Orthodoxy and Controversy in Twelfth-Century Religious Discourse: Peter Lombards 'Sentences' and the Development of Theology (EUROPA SACRA) 9782503527956, 2503527957

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Orthodoxy and Controversy in T welfth-C entury Religious Discourse

EUROPA SACRA Editorial Board under the auspices of Monash University General Editor Peter Howard, Monash University Editorial Board Megan Cassidy-Welch, Monash University David Garrioch, Monash University Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Carolyn James, Monash University Constant J. Mews, Monash University M. Michèle Mulchahey, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto Adriano Prosperi, Scuola Normale di Pisa

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 8

Orthodoxy and Controversy in T welfth-C entury Religious Discourse Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the Development of Theology by

Clare Monagle

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Monagle, Clare, author. Orthodoxy and controversy in twelfth-century religious discourse : Peter Lombard's 'Sentences' and the development of theology. -- (Europa sacra ; 8) 1. Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris, approximately 1100-1160 Sententiarum libri IV. 2. Church history--12th century. 3. Lateran Council (4th : 1215) 4. Scholasticism--Europe--History--To 1500. 5. Jesus Christ--History of doctrines--Middle Ages, 600-1500. 6. Trinity--History of doctrines--Middle Ages, 600-1500. 7. Religious disputations--Europe--History--To 1500. I. Title II. Series 230.2'0902-dc23 ISBN-13: 9782503527956

© 2013, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2013/0095/152 ISBN: 978-2-503-52795-6 Printed on acid-free paper

Contents

Acknowledgements vii Introduction xi Chapter 1. Schoolmen and their Critics, from Berengar to Gilbert of Poitiers

1

Chapter 2. Peter Lombard’s Life and his Sentences 43 Chapter 3. Lombard’s Christology and its Critics

73

Chapter 4. Christology in the Schools after Lombard

113

Chapter 5. Lateran IV and Peter Lombard

139

Conclusion 167 Bibliography 171 Index

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Acknowledgements

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his book is the result of many years of study and work. It is also the result of much help and support and kindness. It is a happy relief to be able to thank the friends, teachers, and family members who helped me to get to this point. As an undergraduate at Monash, I was highly fortunate to be taught by the late Dr Louis Green, the late Professor F. W. Kent, and Professor Constant Mews. A more charming, erudite, and fun group of teachers cannot be imagined. Tutorials were full of laughter, with the teachers evincing a profound enjoyment in the ideas, pretensions, and imaginative flights of their students. I try to teach in their image. In my honours year, and during my masters degree, I was supervised by Constant Mews, beginning a long relationship that has blossomed from that of student and teacher, to become one of colleagues and collaborators. Constant was, and is, the most generous of supervisors. He was patient and yet energized and responsive. He was encouraging of my strengths, whilst instilling a disciplined approach to my many limitations. Most happily, he has always been generous in letting me know when my work has aided his ideas. This has been a great source of confidence, and comfort, for me. It gave the scope to imagine that there is always more work to be done in scholarship, always room for new ideas and new approaches. Most recently, Constant has read several iterations of this book. His comments have been rigorous, exacting, and kind. Constant’s encouragement helped me to think big for my PhD. And I did. I went to work at Johns Hopkins with my intellectual hero, Professor Gabrielle M. Spiegel. I am so happy to say that she remains thus to me, as well as many other things. Gaby was a wonder as an advisor. She schooled me in her terrifying work ethic, helping me to understand the level of dedication and rigour that is necessary in the production of good work. She read my work swiftly,

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returning it with scouring comments and encouraging smiles. She was also a mentor in life, understanding intimately the problems of young scholars whose childbearing years coincide with those of crucial early career development. Gaby worked very hard, in a much less forgiving environment than mine, to combine an academic career with motherhood. I am delighted and inspired by Gaby’s continuing success and influence. I miss her terribly from Australia, and hope that this book is some testament to her qualities as a supervisor. At Hopkins I was fortunate to work with Professor David Nirenberg. He brought energy and delight to scholarly work, schooling all of us in the necessity of a passionate and quizzical relationship with our subject. In particular, David encouraged us to think about the political and ethical dimensions of our practice as historians. In so doing, he insisted that we read more than our own fields, but that we also immerse ourselves in the political and social theories that would enable us to conceptualize better the meanings and ramifications of own scholarly work. I would also like to thank Tom Izbicki for his help with Latin during my time at Hopkins. From his office in the Milton Eisenhower Library, he dispensed kind words of encouragement, as well as explanations of confusing things like gerunds. I shared my life in Baltimore with a wonderful group of friends. Graduate school brought us altogether for that brief window, and now our lot are scattered across the globe. For good times, I want to thank Gavi Bogin-Farber, Dirk Bönker, Frances Clarke, Casey Coneway, Michael Henderson, Katherine Hijar, Razeeb Hossain, Kimberley Lynn, Nikolas Matthes, and Kyle Riismandel. Ethan Miller was brave enough to join me in a cross-country trip in a borrowed Audi, and I thank him for his courage and love. The Kates, Moran and Jones, have been profoundly nice to me. Since 2007 I have been back at Monash. It has been a pleasure to return to Monash as a staff member and to enjoy the atmosphere of collegiality and support. I want to mention my gratitude to Megan Cassidy-Welch, Clare Corbould, Jane Drakard, Leah Garrett, David Garrioch, Michael Hau, Carolyn James, Jan Pinder, Jason Taliadoros, Beatrice Trefalt, Christina Twomey, and Tomas Zahora. A number of my colleagues have commented on various sections of this book. I am grateful to them for their sharp, yet twinkling, eyes. Bain Attwood bravely offered his talents as a proofreader at the end of the process. I hope that there are not too many errors remaining to cause him irritation. Peter Howard has been very supportive over the many years that we have known each other. He has been especially encouraging with warm words and friendly queries as I have tried to complete this book.

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To the anonymous readers of this manuscript I offer humble thanks. Readers’ comments tend to be bracing, and mine were no different, but they were also erudite, painstaking, and very helpful. Finally, at Monash, Barbara Caine has been a warm and generous mentor. She is also a cherished friend. Magically, Barbara always seems to know what to say at the right time. After many difficult moments, I have left a conversation with Barbara feeling resolved and encouraged. She has been a wonderful guide as I began my professional career, and her example in mentoring junior female scholars is one that I hope to be able to emulate. My interest in the intellectual history of the Middle Ages, which began as an undergraduate, has coincided temporally with my wonderful life with Cameron Logan. This is not a coincidence. Cam has always shared my determination that we should try for a life in scholarship, even with the invariable risks, dislocations, and financial worries that have often been the result. I thank him for his optimism, energy, and love. Honora and Terence Monagle, our children, came on-board during this project. They did not help much at all, but I am glad that they are here. I would like to thank Sam Morley for, reliably, being there. Brigid Monagle, Catherine Monagle, Paul Glubb, Michael Logan, Libby Priddle, Tasha Logan and Paul Williams have all been there as well. Thank you one and all. My parents, Eileen and Terry, were always excited, if nervous, about my career choice. I am very happy that Terry, who died in 2008, was able to see me dressed in my lurid bumble-bee Johns Hopkins doctoral robes when I attended a Monash graduation as a staff member. My memory of his happy laughter as he spied me will always be a source of joy. My parents were exemplary role models for work/life balance, well before the phrase was coined. In this regard I am working to emulate them. My parents-in-law, Nola and Brian Logan, have the work/life thing down pat, with an emphasis on the life part. Their support, both financial and emotional, has carried us through during some of the tougher times. I dedicate this book to Constant, Gaby, and Barbara. It would not be here without them.

Introduction

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he temporal span of this book begins in the middle of the eleventh century with the controversy over the Eucharistic theology of Berengar of Tours. It terminates at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Over those 150 years or so, of the long twelfth century, the so-called schoolmen emerged as a dynamic force in the administrative and intellectual life of western Europe.1 By 1215 men trained in the cathedral schools of northern Europe, a cohort called the clerici whose rise to power is chronicled in R.  I. Moore’s The First European Revolution, had become prominent in secular and religious administration.2 1215 saw the aforementioned Lateran IV, as well as the foundation of the University of Paris and the Magna Carta. These were all watershed events in the history of western Europe, and they were all enabled by textual work performed by these clerici. As Moore has shown, schoolmen were responsible for constructing the rationales for these events and for drafting the pieces of legislation that would be their centrepieces. In Moore’s telling, the rise to power of the clerici in this period was nothing short of revolutionary, and their new skills constituted a genuinely new source of power, authority, and prestige in the High Middle Ages. As Moore has it, the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the rise of the descendants of the Carolingian aristocracy into a more concentrated and organized ruling culture who oversaw the cultural flourishing, eco1 

One of the best general introductions in English to the intellectual culture of the twelfth century remains Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Benson and Constable. Also beloved of this author are Chenu, La Théologie au douzième siècle, and Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, i: Foundations; ii: The Heroic Age. See also the collection, A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, ed. by Dronke. 2  Moore, The First European Revolution, p. 6.

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nomic growth, and emerging persecutory processes that characterized medieval Europe by 1215. He argues that much of the cultural and political heavy lifting of this ruling culture was performed by its clerici. He writes that ‘the greatest beneficiaries of the redistribution, the clerici who became the power elite of the new Europe, themselves constituted a class in all but name, and one which was new in all but blood. If this was not a revolution it is difficult to suggest another name for it’.3 I begin with Moore’s bold formulation because it offers, in the words of John O. Ward: A basic and profound corrective to earlier writings that stress, perhaps overmuch, the religious significance of the twelfth century in European history. So often seen as the heyday of heresy, the beginnings of the ‘reformation,’ or of religious individualism or the age of papal absolutism, the twelfth century in Moore’s view is depicted in the broadest terms as a momentous epoch of general change in the trajectory of European historical evolution.4

Moore’s vision of the twelfth century as a period of tremendous and founda­ tional change, in which the clerici take a pivotal role, is one that implicitly places the theology of that period in a broader context that is political and social and economic. Moore’s account uses very broad brush strokes, which are in sharp contrast to the fine miniatures commonly presented by intellectual historians of this period. The picture he paints is a large one that attempts to gauge how the work of reformers and scholars, as two examples, relates to and informs the political cultures of the twelfth century. Whether or not one agrees with Moore’s overall argument, he offers an important hypothesis about the intersections between proto-scholastic learning and the operations of power in the twelfth century. According to Moore, then, in the period between Berengar of Tours and Lateran IV, the clerici become dominant as the draftsmen of the political order. They were the literate elite who enabled the inscription of the notions and laws to be incorporated into the written word. Their training in the schools, their geographical mobility, and their investment in institutional life made them ideal administrators within the growing bureaucratic machineries of western Europe. These men had been trained in systematization and codification. That is, they were taught how to extract abstracted principles and laws from authori3  4 

Moore, The First European Revolution, p. 6. Ward, ‘Cereals, Cities and the Birth of Europe’, pp. 250–51.

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tative texts. They learned how to generate systems out of often contradictory bundles of information. This made them particularly well suited to tasks such as drafting legislation, preparing papal councils, or keeping records of feudal dues and obligations. In other words, their learning was swiftly transformed into a technology of power and authority.5 As authority increasingly came to be vested in the written word, rather than the sworn oath, it was the schoolmen who were charged with composing those words.6 It is for this reason that 1215 is seen as a benchmark year by historians of the Middle Ages. In that year of Magna Carta and Lateran IV, crucial legislation drafted by schoolmen is seen to inaugurate a new order of social and political order for Europe.7 This book is no different in assigning particular significance to 1215. Alongside the roster of regulations emerging from Lateran IV, which were inscribed in the canons, was a statement of emphatic support for Peter Lombard’s Trinitarian orthodoxy. This endorsement has been little remarked upon by scholars, and yet it provides a fascinating insight into the growing importance of the practice of academic theology within the corridors of power at that time. As such, I will argue it provides some significant clues for understanding just how the clerici came to assume such authority and cultural prestige over the course of the long twelfth century. This endorsement of Lombard took centre stage in the canons of Lateran IV. Indeed, it underpinned the logic of the council as a whole. To put this another way, the figure of Peter Lombard was constructed as the voice of orthodoxy and as the builder of a reverent and authoritative system of theological speculation. The author of the Sentences was made an emblem of the schools and endorsed as a voice of reasoned and profound inquiry. In so doing, the council 5 

On literacy as a technology of power, particularly in relation to inquisitorial practice, see Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society; Arnold, ‘“A Man Takes an Ox by the Hand”’. 6  The classic accounts of the relationship between oral and textual cultures in the Middle Ages are Stock, The Implications of Literacy, and Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. John H. Arnold has recently pointed out that historians have been problematizing the idea of a transition between orality and literacy, writing that ‘with specific regard to medieval literacy, historians have more recently argued for the interpenetration of oral and literate modes of culture, noting for example the ability of one literate person to disseminate a text to a much wider circle (hence expanding the practical effect of literacy), whilst also pointing to the particular cultural “charge” that literacy and texts carried with them in the middle ages’. Arnold, What is Medieval History?, p. 63. 7  For example, a few titles that use 1215 as a starting or an endpoint, in addition to Moore’s book already cited, are Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe; Holt, Colonial England; Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire.

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not only endorsed the intellectual methods invented in the schools over the preceding 150 years but used those methods to both persuade and mandate a series of reforms. Peter Lombard’s place at Lateran IV would seem to support the claims of Moore about the nature of the ‘first European revolution’. Here we have the author of the most influential textbook in theology being celebrated in the same statutes as those that proclaimed the most activist papal agenda in centuries. The ascent of the clerici does seem, from the example of Lateran IV at least, to have been assured at that time. But how did this happen? Throughout the late eleventh and most of the twelfth century, the schools attracted significant amounts of criticism and controversy. In the better-known stories of Berengar and Abelard, and the lesserknown stories of Gilbert of Poitiers and Peter Lombard, we can see that the emergent practice of academic theology was fraught with potential for charges of error and even accusations of heresy. At the same time, this volatile environment was one of energy and innovation. Gillian Evans observes that ‘the pressures of an inward intellectual dissatisfaction among teachers and pupils helped to generate the air of constructive intellectual excitement which animates the most characteristic writings of the twelfth century’. 8 The history of the schools in this period, this story of vigorous contestations and attacks, does not necessarily seem to presage the dignity and respect given to the name of Magister Peter Lombard at Lateran IV. Rather, the story of the schools in the twelfth century often seems to be one of speculation, contingency, and argument.9 Powerful men such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Gerhoh of Reichersberg, and Joachim of Fiore mounted vigorous campaigns against the schoolmen, anxious that theological speculation threatened faith and the integrity of the Church. In the twelfth century, I would argue, the triumph of the schoolmen was not inevitable. The intellectual tumult of that century ought not be written as a footnote to the scholastically led innovations of the thirteenth century. Instead, it seems that if we are to understand just how the rise of the clerici took place, we should return to the arguments of the twelfth century regarding the schoolmen and their ideas. The investigation of the moments when the schoolmen were most under attack, when their ideas and methods seemed most vulnerable to stigmatizing charges of heresy, might offer an intriguing 8 

Evans, Old Arts and New Theology, p. 14. A very helpful introduction to the relationship of intellectual tumult to broader political and social concerns is provided in Fichtenau, Ketzer und Professoren. It has been translated into English as Fichtenau, Heretics and Scholars, trans. by Keiser. Another useful introduction is Ferruolo, The Origins of the University. 9 

Introduction

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vista to look at the process by which their scholarly community evolved and their relationships with the wider world developed. In particular, given that it was Peter Lombard who was eventually endorsed at Lateran IV, it will be useful to consider the controversies that circled around the reception of his epochal Sentences after 1160. These should be read in the light of the preceding theological controversies, those that involved Berengar, Abelard, and Gilbert. Read together, a strong seam of criticism of the schools, and internal responses to that criticism, can be understood as being systemic to the schools over the course of the twelfth century. Describing the intensity of these controversies, Peter Godman writes says that in ‘the absence of criteria of verification and the lack of effective oversight, charges of heterodoxy and claims to exercise magisterium could be raised so recklessly that the figures of scholar/heretic and the inquisitor were becoming interchangeable’.10 If we take the theological arguments surrounding Berengar, Abelard, Gilbert, and Peter Lombard as a continuous line, I argue we will be able to chart the necessary and foundational role that these debates played within the schools, and how these debates structured the larger relationships of the schools with the papacy. The elucidation of this line will enable a contextualization of the use of Peter Lombard at Lateran IV. If we are to understand the multitude of meanings offered by the figure of Peter Lombard in 1215, we must uncover the preceding history of the reception of his ideas, and the memories of his person. In Chapter 1, ‘Schoolmen and their Critics, from Berengar to Gilbert of Poitiers’, I reconsider the attacks that attended the careers of Berengar, Roscelin, Abelard, and Gilbert, as well as canvas their innovations of method and content. Each of their theological approaches, in spite of the many differences between them, took a grammatical approach to the words that bore divine meanings to them. They attempted to understand how divine names, such as those of the Trinitarian persons, could be understood within the terms of human grammar. What was signified by the noun Deus or Christus? Could human concepts be predicated upon those words? What does it mean to say ‘God is goodness’ or ‘Christ is man and God’? These early schoolmen were experimenting with just how far their training in grammar could help them in apprehending aspects of divinity. In so doing they were testing the limitations of human inquiry, setting their questioning at the limits of comprehension in their attempts to apprehend divinity. This approach to divine names resulted in waves of criticisms, as I demonstrate. What was at stake, for the critics of the schoolmen, was faith 10 

Godman, The Silent Masters, p. xv.

