides in the soul, not only teaches that which it is necessary to do by illuminating intelligence, but also inclines the affections toward acting rightiy. . . . In a second sense, this law can be understood as the proper effect of the Holy Spirit, which is to say, of the faith that operates through charity. It too teaches interiorly what it is necessary to do according to the verse from 1 John 2: His unction teaches you all things, but it also spurs the will toward action, according to 2
Corinithians 5: Christ's love constrains us. This law therefore is called a new law because it is identified with the Holy Spirit, or because the Spirit itself carries it out within us. . . .
And if the Apostle adds in Jesus Christ, that is because this Spirit is given only to those who are in Jesus Christ. As the natural vital breath does not come to the members who are not joined with the head, in the same way, the Holy Spirit does not come to the members who are not linked to their chief, Christ.33
The Course on the Psalms
Outside of the Epistle to the Romans, we do not exactly know what subjects could have been taught during the year 1272–73. No disputed question can be assigned to this period, and it seems indeed that there were
33. In Roman. 8, lect. 1, no. 601–606. See F. R. Larcher's translation, Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians (Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1966), and M. L. Lamb's translation, Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians (Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1966). Apart from the abbé Bralé's translation, which appeared in 1874 published by Vivès, there exists in French, to our knowledge, only the translation by A. Charlier, Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Commentaire de la seconde épître aux Corinthiens (Paris, 1980), 2 vol.;
we mention again several studies of general interest: O. H. Pesch, "Paul as Professor of Theology. The Image of the Apostle in St. Thomas's Theology," The Thomist 38 (1974) 584–605; W. Swierzawski, "God and the Mystery of His Wisdom in the Pauline Commentaries of Saint Thomas Aquinas," DTP 74 (1971) 466–500; Th. Domanyi, Der Römerbriefkommentar des Thomas yon Aquin. Ein Beitrag zur Untersuchung seiner Auslegungsmethoden (Bern, 1979); M. Hendrickx, Sagesse de Dieu et sagesse des hommes.
Le commentaire de 1 Co 1–4 et sa confrontation avec la grande glose de Pierre Lombard (LouvainlaNeuve, 1987); J. TiTi Chen, La unidad de la lglesia según santo Tomás en la epistola a los Efesios (Pamplona, 1979).
none.34 Since Mandonnet, one generally says that Thomas gave a course on the Psalter, but that he was interrupted by illness and death and that he could explicate only the first fiftyfour psalms.35 This opinion is shared by Glorieux, Eschmann, Weisheipl. But judges as good as Father BatailIon say that these texts hardly correspond to the maturity of this period and we can ask ourselves why Thomas would have waited so long before commenting on so fundamental a text as the Psalter.36 But it is true that the interruption points us in a certain direction. If we must abandon the hypothesis of Mandonnet, of a course simultaneously on Romans and the Psalter (on alternating days, or, indeed, one course in the morning and another in the evening), we could look toward the beginning of September–October 1273, which would lead us then to the very last days of Thomas's teaching and would explain perhaps certain particularities of the text that has come down to us.
The catalogues in effect attribute the reportatio on it to Reginald, but whereas the Prague list speaks of a "Lectura super tres nocturnos [psalterii],"37 Bartholomew of Capua speaks of a "Lectura super quatuor nocturnos psalterii."38 This matter might be explained thus: as we know, the "nocturnals" allude to the liturgical office of matins, where the Psalms were divided according to the days of the week. The three nocturnals from the Prague list correspond to the Psalms of the first three days (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday), which go up to and include Psalm 51. The rare manuscripts that transmit this work do not contain more, and even today the contemporary printed editions do not know of any further material.
We had to wait until 1880 for Paolo Uccelli to discover in the archives of Naples a new manuscript of the Lectura on the Psalms, where we find the lessons on the three following Psalms (52–54).39 Beyond this fragment
34. Despite the attempts by Pelster to situate the Q. De unione uerbi incarnati at Naples (cf. above, chapter XI, note 33).
