1.3 When and Why Did Aquinas Write the Summa Contra Gentiles?
1.3 When and Why Did Aquinas Write the Summa Contra Gentiles?
There has been much scholarly debate concerning the dating and purpose of many of Aquinas’s writings, or writings attributed to him.26 And such debate continues when it comes to the SCG. But we do have a critical edition of this work produced by the Leonine Commission, so we at least know that Aquinas wrote it.27
The Leonine Commission consists of a group of scholars deputed to produce the best possible editions of Aquinas’s writings, ones that most accurately reflect what he actually wrote. It was founded in 1879 under the influence of Pope Leo XIII. When thinking of the work of the Leonine Commission, we have to remember that Aquinas did not write using a computer. Indeed, he lived before the invention of the printing press, at a time when literary works still had to be copied by hand and circulated in manuscript form. And manuscripts of Aquinas’s writings that survive sometimes differ from each other even when it comes to a single work such as the SCG. Indeed, some of his “writings” survive in reports of what he said rather than in texts drafted by him and subsequently copied. In short, there are serious problems when it comes to getting as close as we can to what Aquinas wrote in what is authentically attributable to him.28 Hence the need for the Leonine Commission.
Textual matters aside, however, there remains the question “When did Aquinas write the SCG?” Largely due to the labors of René-Antoine Gauthier, we can be fairly sure as to how to answer this question.29 We can reasonably conclude that Aquinas began the SCG when he first taught in Paris, that he continued work on it in Italy, having moved there from Paris, and that he had finished writing it around 1265–1267.
Gauthier notes that much of SCG 1, in manuscripts of it that come from Aquinas’s hand, are written on the same parchment and with the same ink as Aquinas’s commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate. This fact allows us to date the beginning of the SCG to some time prior to June 1259, when Aquinas, together with St. Albert, was present at a Dominican General Chapter at Valenciennes. However, the parchment and ink change at a certain point, suggesting that Aquinas had then left Paris for Italy. Also worth noting is that quotations from Aristotle at a certain stage in the SCG rely on translations that were not available in Paris in the 1250s but were available in Italy around 1260–1265, suggesting that SCG 3,85 was not written before 1263–1264.30 Yet also worth noting is that Aquinas refers to the SCG in works that can be dated to soon after 1265. Bearing in mind such facts, Gauthier, with whom I would not dream of trying to quarrel, concludes that Aquinas had completed and revised the SCG by the autumn of 1265, just before, or around, the time that, he started to write the Summa Theologiae.
But why did Aquinas embark on his first summa, the Summa Contra Gentiles?31 When it comes to this question, answers are harder to provide than ones we might offer when it comes to the dating of the SCG.
It has often been said that Aquinas wrote the SCG as a manual or textbook to be used by Dominican missionaries working in Spain, in which Islam was then a force to be reckoned with by Christians. It has also been claimed that he did so at the request of Raymund of Peñafort, who was Master General of the Dominican Order from 1238 to 1240. This tradition of thinking concerning the SCG derives from the Chronicle of the King of Aragon, James I written by a Dominican called Peter Marsilio, who finished his work around 1314. Peter says that Raymund was anxious to convert infidels and that he asked Aquinas, considered as a scholar of great renown, to write what turned out to be the SCG. There are, however, reasons for doubting the historical accuracy of this account.
It is not that nothing can be said in its favor. For one thing, the SCG is evidently an apologetic work since it defends a series of Christian beliefs from criticism, or potential criticism, and since its earliest and best attested title is Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei contra Errores Infidelium (A Book on the Truth of the Catholic Faith against the Errors of Unbelievers).32 Again, Raymund of Peñafort worked in Spain, where the influence of Islam was considerable, and from the middle of the thirteenth century Dominicans had a definite interest in missionary work among Muslims. In 1255, for example, the Dominican Master General, Humbert of Romans (c. 1194–1277), called, with considerable success, for Dominicans to volunteer for foreign missions. In some of his writings he stressed the need for there always to be Dominican treatises against the errors of unbelievers. So we might suppose that Aquinas could have written the SCG with some kind of missionary aim in mind, or as a work to aid Dominican missionaries in some way.
Yet the SCG does not seem to be especially targeting Islam. Insofar as it criticizes various ideas, these are ones coming from many people, including ancient philosophers, Jewish thinkers, and Christians whom Aquinas took to have fallen into heresy. I doubt that anyone reading the SCG today with no prompting as to its purpose would speedily say “This is obviously a treatise against Islam.” It just does not read like such a work. It refers to Islamic teaching from time to time. But we have reason to believe that Aquinas was not very well informed about Islamic thinking, though he was familiar with the writings of some famous Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna (Ibn Sınā, c. 980–1037) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198).33 We should also note that Peter Marsilio does not specify that the SCG was written as a tract against Islam. Peter speaks only of “pagans” or “unbelievers” (infidelium), which is highly ambiguous since he could here be thinking of any people who are not orthodox Christians.
Also to be noted is the fact that Aquinas did not dedicate the SCG to Raymund of Peñafort. Had he written the work at Raymund’s request, one would expect him to have done so given the custom of the time, one to which he conformed in a number of his writings.34 Even more significant than this fact, however, is one concerning chronology. Aquinas had completed the first fifty chapters of SCG 1 by autumn of 1259, which suggests that he had begun to work on them possibly as early as 1257. By this time in his career, however, Aquinas was not the renowned scholar he is said to be by Peter Marsilio. He had barely finished his commentary on the Sentences and had not yet published his De Veritate. As Gauthier observes, far from having been struck by the reputation of Aquinas, Raymund of Peñafort had probably never even heard of him when he started to work on the SCG.35
Again, therefore, what was Aquinas trying to do in writing the SCG? Perhaps the best way to discern a correct answer to this question is to read what he says in SCG 1,1–9, in which he provides what reads like an extended preface to the work, one that makes little reference to Muslims or to missionary matters.