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itself. They believed that to expose the Trinity or the Incarnation to such forensic investigation constituted a type of violence against the faith. Consistently, men such as Lanfranc, Anselm of Bec, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Gerhoh of Reichersberg saw the schoolmen’s questioning as a form of pestilence and depravity, as opening lines of investigation that displayed contempt for belief and mocked the mystery inherent to Christian doctrine. Chapter 2, ‘Peter Lombard’s Life and his Sentences’, takes the schools c. 1156 as its point of departure. The schools in the second half of the twelfth century have received somewhat less attention than those of the first. It is usually presumed that the era after Abelard is one of stability and consolidation. In this chapter, I take issue with that characterization. I draw on the life and work of Peter Lombard to show that there was no dimunition of creativity or speculation in the period after 1150. Rather, I argue that casting fresh eyes on Peter Lombard’s Sentences enables us to witness a period of genuine intellectual novelties and provocations. In the first instance, I contextualize Peter Lombard in terms of the patronage networks that brought him to France. I argue that Peter Lombard’s educational trajectory makes him particularly well placed to respond to the educational needs of his time. I argue that the evidence suggests that Lombard was a shrewd manager of his relationships within and outside of the schools, which enabled him to stay on the right side of certain important potential critics, in contrast with Abelard for example. Secondly, I show the way his earlier works reflect his most important scholarly and patronal relationships, particularly those with Bernard of Clairvaux, Alberic of Reims, and the Victorines. This is not to say, however, that I assume that Peter Lombard’s work was merely the result of the insights of his mentors. Lombard’s works might be couched in the conservative terms of intellectual homage, but their overall content reveals profound debts to the more innovative work in systematic theology proferred by predecessors in the schools. This is to say that there is deep continuity of ideas and methods between Peter Lombard and those who came before him. Peter Lombard was strategically and overtly conservative, in ways that I outline. At the same time, however, I argue that Lombard’s performance of conservatism should not also blind us to the more radical ideas underlying his masterwork, the Sentences. In Chapter 3, ‘Lombard’s Christology and its Critics’, I devote much time to an explanation of Peter Lombard’s Christology as it manifests itself in the Sentences. In so doing, I explore Lombard’s self-presentation as an orthodox and careful thinker firmly rooted in the Augustinian tradition. I also show, however, how he makes some subtle, but significant, departures from Augustine. These departures contain the seeds of some of the innovations of the Sentences.

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I then look at the criticism that Lombard’s Sentences received after its publication. Its critics, often scathing and brimming with fury, focus particularly upon his Christology. They argue that in his efforts to explain the difference between Christ’s human and divine natures, Peter Lombard derogated Christ’s humanity and reduced it to nothing. That is, they accused Peter Lombard of refusing the quiddity of Christ’s humanity, its thing-ness. These criticisms were passionate and furious and drew much of their power from their rhetorical excess. Many of the criticisms were framed as an appeal to the pope and constructed Lombard’s alleged error as threatening the unity of ecclesia. Peter Lombard, they argued, was using human language to penetrate sacred mystery. In so doing, he was threatening the faith, and thereby the Church that housed and protected the faithful. The Christological criticisms that emerge use the figure of Peter Lombard, and his alleged error, as a mode to petition the pope and remind him of his duties to guard the faithful. The often intricate Christological argumentation that takes place as a result of Peter Lombard’s Sentences is construed as schismatic and irreverent in the hands of the Christological critics. And, in this, the anti-Lombard invective follows tropes and moods established previously by Bernard of Clairvaux in his criticisms of Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers. In Chapter 4, ‘Christology in the Schools after Lombard’, I try to understand the source for the Christological criticisms of the previous chapters. Although the criticisms were aimed firmly at the posthumous reputation of Peter Lombard, many accusations made against him were not based on textual evidence from the Sentences. It seems that Lombard’s legacy was transmitted, after his death, not only by text but by rumour, hearsay, lectures, and gossip. As the Sentences became a popular textbook in the schools, it became increasingly widely discussed and interpreted on the page and in conversation. In this chapter I chart the permutations and combinations of the Lombardian legacy. In so doing, I show how the tradition of interpreting and using Peter Lombard’s Sentences gave rise to a number of the criticisms canvassed in Chapter 3. Historians have long puzzled at the virulence of the Christological criticisms, given the many moderations of the Sentences. I demonstrate, in this chapter, that the Sentences had a life of its own after 1160. It was redacted, it was commented upon, and it was the subject of rumour and hearsay. And this occurred both within the schools and in worlds beyond them. Finally, in Chapter 4, I argue that the Christological criticisms die down after 1180. One of the reasons for this is the failure of Alexander III, the pope, to legislate upon the issue. The other reason, I argue, was some significant changes in the theological orientation of the schools after that date. Led by Peter the Chanter, a number of schoolmen worked on issues of applied theology. They were less concerned

Introduction

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with the high theory of the Trinity or Christology than with the application of theological reasoning to problems of Christian practice, regulation, and life. Consequently, the involved and abstracted conversations about Christ’s two natures that had been so pressing in the schools between 1160 and 1180 were pushed aside. The frenzied Christological criticisms canvassed in the previous chapter seem to have significantly reduced after 1180. In the final Chapter, ‘Lateran IV and Peter Lombard’, I return to Lateran IV in 1215, with which I began this Introduction. I show how the support of Peter Lombard evinced in the canons of the council fits into the overall logic of the conciliar documents. I argue that Peter Lombard functions as an emblem of sound theological reasoning which is reverent and orthodox. This approach, within the terms of Lateran IV, is constructed as meticulous, reasoned, and grounded in auctoritates. The figure of Peter Lombard, and his theology, is presented as that which enables the saving work of the council. The message of Lateran IV was that effective papal policy was produced through the codifying and consolidating work of schoolmen, with a mastery of tradition and a technology of intellectual precision. My overall point, in reading the council, is that Lateran IV reveals the necessity of the intellectual technologies produced by the schools in the previous century and a half. The heroic figure of Peter Lombard deployed at Lateran IV was a necessary one, in spite of the ambivalent history attached to his name. This was partly because, I will argue, the method that he was made to stand for, that of dialectical reasoning, was found to be so instrumental in the making of law and the functions of government in the early thirteenth century. Over the previous century, critics of the schoolmen, as well as certain schoolmen themselves, had repeatedly petitioned various popes to discipline the schoolmen, to reduce the intellectual hubris, to stifle their novel and profane questions. These external and internal critics of the schools sought an increase in the regulation of the type of questions being asked and the types of answer being given.11 These petitions had implored papal action and attempted to use these issues of intellectual heresy to test the mettle of these popes. In many cases these petitions had held sway. Popes had responded to these provocations and attempted to sanction and impose order upon scholars. By 1215, however, the method offered by the schoolmen had become integral to the operations of power and authority. The pope needed the schoolmen, and in fact Innocent III had been one himself.

11 

See Godman, The Silent Masters, pp. 3–31.

Introduction

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The long twelfth century is the period of the move from ‘controversy to orthodoxy’ of this book’s title. Throughout that period, certain schoolmen were experimenting with novel approaches to doctrine and mystery. They were attempting to see just how close human knowledge, and the tools of human reasoning, could take them towards the apprehension of the mysteries of their faith. And for many critics, these ideas were indeed trying. They seemed like the result of overweening curiosity, hubris, and irreverence. The schoolmen seemed to be meddling in the problems beyond their scope. In so doing, they ran the risk of poisoning the simple minds of the faithful with meaningless complication and analysis. The quarrels between these two camps were vitriolic and furious. They moved quickly beyond debates about content, swiftly becoming sites of personal and institutional enmities. All this is outlined in the following book. These quarrels enable us to witness passions running high in feverish debate. In this witnessing, I argue, we can become privy to the ultimate stakes of the argument. As I will show, the stakes go beyond a contest over the best way to think about the Trinity or the Incarnation. These quarrels also bear meanings that pertain to faith, governance, and institutional power in the twelfth century. Finally, in this Introduction, I want to make clear my enormous debt to the contribution of Marcia Colish, who has done much crucial work to revive and inform interest in the legacy of Peter Lombard.12 This particular investigation into Peter Lombard’s work and reception would not have been possible without her foundational investigations. And, in addition, I would also like to acknowledge Philipp Rosemann’s work on Peter Lombard. His monograph, Peter Lombard, has succeeded in bringing Lombard’s achievement to a wider audience. His contribution is an example of lucid synthesis and a model to those of us who think about this thinker. The insights of Colish and Rosemann run throughout what follows. Footnotes alone are unable to do justice to their impact in this book.

12 

Most importantly see Colish, Peter Lombard.

Chapter 1

Schoolmen and their Critics, from Berengar to Gilbert of Poitiers

C

athedral schools of the twelfth century were often a space for explicit discussion about the possibilities and limitations of human thought. The members of these schools wanted to know the degree to which reasoning might productively explicate sacred mystery. Concomitantly, they inquired as to the reliability of human language as a mode of representing those mysteries. These two questions — of the applicability of logic and the integrity of representation in language — were pondered in tandem by the men who populated the schools as teachers and students. They were intent upon working out what things could be said to be true. Their desire was to establish a roster of satisfactory statements about God that would function not only as a guide to knowledge of God but to the limitations of human perceptions of God. In demarcating what could be said with certainty about an atemporal and perfect God, the schoolmen were similarly engaged in understanding their capacities as human beings in an imperfect and temporal world. As they saw it, any systematic knowledge of God had to be extrapolated from the sacred page (sacra pagina) and the writings of the church fathers. God presented, then, through words. The nature of these words, and their thoughts about the best ways of organizing them into meaning, was the fundamental concern of these new schools. Hence the origin of the word ‘scholastic’; it was the method of instruction that emerged from the schools.1 1 

On this process, the development of a new ‘scholastic method’ in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, see Evans, Old Arts and New Theology, and Smalley, The Study of the Bible

2

Chapter 1

These schools, attached to collegiate churches and cathedrals, expanded in significance in the growing market towns of northern France of the late eleventh and the early twelfth centuries. They were designed to train young clerics in the literacy required for the administration of growing episcopal and papal administrations. While many cathedral schools had been operational since at least the Carolingian period, monasteries had been the main providers of higher education in early medieval Europe. In the politically insecure early Middle Ages, the localized and fortified monasteries that dotted Europe were best placed to maintain structures for the transmission of Latin literacy and manuscript production. Learning, in this context, was a mostly private practice dependent on the protocols of individual monasteries and their pedagogical needs. There was no established curriculum of higher education. There were no degree-granting institutions. Rather, the practice of reading and writing the Latin language was intimately connected with the particular needs and methods of individual foundations. The growing urban schools were very different. They were a specialized product of the town, with students flocking in from all over to avail themselves of this service. In Paris, the masters paid the bishop for a licence to teach (licentia docendi), which entitled them to charge tuition for instruction. Across the left bank, masters peddled their lessons in grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. They attempted to attract fee-paying students with the dynamism of their loquacity and the novelty of their interpretations of texts.2 This is not to say, however, that the rise in popularity of the schools saw the end of monastic education. Nor is it to say that the school or the monastery offered the only locations of higher education in the medieval West. As C. Stephen Jaeger has shown, the courts also provided a place of further education at certain times in the Middle Ages.3 Indeed, the line between the monastery and the school in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was not necessarily as sharp and precise a line as it might seem on first glance. In fact, many prominent schoolmen, such as Abelard, Thierry of Chartres, and Alan of Lille, actually ended their lives as monks. Yes, many twelfth century figures were quick to decry the errors of their educational competitors. There was certainly, as we

in the Middle Ages. See also Mews, ‘Philosophy and Theology’. 2  On the licentia docendi see the famous essay by Post, ‘Alexander III, the Licentia docendi, and the Rise of the Universities’. Also see Delhaye, ‘L’Organisation scolaire au xiie siècle’. For a relatively more recent approach to the economic sociologies of the schools see Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages. 3  See Jaeger, The Envy of Angels, and also Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness.

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will see, routinely aired polemical discourses overstating the difference in aims and method between these competing educational worlds. This has left a lingering impression of a bitter and impassable divide, with the conflict between Bernard of Clairvaux and Abelard being most emblematic of these tensions. However, the intensity of their rhetorical performances ought not lead us to overstate the gulf between monastic and scholarly education. Rather, as we will see, the often virulent disagreements over education and theology are only part of the story of intellectual life in that period. Monks, schoolmen, and courtiers all drank from the same well of the liberal arts, but had differing opinions as to the appropriate use and applications of the literary skills provided by grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. The students in the schools were not cloistered or protected by fortifying monastic walls. Instead, they lived in rented lodgings and frequented taverns. They were of the medieval town, with its increasingly variegated economic functions and mobile populations. Education in the schools was concerned less with the cultivation of a holy person than with the production of a body of skills in Latin language. Like the monasteries, the schools were providing an education in the Trivium — grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Unlike the monasteries, however, this education was slowly taking the form of a bachelor’s degree, which could lead on to further more specialized studies or into employment in the courts of both secular and religious leaders. Where the monasteries cultivated learning as part of a faithful orthopraxis embedded in cloistered space, the schools were, crudely, service providers for hire.4 This is not to minimize the faith or the reverence of the schoolmen; it is rather to point out that the structural conditions of their operations were very different to those of monks.5 4  I use the term ‘orthopraxis’ following Carruthers, The Craft of Thought. See particularly her introduction, pp. 1–6. She writes of the difference between orthodoxy and orthopraxis that ‘orthodoxy explicates canonical texts, whereas orthopraxis emphasises a set of experiences and techniques, conceived as a “way” to be followed’. See also her work on memory, Carruthers, The Book of Memory. 5  As Sally N. Vaughn and Jay Rubinstein pointed out in 2006, ‘The study of monastic schools has largely been lost in scholars’ efforts to present a picture of monastic life as a whole’; with the exception of Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. by Misrahi, Vaughn and Rubenstein argue that the minutiae of method and material in the monastic schools has been significantly elided in the literature. They discuss the work of scholars such as Beryl Smalley and C. Stephen Jaeger and argue for a general historiographical glossing over of the work of schools. See, the introduction to Teaching and Learning in Northern Europe, ed. by Vaughn and Rubinstein, p. 1.

4

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Whereas the monastic ideal saw education as an ongoing aspect of prayer practice, the urban schools offered the possibility of an intellectual apprenticeship that, once completed, would enable the recipient to ply his trade in the wider world. Higher education in theology expanded from the cloister to the town with the consequence that even though the schools were ostensibly restricted to male clerics, there was a significant increase in the educational franchise of the Middle Ages. While Heloise famously received tuition from a magister, it does seem that she was the exception that proved the rule of female exclusion from the schools. The dominance of monks as the major literate force in western Europe was challenged by the schools attached to non-monastic churches. The written word was increasingly deployed by their graduates. This was a change that generated much anxiety from a number of different constituencies. What would it mean to talk about language and God outside of the cloister? What were the consequences of literacy being a skill rather than a piety? What would happen to the language that bore sacred mystery if it was to be exposed to the scrutiny of those who sought to understand its grammatical and logical principles? Nobody knew the answer. Monks, schoolmen, and bishops were all engaged in these questions; they all wanted to know where this brave new world of scholastic education would take them intellectually and devotionally. Some feared that splicing the mysteries of faith with logic would demean the faith, exposing sacred doctrine to ridicule. Others hoped that they could articulate a solid scientia (knowledge) of God gleaned from the involved textual legacy of scriptures, the writings of church fathers, and the records of papal councils. That is, they hoped for the production of an orthodoxy, a body of extracted teachings. The schools aroused both feverish hopes and dire fears. Both emotions were constitutive in the sagas of Berengar, Roscelin, Abelard, and Gilbert of Poitiers that concern us in this chapter. Between 1050 and 1148 each of these schoolmen was accused of promulgating inappropriate explanations of divine things. In Berengar’s case it was the Eucharist, while in the cases of Roscelin, Abelard, and Gilbert it was problematic definitions of the Trinity. Each of these men had attempted to analyse the grammar of the phrases that conveyed the contours of mystery to the faithful. For example, Berengar interrogated the phrase ‘This is my body’ (Hoc est corpus meum) that was proclaimed by the priest as he held aloft the consecrated host during Mass. Roscelin criticized theories of Trinitarian unity that understated the difference between the Trinitarian persons. To do so, he argued, was to refuse the fundamental reality implied by the word res. Abelard attempted to make sense of the three persons of the Trinity by having each person manifest a particular quality of the supreme good, which he identified with God. Gilbert of Poitiers attempted to decline

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the name of God according to the Latin case system. He wanted to know what was meant by saying that God was something, by creating a predicate statement with Deus as the subject. Language enables something to be predicated of God, but Gilbert maintained that God was ultimately beyond the petty qualities that man could bestow on him conceptually. He asked how could this be? Berengar, Roscelin, Abelard, and Gilbert were all accused of taking the insights of the liberal arts into the realm of theology. The orthodoxy of each of these men was debated at or after papal councils, and each were forced to rescind aspects of their thought. Their ideas and their persons aroused much enmity from their opponents and inspired devotion in their supporters. While the trying ideas of each teacher were articulated in very precise and abstract prose, the debates about the orthodoxy of their persons were conducted in language hysterical and replete. In the minds of many, the application of grammatical categories to the word Deus was a schismatic act. That is, the critics of the schools perceived in the dialectical methods of the schoolmen a refusal to accept unity per se, be it in relation to a sacrament, a mystery, or the ecclesia itself. Consequently, it was not only their ideas that were considered to be dangerous but their methods and their persons as well. The critics of these particular schoolmen were a broad church. They included famous monks, such as Rupert of Deutz, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Geoffrey of Auxerre, and episcopal luminaries such as Lanfranc of Bec. And certain schoolmen were part of the charge against other schoolmen. In particular, William of Champeaux and Peter Lombard took active roles in opposing Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers respectively. That around twenty years later Lombard’s reputation would also come under attack demonstrates the shifting sands of allegiances in these controversies. It was never as simple as monk versus scholar, in spite of surviving rhetoric that would have it so. Instead, in these trials we see vigorous argument taking place among a number of influential people of varying institutional allegiances about the future path that the schools should take. The schools themselves were never on trial; their existence was a fait accompli. Rather, the trials of Berengar, Roscelin, Abelard, and Gilbert of Poitiers demonstrated the increasingly dynamic influence of the schools in defining theology, and the concern of many that they be involved in shaping the future of these new institutions. These arguments of substance which are the subject of this chapter introduce the myriad of concerns, emotions, and thoughts that the new schools aroused within their community. Around these very particular debates about language and divinity there was a repetitive refraction of broader tensions about the contested nature of ecclesia and her mysteries. And this refraction, in

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turn, expressed anxiety about the very practical spoils of institutional change and development. As modern bureaucratic language would have it, there were many stakeholders there, and they were zealously guarding their intellectual, social, and political patches. Above all, what was at stake was the definition of theology. The trials of Berengar, Roscelin, Abelard, and Gilbert exposed this complicated web of enmities and amities in sharp relief. These conflicts were a site where these epistemological concerns became juridical, emotional, and relatively public. The story of the trials cannot be told as a contest of disembodied ideas. Nor can it be treated as a tale of ideas used instrumentally in order to effect political or social realities. Instead, to come to terms with both the hysteria and the abstraction of these debates, it is necessary to register the fact that the intellectual, the political, and the emotional are inextricably connected in the world of the schools of the twelfth century. The debates that begin in the 1150s concerning the orthodoxy of Peter Lombard’s Sentences emerged out of this particular history of arguing within and over the schools, and can only be explained in that context. At Lateran III in 1179 and Lateran IV in 1215, the adequacy of Lombard’s explanations of Christ’s hypostasis and the Trinity were canvassed. In the preparations for these councils, documents were produced that challenged the integrity of Lombard’s person and the orthodoxy of his theology. In the arguments over Lombard, a similar constellation of hopes, furies, and anxieties that constituted the earlier trials were visible. These attacks on Lombard have been understudied in relation to the earlier controversies, with the scholarly consensus seeming to be that the trial of Gilbert of Poitiers in 1148 was the last moment of this sort of intellectual conflict in the twelfth century. According to Richard Southern, this signalled the end of the ‘heroic age’ of the charismatic masters (magistri) of the early schools.6 The schools had become, to many minds, more stable and less personal institutions, with the evaporation of the type of enmity seen earlier in the century. Peter Lombard’s Sentences, along with Gratian’s Decretum, is often figured as the driver of this change. The standardized textbook of theology — and the Sentences was really the first of its kind in medieval Europe — becomes the container of wisdom. Authority resided (or came to reside) in the page rather than in the teacher. The evidence of the controversies surrounding the reception of the Sentences, which is the principal subject of this book, runs contrary to this narrative, that of the triumph of system over personality. The travails of the reception of the 6 

As per n. 63 on p. 52.