35. Mandonnet, Chronologie des écrits scripturaires, pp. 59–70.
36. Tugwell, p. 248 and note 474, receives this suggestion favorably and believes it may belong to the very beginning of Thomas's career. Since the publication of the original, French edition of this book, one informed reviewer has furnished me with two supplementary pieces of information that favor a later dating: (1) the evolution of Thomas's theology of the episcopate; (2) the allusion to the sanctity of St. Louis [king of France] (see A. Bandera, Ciencia Tomista 120 [1993] 636). Further, even Father Bataillon seems to have been convinced by our argumentation: "The commentary on the Psalms is almost certainly the last instruction of Thomas" (see his "La diffusione manoscritta e stampata dei commenti biblici di San Tommaso d'Aquino," Angelicum 71 [1994] 579–90, esp. 589).
37. Grabmann, Werke, p. 93.
38. Naples 85, p. 389.
39. P.A. Uccelli, S. Thomae Aquinatis in Isaiam prophetam, in tres psalmos David, in
(footnote continued on next page)
of Thomas's authentic work, the high interest of this discovery resides in the colophon of that manuscript, which specifies that it had been copied from the exemplar by Reginald of Piperno, and that no more of it was to be found.40 Bartholomew of Capua, who knew both Thomas and Reginald in this period at Naples, was well situated to know whether Thomas had commented on the Psalms of the fourth nocturnal, those of Wednesday; he simply omits telling us that the work was not finished. This is without doubt the strongest indication for situating this work in the last weeks of Thomas's teaching, but we can say no more about it.41
The prologue is most instructive for grasping the method and intention of our author, who set himself to commenting on this treasure of ecclesial prayer. As enlightening as his comments on St. Paul cited above and complementary to them, it illustrates the way in which Thomas approaches his various commentaries on Scripture. He wishes to emphasize its ''cause," which is quadruple: matter, form, end, agent (materia, modus seu forma, finis et agens): "Its matter is universal; while each of the canonical books has its special material, this one ranges over the material of all theology." This can be verified in several domains, but above all in what concerns the work of salvation carried out by Christ:
Everything that bears on the end of the Incarnation is expressed in this book in so clear a way that one might believe oneself face to face with the Gospel, not with prophecy. . . .
This plenitude is the reason why the Church returns ceaselessly to the Psalter, for it contains all Scripture.42
After dealing with the matter, he seeks to characterize the mode or the form of this book:
The mode of sacred Scripture is in effect multiple. It can be narrative . . . as in historical books; commemorative, exhortative, and prescriptive . . . as in the Law, the Prophets, or in the Wisdom Books; disputative, as
(footnote continued from previous page)
Boetium de Hebdomadibus et de Trinitate expositiones (Rome, 1880), pp. xv–xvi and 241–54; this manuscript—described by H.V. Shooner, Codices, vol. 3, no. 1959, pp, 30–31, according to notes taken by J. Destrez and T. Käppeli—was destroyed by fire following the bombardment of Naples during the Second World War, 30 September 1943.
40. "Explicit postilla super partem psalterij secundum fratrem thomam de aquino ordinis predicatorum, quia non invenitur plus in exemplari fratris Raynaldi de piperno qui fuit socius fratris thome usque ad mortem et habuit omnia scripta sua," according to Shooner, ibid.; cf. Mandonnet, Chronologie des écrits scripturaires, p. 68.
41. We might simply underline that—as in the case of the Pauline Corpus—the manuscript diffusion began from Naples.
42. Prooemium in Psalm, Vivès ed., vol. 18, p. 228.
in Job or Saint Paul; deprecative or laudatory, as here. In effect, everything that in the other books is dealt with according to a precise mode is here found under the form of praise and of prayer. . . . It is from this that the book takes its rifle: The beginning of the Book of Hymns, which is to say, of the soliloquies of the prophet David about Christ. The hymn is a praise of God under the form of a song. The song is the exaltation of the soul over the subject of eternal realities that are expressed by the voice. It teaches therefore to praise God in joy. The soliloquy is the personal colloquy of man with God or, indeed, only with himself; and this is necessary for whoever praises or prays.
As to the end of this Scripture, it is prayer, elevation of the soul toward God. . . . It is possible for the soul to elevate itself toward God in four ways: by admiring the greatness of his power . . . the elevation of faith; by extending itself toward the excellence of its eternal beatitude . . . the elevation of hope; by attaching itself strictly to divine goodness and its holiness . . . elevation of charity; by imitating the divine justice and its action . . . the elevation of justice. [These different points are insinuated into the various Psalms], this is why Saint Gregory says that if the Psalmody is accompanied by the intention of the heart, it prepares in the soul a path for God, who infuses into it the mysteries of prophecy or the grace of compunction.