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Sentences between 1160 and 1215 suggest that the totalizing ambitions of the textbook inspired a new generation of anti-school polemicists who were not only keen to enjoy the rhetorical flourish and political energies of intellectual scandal but were also genuinely nervous about the novelty of the work. The Sentences, according to prevailing accounts of the schools in the twelfth century, is supposed to have closed down querulousness, to have organized the problems of the preceding generation into a coherently orthodox almanac.7 The twelfthcentury critics of the Sentences, however, would not have agreed that this shift had occurred. Men like Gerhoh of Reichersberg, John of Cornwall, and Walter of St-Victor struggled bitterly to petition Pope Alexander III to apply papal censure on the book so that its dissemination would be restricted. They feared that the idea of the textbook promoted undue aspirations to unified and total human knowledge of the divine. So, rather than a quieting of questioning, the Sentences aroused consternation and anxiety. The debates around its orthodoxy covered much of the same terrain as those earlier quarrels about Berengar, Abelard, and Gilbert. The critics of Lombard charged that his desire to explicate the logic of the hypostasis, the constitution of Christ’s person, was hubristic and schismatic. Their fear, as they expressed it, was that too much questioning would undermine the necessary simplicity of the faith of the faithful. In order to understand better the attacks made on the orthodoxy of Peter Lombard’s masterwork it is necessary to retrace the earlier argumentative steps of the schools. In the earlier trials, as well as the attacks on the Sentences, we encounter often uncomfortably vitriolic language and outlandish claims on the parts of the protagonists. The mapping of the controversy about the Lombard needs these contours of the preceding arguments. The trials of Berengar, Abelard, and Gilbert initiated a new discourse around the efficacy and legitimacy of school-based ideas. This discourse was continued in the second half of the twelfth century in relation to Peter Lombard. What are these rhetorical and intellectual contours?

7  The standard edition is Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady. The Sentences has very recently been translated in four volumes by Giulio Silano for the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, i: Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano; ii: Peter Lombard, On Creation, trans. by Silano; iii: Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano; iv: Peter Lombard, On the Doctrine of Signs, trans. by Silano.

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Berengar of Tours (c. 999–1088) The debates that circulated around the Eucharistic theories of Berengar of Tours were foundational to the intellectual and institutional lives of the schools as they proceeded over the twelfth century.8 The influence of the controversy was evident in the fact that for many centuries afterwards the term ‘another Berengar’ was often used to cast aspersions upon the orthodoxy of a thinker.9 The quarrels surrounding the figure of Berengar provided a forum around which issues of theology, scholarship and church governance coalesced; as Radding and Newton write: The Eucharistic Controversy of the eleventh century is of importance not just for the ideas at stake, crucial as they were for the central rite in Christian religious practice, but as a key episode in the process by which an intellectual and scholarly community took shape.10

Berengar was, for most of his career, a master in the ancient abbey school at Tours. It had an eminent history as an educational institution. Under Alcuin’s guidance during the Carolingan period, Tours had become a centre of learning and an important centre for the diffusion of the novel Carolingian miniscule. The history of the abbey at Tours illuminates some of the problems of assuming there was a clear divide between monastic and scholastic educational traditions. As abbot of the monastery at Tours, Alcuin imposed strict Benedictine 8 

The most recent overviews of the disputes surrounding Berengar’s Eucharistic theology are assembled in Auctoritas und Ratio, ed. by Ganz, Huygens, and Niewöhner, and Theology, Rhetoric, and Politics in the Eucharistic Controversy, ed. by Radding and Newton. Both have excellent bibliographies. Radding and Newton also edit and translate a treatise dating from the controversy, which they identify as authored by Alberic of Monte Cassino, and which related to the latter stages of the controversy. Macy, The Theologies of the Eucharist, provides another excellent exposition of the issues of the controversy as well as an illuminating historiographical essay that charts the purposes to which Berengar’s theology has been put in post-Reformation debates about the sacrament of the Eucharist. The most detailed history of the controversy is provided by de Montclos, Lanfranc et Bérenger. In addition to his monograph, Montclos has edited a number of primary sources pertaining to the controversy which he places in his appendices. One of the most influential earlier articles on the controversy was Southern, ‘Lanfranc of Bec and Berengar of Tours’. 9  Macy, ‘Berengar’s Legacy as a Heresiarch’, locates references to Berengar’s heresy throughout the medieval and early modern periods, pp.  46–77. See also Hödl, ‘Die theologische Auseinandersetzung mit Berengar von Tours’. 10  Theology, Rhetoric, and Politics in the Eucharistic Controversy, ed. by Radding and Newton, p. 1.

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rule and reformed the scriptorium. Yet, he also opened the school to lay and clerical students. At Tours, monastic education blurred with the courtly and the clerical.11 This mixing continued until Berengar’s day. As well as bearing the title scholasticus at Tours, as master of the school he also spent some time as secretary to Geoffrey of Anjou, from whom he received significant patronage.12 Although Berengar is most often remembered as a founding grammatical theologian, he came from a tradition in which monastic and clerical education were intermingled. Berengar’s fame, or infamy, came from his attempts to use grammatical categories to explicate the Eucharistic mystery. That is, he wanted to understand the grammar of the statement Hoc est corpus meum. The Eucharistic mystery, to his mind, was the question of how the bread and wine could be the body and blood of Christ and yet still look just like bread and wine. What was the nature of this change, given that it did not seem to be a physical one? This was a vexed question, as Berengar was to find out. His inquiry, as innocuous as it might seem, courted controversy. In asking whether or not the change to the bread and wine could be considered to be real, he was implicitly posing the correlate, namely that the changes might only be metaphysical and so constituted through the metaphor of priestly pronouncement, rather than actual physical transformation. At stake were two visions of priestly performance of the sacraments. One had the priest conjuring the sacramental mystery through invocation, his words fusing the bread and wine with real presence that could be devoured by the faithful in sacramental union; the other implied by Berengar had the priest witnessing the mystery when he pronounced Hoc est corpus meum. In the latter, the priest was charged with the task of remembrance, of issuing the linguistic sign of mystery, rather than producing the mystery itself. The question at the heart of this controversy was, as Brigitte Bedos-Rezak has argued: ‘was the Eucharist “dispositive”, that is, endowed with real presence and inherently potent?’13 Or was the Eucharist only endowed with real presence in a limited and contingent spiritual sense? 11 

For a general introduction to Carolingian culture, and to Alcuin’s career, see McKitterick, Charlemagne. 12  For a biography of Berengar see Evans, ‘Berengar of Tours’. 13  Bedos-Rezak, ‘Medieval Identity’, p. 1501. This article follows the activities of ‘chanceryscholars’ (Bedos-Rezak’s own term) — men trained in the schools and working in administration — as they develop new modes of representing identity over the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Bedos-Rezak focuses particularly on the increasing use of seals and charters to manifest the authority of the person through a symbol rather than through their physical person.

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Berengar’s path to the question was through a combination of Augustinian semiotics and the grammatical theory of Priscian and Boethius. The insight he gathered from Augustine, which formed the basis of his grammatical analysis, was the belief that objects in the created world constituted a semiotic system of signs referring to deeper, obscure meanings. For Augustine, the sacraments were part of this reifying system, signs of something other than themselves. Such sacraments were the outward sign of inward grace. As Berengar wrote in a letter, quoting Book ii of Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana: ‘A sign is a thing which of itself makes some other thing come to thought, besides the impression that it presents to the senses’.14 Berengar stressed that the reception of signs was ultimately intellectual, noting that ‘he [Augustine] did not say: into the hands, into the mouth, into the teeth, into the heart’ but ‘into thought’.15 Hence the sacrament was constituted as an object in the world referring to grace. The sign bears grace, conveys grace, but ought not to be confused with grace itself. This meant that sacraments, as with other objects in the world, required interpretation. The higher meaning of signs was not self-evident; rather it was the task of the believer to move through them into the higher truth they bear. The signs that bear the sacrament of the Eucharist are the bread and the wine as well as the statement of consecration: Hoc est corpus meum. Berengar argued that the signs of the bread and wine did not seem to alter substantially. That is, whatever changes might be affected within the sacrament, they do not seem to alter the fundamental bread-ness and wine-ness of the objects. As Berengar wrote, it would be ‘against all reasons of nature’ (contra omnes naturae rationes) if he were to assert that ‘bread loses its substance altogether in the sacrament of the body of the Lord’.16 Since the bread and wine appear unchanged, their quiddity unaltered, the sacrament must occur spiritually. That the bread and wine should be considered to be unchanged substantially was, for Berengar, a confirmation of his conviction that the sacraments were signs of divine presence, rather than divine presence itself. But what to make of the statement, ‘This is my body’, which seems to be in conflict with the visual evidence on the altar? This predicate statement implied that the ‘this’ of the bread and wine is modified by the ‘my body’. The substan14 

‘Letter to Adelmann’, in de Montclos, Lanfranc et Bérenger, p. 532. ‘Letter to Adelmann’, in de Montclos, Lanfranc et Bérenger, p. 532. 16  Berengar of Tours, Serta Mediaevalia, ed. by Huygens, p. 148: ‘Sapis enim contra omnes naturae rationes, contra evangelicam et apostolicam sententiam, si cum Pascasio sapis in eo, quod solus sibi confingit, sacramento dominici corporis decedere panis omnino substantiam’. 15 

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tive verb (est) conveys equivalence between the two parts of the sentence. The subject, the pronoun ‘this’ (hoc) was equivalent to ‘my body’ (corpus meum). Following Priscian, the schoolmen had been taught that a noun signified substance and quality.17 Therefore, to say Hoc est corpus meum, using predicates, suggested that the change was a substantial one. Here was the source of the contradiction: the bread and wine do not seem to alter substantially, but the grammar of the predicate statement suggests that they do. Berengar’s eyes taught him that the changes to the bread and wine were not substantial. His understanding of the rules of grammar, however, suggested the opposite. The problem of the Eucharist was that the signs of the sacrament said contradictory things. Could this contradiction be resolved with more thought? Berengar attempted to resolve the contradiction logically. This is to say, he took great argumentative pains to show that a more nuanced reading of the grammar of Hoc est corpus meum suggested that the predication was less equivalent than it might appear at first glance.18 He performed a type of forensic grammar upon the Eucharistic statement in order to show its ultimate congruence with the bread and wine. He was not denying sacramental change; rather he denied that the change that took place was substantial in strictly Aristotelian terms. He argued that since sacraments were sacred signs that demanded interpretation, it was necessary that the interpretive modes to hand were shown to have the integrity necessary to the task. He had to prove that Hoc est corpus meum was not a statement that implied substantial change, as he had to show that the rules of grammar were congruent with what he understood to be theological reality. Berengar’s opinions aroused consternation on the part of a number of ecclesiastical and monastic luminaries. Between 1059 and 1079 Berengar appeared at papal councils. In 1059 he assented to an oath, later recounted, in which he confessed that the bread and wine that are set upon the altar, after consecration are not sacrament alone, but also are the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and in sensory fashion and not only as a sacrament but in truth are handled and broken by the hands of the priest, and ground between the teeth of the faithful.19 17 

On the influence of Priscian in the Middle Ages see Gibson, ‘Milestones in the Study of Priscian’. 18  Berengar’s very complicated grammatical argumentation is too involved to cover here. For an exposition of this particular aspect of Berengar’s analysis see Colish, The Mirror of Language, pp. 72–74. Colish’s analysis is used to good effect in Rubin, Corpus Christi. 19  Lanfranc of Bec, Liber de corpore sanguine domini, col. 410D: ‘quae astruere conatur

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This was a strikingly carnal formulation that reveals how anxious the papacy was to manage Berengar’s opinions. The bread and wine were, the statement asserted, the actual body and blood of Christ which were masticated by the faithful. Berengar was forced to assert what he would have registered as a primitive sacramental theology, one that conflated the sacred sign with the thing itself. Brian Stock argues that Berengar’s formulation of 1059 ‘effectively eliminated the distinction between the appearance and the reality of the sacrament’.20 The crudely corporeal statement forced upon Berengar by his critics illuminated difficulties they had experienced in meeting Berengar’s challenge. This was because the prevailing explanations on the Eucharist, up until this period, emphasized the mysterious sacramental mutuality between the bread, Christ’s body, and the Church. As Henri de Lubac explained of early medieval formulations of the Eucharist, that they focused ‘less on the apparent sign, or rather the hidden reality, than on both at the same time: on their mutual relationship, union and implications, on the way in which one passes into the other, or is penetrated by the other’.21 In language poetic and allusive, earlier medieval writings had emphasized the significatory allusions enabled by the Eucharist. For example, de Lubac quotes the ninth-century monk Candidus: ‘Take and eat’. That is, Gentiles, make up my body, which you already are. This is the body which is given for you. What he took from that mass of the human race, he broke by his passion, and raised up after breaking […]. Therefore what he took from us, he handed over for us. You are to ‘eat’, that is, perfect the body of the Church, so that, whole and perfect, she may become the one bread, with Christ as its head […]. Bread, therefore, is the body of Christ, which he took from the body, his Church.22

In this earlier sacramental economy, the sign was expressed as part of a continual and open-ended refraction of meaning. panem et vinum quae in altari ponuntur, post consecrationem solummodo sacramentum, et non verum corpus et sanguinem Domini nostri Jesu Christi esse, nec posse sensualiter in solo sacramento manibus sacerdotum tractari, vel frangi, aut fidelium dentibus atteri’. 20  Stock, The Implications of Literacy, p.  277. Stock’s work provides another excellent introduction to the Berengarian controversy. He provides particular detail on the patristic and Carolingian origins of the debate and frames the content of the eleventh-century debate particularly in terms of a divide between high and low culture, learned and unlearned. 21  I found this quotation, originally from de Lubac’s Corpus Mysticum, in Boersma, ‘Nouvelle théologie’ and Sacramental Ontology, p. 6. 22  I have taken the text from the English translation of de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church, trans. by Simmonds, p. 24.

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Berengar, however, insisted on understanding the signs that bore the Eucharist as separate from that which they signified. He wanted an enumeration within the sacramental economy. By contrast, the oath to which his critics demanded he assent in 1059 insisted that pointing out the separation between sign and signified constituted theological error, even at the cost of producing an unduly literal statement. Lanfranc of Bec, one of Berengar’s critics, wrote that it needed to be understood that ultimately ‘Christ is thus a sacrament of Christ’ (Christus ergo Christi est sacramentum).23 His point was that the enumeration demanded by Berengar displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the function of sacraments. Their mystery is the result of their atemporality, their refusal of the sign/signifier dichotomy, their transcendence of human categories. To say that ‘Christ is a sacrament of Christ’ was to say that, in the case of sacramental transformation, the categories that govern human understanding of events fail to hold. Lanfranc of Bec (c. 1005–89) was a formidable adversary. As the title of a recent monograph attests, his career combined many aspects of educational, spiritual, and administrative life.24 Born in Italy, he was educated in Pavia before making his way to the schools of northern France, eventually achieving the position of master of the cathedral school of Avranches. Lanfranc became a monk in 1043, joining the newly established foundation at Bec. Bec became one of the most important monasteries in the Anglo-Norman realm. Lanfranc founded its school, which was responsible for educating a number of young men who would go on to assume key ecclesiastical posts, including the archbishopric of Canterbury. Lanfranc himself would hold this post during his lifetime. Throughout the intense and innovative years of the Gregorian reforms, the monks of Bec were at the vanguard of the movement that combined monastic revival with a reassertion of papal primacy, since the school at Bec played a key role in disseminating these ideas and propagating arguments in their support. Lanfranc’s life, then, was not one of monastic seclusion and isolation. Instead, certain aspects of his biography would seem more apposite to clichés of the life of young man of the cathedral schools. Lanfranc had travelled for his education, embodying the mobility that so characterizes the schools in the twelfth century. In fact, in the course of his lifetime Lanfranc lived in what we now call Italy, France, and England. And his intellectual life, at least in the terms of 23 

Lanfranc of Bec, Liber de corpore sanguine domini, col. 423D. Cowdrey, Lanfranc: Scholar, Monk, and Archbishop. For further reading on Lanfranc, see Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec, and Southern, ‘Lanfranc of Bec and Berengar of Tours’. 24 

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his argument with Berengar, was concerned with the cutting-edge theological issues of his day. Certainly, the quarrel between Berengar and Lanfranc cannot be reduced to a binary between school and monastery, with school standing for modernity and the monastery for the past. Rather, both men were involved as innovators in the significant intellectual and educational currents of their time. The controversy was also undercut, we can assume, by the different political allegiances of the protagonists. As mentioned earlier, Berengar enjoyed patronage from Geoffrey of Anjou. Throughout the 1040s Geoffrey had been in the ascendency, moving out of his base around Angers and Orléans into the county of Tours, and by the end of that decade he was attempting to take Maine, the border region which lies between Normandy and the Loire Valley, and was, at that time, under the stewardship of Geoffrey’s godfather Gervase who was bishop of Le Mans. As part of his power play, Geoffrey took Gervase hostage. In doing so, Geoffrey embroiled himself in border tensions with Normandy, as well as alienated the papacy. Consequently, Pope Leo met with the bishops of Normandy in Reims in 1049, and Geoffrey, and thus his county, was placed under interdict. 25 Meanwhile Bec, rising in prominence during that time, enjoyed remarkable independence and was celebrated for its intellectual and spiritual life.26 Hence the passion and vitriol of the quarrel that unfolded. After 1059, the arguments surrounding Berengar continued for the next twenty years and reached far beyond the confines of school and cloister. Lanfranc wrote to Berengar that Pope Nicholas, thrilled at your conversion, sent the report of your oath-taking [in 1059] throughout the towns of Italy, France, and Germany, and indeed to any places where the story of your depravity could reach. Just as the scandalised churches had before mourned your rejection of the truth, afterwards they rejoiced and thanked the Lord at your return and conversion.27

Here, Lanfranc describes Berengar’s heresy as a kind of virus. Evidently, the pope had attempted to use the publication of Berengar’s oath to soothe the 25 

See Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec, p. 65. See also Fulton, From Judgement to Passion, p. 130. For an explanation of the particular privileges enjoyed at Bec, see Constable, Three Treatises from Bec. 27  Lanfranc of Bec, Liber de corpore sanguine domini, cols 411D–12A: ‘Nicolaus papa, gaudens de conversione tua, jusjurandum tuum scriptum misit per urbes Italiae, Galliae, Germaniae, et ad quaecunque loca fama tuae pravitatis antea potuit pervenire. Ut sicut Ecclesiae scandalizatae prius dolebant de te a veritate averso, atque ita postea gauderent gratiasque Deo agerent de reverso atque converso’. 26 

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concerns of the faithful. Berengar was later to say, as Lanfranc reports, that he had only taken the oath for fear of recrimination. Berengar’s repudiation of this oath was a betrayal of orthodoxy itself; Lanfranc addressed him, ‘Oh demented mind! Oh lying impudency! Such punishable wickedness’.28 In this account, Berengar was a secretive hypocrite. Lanfranc wrote to Berengar, ‘you chose evil, which you often imbibed and which you upheld in secret meetings of the ignorant, but openly and in the presence of the Sacred Council you upheld sacred orthodoxy from no love of truth’.29 Lanfranc’s words reveal the sense in which heresy was perceived as a covert attack not only of orthodox ideas but upon the health of the church. In Lanfranc’s letter, moreover, we see ecclesia conflated with Christ’s body conflated with the Eucharist itself. Consequently Berengar’s posing of the problem of the Eucharist — his desire to enumerate the component parts of the sacrament as sign — was not merely a slight upon the mystery of the sacrament, it was an attack upon Christ’s body and the Church. Berengar was not merely in error, he was in evil. It was ‘such punishable wickedness’. Lanfranc’s passionate invective proposed a dichotomy between good and evil that was unsustainable. Consequently, it was necessary to answer the concerns of Berengar on intellectual grounds rather than on Lanfranc’s moral grounds. How do we know this? Over the course of the Eucharistic controversy, the terms of the debate shifted towards the terms proposed by Berengar, even if his final argument was repudiated. In 1079 Berengar was again compelled to assent to an oath, this time pronouncing that the bread and wine which are placed on the altar […] are changed substantially into the true and proper vivifying body and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord and after the consecration they are the true body of Christ which was born of the virgin […] and the true blood of Christ which flowed from his side, not however through sign and in the power of the sacrament, but in their real nature and true substance.30

28 

Lanfranc of Bec, Liber de corpore sanguine domini, col. 419C: ‘O mentem amentem! o hominem impudenter mentientem! o puniendam temeritatem!’ 29  Lanfranc of Bec, Liber de corpore sanguine domini, col. 408A: ‘Sed quia elegisti pravitatem, quam semel imbibisti, clandestinis disputationibus apud imperitos tueri, palam autem, atque in audientia sancti concilii orthodoxam fidem non amore veritatis’. 30  Gregory VII, Das Register, ed. by Caspar, 6. 17A, pp. 425–26: ‘Ego Beringarius corde credo et ore Confiteor panem et vinum, quae ponuntur in altari, per mysterium sacrae orationis et verba nostri redemptoris substantialiter converti in veram et propriam ac vivificatricem carnem et sanguinam Iesu Christi domini nostri et post consecrationem esse verum Christi corpus,

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Although Berengar was not happy with the terms of this oath, its use of the notion of substance showed some shift from the earlier more carnal formula that had the body and blood of Christ being bound between the teeth of the faithful. The new formula asserted that the change that took place during the sacrament of the Eucharist was indeed a substantial one. In other words, the bread and the wine, despite their unaltered appearance, were fundamentally and substantially (substantialiter) transformed within the sacrament. The question then became how this substantial change occurred without the change of appearance. The answer, which would later be given the formal name of transubstantiation, was that the mystery of the Eucharist was precisely this unanswerable question. Berengar’s inquiries had not resulted in his preferred solution, an acceptance that the Eucharistic change was not substantial. But it had resulted in a refinement of the formula that took his definitional nuance on board, in order to state with much greater clarity the contours of the mystery within the terms of human cognition. The Eucharist was a mystery because it seemed to contravene the laws of nature as well as those of grammar. Berengar pushed those around to him to account for this, to account for this contradiction more precisely in the theology of the sacrament. The Eucharistic controversy was notable for the eventual occurrence of this linguistic modification. Drawing on the revival of grammatical training in the schools, Berengar attempted to penetrate the grammar of Hoc est corpus meum in order to see how it accorded with the transformational claims of sacramental theology. What he found were incongruences between what he read, what he saw, and what he had been taught to understand. His response was radical: he said that his methods proved the Eucharistic changes to be merely spiritual and not substantial. His line of argument opened up a seam within theology that could not easily be stitched up. Here we see an emerging instant of the peculiar dynamic that will concern us here, that of the ways in which the new forms of logical and grammatical reasoning changed the terms of theological debate, even while the practioners were often reviled and condemned.

quod natum est de virgine […] et verum sanguinem Christi, qui de latere eius effusus est, non tantum per signum et virtutum sacramenti, sed in proprietate naturae et veritate substantiae’. Translated from Theology, Rhetoric, and Politics in the Eucharistic Controversy, ed. by Radding and Newton, pp. 107–08.

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Roscelin of Compiègne (c. 1050–after 1120) The next intellectual conflict of note, for our purposes, is that between Roscelin and Anselm of Bec. Little is known of Roscelin’s life and times. He tells us that he taught at Loches and Tours. Almost none of his writings have survived. What we do know is that Roscelin, like Berengar before him, was keen to understand the space between human language and divine things themselves. He was fascinated by the problem of theological language, of how to best convey ineffable mysteries within the limits of human speech. Whereas Berengar was embroiled in the Eucharistic controversy, it was Roscelin’s Trinitarian theology that got him into trouble. Most famously, and in the latter stages of his career, he composed a furious letter to Abelard, his former student.31 In this he outlined his own theological positions, focusing on the ‘gulf between human language and divine simplicity’, as Constant Mews has it.32 While this letter comes well after Roscelin’s quarrel with Anselm, it is worth quoting for the insight it gives us into Roscelin’s thought. Roscelin wrote to Abelard in order to explain that one could define the three persons of the trinity each as a thing (res) without undermining the unity of the Trinity. His point pertained to the elasticity and conventionality of human speech, which ought not be understood to correspond to divine reality. He wrote, on divine names (nomina), that any nouns do not signify one thing and another, whether according to parts or to qualities, but they signify only substance itself, neither divided into parts nor changed through qualities. We do not therefore signify through person anything other than through substance, granted that we are accustomed out of a certain habit of speech to triple person, not substance, as the Greeks are accustomed to triple substance […]. For in speech there is diversity, in belief unity.33

31 

For a number of new insights into Roscelin’s oeuvre, as well as for a further contextualization of his thought, see the collection of articles by Mews, Reason and Belief in the Ages of Roscelin and Abelard. 32  Mews, ‘Nominalism and Theology before Abelard’, p. 12. 33  Roscelin, Epistola ad Abaelardum, ed. by Reiners, p. 72: ‘Sciendum est vero, quod in substantia sanctae trinitatis quaelibet nomina non aliud et aliud significant, sive quantum ad partes sive quantam ad qualitates, sed ipsam solam non in partes divisam nec per qualitates mutatam significant substantiam. Non igitur per personam aliud aliquid significamus, quam per substantiam, licet ex quadam loquendi consuetudine triplicare soleamus personam, non substantiam, sicut Graeci triplicare solent substantiam […]. In locutione enim tantum diversitas est, in fide unitas’. Translated by Mews, ‘Nominalism and Theology before Abelard’, p. 8.

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Here, Roscelin pointed out how language, used habitually, was often in partial error when it came to explaining the divine. It was customary to speak of the three persons of the Trinity, even though usual meanings of person presumed a quiddity in conflict with Trinitarian unity. This was the nature of language: to express diversity and difference. Faith, on the other hand, reached for unity. Hence there would also be something of a gap between the enunciations of speech and the pure enjoyment produced with faith. It is for this reason, his belief in the pliability and contingency of nomina, that Roscelin has had his long reputation as the founder of nominalism.34 Due to the paucity of sources for Roscelin’s writings, we have to take Roscelin’s later statements on the Trinity, quoted above, as evidence of his theological position. In his De incarnatione verbi, completed around 1092–93, Anselm noted that he was responding to repeated reports of Roscelin’s Trinitarian error. By this time Anselm had spent many years as Lanfranc’s successor as abbot of the monastery at Bec. Under his tenure, Bec had continued to rise in prominence as a seat of learning. It was one the most prestigious institutions in the Anglo-Norman realm, as attested by the fact that both Lanfranc and Bec went on to become archbishop of Canterbury. Famously, during his period at Bec, Anselm produced his Monologion and Proslogion, both of which were foundational works in the history of the theology of the Middle Ages. Writing under the oft-quoted injuction of ‘faith seeking understanding’ (fidens quaerens intellectum), Anselm had sought to show the congruence between Christian doctrinal belief and the conclusions reached by human reason when applied to spiritual matters. For this reason, Anselm is often reckoned the founder of scholasticism. He articulated a project that made understanding (intellectum) a necessary and useful supplement to faith. 35 That a founder of scholasticism was also one of the most important monks of the Middle Ages goes some way to illustrate the mutual imbrication of monasticism and scholasticism in this period, and to disabuse the binary between school and monastery. Like Lanfranc, Anselm was wary of the potential implications of the use of dialectic. And, like his predecessor, he saw himself of something of a guardian of orthodoxy. Hence he was moved to write his De incarnatione verbi in response 34 

For a survey on the historiography of nominalism, see Courtenay, Ockham and Ockhamism, pp. 1–22. 35  There is a vast literature on Anselm. The classic study of Anselm is Southern, St Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape. A significant collection of essays can be found in Anselm, Aosta, Bec and Canterbury, ed. by Luscombe and Evans. More recently, see Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance.

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to Roscelin. In about 1090, Fulco, a monk from Bec and bishop of Beauvais, had accused the well-known teacher Roscelin of teaching heresy; Roscelin had, accordingly, recounted his error at a council in Soissons. Anselm was moved to write after he heard that Roscelin ‘was persisting in his opinion and was saying that he had abjured his earlier statements only because he was afraid of being killed by the people’.36 This echoed the similar claims made by Berengar, who had similarly written that he feared the wrath of the mob. Later, at another council in Soissons in 1121, Abelard would record that he feared the anger and virulent attacks of the mob. Like Berengar, Roscelin eventually found support and sanctuary in the person of the count of Anjou.37 These allegations of retributive violence, as well as the protection offered by the count, testify to the heated tensions aroused by these controversies. As do Anselm’s admonitions against the pitfalls of seeking to understand doctrine without adequate humility or wisdom. He wrote, I will say something to curb the presumption of those who, with blasphemous rash­ness and on the ground that they cannot understand it, dare to argue against something which the Christian faith confesses — those who judge with foolish pride that what they are not able to understand is not at all possible, rather than acknowledging with humble wisdom that many things are possible which they are not able to comprehend.38

Anselm’s admonition against Roscelin was not only against the opinions he professed, but also his posture as a scholar. According to Anselm, Roscelin inquired into things of the faith without having adequate faith himself. When this happened, Anselm wrote, ‘It is as if bats and owls, which see the sky only at night, were to dispute about the midday rays of the sun with eagles, which with unblinded vision gaze directly at the sun’.39 Roscelin’s defiant position on 36 

Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, ed. by Schmitt, p. 4: ‘audivi prafatae novitatis auctorem in sua perseverantem sententia dicere se non ob aliud abiurasse quod dicebat, nisi quia a populo interfici timebat’. Translated from Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, trans. by Hopkins and Richardson, p. 266. 37  See Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard, p. 66. 38  Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, ed. by Schmitt, p. 6: ‘Sed priusquam de quaestione disseram, aliquid praemittam ad compescendam praesumptionem eorum, qui nefanda temeritate audent disputare contra aliquid eorum quae fides Christiana confitetur, quoniam id intellectu capere nequeunt, et potius insipienti superbia iudicant nullatenus posse esse quod nequeunt intelligere, quam humili sapientia fateantur esse multa posse, quae ipsi non valeant comprehendere’. Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, trans. by Hopkins and Richardson, p. 267. 39  Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, ed. by Schmitt, p. 8: ‘Velut si vespertiliones et noctuae

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the contingency of language, according to Anselm, exposed him to the harshest of lights. In his ignorance, Roscelin was confronting more than was appropriate for the faithful. As we have noted, Roscelin had insisted that the Trinity ought to be understood as being constituted of three things (tres res). As we saw above, Roscelin claimed the right to separate the quiddity of the Trinitarian persons on the basis that it was necessitated by the conventions of human speech. Famously, Anselm rephrased this position with fury, writing against ‘those dialecticians of our day (or rather heretics of dialectic) who think that universal substances are only vocal sounds [flatus vocis]’.40 Anselm’s response to Roscelin was to argue that each of the persons of the Trinity could be understood to be a res as long as the term was understood to merely convey distinguishing properties rather than ontological discretion. For Anselm, the absolute unity of the Trinitarian persons was never in doubt, thus the predication of singularity on each person of the Trinity needed to be understood as relational rather than literal. Anselm made the case for the potential continuity between reason and faith for the sake of the natural coherence of orthodox doctrine and the liberal arts. Categories of things in the world ought to provide a conduit to the apprehension of God, instead of provoking an awareness of division. Anselm wrote, Indeed, in the souls of these dialecticians, reason — which ought to be the ruler and judge of all that is in man — is so covered over by corporeal images that it cannot extricate itself from them and cannot distinguish from them those things which it ought to contemplate purely and in isolation.41

Anselm explained that corporeal things needed to be understood by reason in order to understand the relationship of things in the world to higher spiritual reality. Roscelin, however, made a case for a profound rupture between the

non nisi in nocte caelum videntes de meridianis solis radiis disceptent contra aquilas ipsum solum irreverberato visu intuentes’. Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, trans. by Hopkins and Richardson, p. 268. 40  Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, ed. by Schmitt, p. 9: ‘Illi utique nostri temporis dialectici, immo dialecticae haeretici, qui nisi flatum vocis putant universals esse substantias’. Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, trans. by Hopkins and Richardson, p. 269. 41  Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, ed. by Schmitt, p. 10: ‘In eorum quipped animabus ratio, quae et princeps et iudex debet omnium esse quae sunt in homine, sic est in imaginationibus corporalibus obvoluta, ut ex eis se non possit evolvere, nec ab ipsis ea quae ipsa sola et pura contemplari debet, valeat discernere’. Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, trans. by Hopkins and Richardson, p. 269.

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rules of human language and the mystical unity of the divine. But Anselm saw Roscelin’s articulation of this rupture as a failure of faith, as well as of imagination, wondering ‘if [my opponent] is one of those modern dialecticans who argue that nothing exists except what they can imagine’.42 Anselm suggested that Roscelin’s desire to mark the separation between human language and God was the result of his own inability to see the infusion of divinity into the things of the world. The debate as to whether each person of the Trinity constituted a res would not end with Anselm and Roscelin, as we shall see. At stake was much more than a point of doctrinal precision. Roscelin and Anselm were in disagreement about the scale of meaning that human language could be made to bear. Anselm believed in a profound possible consonance between human thought and divine truth. Roscelin argued that they were of an entirely different order and ought not be conflated. That this was a serious question indeed was evinced by Anselm’s determination to offer his De incarnatione verbi to the pope for censure. He stated, Divine Providence has chosen Your Holiness and has appointed you custodian of the Christian faith and life, and ruler of the Church. Therefore, if anything which is contrary to the Catholic faith arises in the Church, there is no one else to whom it is more rightly referred for authoritative correction.43

This direct appeal to papal sovereignty was unprecedented in the recent history of debates about academic heresy. Certainly, Lanfranc never petitioned the pope in the same way. Anselm’s point was to pivot this debate about the quiddity of the Trinitarian persons upon the sanctity of the church, and the authority of the pope. This was a statement of the stakes. Roscelin’s error, Anselm was suggesting, struck at the heart of all that was necessary for the ‘Christian faith and life’ of which the pope was the guardian. For ‘no Christian ought to question the truth of what the Catholic Church believes in its heart and confesses

42  Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, ed. by Schmitt, pp. 17–18: ‘Quod si iste de illis dialecticis modernis est, qui nihil esse credunt nisi quod imaginationibus comprehendere possunt’. Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, trans. by Hopkins and Richardson, p. 277. 43  Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, ed. by Schmitt, p. 3: ‘Quoniam divina providentia vestram elegit sanctitatem, cui fidem et vitam Christianam custodiendam et ecclesiam suam regendam committeret, ad nullum alium rectius refertur, si quid contra catholicam fidem oritur in ecclesia, ut eius auctoritate corrigatur’. Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, trans. by Hopkins and Richardson, p. 265.