As to the author of this work, it is evidently God Himself, since the sacred Scriptures are not the fruit of a human will but indeed of divine inspiration, which is aroused in appropriate instruments. Thomas ends his introduction, therefore, with several indications on the way in which prophetic revelation occurs, but this is not the place to tarry on this point—except to say that Thomas retains the play of secondary causes.43
Instructive and astonishing as to its method, this text of the Prologue is slightly deceptive in its content for an uninitiated reader. But whoever returns frequently to Thomas's reading of the Psalms will not regret it. His dryness allows us to guess that the reporter has noted only the essential ideas, and has permitted the escape of the nuanced explications and the warmth of living speech that make of oral teaching something entirely different than the simple course notes, however well they have been taken. We must know how to read this text so that it will deliver up a little of its richness, going back to the sources and seeing what Gregory or Augustine said, in order more or less to reconstruct what he must really have said.
43. Cf. ST IIa IIae qq. 171–74; De uer., q. 12; J.P. Torrell, "Le traité de la prophétie de S. Thomas d'Aquin et la théologie de la révélation," Studi Tomistici 37 (1990) 171–95.
We can take as an example the commentary on Psalm 3:3: Ego dormivi et soporatus sum, which evokes in a word the birth of the Church from the pierced side of Christ sleeping in the sleep of death, signified by the birth of Eve from the side of Adam sleeping in the morning of Genesis.44 Thomas gives here an echo of a true patristic commonplace, which extends the Pauline parallel between the two Adams through a parallel also dear to Irenaeus, that of the two Eves—the Church being the new "mother of the living"—which was transmitted to Thomas by two familiar authors, Augustine and Chrysostom. Similar cases could be multiplied with regard to prayer, affectivity, the desire of God, etc. We cannot overemphasize to whoever would attempt a translation of the scriptural commentaries, that it would not be useful or fruitful unless accompanied by notes that extend the text in the sense sketched here, for the difficulty is less in the Latin than in what is not said in these texts.
The "Life of Jesus"
Upon leaving Paris, as we have said, Thomas took with him a certain number of books already under way. Among the most important tasks still pending, the first was certainly the completion of the Summa. At his arrival in Naples, only the first questions of the Tertia Pars had been written (20, according to Eschmann, or 25, according to Glorieux, but not without some questions). This corresponds roughly to the properly speculative part of the theology of Christ, the study of the hypostatic union and its consequences. It is, therefore, during the Naples period that Thomas composed the remainder of these questions on Christ and the beginning of his theology of the sacraments. We can put aside here whatever concerns his sacramental theology,45 but we must speak at least briefly about this part of his christology.
Popularized in France under the name Vie de Jésus (Life of Jesus), these Questions 27–59 of the Tertia reveal a scriptural and patristic return to 44. In Ps. 3:3 (Vivès, vol. 18, p. 242): "Iste sopor signatur in sopore Adam . . . quia de latere Christi in cruce mortui formata est Ecclesia."
45. There is much here to grasp. Think of what we have already said above (chapter 7) about the Eucharist; but we might also think about the highly "personalist" approach that Thomas took to the sacrament of reconciliation—which he called penitence. Cf. C. E. O'Neill, Sacramental Realism. A General Theory of the Sacraments (Wilmington, Del., 1983), pp.
164–84. We also refer to the study by L. G. Walsh, "The Divine and the Human in St. Thomas's Theology of Sacraments," in Ordo sapientiae et amoris, pp. 321–52, this study shows quite well the intimate links that connect the theory of causality at work in the sacramental theology to the theory that Thomas uses in his doctrine of creation and his anthropology.
sources that would astonish those who do not wish to see in Thomas anything other than an impenitent Aristotelian. There is here, on the contrary, nothing surprising for one who has studied Thomas's scriptural commentaries and knows the gigantic effort of research into the patristic heritage represented by the Catena aurea. We must speak about this at some length, for it is probably the most original part of his christology, and we will be able to observe more than one point of contact between these pages and Thomas's evolution in the last months of his life.