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with its mouth’.44 According to Anselm, the Church was like a person: it was an organism capable of belief and of confessing. When Roscelin, or whoever, confessed error then the Church was riven within. Anselm propounded a vision that made the work of understanding a beautiful and coherent supplement to belief. He was concerned by the potentially divisive qualities of Roscelin’s dialectical reasoning was that it refused the very continuity between fides and intellectum that Anselm held to be essential to the reverent operation of reason.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142) Abelard was Roscelin’s most famous and influential student.45 The relationship between the two men was a troubled one, with Abelard making serious criticisms of his master in his Theologia summi boni. Like Anselm before him, Abelard took serious issue with Roscelin’s approach to theology. Against Roscelin, he wrote that ‘we do not promise to teach the truth, which everyone agrees neither we nor any other mortal can know, but only a verisimilitude of it which accords with human reason and is not contrary to human scripture’.46 He then followed with ‘what truth is, the Lord knows; but I am the judge of what may be said about what its verisimilitude is and what is most consistent with the philosophical reasonings which we use’.47 Abelard was seeking here to place human knowledge in something of a continuum with absolute truth. While the ultimate truth of divine things could only be known to God, Abelard maintained that human knowledge was potentially a verisimilitude of truth and was 44  Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, ed. by Schmitt, p. 7: ‘Nullus quipped Christianus debet disputare, quomodo quod catholica ecclesia corde credit et ore confitetur non sit’. Anselm, De incarnatione verbi, trans. by Hopkins and Richardson, p. 267. 45  Abelard’s story is most famously recounted in his own words in Abelard, Historia calamitatum, ed. by Monfrin, translated in Abelard, Historia calamitatum, trans. by Radice. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life, provides an in-depth survey of Abelard’s personal and intellectual life. See also Mews, Abelard and Heloise. For an overview of Abelard’s thought see The Cambridge Companion to Abelard, ed. by Brower and Guilfoy. 46  Abelard, Theologia summi boni, ed. by Mews, 2.26, p. 123: ‘De quo quidem nos docere ueritatem non promittimus, quam neque nos neque aliquem mortalium scire constat, sed saltem aliquid uerisimile atque humanae rationi uicinium nec sacrae scripturae contrarium’. Translated from Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life, p. 107. 47  Abelard, Theologia summi boni, ed. by Mews, 2.27, p. 123: ‘Quid uerum sit, nouerit dominus; quid uerisimile sit ac maxime philosophicis consentaneum rationibus quibus impetimur, dicturum me arbitror’. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life, p. 107.

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therefore related to it in a real way. Abelard did not see human knowledge as being in a blissful continuum with divinity, as per Anselm. But nor did he argue for a fundamental rupture between human understanding of divine things and divine things themselves, as had Roscelin. He argued that there existed a fundamental, if partial, likeness between human reason and truth. In so doing, he asserted his own legitimacy in interpreting that likeness. With such statements of his own intellectual entitlement, it is easy to see why Abelard often raised the hackles of his contemporaries. The consequences for his person and his reputation were, as is well known, harsh and decisive. However, while Abelard’s ego and proclivities were certainly consequential in his various conflicts with authorities over the span of his career, they ought not to concern us here. Rather, the reason that Abelard is interesting for our purposes is that his intense logical speculation on the nature of the names of God became the source of scandal after scandal. He was charged with heresy a number of times and brought before a number of councils. His combatants were famous and powerful men, both within and outside of the schools. It was an extraordinary roll call: apart from Roscelin, there was William of Champeaux, Anselm of Laon, Bernard of Clairvaux, and William of St-Thierry. Some were scholars, some were monks. Whatever their institutional affiliations, it seems that Abelard’s theology and person posed real challenges for normative conceptions of thinking and talking about God in an academic context. Their virulent quarrels with Abelard exposed real fissures in the conceptions of theology that opened further during this period. That some of them took place in the relatively public fora of papal councils demonstrated that they were certainly not mere inter-Nicene spats based on personal dislike of Abelard. Rather, Abelard appeared before successive councils because of the serious implications that his mode of thinking about God was held to have for the faith of the believer in particular, and the constitution of ecclesia in general. As Bernard famously and floridly wrote concerning Abelard: ‘I call you friends, not my friends, but Christ’s friends; Christ whose bride calls out to you that she is being strangled in the forest of heresy and amongst the undergrowth of errors which are cropping up under your care and shelter’.48

48  Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, viii: Epistolae: Corpus epistolarum, 181–310 (1977), Letter 187, p. 10: ‘Amicos dixerim, non nostros, sed Christi, cuius sponsa clamat ad vos in silva haeresum et in segete errorum, quibus sub tutela et custodia vestra pullulantibus, paene iam suffocatur’. Translated in Bernard of Clairvaux, The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, Letter 237, p. 315.

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Berengar wrote in his Rescriptum that it is a mark of the greatest spirit in all things to have recourse to dialectic […]. The blessed Augustine deems dialectic worthy of such high definition that he says ‘Dialectic is the art of arts, the discipline of disciplines. She knows how to learn, she knows how to teach, and she not only wishes to make men knowing, she actually makes them so’.49

Many years later, Abelard would cite the same passage from the De doctrina christiana in his Theologia.50 For both men, dialectic was more than just the application of a set of rules of argument and division. Rather, with Augustine’s warrant, they saw it as an integrative process of coming to know and knowing itself. It was a practice that trained the mind to wisdom, where the analysis of the factors that made things different from one another instilled in the practitioner a recognition of the diversity of God’s creation and his working through it. In particular, the diversity pondered by Abelard’s dialectical work was the contradictions he perceived between auctoritates on doctrinal matters. In his prologue to the Sic et non, where he outlined his method, he described how these contradictions ‘provoke tender readers to the highest exercise of seeking the truth, and return more acute from their questioning’, for ‘through doubting we come to questioning; and through questioning we perceive the truth’.51 Abelard’s statement was a very bold one. He was arguing that truth is revealed through the process of doubting, meaning the embrace of uncertainty rather than scepticism. It was an epistemology that contrasted sharply with one of the other great strands of twelfth century thought: Cistercian mystical theology. Bernard asked, ‘Why seek the Word among written words, Who stands before you, visible in the flesh?’52 For Bernard, the Word infused the world sacramentally and could be apprehended only in a state of Grace. Abelard, however, 49  Berengar of Tours, Rescriptum contra Lanfrannum, ed. by Huygens, pp. 85–86: ‘Maximi plane cordis est per omnia ad dialecticam confugere […]. Dialecticam beatus Augustinus tanta diffinitione dignatur, ut dicat: dialectica ars est atrium, disciplina disciplinarum, novit discere, novit docere, scientes facere non solum vult se etiam facit’. 50  Abelard, Theologia summi boni, ed. by Mews, p. 115. 51  Abelard, Sic et non, ed. by Boyer and McKeon, Prologue, p. 103: ‘quae teneros lectores maximum inquirendae veritatis exercitium provocent at acutiores ex inquisitione reddant’; ‘dubitando quippe ad inquisitionem venimus; inquirendo veritatem percipimus’. 52  Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, vii: Epistolae: Corpus epistolarum, 1–180 (1974), Letter 106, p. 266: ‘Quid quaeris Verbum in verbo, quod iam caro factum praesto est oculis?’

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believed that the Word was conveyed in words and needed to be interpreted as such. A wonderful summary of the difference between Bernard and Abelard was provided in Bernard’s letter to the bishops and cardinals of the curia in which he wrote of Abelard: ‘So mere human ingenuity is taking upon itself to solve everything, and leave nothing to faith. It is trying for things above itself, prying into things too strong for it, rushing into divine things, and profaning rather than revealing what is holy’.53 For Abelard, Bernard’s statement would have been a reductio ad absurdum. To deny the need for disputation implied the denial of thought altogether, for the quaestio was the major device used in the schools to foster learning and generate synthetic solutions. This would become increasingly apparent throughout the course of the twelfth century, particularly in the Sic et non, the Glossa Ordinaria and, of course, Peter Lombard’s Sentences. No doubt Bernard was being highly polemical with his attack, but it does demonstrate his strong awareness of the substantive difference between himself and Abelard. As Abelard demonstrated throughout his career, belief in the edifying and truthproducing powers of dialectic led him to embrace a view of the created world as composed of atomized, individual things whose ontological relationship to each other could not necessarily be assumed. The same held true of the words used to name those particular things. These names could not be assumed to bear an ontological reality, they were signs of divinity rather than divinity itself. In contrast, Bernard held a mystically infused view of the world, where meditation upon the Word aroused and nurtured the individual through a spiritual praxis. For his part, Berengar had taken great pains to separate the materiality of the bread and wine from the miracle thought to inhere therein, as well as from the linguistic formula that pronounced the sacrament. His desire was to respect the truth of the very evident — to his eyes at least — gap between the statement Hoc est corpus meum and the unchanged physical appearance of the bread and wine. His opponents charged that he reduced the sacramental mystery to individual units, that he reduced it to less than the miraculous sum of its parts. To a degree, the same intellectual dynamic was visible throughout Abelard’s various calamities. His dialectical appreciation of the created world as a site of differentiated concrete beings was often in conflict with the desire of his more vigorous opponents to view that same created world as divinely informed in a 53 

Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, viii, Letter 188, p. 11: ‘Ita omnia usurpat sibi humanum ingenium, fidei nil reservans. Tentat altiora se, fortiora scrutatur, irruit in divina, sancta temerat magis quam referat.’ Bernard of Clairvaux, The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, Letter 238, p. 316.

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multitude of ways. Like Berengar, Abelard believed that grace was mediated through signs, and that these signs were fundamentally intelligible as things in the world. Their efficacy as signs depended on them being so. The signs of God, not God Himself, functioned in the world as mediators that followed rules of human expression. Concepts such as Trinity or Incarnation could be analysed grammatically since they were not the actual sacred things themselves, but signs of them. The question that drove Abelard to this position was one posed by Porphyry, and translated by Boethius, and which Abelard reframed in his own words in his Logica ingredientibus. Regarding genera and species he asked: ‘Do they have true being, or do they reside in opinion only?’54 This was a crucial question, because if genera and species were held to have true being this would imply a neo-platonic metaphysics of emanation that was quite contrary to the Augustinian semiotics governing the practice of grammar in the schools. This question concerned the nature of individuation. Are like things held together ontologically through a shared indistinguishable substance and differentiated only in their accidental characteristics? Or are like things mentally grouped together by the cognizance of likeness in the eye of the human beholder. That is, does the word ‘man’ signify the universal essence man, which inheres individually in men? Or does it constitute a name of a notional category of individuals in the world who seem alike? This was the issue of the famous debate over universals that took place in the early twelfth century, between the so-called nominalists and realists. Abelard declared: ‘Since both things and words seem to be called universals, it must be asked how the definition of a universal can be adapted to things’.55 While Boethius had defined the criterion for a universal as ‘being present as a whole in many at once so as to constitute their substance’, Abelard asked if this was really possible metaphysically.56 William of Champeaux, Abelard’s teacher, had held the realist position. He believed that genus and species constituted universals, simultaneously present in numerous individuals. The genus ‘animal’ is wholly present in Socrates and Plato at the same time, likewise the species ‘man’. The genus and species are 54  Abelard, Logica ‘ingredientibus’, ed. by Geyer, p. 7: ‘Utrum verum esse habeant an tantum in opinione consistant’. Translated in Abelard, ‘Logica “ingredientibus”’, ed. and trans. by Spade, p. 26. 55  Abelard, Logica ‘ingredientibus’, ed. by Geyer, p. 10: ‘Cum autem tam res quam voces uni­versales dici videantur, quaerendum est, qualiter rebus definitio universalis possit aptari’. Abelard, ‘Logica “ingredientibus”’, ed. and trans. by Spade, p. 29. 56  Quoted in King, ‘Metaphysics’, p. 66.

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then contracted into individuality through the addition of accidental forms.57 For Abelard this was a logical and metaphysical impossibility. To argue that an individual was constituted through accidental forms was a contradiction in terms. By definition, an accident was not essential. How could accidents be the essence of individual identity, that which makes something a thing in itself ? The other problem, according to Abelard, was the constitution of the Universal itself. How could the Universal be wholly and simultaneously present in multiple things, and yet still be a thing in itself ? This was the metaphysical critique, one that held realism to be contrary to the laws of physics as they were understood. Abelard said that ‘no thing or collection of things seems to be predicated of several singly, which the characteristic feature of a universal demands’.58 His point was that a thing is by definition an individual and, as such, cannot participate in all things. Abelard claimed (as he was apt to do) that he roundly defeated William of Champeaux on this issue, and that William ‘corrected his opinion so that afterwards he said that things were the same not essentially but indifferently’.59 William’s modification was to grant only that things were related to each other through ‘indifference’, whereby ‘every human, for instance, is the same in that what makes them each a human does not differ’.60 Socrates is the species man in as much that he is indifferently a man like other men. This position posited the quality of individuality as the real thing, the Universal. Genus and Species defined difference between individuals indifferently, rather than essentially. This was not a satisfactory modification for Abelard, who felt that the problem remained the same. The idea of indifferent sameness still conflated the individual thing with the Universal. The individual thing — qualified by the indifferent relationships of genus and species — was still fundamentally undifferentiated from the Universal, which was a definitional absurdity. Abelard’s solution was eventually to abandon the concept of the Universal as a thing altogether, 57  Most of what we know about the thought of William of Champeaux is from the reports of Abelard, in his Logica ingredientibus and Historia calamitatum. The debate between Abelard and William, as well as the state of current studies on manuscripts potentially ascribable to William of Champeaux, is summarized by Mews, ‘Philosophy and Theology’. 58  Abelard, Logica ‘ingredientibus’, ed. by Geyer, p. 10: ‘Nulla enim res nec ulla collectio rerum de pluribus singillatim praedicari videtur, quod proprietas universalis exigit’. Abelard, ‘Logica “ingredientibus”’, ed. and trans. by Spade, p. 29. 59  Abelard, Historia calamitatum, ed. by Monfrin, p. 65: ‘Sic autem istam tunc suam correxit sententiam, ut deinceps rem eamdem non essentialiter sed indifferenter diceret’. 60  Marenbon, ‘William of Champeaux’, p. 690.

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understanding it, instead, as a mental abstraction. He thought that there were no identifiable objects that satisfied Boethius’s criteria of a universal, a thing that was present in many at once so as to define them substantially. The only thing that could be demonstrably proven about things, according to Abelard, was their distinction from one another. He stated, Thus we say that individuals consist only in their personal distinctness, namely, in that the individual is in itself one thing, distinct from all others; even putting all its accidents aside, it would always remain itself personally one — a man would neither be made something else nor be any the less a this if his accidents were taken away from him, e.g. if he were not bald or snubnosed.61

The difference between this position and William’s notion of ‘indifference’ is that while both agree that all things share the fact of individuality, Abelard rejected the idea that individuality is a Universal in the formal sense. He did not believe that the quality of individuality exists as a thing outside of individuals themselves. As Mews writes of Abelard’s position, ‘To argue that universal categories were things was to fly against physical reality. They signified an understanding of what they predicated’.62 Abelard’s position — what Peter King calls his ‘irrealism’ — was, and is, more commonly called nominalism.63 Nominalism was the conviction that universals could be understood as words predicated of individual things, words that could apply to many. Universals recognized the mental taxonomies produced in the mind, the intellectus of categories within creation. Abelard believed that the created world was made of scores of individual things that bore marked resemblances to one another, in spite of their ontological separation. It was useful to be able to speak about and construe sameness among individual things. He argued that ‘a universal word [sermo] is one that on the basis of its invention is apt to be predicated of several things by one’.64 And he defined predication 61  Abelard, Logica ‘ingredientibus’, ed. by Geyer, p. 64: ‘Dicimus itaque individua in personali tantum discretione consistere, in eo scilicet quod is se res una est discreta ab omnibus aliis, quae omnibus etiam accidentibus remotis in se una personaliter semper permaneret nec alia efficeretur nec minus hic homo esset, si omnia quoque separarentur accidentia, ut si hic calvus non esset vel hic simus’. Translated in King, ‘Metaphysics’, pp. 72–73. 62  Mews, ‘Philosophy and Theology’, p. 170. 63  King, ‘Metaphysics’, p. 65. 64  Abelard, Logica ‘ingredientibus’, ed. by Geyer, p. 16: ‘Est autem universale vocabulum quod de pluribus singillatim habile est ex inventione sua praedicari’. Abelard, ‘Logica “ingredientibus”’, ed. and trans. by Spade, p. 37.

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as ‘to be conjoinable to something truly by means of the expressive force of a present-tensed substantive verb’.65 As with Berengar, Abelard insisted on the grammatical rules governing predication as the necessary interpretative technique for thinking about phenomena in the world. We cannot understand what things are absolutely, only what can be said/predicated of them. For both men, esse in conjunction with other words only registered relational degrees: how things compare to one another. Abelard’s application of universal words or names was, as I have mentioned, the way he understood the difference between things in the world. His problems began, however, when he attempted to use the same method to understand the difference between the persons of the Trinity. He was charged with reducing the three persons to empty names rather than true realities. Given the following statement concerning the Trinity made by Abelard, it is easy to see how he could have been so accused: Christ the Lord, who is the wisdom of God incarnate, has diligently distinguished the perfection of the highest good, which is God, by describing it with three names […]. He called the divine substance ‘the father’, ‘the son’ and ‘the Holy Spirit’ for three causes he called it ‘the Father’, in accordance with that unique power of his majesty which is omnipotence, by which He can effect whatever He wills as nothing is able to resist Him. The same divine substance He says is ‘the Son’ in accordance with distinction of his own wisdom, by which He can truly judge and discern all things so that nothing can lie hidden by which He is deceived. He likewise called that substance ‘the Holy Spirit’ in accordance with the grace of His goodness […]. This therefore is how God is three persons, that is, ‘the Father’, the Son’ and ‘the Holy Spirit’. And so we say the divine substance is power, wisdom and goodness.66

Abelard constructed Christ as a magister, distinguishing Trinitarian names from one another, predicating characteristics of God. The names of the Trinity 65 

Abelard, Logica ‘ingredientibus’, ed. by Geyer, p. 16: ‘Est autem praedicari coniungibile esse alicui veraciter vi enuntationis verbi substantivi praesentis’. Abelard, ‘Logica “ingredientibus”’, ed. and trans. by Spade, p. 38. 66  Abelard, Theologia summi boni, ed. by Mews, pp. 86–87: ‘Summi boni perfectionem quod deus est, ipsa dei sapientia incarnata christus dominus describendo tribus nominibus diligenter distinxit […] filium autem eandem diuinam substantiam dixit secundum proprie sapientie discertionem, qua videlicet cuncta veraciter diiudicate ac discernere potest, ut nichil eam latere possit quo decipiatur; spiritum sanctum etiam uocauit ipsam secundum benignitatis sue gratiam […]. Tale est ergo deum esse tres personas, hoc est patrem et filium potentem, sapientem, benignam, immo etiam esse ipsam potentiam, ipsam sapientiam, ipsam benignitatem.’ Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life, p. 270.