The title Life of Jesus is, however, misleading; Thomas says more exactly that he wishes to speak about "what the Incarnate Son of God did and suffered in the human nature that was united to him,"46 or—according to a formula that occurs several times—of the acta et passa Christi in carne. To understand the extent to which this goes beyond what we would normally mean by the term "life"—more or less historically understood—it is sufficient to recall the plan announced by the author. He develops it in four sections, about which we do not have to comment on their relation to the construction of the Summa theologiae itself: (1) The entrance (ingressus) of the Son of God into this world (QQ. 27–39). This is the occasion for speaking of his mother, the Virgin Mary, of her sanctification in utero (as we know, Thomas did not accept the Immaculate Conception), of her virginity, of her marriage with Joseph (a true marriage), of the annunciation by the angel, etc. One sometimes speaks here of Thomas's "Mariology," quite improperly without doubt, but it is true that despite the completely outofdate physiological data, one can profit from several striking intuitions (Mary giving, in the name of all humanity, her consent to the coming to the Savior: loco totius humanae naturae).47
In reality, we are always dealing with christology, and everything is seen in relation to Jesus' birth and to the various circumstances that were connected with it.
(2) The development (progressus) of his life in this world (QQ. 40–45). This is what one commonly calls the public life of Christ: the type of life that he led (conuersatio) and the teaching that one can draw from it for those who wish to announce his message today, his temptation in the desert and its meaning in salvation history, his teaching, his miracles, and his Transfiguration. Rather curiously, Thomas has connected Christ's baptism to his first section, but he sees it as also introducing the full manifestation of Christ.
(3) His departure (exitus) from this world, which is to say, His Passion and
46. IIIa q.27 Prol.
47. ST IIa a. 30 a. 1.
death (QQ. 46–52). Under some conventional scholastic headings, Thomas treats the most burning subjects in our contemporary theology of redemption. His consideration of the "efficient cause" of the Passion probes the responsibility of its authors—not only that of the Jews or the Romans, but our own, and even that of the Father. The "efficient modality" of the Passion—which is to say, the way in which it effects our salvation—puts precisely in place notions of merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, redemption, reserving for Christ alone the honor of being "the" Redeemer, for only the person of the Word could give such value to human acts. If it is necessary for the theologian who wants to use these texts today to work up a minimum of hermeneutic (as for all the texts of the past), it is no less certain that we find here practically all the elements of a soteriology.
(4) His exaltation (exaltatio), or His triumph after this life (QQ. 53–59). It is evidently here that the term Life of Jesus reaches its limits as a description of Thomas's undertaking, since we are from this point on beyond history. These last questions examine, therefore, the final unfolding of the mystery of Christ: the Resurrection, the Ascension, the sitting at the right hand of the Father, and the power then given to Jesus to be equal to the Father—and with His humanity, the judge of the living and the dead. Thomas discovers doubtless once again the order of the Credo, which is familiar to him, but it is also striking to observe the facility with which this theoretician, who has no problem with a christology "from above," also engages in the christology "from below" of the very first Christian generations.
This simple enumeration of some of the themes dealt with permits us to see a little better the author's real purpose. The unfolding of evangelical history has provided him with a precious historical framework, since it permitted him to pass in review all the events of Christ's life, the smallest as well as the greatest, giving him also occasion to deal with subjects rather badly understood by a number of theologians, such as baptism, Christ's temptations, or the way in which He lived amid the crowd. He wishes to show that the Word was made man in the most human way and that there is here material not only for theological reflection, but for spiritual meditation, repeated without ceasing in order to deepen the mystery of the Incarnation and to clarify the Christian life. This is a decided return to the Gospel as it had been defined with regard to the Catena aurea, for "it is there that has been transmitted to us the substance of the Catholic faith and the norm for our entire Christian life."48
48. "In evangelio precipue forma fidei catholicae traditur et totius vitae regula christianae," Dedicatory Letter to the Catena aurea addressed to Urban IV.