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are given to humans by Christ to aid in the intellectus of God. In defining the three persons as names applied by Christ he threatened to undermine the individual personhood of each member of the Trinity. The names of the Trinitarian persons were, for Abelard, aspects of predicable statements of relation, as were their characteristics of power, wisdom, and goodness. The names and the characteristics were words bequeathed by Christ to aid human understanding of the divine substance. In making these points, Abelard implied that the difference of number in the Trinity was descriptive rather than essential. Abelard first faced heresy charges at the Council of Soissons in 1121. The charges were brought by Alberic of Reims and Lotulph the Lombard, former colleagues of Abelard’s at the school of Laon. At Laon, Abelard had made few friends with his insistence on demonstrating his own exegetical virtuosity, declining to pay deference to the skills of Master Anselm. Eventually he challenged Anselm’s authority head-on by conducting his own lectures in Laon in direct competition with his master and teaching without a licence. Abelard was charged with teaching that ‘only God the Father was omnipotent’.67 The charge derived from Abelard’s attempt to assign characteristics to each Trinitarian person. In saying which characteristic defined a particular member of the Trinity, he was implicitly saying what the other members were not. His case at the Council of Soissons was overseen by Cardinal Cono of Preneste, the papal legate in France at the time. Despite the attempts of Alberic and Lotulf to discuss the nuances of Abelard’s theology, as Michael Clanchy points out, ‘an academic heresy trial was the medieval equivalent of a trial for financial fraud. A fair decision in such a complex matter was close to impossible because unequivocal proof was so hard to obtain’.68 Bogged down in technical discussions, the legate proposed delaying the case and assembled a panel of experts to examine Abelard’s Theologia at a later date. Abelard’s prosecutors were reluctant to let this happen, fearing indefinite deferment. They attempted and succeeded in prosecuting Abelard on a technicality. They reminded the legate that Abelard had read in his book in public and had it copied without the approval of papal authority. The legate then ordered the book to be thrown in the fire, and Abelard was forced to recite the Athanasian Creed and was briefly confined at the monastery of St-Médard. While Abelard seems to have emerged relatively unscathed at Soissons, he remained a figure of controversy whose name continued to arouse suspicion 67  68 

Mews, ‘The Council of Sens (1141)’, p. 360. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life, p. 300.

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and anxiety. This all came to a head at his well-documented trial at Sens in 1141.69 Preceding this event, Bernard of Clairvaux had called upon his powerful connections and rhetorical arsenal to bring about Abelard’s prosecution and to secure its success. He called upon the bishops and cardinals of Rome, instructing them to ‘read, please, that book of Peter Abelard which he calls “Theology”’.70 That Abelard named his work ‘Theology’ provides another example of his self-conscious novelty, being the first usage of the word as a title for a text. Bernard’s case against Abelard was premised on the potential damage done to the Church when theological speculation such as Abelard’s is allowed: The faith of the simple is being held up to scorn, the secrets of God are being reft open, questions about the most sacred matters are being recklessly discussed, and he derides the Fathers because they held that such matters are better allowed to rest than solved.71

For rhetorical flourish, Bernard equated Abelard’s intellectual crimes to those of Arnold of Brescia, who had been waging his political revolt in Rome: ‘Scale is joined to scale, and there is no breathing space between them’.72 They were, according to Bernard, both part of the same movement to destroy the authority of the Holy Roman See. Bernard saw Abelard’s heresies as contaminating, just as Lanfranc had viewed those of Berengar. For Bernard, heresy became the source of error in others, infecting faith and moving through communities invidiously. Theological speculation, in particular, encouraged the questioning of sacred mystery which was better left undisturbed. It was equivalent to Arnold of Brescia’s threats of physical violence upon the papacy, in that it, too, threatened the unity of the Church. 69 

While there has been debate over the year of the trial, with the standard date being given as 1140, Mews has persuasively determined that it took place in 1141. See Mews, ‘The Council of Sens (1141)’, pp. 345–54, for a detailed summary of the arguments and evidence for both dates. 70  Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, viii, Letter 188, p. 11: ‘Legite, si placet, librum Petri Abaelardi, quem dicit theologiae’. Bernard of Clairvaux, The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, Letter 238, p. 316. 71  Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, viii, Letter 188, p.  11: ‘Irridetur simplicium fides, eviscerantur arcana Dei, quaestiones de altissimis rebus temerarie ventilantur, insultatur Patribus, quod eas magis sopiendas quam solvendas censuerint’. Bernard of Clairvaux, The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, Letter 238, p. 316. 72  Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, viii, Letter 189, p. 14: ‘Squama squamae coniungitur, et nec spiraculum incedit per eas’. Bernard of Clairvaux, The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, Letter 238, p. 318.

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A lot of ink has been spilt regarding Bernard and Abelard’s contest at Sens. It is sufficient to say for our purposes that Bernard succeeded manifestly in his mission, marshalling great support within the curia in order to defeat Abelard roundly. It was a defeat from which Abelard never recovered and seems to have haunted him throughout his life.73 What interests us here, though, is Bernard’s conflation of inappropriate speculation and schismatic behaviour. Mews has suggested that his conflation was not as expedient as is usually assumed, that indeed Bernard was extremely anxious about the threat of Abelard’s thought and the possibility that it might stir up social unrest.74 Certainly, Bernard’s zealous prosecution of Abelard drew on a powerful and poetic store of invective and lamentation which was rhetorical in the classical sense of the world and deeply persuasive to many. His own motivations notwithstanding, it was evident from the speed with which Bernard was able to move from the painstaking detail of Abelard’s theology to a widespread condemnation of his person and his enterprise that he thought the act of analysing the names of God posed a wider danger to the Church. As with Berengar and Roscelin — two other great iconoclasts in the short history of the schools so far — it seemed to be the application of grammar to the words that define divine presence that aroused the most vigorous ire among those who were watching the schools, from inside and outside.

Gilbert of Poitiers (1070–1154) The last major conflict of the pre-Lombardian era concerned the theology of Gilbert of Poitiers. Gilbert taught at Paris, and most probably at Chartres, before becoming bishop of Poitiers in 1142. We know about Gilbert’s trial in 1148 mainly due to accounts offered by the contemporary historians John of Salisbury and Otto of Freising. The conflict surrounding Gilbert has often been understood as a footnote to the more famous affairs of Abelard. This is so partly because Bernard of Clairvaux was actively involved in the attacks upon both men. John of Salisbury, writer of the Metalogicon and Policraticus, wrote of Bernard of Clairvaux in his Historia pontificalis that ‘various opinions are held of the abbot himself, some saying one thing and some another, because he attacked the two men most famous for their learning — Peter Abelard and this same Gilbert [of Poitiers] — and pursued them with such 73  74 

See Godman, The Silent Masters, p. 4. Mews, ‘The Council of Sens (1141)’.

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zeal’.75 But in the minds of Gilbert’s contemporaries, at least, Abelard and Gilbert could not be placed in the same basket. The historian Otto of Freising also recorded Bernard’s role in the trials of Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers, arguing in his Gesta Friderici that while Abelard may have provoked his own end, with Gilbert ‘there was neither the same reason nor like material’. 76 Tellingly, both John and Otto took pains to paint Gilbert’s character and learning as beyond reproach.77 John called Gilbert the ‘most learned man of our day’;78 Otto said that Gilbert ‘from his youth had subjected himself to the instruction of great men and placed more confidence in the weight of their authority than in his own intellect’.79 Gilbert was summoned to the Council of Reims (although his case was not heard until after the Council had closed) in 1148 to answer charges that he had promulgated four heretical propositions: ‘that the divine essence is not God; that the properties of the persons are not the persons themselves; that persons (in the theological sense) are not predicated in any proposition; that the divine nature did not become flesh’.80 The council was overseen by Eugenius III and was prosecuted by Bernard who focused particularly on the first three propositions, arguing that Gilbert’s application of grammatical categories to the persons of the Trinity had created a quaternity. As with Berengar and Abelard before him, Gilbert was accused of assuming that the signs that bore divine presence in the world functioned according to human laws of representation. 75  John of Salisbury, The ‘Historia pontificalis’, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, bk viii, 16: ‘De ipso tamen varia opinio est, aliis sic et aliis sic sentientibus de eo, quod viros in litteris famosissimos, Petrum Abaielardum et prefatum Gislebertum, tanto studio insectatus est’. 76  Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris, ed. by Waitz and von Stimson, i. 52, p. 74: ‘Sed nec eadem causa nec similes erat materia’. Translated in Otto of Freising, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. by Mierow, p. 88. 77  On the narrative qualities of John and Otto’s accounts, see Monagle, ‘The Trial of Ideas’. 78  John of Salisbury, The ‘Historia pontificalis’, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, bk viii, 15: ‘Vir etate nostra litteratissimus Magister Gislebertus’. 79  Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris, ed. by Waitz and von Stimson, i. 52, p. 74: ‘Iste enim ab adolescentia magnorum virorum disciplinae se subicens magisque illorum ponderi quam suo credens ingenio’. Otto of Freising, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. by Mierow, p. 88. 80  Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris, ed. by Waitz and von Stimson, i. 52, p. 75: ‘Quod videlicet assereret divinam essentiam non esse Deum. Quod proprietates personarum non essent ipsae personae. Quod theologicae personae in nulla predicarentur propostitione. Quod divina natura non esset incarnate.’ Otto of Freising, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. by Mierow, p. 88.

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But unlike those men, Gilbert’s personal reverence and humility was never in doubt. This meant that the conflation effected so easily by Bernard between a bad person and bad ideas in the former case of Abelard could not be made so easily in that of Gilbert. Gilbert’s person seems to have been beyond repute. No whiff of scandal or infamy surrounded his name. As far as we know, he did not have a history of provocative contestation, nor a colourful personal life. Otto of Freising wrote that Gilbert’s ‘moral sense and the seriousness of his living were not at variance with his intellectual attainments; he had applied his mind not to jesting at jokes but to serious matters’.81 Gilbert’s unassailable academic reputation presented a challenge to Bernard. The arsenal of accusations he had levelled at Abelard could not easily be applied in this case. Gilbert could not be charged with the accoutrements of heresy, of arousing social tension, encouraging sexual immorality, and prideful repudiation of orthodoxy. Instead, the campaign had to be waged on the basis of doctrine alone. This is not to say that it was not similarly political, as the accounts of Gilbert’s trial make clear, the stakes of reputation and prestige were enormous. Hence, I take some time in the following account of Gilbert’s trial to explain the intersection of theology and high drama that characterized the hearing. In so doing, we can further gauge why these new modes of theological reasoning provoked considerable anxiety and fear. That we are in a competitive educational environment becomes very clear when Geoffrey of Auxerre, Bernard’s biographer, was forced to admit how woefully unprepared Bernard was for this task of engaging in a trial of ideas. Geoffrey described his shame when, upon entering the consistory for the first day of the trial, he noticed that ‘Gilbert’s supporters had brought a great body of books while we only had a few authorities scribbled on a schedule’. 82 The next day, Geoffrey records, Bernard’s camp brought in a great stack of books in order to say to Gilbert’s acolytes (fautores), ‘See, we don’t have the schedule anymore!’83 Given the famous complexity of Gilbert’s thought, as well as his 81 

Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris, ed. by Waitz and von Stimson, i. 52, p. 74: ‘A scientia haut censura morum vitaeque gravitate discordante, non iocis vel ludicris, sed seriis rebus mentem applicaret’. Otto of Freising, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. by Mierow, p. 88. 82  Geoffrey of Auxerre, Epistola ad Albinum cardinalem et episcopum Albanansem, ed. by Häring: This particular extract is at 4. 18, p. 73: ‘ingredientibus uero nobis Consistorium prima die, cum magnorum voluminum corpora per clericos suos Pictauiensis fecisset afferi et nos paucas auctoritates ecclesie in sola scedula haberemus’. 83  Geoffrey of Auxerre, Epistola ad Albinum cardinalem et episcopum Albanansem, ed. by

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esteemed character, Bernard left himself vulnerable with this lack of preparation. For Gilbert, as Southern has pointed out, ‘wrote theology as Henry James might have written it: prolix, enigmatic, strikingly original’.84 Otto also commented on the complexity of Gilbert’s thought: ‘What he meant was never clear to childlike minds, scarcely even to men of learning’.85 Like Berengar, Roscelin, and Abelard, Gilbert used grammatical categories to analyse the names of God. Unlike those two, however, his thought could not be reduced to a snippet of easily prosecutable error. Students studying grammar in the schools were taught that a nomen signified substance and quality. In the Glosule on Priscian, Priscian’s definition that a noun signified substance and quality was interpreted as meaning that a noun named a substance and signified a quality. This was the basic insight informing Gilbert’s theology. For Gilbert, a noun named a specific thing in itself (substance) but also signified the quality by which it was recognizable as itself. Nouns identified both the id quod est (that which is) and the id quo est (that by which something is). This rule applied to the nouns signifying composite beings in the created world, which could be understood in the nominative as individual things and in the ablative as embodying differentiating qualities. When it came to speaking about God, however, this distinction became problematic and suggested a number of questions to Gilbert. Could the same rule be applied to the nouns that named God? Did the application of the rule to God mean that he was both said to be in the nominative and defined qualitatively in the ablative? If this was the case, did it imply that God’s identity was informed by something extrinsic to himself ? In relation to the Trinity, in particular, this matter became even thornier. Was each member of the Trinity said to constitute an individual noun? If so, was each member of the Trinity particularly defined through its own ablative? Or was each member of the Trinity informed by the same id quo, that of divinity? What was the difference between God/Deus and the divinity/ deitas that defined him as God? Gilbert’s critics were concerned that thinking in this way might create a quaternity: the three members of the Trinity as individuals plus the quality of divinity informing their being. Nikolaus Häring

Häring, 6. 29, p. 74: ‘Sequenti die codices tantos attulimus ad disputationem ut obstuperescent fautores episcope et a nobis audirent quia “Ecce scedula non habemus”’. 84  Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, p. 132. 85  Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris, ed. by Waitz and von Stimson, i. 52, p. 75: ‘ut nunquam puerilibus, vix autem eruditis et exercitatis quae ab eo dicebantur paterent animis’. Otto of Freising, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. by Mierow, p. 88.

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wrote that in Gilbert’s thought the substance/quality distinction ‘was transformed from a logical principle of speech and law of philosophical disputation into a formula expressing what may be called the metaphysical constitution of concrete, composite beings, both material and spiritual’.86 That was the point of the allegations made against Gilbert: that Gilbert had transferred a grammatical distinction to the realm of the metaphysical and consequently had fallen into the error of subjecting not only the name of God but God himself to the laws governing human speech. This was complicated material which Bernard was ill equipped to counter in disputation. Otto and John both report that Bernard questioned Gilbert for a few days but with little result. According to Otto, Bernard’s biggest victory was in forcing Gilbert to concede in relation to the Trinity that ‘every person is a thing in itself ’.87 This was a resonant statement as it echoed comments made by Roscelin and condemned by Anselm. Bernard had assembled an illustrious group of supporters for his cause and must have been frustrated by his failure to ensnare the magister. John of Salisbury tells us that Peter Lombard, Robert of Melun, and Suger of St-Denis were at Reims and were happy to speak against Gilbert.88 Importantly, Robert of Melun and Lombard were prestigious theologians themselves, demonstrating that criticism of schoolmen was just as often made by rival schoolmen, as by outsiders. In addition the case was presided over by Pope Eugenius III, Bernard’s Cistercian protégé. Of Bernard’s eminent roster of supporters John declared: I hold it to be uncertain whether they acted out of zeal for the faith, or jealousy of his [Gilbert’s] fame and merit, or a desire to propitiate the abbot, whose influence was then at its height and whose council was most weighty in the affairs of church and state alike.89

86 

Häring, ‘The Case of Gilbert de la Porrée’, p. 5. Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris, ed. by Waitz and von Stimson, i. 54, p. 76: ‘Quia omnis persona res et per se una’. Otto of Freising, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. by Mierow, p. 90. 88  John of Salisbury, The ‘Historia pontificalis’, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, bk viii, 16: ‘Magistri quoque scolares, Petrus Lumbardus, postea Parisiensis episcopus, et Robertus de Meliduno, postmodum Herefordensis presul, suas et aliorum linguas in eum acuebant’. 89  John of Salisbury, The ‘Historia pontificalis’, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, bk viii, 16: ‘Incer­ tum habeo an zelo fidei, an emulatione nominis clarioris et meriti, an ut sic promererentur abbatem, cuius tunc summa erat auctoritas, cuius consilio tam sacerdocium quam regnum pre ceteris agabatur’. 87 

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Certainly Bernard played a high stakes game, attempting a very public display of his own authority in challenging the ideas of a respected master. Gilbert may have had much in common intellectually with Abelard but shared none of his capacity to arouse enmity and ill-wishes. Bernard could not rely upon general grievances to shore up the conviction of Gilbert, to demonstrate his real and substantial error. Frustrated at his inability to do so Bernard convened a secret meeting after the beginning of the trial, at which a symbolum fidei was drafted. His plan was to force Gilbert to assent to the oath and to guarantee a victory. It backfired significantly. Nielsen argues that the result he [Bernard] achieved by issuing the confession was — as far as I can see — to shift the entire emphasis of the trial, so that it was no longer a matter of deciding whether Gilbert’s teaching was heretical or not, but to decide which of the two — Gilbert or Bernard — was a heretic.90

The cardinals present were outraged by Bernard’s presumption and agreed among themselves to support Gilbert’s cause ‘because it was befitting to the apostolic see, which was accustomed to confound schemes of this kind, and [to] snatch the poor from the clutches of the strong’.91 John of Salisbury recorded that the cardinals felt that Bernard had called the meeting ‘for the express purpose of forcing the Papacy to accept the abbot’s views under threat of schism’. In John’s telling, it was Bernard who was in error, his pride threatening the unity of ecclesia. John noted that subsequently the cardinals reminded Pope Eugenius that his duties were to the unity of his church rather than to Bernard. The cardinals leant very heavily on the Pope to vindicate Gilbert and to let him go in peace with his reputation restored. It was clear that they saw no real threat to the Church in Gilbert’s thought or any evidence of heresy. And this is more or less what seems to have happened, although the three available accounts differ slightly on this.92 Gilbert’s trial — in spite of its inauspicious ending — seems to have been something of a watershed for the schools. Despite his best attempts, Bernard was not able to establish Gilbert’s heresy. Nor could he assume that the schools 90 

Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century, p. 37. John of Salisbury, The ‘Historia pontificalis’, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, bk viii, 19–20: ‘Sed ille sedis apostolice non habuerat copiam, que consueuit machinationes huiusmodi reprobare et de manu potentioris eruere pauperem’. 92  Geoffrey records that Gilbert’s headings were condemned. John and Otto, however, say that Gilbert was exonerated and returned to his diocese. 91 

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were an easy target that could be charged with all sorts of error. In their accounts, John and Otto had made clear that Gilbert’s solution to the problem of speaking humanly about God was not a prideful gesture, but an act of necessity.93 John said that theology was the discipline concerned with speaking about God and that ‘since we have no words fitting for such matters […] necessity compels us to use the alien names and descriptions of temporal and fragile things’.94 Otto read Gilbert’s possible overstatement of the diversity of number in the Trinity as ‘not affirming the singularity of the theological persons, but rather recognizing their exalted uniqueness’.95 Certainly, the refusal of the curia to follow Bernard’s lead signalled a conviction that the developing theology of the schools did not necessarily threaten the firmament of doctrine or the simple faith of the believer. Instead, the derision Bernard encountered when he entered the consistory without any books demonstrates that declarations of faith were not sufficient enough. Geoffrey of Auxerre stated in his account that ‘Gilbert’s supporters humiliated us because we could only produce truncated quotes, while he was able to exhibit complete books so that it could be understood how the preceding or following words related to propositions put forward’.96 Even Bernard’s biographer was aware of the shame of this moment, speaking of a world where the systematic analysis of scripture and doctrine was growing in respectability and applicability. It is telling that the two trial accounts partial to Gilbert, those of John of Salisbury and Otto of Freising, were written by school-trained men who were working in the world in administration. Their literary works were full of the day-to-day business of bureaucratic travails. That both took significant time and pains to write excursus in defence of Gilbert particularly, and dialectic generally, demonstrates the growing reach of the trivium throughout the administrative units of western Europe.