In contrast to those theologians who seem to reduce the work of salvation to the paroxysm of pain and death, Thomas does not think that the birth, the humble years of the hidden life are a superfluous preface to the death on the Cross, as if it were the only thing that counts. Nothing is more foreign to him than this focus on sorrow, and he repeats peacefully: "The least of Christ's sufferings [ minima passio] would have sufficed to redeem the human race."49 In many other places as well, the word passio has kept its etymological sense and does not necessarily signify "suffering": acta et passa Christi signifies indeed everything that the Word did and endured, experienced in our human condition. This theologian, who is believed to be abstract, knows the weight of the historical insertion of the Incarnate Word, and it is that he labors to take into account.
To give it its true name, what Thomas wished to do was a "theology of the mysteries" of the life of Jesus. We will easily understand what this means if we recall that the musterion of Saint Paul sums up at once the divine plan for salvation and the way in which that plan was achieved in Jesus. If the entire life of Christ is itself the mystery of the love of God that reveals itself and acts in history, each one of His acts is also a "mystery" in the sense that it signifies and realizes this total "mystery."
Profoundly traditional, this perception of things already shows itself in Ignatius of Antioch and Meliton of Sardes, in Origen above all, who was the first to venerate Jesus' humanity with a true tenderness, but it is also from Ambrose and from Augustine, that Thomas has most directly received these ideas. These ideas were furthermore not unknown among the scholastics, both Thomas's predecessors and his contemporaries, but Thomas reveals himself profoundly original for he is the first and the only one for a long time (it would be necessary to wait until Suarez) to deal with these things apart from speculative christology and to organize them in a coherent fashion.50 There is here certainly a deliberate will to construct what might be called a concrete or existential christology—quite close in intention to the attempts at a narrative theology that are flourishing toward the end of the twentieth century. We can regret that this has been misunderstood for such a long time by some Thomists.51
49. ST IIIa q.46 a. 5 ad 3.
50. We refer here to the remarkable study by L. Scheffczyk, "Die Stellung des Thomas von Aquin in der Entwicklung der Lehre von den Mysteria Vitae Christi," in M. Gerwing und G.
Ruppert, eds., Renovatio et Reformatio . . . Festschrift für Ludwig Hödl . . . (Münster, 1986), pp. 44–70.
51. Things have changed in the past few years; we mention again L. Scheffczyk, "Die Bedeutung der Mysterien des Lebens Jesu für Glauben und Leben des Christen," in the same editor's
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By way of illustration of these last remarks, it would be useful to reproduce an example of the way in which Thomas proceeds in this last part of the Summa. He probes into the question of knowing if God would have had at his disposal a more suitable means than the Passion of Christ to save the human race: A means is much more "convenient" to an end when it brings to that end a greater number of advantages. Now, from the fact that man was delivered by Christ's Passion, that Passion, beyond liberation from sin, has gained for him many advantages for his salvation.
1. Through it, we know how much God loved us and through that knowledge we have been moved to love God and it is in that love that consists the perfection of our salvation.
Thus Saint Paul says (Romans 5:8): "The proof that God loves us is that Christ, while we were still sinners, died for us."
2. Through his Passion, Christ gave us the example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and other virtues necessary to our salvation. As Saint Peter says (I Peter 2:21):
"Christ suffered for us, leaving us a model so that we could follow in his steps."
3. Christ, through His Passion, not only delivered us from sin; He furthermore merited for us the grace of justification and the glory of beatitude, as we will speak of further on.
4. Through the fact of the Passion, we understand that we are obliged to keep ourselves pure from all sin, since we believe that we have been redeemed from sin by Christ's blood, according to Saint Paul (I Corinthians 6:20): "You have been redeemed at great price! Therefore glorify God in your bodies."
5. The Passion conferred on us a higher dignity: conquered and deceived by the Devil, we must in turn conquer him; having merited death, it was necessary also, in dying, to dominate death itself, and Saint Paul says to us (1 Corinthians 15:57): "Render thanks unto God who has given us the victory through Jesus Christ."
For all these reasons, it was more "convenient" that we be liberated by Christ's Passion rather than by God's will alone.52
Chosen from among many other texts that are also quite significant, this text has the interest of showing in action the theologian's method in this part. He does not try to prove the necessity of the Passion (he even said
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Die Mysterien des Lebens Jesu und die christliehe Existenz (Aschaffenburg, 1984), pp. 17–34; I. Biffi, in I Misteri di Christo in Tommaso d'Aquino (Milan: Jaca Book, 1994), has investigated this question in all Thomas's works, thus showing its omnipresence and its fecundity.
52. ST IIIa q.46 a. 3.
that it was not "necessary" in the strict sense), it is for him a fact; he wishes solely to give full weight to that which he calls its "convenience."53 Knowing everything that he otherwise knows about God's design for humanity, he labors to make effective all the reasons that permit us to understand it as the supreme act of Christ's and God's love with respect to humanity. He thus reconstructs a network of convergences that suggest that such an act, without doubt beyond reason, is not, however, without reasons. Theology here is no longer demonstrative (it rarely is, to tell the truth), it becomes ostensive. It shows to whoever wishes to see it that it is indeed this that the texts say in themselves and that is why we must adhere very closely to the data (here, four arguments out of five are directly taken from the New Testament; elsewhere, patristic texts will be used with the same profusion). In the same motion, theology becomes exhortative (following that which we have read in the Prologue of his course on the Psalms): that provocation to love on the part of God cannot remain without effect for the theologian—nor for his reader! So much is this true that for Thomas, theology, if well done, ends up being pastoral.
Thomas continued, however, to be very much taken up with other tasks than direct teaching and the completion of his Summa theologiae. We have already seen in the preceding chapter, he had to finish his Sententia on the Metaphysics and the Expositio libri Posteriorum and he also began various commentaries that he left unfinished (De caelo et mundo, De generatione et corruptione). He also continued to respond to friendly requests ( De motu cordis, perhaps De mixtione elementorum), and notably to that of Reginald, for whom he returned to his labor on the Compendium theologiae, beginning then the De spe that he would also not finish. Finally, we know that he preached during this period, if not necessarily on the Decalogue and the Credo, as Mandonnet thought,54 at least probably on the Pater, and to the faithful in his native language, as the witnesses at the process of canonization testified.55 In short, if we are able to suppose a university year relatively leisurely compared with the ones at Paris, it certainly was not an idle one. Furthermore, his return to Naples, which brought him nearer to his family, did not occur without causing him some small additional worries.
53. Although largely neglected until now, this type of reasoning finally is now drawing the interest that it deserves, cf. G. Narcisse, "Les enjeux épistémolgiques de l'argument de convenance selon saint Thomas d'Aquin," in Ordo sapientiae et amoris, pp. 143–67.
54. Cf. above chap. IV, n. 75.
55. Cf. Collationes, ed. Torrell, pp. 9–17; La pratique, pp. 215–17.
Chapter XIV—
The Last Months and Death
Another Thomas begins to appear upon his return to Italy. Or at least an entirely new aspect of his personality, heretofore little known, connects us again to the first days of his childhood. It seems a little as if the fact of returning to his native soil made many familiar persons rise up around him. He had certainly not lost all contact with them during his years in Paris or Rome, but the messages, written or oral, which could have existed, have not come down to us.
The People Who Knew Thomas
The period that began at this point was, of his whole life, the one from which we have the greatest amount of concrete data. This is not an accident, because this period also presents us with names among his confreres or his friends and family members who are linked to Thomas as his disciples. We find them as witnesses at the two canonization proceedings.1 Only the first of these two proceedings interests us here, the process at Naples (which was held from 21 July to 18 September 1319).
At the second process (Fossanova, 10–20 November a 1321), the inquirers were not given the responsibility to look into the life and virtues of the saint, but were solely to inquire about miracles after his death.2 The numbers that follow concern, therefore, only the depositions at the process in Naples.
Among the fortytwo witnesses who gave testimony at the Naples
1. WN, pp. 178ff. gives a complete list of them.
2. Cf. the introductions by M.H. Laurent: Naples, pp. 265–66; Fossanova, pp. 409–10.
proceedings, only sixteen were eyewitnesses; thirteen others were noneyewitnesses but had at least a part of their information from persons who knew Thomas directly. The thirteen remaining witnesses had their information at second or third hand. Among the eyewitnesses, we can identify eleven religious (six Dominicans, five Cistercians) and five lay people. Among the noneyewitnesses who had firsthand information, the proportion is almost the same: five Dominicans, four Cistercians, four lay people. As we might expect, the number of religious witnesses or clerics is higher than the number of lay witnesses, but these latter are honorably enough represented.