93  On the relationship between John’s thought and his account of the trial see Monagle, ‘Contested Knowledges’. 94  John of Salisbury, The ‘Historia pontificalis’, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, bk xiii, 37: ‘Et nominibus et uerbis alienis rerum temporalium et fragilium nos uti necessitas ipsa compellat’. 95  Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris, ed. by Waitz and von Stimson, i. 54, pp.  76–77: ‘Affirmans per singularia non theologicas personas, sed ipsarum excellentiam intellexisse’. 96  Geoffrey of Auxerre, Epistola ad Albinum cardinalem et episcopum Albanansem, ed. by Häring, 4. 18, p. 73: ‘Calumpniabantur fautores illius hominis quod decurtata testimonia proferremus cum ille codices integros exhiberet ubi posset intelligi quemadmodum uerbis propositis precedentia uel sequentia adhererent’.

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Like Abelard, Gilbert had proposed a theology based on the atomized appreciation of individual things, the defining quiddity of the created world. He took this observation from grammar, transferring it to the realm of objects. From the notion that every noun was constituted by an id quod and an id quo, he likewise understood that every object was a thing in itself and could be defined by its quality of being so. He applied this conviction to the names of the persons of the Trinity, arguing that each name was that of a true individual. They each shared, however, the id quo of being a member of the Trinity. His supporters, John and Otto, do not find this proposition problematic. They argue that this sort of speculation was entirely appropriate as long as the theologian was appropriately reverent. They rejected the claims of Bernard of Clairvaux that Gilbert had created a quaternity, that he was heretic. Moreover, they turned the spotlight on Bernard and charged him with holding the cardinals to ransom under the threat of schism. Bernard’s rhetorical mode was turned back on himself. Otto and John charged him with precisely the error with which he had impugned the schoolmen. Otto and John’s supportive responses to Gilbert, and concomitant refusal of Bernard’s claims, indicates a certain type of support for the emerging theology of the schools. As bureaucrats, Otto and John were similarly grateful to the liberal arts as facilitators of communication and civilization. They saw no problem in the transfer of the rules of grammar to theological problems, as long as this was done in a sensible and reverent manner. And, certainly, they saw Gilbert’s gravitas, in contrast to perceptions of Berengar and Abelard, as enabling him to do theology with adequate humility and caution. Yet, as we saw earlier, Bernard was able to marshal Peter Lombard and Robert of Melun in support of his campaign against Gilbert of Poitiers. As in the case of Abelard, this shows us that the schools were themselves highly competitive places, and that their members cannot be regarded as a homogenous group. This resulted from the fact that the schools, as shown by John and Otto’s non-scholarly careers, were becoming more broadly influential. John and Otto confidently wielded the terms of the theological argument of the trial, in a non-specialist mode. They evidently did not see this mode of inquiry as undermining faith; rather, they saw it as productive for fruitful discussion of issues of doctrine. They placed their endorsements of Gilbert more broadly in the context of administrative histories that they were writing, thereby suggesting the need for open critical thinking in institutional as well as intellectual spheres. They moved with ease from describing the limited realm of early scholastic enquiry to the large arena of royal and papal governance. It demonstrated the link, in the mind of two twelfth-century schoolmen at least, between an education in the liberal arts and successful and

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peaceful administration in Christendom. The schools were the opposite of schismatic, according to John and Otto; instead, they provided the tools for the provision of justice and the maintenance of order. Given this expansion in support for and influence of the schools, it is no wonder that eminent men such as Bernard, Suger, Peter Lombard, and Robert of Melun were prepared to move against Gilbert. While the former two men were famously monks, and the latter two were serious emerging scholars — what they must have shared was a desire to corral and control some of the growing prestige and cultural power of the cathedral schools. As we shall see, in spite of his opposition to Gilbert of Poitiers in 1148, Peter Lombard was indebted to the scholars mentioned above for their pioneering theological work. His sacramental theology owed much to the conflict between Berengar and Lanfranc that refined definition of the Eucharist. His project of synthesis in his Sentences drew heavily upon Abelard’s model in the Sic et non. His definition of the persons of the Trinity was dependent on the definition of persona offered by Gilbert of Poitiers. In fact, it was Gilbert’s definition of the constitution of personhood that would form the basis for his own Christological innovations. The other inheritance bequeathed by these men to Peter Lombard is that of stinging criticism and disciplinary actions from authorities. At various times, Berengar, Roscelin, Abelard, and Gilbert were all called to task for their application of grammar to the names of God. These conflicts, which took place in letters and at councils, left a legacy of criticism of the schools which was to be rehearsed repeatedly in outbursts against Peter Lombard. The work of critics such as Lanfranc, Anselm, William of Champeaux, Bernard of Clairvaux, in spite of a not entirely successful rate of conviction, cast a suspicion of intellectual heresy in the minds of their followers. No one claimed that Berengar, Roscelin, Abelard, and Gilbert were heretics in the conventional and popular sense, but in pointing out the error of certain schoolmen their critics were creating a field of disapproval which they could use to demonstrable consequence. In the characters of Berengar, Abelard, and Gilbert a cast of cautionary tales was rhetorically produced, a dramatis personae that would influence the critical reception of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. These narratives were constructed around the inevitable error that resulted when grammatical analysis was applied to the Word, whether in relation to the Eucharist (as with Berengar), the divine nature (as with Roscelin, Abelard and Gilbert) or Christology (as with Peter Lombard). In response, men like John and Otto declared that grammatical analysis, as the schoolmen used it, was productive and efficacious for the avoidance of schism and the maintenance of political order.

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These then were the new terms of debate within which the Sentences was received. A hundred years after Berengar, it was evident that the schoolmen had not generated the apocalyptic strife predicted by their opponents. Rather, they had educated an army of bureaucrats who were working throughout Europe and were aiding the development of new technologies of administration in both secular and religious governance. Generally, the skills of the schoolmen were contributing to greater institutional stability throughout northern Europe, rather than provoking sedition and heresy. This, at least, was the point propounded by John and Otto: that the liberal arts promoted harmony and peace. The critical reception of Peter Lombard’s Sentences, which will be the subject of the next chapter, takes its place in this context. That is, the debates about the orthodoxy of the Lombard take place within a discursive tradition of both attacking and endorsing the schools.

Chapter 2

Peter Lombard’s Life and his Sentences

G

ilbert’s trial in 1148 brought together many scholastic, monastic, and episcopal luminaries at that time. Ostensibly what was at stake, as we have seen, was orthodoxy in doctrine at the level of the schools. But was the broader intellectual leadership of the Church was similarly at stake. The presence of Gilbert of Poitiers, Bernard of Clairvaux, Suger of St-Denis, Peter Lombard, and Robert of Melun, not to mention the pope himself, testified to the significance of this event and to the importance of the schools generally. The schools had been flourishing in northern Europe for the previous half century and had, by 1148, sent out generations of young clerics to important bureaucratic careers. As we saw, two of those former students, John of Salisbury and Otto of Freising, had applied themselves not only to administration but to history writing. They were but two of countless school-trained men who had become significant figures in institutions of power in the High Middle Ages. To win control or influence over the schools was to gain power more generally, as these institutions were proving so important to the formation of many governing men in this period. Consequently, Gilbert’s trial attracted the prominent figures mentioned above and resulted in the debates and intrigue that were canvassed in the preceding chapter. The participants and viewers at Gilbert’s trial did not fall into clear camps of schoolmen and their opponents. Strikingly, as mentioned above, two of Bernard’s supporters at Reims were the schoolmen Peter Lombard and Robert of Melun. These men were two of the most eminent Parisian teachers at that time, and their involvement in Gilbert’s trial offers some insight into the complicated politics governing the life of the schools in this period. Their participa-

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tion shows us that the men of the schools were a diverse and competitive lot who were prepared to speak about and against one another. It alerts us to the level of contestation going on within the schools, as well as outside them, around questions of intellectual authority. That mid-career scholars such as Peter Lombard and Robert of Melun were prepared to enter the very public fray at Reims, and ‘sharpen their tongues’ against one of their own in support of Bernard of Clairvaux, suggests a complicated web of allegiance existing at this time in the schools of northern Europe.1 Paris in particular was a site of schools offering competing intellectual visions. The schools were expanding rapidly and producing generations of influential students such as John of Salisbury and Otto of Freising. In this growing intellectual market place, there was much competition for students and for authority. Peter Lombard and Robert of Melun, to name but two, were surely part of this jostling. This was an important period of innovation and consolidation in the schools. The demands of teaching were leading to new methods of argumentation, as well as new structures for the organizing of scholarly materials. Masters were attempting to organize and formalize their teaching in order to provide a more coherent and codified experience for their students. This is what Colish has described as the ‘massive pedagogical assignment’ with which scholars were engaged at this time.2 Cast in this light, Peter Lombard and Robert of Melun’s support of Bernard at Reims can be understood as the work of two ambitious young scholars, attempting to raise their own profile by supporting the very powerful Bernard, against the quieter and more cryptic Gilbert of Poitiers. This competitive environment was crucial to Peter Lombard’s intellectual and institutional formation. In many ways, it can be argued, conflict between scholars was a highly productive source of intellectual refinement and qualification in this period. Peter Lombard’s career, and attendant controversies, can only be understood in the context of his immersion in the emerging scholastic cultures of Paris in the middle of the twelfth century. He is famous as the author of the Sentences, the book that would become the dominant textbook in 1  John of Salisbury, The ‘Historia pontificalis’, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, bk viii, 16: ‘Magistri quoque scolares, Petrus Lumbardus, postea Parisiensis episcopus, et Robertus de Meliduno, postmodum Herefordensis presul, suas et aliorum linguas in eum acuebant’. 2  Colish, Peter Lombard, p. 33. She defines this assignment in this way: ‘Theologians in the schools committed themselves, as never before to the task of ensuring that their students possessed both the range and depth of knowledge and the technical skills required not only to solve practical problems within the church but also the skills required to train other professional theologians as masters in their own turn’.

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theology for the following centuries.3 But its eventual prestige and canonicity should not blind us to the contingencies and negotiations of the period in which it was produced. At the time that Peter Lombard was working on the Sentences there were a number of scholars, including Robert of Melun, producing innovations in curricula and intellectual method. For many reasons which shall be enumerated, it was the Sentences that would eventually emerge victorious in this period of creativity and experiment, but it was by no means selfevident that this would be the case. As Colish has written: One of the best known facts about the intellectual history of Medieval Europe is the success of Peter Lombard’s Sentences as the systematic theological textbook of choice among scholastics, with its study mandated by the University of Paris during the thirteenth century as a necessary stage for incipient theologians to negotiate en route to the coveted doctorate. At the same time, a subject much less well-known is how and why the Lombard’s Sentences obtained this commanding position in theological education in the half-century after his death, a period marked by controversies about his teachings and one in which disciples of the Lombard had to share the stage with scholastics whose allegiances lay with other masters, or who were simply not interested in the project of systematic theology as such.4

In order to begin to understand the legacy of Peter Lombard, and the criticisms that followed the Sentences in the years after it completion, it is necessary to chart the context and career of the man who produced them.

Peter Lombard (c. 1095–1160) The first documented reference that we have to Peter Lombard comes in a letter dated either 1134 or 1136.5 In this missive Bernard of Clairvaux commended Peter Lombard to Gilduin, the abbot of St-Victor. 3 

On the ‘staggering number’ of commentaries on the Sentences, our major measure of the work’s dominance, see Rosemann, Peter Lombard, pp. 194–211. 4  Colish, ‘The Development of Lombardian Theology’, p. 207. In this important essay, Colish attempts to chart the ‘how’ by looking at the longevity of Lombardian theology in regards to his ethics and his discussion of eschatology. She concludes that the aspects of Lombardian theology that have the strongest legacy in this period are those that are more idiosyncratically his. That is, she rejects the idea that the Sentences was successful because of its overall conservatism. 5  Until recently, the most thorough discussion of Peter Lombard’s biography could be found in the introduction to Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady. Drawing on Brady’s

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Brother Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, offers his greeting and his prayers to his reverend fathers, his lords, and his dearest friends, G[ilduin] the venerable abbot, by God’s grace, of Saint Victor of Paris, and his whole holy community. I need to ask much of you, because much has been asked of me. I cannot be sparing of my friends, because they are not sparing of me. The Lord Bishop of Lucca [Uberto], my father and friend, has commended to me the venerable man P[eter] Lombard, asking that I support him materially through my friends during the short period that he is in France for the purpose of study. And I did that for as long as he was at Rheims. Now, as he is going to be spending time in Paris, I commend him to your care, because I know that I can count on you for more. I ask only that you provide him with food, for the short period he will spend until the feast of the nativity of the blessed Virgin Mary. Goodbye and thanks!6

This letter has been crucial for locating the early years of Lombard’s career. It has enabled us to place him in Lucca, Reims, and eventually Paris. And it would seem from this letter that it was the patronage of Bernard of Clairvaux that enabled these moves to be made. During the 1130s Bernard of Clairvaux had made a number of trips to Italy. He had been embroiled in the papal schism that had occurred between the supporters of Innocent II and Anacletus II. Bernard had actively taken up the cause of Innocent and had become embedded in a network of fellow supporters, such as Norbert of Xanten and Peter the Venerable.7 His trips to Italy were the result of his attempts to broker a solution to the paralysing problem of schism and allowed him to forge many connections. The letter quoted above attests to these connections: Bernard explained that his ‘father and friend’ Uberto of Lucca had asked that Bernard account, and adding greater complexity, is Doyle, ‘The Career and Students of Peter Lombard’, pp. 26–108. In the following account of Peter Lombard’s biography I am indebted to Brady and Doyle. 6  Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera, ed. by Leclercq and Rochais, viii, Letter 410, p. 391: ‘Rev­ erendis patribus et dominis, et amicis carissimis, G. Dei gratia venerabili abbati Sancti Victoris Parisiensis, et universo conventui sancto, frater Bernardus Clarae Vallis vocatus abbatis, salutem et nostras qualescumque orationes. Necesse habemus multa requirere, quia multa requiruntur a vobis: nec amicis possumus parcere, quia ab aliis amicis non parcitur. Dominus Lucensis episcopus, pater et amicus noster, commendavit mihi virum venerabilem P. Lombardum, rogans ut ei parvo tempore, quo moraretur in Francia causa studii, per amicos nostros victui necessaria providerem; quod effeci, quandiu Remis moratus est. Nunc commorantem Parisius vestrae dilectioni commendo, quia de vobis amplius praesumo, rogans ut placeat vobis providere in cibo per breve tempus, quod facturus est hic usque ad navitatem beatae Virginis Mariae. Vale.’ Translated in Doyle, ‘The Career and Students of Peter Lombard’, pp. 42–43. 7  On the schism see Stroll, The Jewish Pope.

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provide patronage to the ‘venerable man’ Peter Lombard. Uberto was a significant player in the schism. At the beginning of the crisis, Norbert of Xanten, founder of the Premonstratensian canons, wrote to Uberto requesting information. Uberto had written back to Norbert that ‘we hold, receive, and honour the Lord Innocent as the holy and supreme pontiff, and we attach ourselves to him’.8 Bernard and Uberto were on the same side. This was the foundation of the relationship that enabled Peter Lombard to gain access to the patronage as eminent a figure as Bernard. And their meeting was presumably made possible by Lucca’s place on the via Francigena, the major pilgrimage route between France and Rome at that time. Some scholars, most famously Richard Southern, have sought to identify Otto of Lucca as Peter Lombard’s original patron, rather than Uberto. 9 Otto was bishop of Lucca between 1138 and 1146. In addition, he has been mooted by both Ferruccio Gastaldelli and Southern to be the author of the Summa sententiarum.10 The Summa sententiarum would prove to be an influence for Peter Lombard’s sentences. That a bishop of Lucca might have been responsible for writing an important source for Peter Lombard has led to the suggestion that it was Otto, rather than Uberto, that recommended the young Peter Lombard to Bernard of Clairvaux. This is a tempting scenario, for it would produce a direct line of continuity between Peter Lombard’s foundations in Italy and his career in France. Yet, as M. A. Doyle has shown, drawing on the arguments of Damien Van den Eynde, Bernard’s letter was almost certainly written in 1133 or 1134.11 This date is too early for the bishopric of Otto. It was most probably Uberto that petitioned Bernard of Clairvaux to support the emerging scholar Peter Lombard. Bernard evidently did as Uberto asked. He organized support for Peter Lombard at Reims. And in the letter to Gilduin he sought to do the same for Peter Lombard in Paris, suggesting that he might find room and board at St-Victor. Thus, Peter Lombard’s career was from the onset implicated in Bernard’s own pan-European networks of affiliation. Furthermore, it is important that Peter’s patron in Lucca was not Otto, learned scholar that he was, 8  ‘Dominum vero Innocentium pro patre et summa pontifice tenemus, recipimus, veneramur et colimus’; Pontificum romanorum, ed. by Watterich, ii, 182. 9  Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, pp. 138–44. 10  Gastaldelli, ‘La Summa sententiarum di Ottone di Lucca’. 11  Doyle, ‘The Career and Students of Peter Lombard’, pp. 52–55: Van den Eynde, ‘Essai chronologique sur l’oeuvre de Pierre Lombard’.