Among the Dominicans, besides William of Tocco, of whom we will speak again more fully, there was Conrad of Suessa: priest, seventyseven years old at the time of the process, he lived with Thomas at Naples, Rome, and Orvieto (in that order). This is entirely possible, though he may have mixed up his dates a little.3 Next in alphabetical order, comes Giacomo of Caiazzo, who was to become the provincial of the Roman province and who knew Thomas in Naples and in Capua; he gives some details on the regular observance carried out by the Master.4 John of Boiano, a priest, also gives his testimony to the regular life lead by Thomas: study, austerity, piety; he saw Reginald of Piperno give a relic of the saint (a thumb in a perfect state of preservation from the hand that had made its way to Dame Theodora) to Cardinal Hugh of Ostia.5 Similarly Leonard of Gaeta emphasizes Thomas's way of life and the little time he devoted to eating and sleep; he had heard Reginald recount the miracle of the Roman lady cured from her flux of blood on one of the days of Easter.6 Peter of San Felice, who ends this little series of witnesses, lived an entire year in Naples in Friar Thomas's company; he gives a physical portrait and applies himself to describing Thomas's exemplary life, both in religious observance and in study. He remarked that Thomas never wounded any person by haughty or injurious words.7 On the whole, these witnesses add only a few things at the historical level; principally they retained the memory of a religious man leading an exemplary life.8
3. Naples 47, pp. 126–27; we may read his text as a testimony to Thomas's sojourn in Naples between 1256 and 1261.
4. Naples 42, pp. 318–19.
5. Naples 89, pp. 393–94.
6. Naples 75, PP. 368–70.
7. Naples 45, PP. 322–23.
8. Many useful things concerning the people mentioned here may be found in I. Taurisano,
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The number of Cistercians among these eyewitnesses is not at all astonishing. They were with Thomas as he lay on his death bed: we are speaking of Nicholas, the future abbot of Fossanova, a priest; of Nicholas of Fresolino, a friar and chorister; of Nicholas of Piperno, a lay brother; of Octaviano of Babuco, a priest, and of Peter of Montesangiovanni, a priest. Although they knew Thomas only a short time, the interesting thing about their testimony is evident: they are the source of certain things that Bartholomew of Capua and Tocco know about only through them (and therefore transmit only at second hand). Where differences arise in accounts, it is to these Cistercians that we must give preference.9
As to the lay figures, we have four men of law and a miles. We shall encounter Bartholomew of Capua again quite soon, but we must present the four others briefly.
John Blasio, judge at Naples, was a relative of Queen Maria of Sicily; his testimony has always raised much suspicion: he claims to have heard Thomas preach for more than ten years, including an entire Lent on the Ave Maria, all of which is quite simply a fantasy; he says that he witnessed the devil physically attack Thomas on the terrace near Thomas's cell.10 John Coppa of Naples presents himself as a notarius; he was still a boy when he met the saint going to visit his Dominican brother Bonofilio, who was in the service of the Master; he speaks about Thomas's preaching on the Pater.11 John of Gaeta, too, remembers some preaching in Naples. John was a zeccadenarius, a doctor of law; he had also heard people speaking about various miracles.12 Peter Brancaccio, miles, also recalls the preaching on the Pater when he was multum iuuenis; he also heard Reginald recount the nocturnal conversation that Thomas had with Saints Peter and Paul about a difficulty in the book of Isaiah.13
If we try to determine what, in this mass of material, presents the historian with something useful toward a better knowledge of Thomas's life and personality—i.e., if we subtract the miracles and the posthumous events—we would find about 36 per cent of the testimony useful. This does not mean that even this portion is entirely usable without reservations,
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''Discepoli e biografi di S. Tommaso," in S. Tommaso d'Aquino O.P., Miscellanea storicoartistica (Rome, 1924), pp. 111–86.
9. In order the numbers of their respective depositions: Naples 8–9; 10–11; 19–21; 15–18; 49–55 (pp. 276–79; 280–82; 290–93; 285–90; 330–42).
10. Naples 70, pp. 361–63; cf. Torrell, "La pratique," p. 216.
11. Naples 87, pp. 391–92; cf. Torrell, ibid.
12. Naples 88, pp. 392–93.
13. Naples 93, PP. 399–400.