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as the relative lack of scholarly eminence of Uberto would further necessitate Lombard’s reliance on Bernard of Clairvaux. This allegiance goes some way to explaining the point with which we began this chapter, Peter Lombard’s support of Bernard against Gilbert of Poitiers in 1148. It seems far less puzzling in the light of this context of patronage. This relationship, however intimate or cursory it may have been (and we have no way of knowing how intimate or cursory it was), also casts some light on the polemical nature of the doctrinal battles conducted in the previous chapter. They were couched in stark and inflammatory terms and set up a rhetorical binary relationship between monastery and school. But when we see Bernard recommending Peter Lombard to the schools of Reims and of St-Victor, we can see that he too was pragmatically engaged with these important emerging educational institutions. After leaving Italy around 1133, Peter studied for some years at the cathedral school in Reims. A number of masters taught at Reims, most notably Alberic of Reims and Lotulph the Lombard (who might conceivably have taught Peter Lombard in Italy).12 These two masters had led the charge against Abelard at Soissons in 1121. They were faithful disciples of Anselm of Laon, experts in expounding their master’s glosses which would eventually come to make up the significant part of the crucial Glossa Ordinaria (the Ordinary Gloss on the Bible). Alberic was also a protégé of Bernard, having been recommended by him to the diocese of Châlons as bishop after the death of William of Champeaux in 1121. Bernard was not successful in this instance, but the triangulation of Bernard, Alberic, and William in this web of patronage, and their mutual opposition to Abelard, is illuminating. That the promising Peter Lombard should have been sent to Reims in the first instance of his scholarly career would seem to reflect the care of his patron to protect him from the more radical aspects of theology emerging in Paris at the time. At Reims he would be expected to receive a solid grounding in traditional exegesis. The exegesis was traditional in that it was not inflected with philosophical concerns. It stayed close to the biblical text, attempting to organize the most appropriate authorities for use in scriptural interpretation. It was not, however, traditional in format. The Glossa Ordinaria was begun by the brothers of Laon around the turn of the twelfth century and was consolidated and promoted over the preceding half century by a number of scholars, including Peter Lombard and Gilbert of Poitiers.13 The format of the Glossa Ordinaria was dis12  13 

Williams, ‘The Cathedral School of Reims in the Eleventh Century’. On the question of Gilbert of Poitiers and the Glossa Ordinaria, see Gross-Diaz, The

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tinctive in that the biblical text was laid out continuously, alongside the glosses that treated the same text. The Glossa Ordinaria was not an annotated bible, nor was it commentary, with appropriate quotations of the original source provided for the student. It was text and explanatory authorities placed in congruence with each other.14 However faithful the exegetical work, this was a bold thing to do. Lesley Smith writes: We might well pause to remember that glossing is a strange, presumptuous thing to do to a sacred text. A written authority of whatever sort — Bible, Constitution, statute law — will always have room for, perhaps demand, interpretation; what is remarkable is that in some contexts, text and glosses are allowed to co-exist, cheek-by-jowl on the same page. The Gloss layout means that the visual distinction between the words of Scripture and their exegesis is maintained; and yet the placing of the glosses alongside and between the biblical text allows one to blur into the other.15

This tension, between the sacred page and its accompanying authorities, exposed seams of doubt about the best way to interpret biblical passages, as the authorities were often in contradiction. In addition, the organizational method of the Glossa Ordinaria placed patristic authors alongside Carolingian sources and the latter alongside contemporary twelfth-century sources. This also created a visible tension between past and present, casting three historical moments of biblical interpretation in Latin together. At Reims, under instruction in the memory of Anselm and his countryman Lotulph, Peter Lombard would have been thoroughly exposed to these innovations in glossing. They would prove to have some influence upon his own methodological innovations in the Sentences. We know from Bernard’s letter that Peter Lombard’s next stop was the school of St-Victor, just outside the city walls of Paris. This sojourn would have continued to embed him in Bernard’s networks, as Bernard and Hugh had a long history of consultation and collaboration.16 St-Victor had been founded in 1111 by William of Champeaux. By the time of Peter’s sojourn there, which must have begun between 1134 and 1136, Hugh of St-Victor was firmly entrenched Psalms Commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers, pp. 122–48. 14  Beryl M. Smalley has written extensively on the ways in which the Glossa Ordinaria might have developed, see Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. See also Smalley, The Gospels in the Schools. More recently, see Smith, The Glossa Ordinaria. 15  Smith, The Glossa Ordinaria, pp. 4–5. 16  On Bernard and the Victorines, see Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 146–48.

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as the leading theologian at the school.17 Those who inhabited St-Victor were canons regular, committed to a life of shared property and adherence to the rule of St Augustine. In that sense, they embodied certain aspects of monastic life. Yet, canons regular were also committed to a life of preaching, education, and pastoral care. They did not see themselves as bounded within monastic walls. They aimed to combine the active and the contemplative, to care for the inner world of the soul while participating in the external world of society. 18 The proliferation of houses of regular canons in this period was part of the broader reform movements initiated by Gregory VII in the eleventh century. As institutions, they enabled the traditional functions of the secular clergy to be performed, while embracing certain aspects of monastic life.19 The abbey of St-Victor was, in the words of Boyd Coolman, at ‘the vanguard of twelfth-century reform initiatives in Paris’.20 The theology of Hugh of St-Victor reflected this mix of the monastic and the secular. He was interested in mystical union and contemplation but also in developing productive and rational schemes for spiritual progress. His treatment of sacramental theology, his De sacramentis, was one of the first coherent works of systematic theology that emerged from the schools. That is, he attempted to treat the sacraments in a thorough and whole way, drawing upon and then synthesizing a number of key authorities apposite to the issue. It is unclear how long, and in what degree, Peter Lombard was involved with the Victorines. The trail on Lombard’s life runs cold until the Metamorphosis Goliae, a poem that emerged c. 1143. In this text, which is predominantly concerned with the affairs of Abelard, Peter Lombard is mentioned as a celebrum theologum, a famous theologian.21 This means that he must have been granted a teaching licence and developed a significant reputation since he arrived in Paris between 1134 and 1136. It seems likely that by this time he had started teaching at the cathedral school of Notre Dame. With the deaths of Hugh of St-Victor in 1141 and of Peter Abelard in 1142, as well as the departure of Gilbert of 17 

Hugh’s theology is the subject of two recent monographs; see Rorem, Hugh of St-Victor, and Coolman, The Theology of Hugh of St-Victor. On 1111 as the date of foundation of St-Victor, see Mews, ‘The Foundation of St Victor’. 18  Bynum, ‘The Spirituality of Regular Canons in the Twelfth Century’. 19  On the origins and impact of the Gregorian reform, see Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century. 20  Coolman, The Theology of Hugh of St-Victor, p. 10. 21  Rosemann, Peter Lombard, p. 36.

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Poitiers from Paris to become bishop of Poitiers sometime after July 1142, it seems that Peter Lombard was able to emerge as a major theologian in his own right. Although the dates are unclear, we know that William of Tyre was Peter Lombard’s student for six years. This in itself indicates that Peter Lombard’s teaching career was a stable one.22 Throughout this period of Peter Lombard’s career, he was not part of the more controversial streams of the schools. In fact, at times of controversy he was confident in taking a stand against his more avant-garde scholastic colleagues. As we have seen, he supported Bernard of Clairvaux’s campaign against Gilbert of Poitiers in 1148. Peter Lombard’s official status in the schools during the 1140s is difficult to gauge. While Ignatius Brady has argued that he is the same person as Petrus puerus mentioned at Notre Dame in 1144–45, a magister Petrus subdiaconus in 1150 at Notre Dame, and a Petrus archidiaconus in 1157, no document firmly identifies Peter Lombard as a canon of the cathedral.23 In fact, Robert of Torigny refers to Peter Lombard only as a magister, not as a canon, when he was offered the bishopric in June 1159 by Philip, brother of Louis VII and dean of Notre Dame after a long vacancy, following the death of bishop Theobald in January 1158.24 Despite the lack of certain evidence that Peter Lombard was a canon at Notre Dame, most scholars are happy to accept that it is the most likely scenario. Whatever the case, we know that throughout this period his works were being read and commented upon. Lombard had initially established his reputation by glossing the Psalms and the epistles of St Paul in a manner established by Anselm of Laon and continued by Gilbert of Poitiers.25 Exactly when he completed these glosses, originally composed for private use, is not certain. In a treatise originally written in 1142, Gerhoh of Reichersberg castigated the lack of Christological orthodoxy of ‘great teachers who have inserted falsehood in their glosses on the Apostle, in particular master Anselm and master Gilbert and most recently Peter Lombard’. Although Brady has suggested that Gerhoh may have added the phrase ‘and most recently Peter Lombard’ to his original 22 

The fragment of William of Tyre’s Historia that mentions his experiences with Peter Lombard were edited in Huygens, ‘Guillaume de Tyr étudiant’, p. 823. 23  For an extensive discussion assessing the evidence of whether Peter Lombard was a canon in the cathedral of Notre Dame, see Mews and Monagle, ‘Peter Lombard, Joachim of Fiore and the Fourth Lateran Council’ 24  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, p. 33. 25  On Peter Lombard’s debt to Anselm of Laon’s interlinear glosses, see Stoppacci, ‘Le Glosse continuae in Psalmos di Pietro Lombardo’, and Zier, ‘Peter Lombard and the Glossa Ordinaria’. See also Colish, ‘Psalterium scholasticorum’.

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treatise only after death in 1160, we can say for certain that Peter Lombard was already becoming known as a major theologian in the 1140s.26 Initially, it could be argued, Peter Lombard established his reputation by making conscious appeals to the authority of patristic tradition, as articulated by Anselm of Laon, rather than that of philosophy. His first major works were glosses on the Psalms and on the Pauline epistles. Both became important sources for exegesis in the twelfth century. Importantly, both contained innovations in method that aided their success, and would contribute to the development of his masterwork, the Sentences. His gloss on the Psalms was originally written for his own private study. His pupil, Herbert of Bosham, said that ‘when he wrote this work, it never occurred to him, as I have learned from his own account, that he would read it [that is to say, lecture on it] in the public schools’.27 This gloss became so popular that it came to be known as the Magna Glosatura (the Great Gloss).28 It was originally intended for the author’s own benefit, as notes on an earlier gloss, that of Anselm of Laon. Peter Lombard was also keen to build upon another gloss on the Psalms, that of Gilbert of Poitiers. Because of this, Lombard was not particularly precise in the distinguishing of sources when compiling this gloss. According to Colish, he was innovative in his use of multiple accessus (academic prologues) in his creation of this work. That is, he provided an involved introduction to the gloss, and to each of the psalms therein, in order to direct the readers’ mind to issues of interpretation prior to their engagement with the text and the authorities themselves. Gilbert of Poitiers had provided similar accessus in his gloss, so we cannot say that the use of accessus in this instance was Lombard’s invention. But we can say that he built upon Gilbert’s method to provide a fuller and more integral frame for his gloss.29 Another innovation was his attempts to explain contradictions among authorities when they occur. Of course he was not the first to do this. Famously Abelard’s Sic et non was concerned with precisely that. But Peter Lombard was innovative in explicating contradiction within the format of the gloss. The format specific to the Magna Glosatura, in terms of its material properties, was also novel. In the Magna Glosatura Lombard used a style known as the inter26  Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Libellus de ordine donorum spiritus sancti, ed. by Sackur, p. 275: ‘Magnos magistros qui in suis glossis in Apostolum falsitatem inseruerunt […] quorum praecipui sunt magistri Anshelmus et magistri Gillibertus et novissime Petrus Longobardus’. 27  Quoted in Rosemann, Peter Lombard, p. 43. 28  Peter Lombard, Magna Glosatura. 29  Colish, Peter Lombard, pp. 171– 188. See also Colish, ‘Psalterium scholasticorum’.

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cisum (the intercut). The page was ruled into two columns. The scriptural text was written in a larger hand, and there was a block of text on the left-hand side of the column. The commentary surrounded the scriptural lemma and was in a smaller hand. This enabled the reader to read the scriptural text easily, as it was always alongside the appropriate piece of commentary. As a scholarly device, the intercisum made possible easier movement between scripture and commentary.30 Copies of the Magna Glosatura were also notable for their use of citations. In many copies quotations are marked by a red line running down the side of the gloss in the outer margin, with an abbreviation for the author’s name also provided. This was a considerable refinement upon the Glossa Ordinaria which had relied upon the encyclopaedic knowledge of the reader to recognize the sources for the authoritative opinions provided. For all of these reasons, the Magna Glosatura was a popular resource for students. The collection of innovations of scholarly organization that reside in this text give us some sense of Peter Lombard’s skill in pedagogy in anticipating methods for ease of reading and comprehension. Peter Lombard’s next important work was his gloss on the Pauline epistles, known as the Collectanea, in that the materials were collected together.31 This must have been produced after 1148, as it makes some reference to the trial of Gilbert of Poitiers. Philipp W. Rosemann writes that in this work we encounter the Lombard as it were torn between sacra pagina and systematic theology, that is to say, between the traditional mode of reflection on the faith, guided as that mode was by the narrative order of Scripture, and more recent attempts to articulate the elements of the faith in a logical system of doctrine.32

On the one hand, it remains firmly a gloss in format, in that it focuses on interpretation of the biblical text which is given in its entirety. On the other hand, Peter Lombard did not just provide helpful auctoritates alongside the biblical text, he also launched into his own mini-treatises on points of contention among the auctoritates. He continued the innovations of the Magna Glosatura, providing in the Collectanea useful accessus and helpful citation, and reprising the novel format of the intercisum. In addition, he deepened and problematized the approach to doctrinal contradiction when posed by competing authorities. He guided the reader through problems, as he saw them. These sections 30 

Smith, The Glossa Ordinaria, p. 130. Peter Lombard, Collectanea. 32  Rosemann, Peter Lombard, p. 45. 31 

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constituted self-contained excursus within the body of the text. That is, when he articulated a doctrinal problem he treated it on its own as a problem of systematic theology. He would then return to the next part of the scriptural text. Consequently, his Magna Glosatura and Collectanea provide us with an important insight into the foundations of his Sentences. As we shall see, the breakthrough of the Sentences was the eschewing of the biblical text altogether as a structuring device. Instead Peter Lombard presented questions of doctrine within his own thematic framing, producing an overarching work of systematic theology that aimed to make coherent the vast array of theological opinions inhering in the intellectual tradition of the Latin West.

The Sentences Peter Lombard’s masterwork was the Sentences. It was composed in the middle years of the 1150s. The initial version of the text was finalized after 1154, then taught in 1156–57 over the academic year. An amended version was taught in 1157–58. This was copied in 1158 into the manuscript form that has come down to us today.33 Peter Lombard built upon the innovations of his previous works, producing a rigorous and coherent collection of sentences, that is, he collected a range of theological opinions, sentences, and explicated them topically. The content of the work is overwhelmingly made up of quotations from auctoritates. But it was no mere anthology. These auctoritates are classified into an organizational structure of Lombard’s choosing and are held together through his authorial explanations. By no means was Peter Lombard the inventor of the sentence collection. In the period prior to his Sentences, a number of other such compositions had been produced. Marcia Colish explains the popularity of the work thus: ‘the systematic sentence collection of Peter Lombard […] remained durable yet flexible enough to accommodate the vastly expanded range of materials and questions that characterized scholastic speculation in the later medieval centuries’.34 The Sentences were methodologically and intellectually precise; they broke new ground in the organization of theological materials and essentially set the theological syllabus for coming generations. This is not to say, however, that they emerged in a vacuum. Rather, Peter Lombard synthe33  Rosemann, Peter Lombard, p.  55. As Rosemann notes, issues over the dating of the Sentences have been discussed in a number of key articles. See Brady, ‘The Three Editions of the “Liber Sententiarum”’. More recently, see Stirnemann, ‘Histoire tripartite’. 34  Colish, ‘The Sentence Collection and the Education of Professional Theologians’, p. 21.

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sized the insights in content and format from the preceding years of the emerging schools in order to codify theological material for the next generations of students, and it was his Sentences that became definitive and would be used in the schools for the following centuries as the basic textbook in theology.35 Peter Lombard’s formation at Reims, St-Victor, and, presumably, Notre Dame had left him uniquely placed to perform this synthesizing feat. At Reims, as we have seen, he would have been exposed to the glossing work of Ralph and Anselm of Laon, as taught by Lotulph and Alberic. This provided his solid foundations in exegesis, which he used in his Magna Glosatura and his Collectanea. From his time with the Victorines, he would have been exposed to some crucial developments in theology. In particular, Hugh’s aforementioned De sacramentis was a crucial influence upon the Sentences. The De sacramentis was a work that sought to extract theological insights from the experience of sacramentality.36 As Colish has argued, this rationale is located in Hugh’s celebrated distinction between God’s work of institution and His work of restitution. Hugh entitles the work De sacramentis because he views as sacramental all the modes by which God reveals Himself to man and all the modes by which he redeems man.37

Hugh’s work then was framed in this way, as a treatise in theology informed by the epistemological insights of the sacraments. He wanted to show how rational insights, deduced from sacramental theology, could be used to aid in the work of spiritual restoration. He wrote: For God would not be praised in all His works by the rational creature, if all the works of God were not known by the rational creature. Therefore, that the praise of God might be perfect, the works of God were shown to the rational creature, so that it might admire Him within and without, and through admiration with advance to love.38

It is in this sense of framing that the De sacramentis may have inspired Peter Lombard. Hugh found a theological justification for his theological treatise, that of educating the rational creature in the array and wonders of God’s works. It is 35  On the emergence of sentence collections, see Colish, ‘From the Sentence Collection to the Sentence Commentary and the summa’, and Colish, ‘The Sentence Collection and the Education of Professional Theologians’. 36  Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis Christianae fidei. 37  Colish, Peter Lombard, p. 57. 38  Quoted in Coolman, The Theology of Hugh of St-Victor, p. 53.

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through this knowledge, this apprehension of God’s work, that the individual might proceed to love. Rather than being yoked to exegesis, Hugh’s devotional and intellectual meditations are attached to a program of human restoration towards God. Peter Lombard, similarly, would articulate an overall thematic that would tie together the strands of doctrinal speculation of the Sentences. The Summa sententiarum, most probably written by Otto of Lucca between 1138 and 1142, was another work of Victorine inspiration that would have influenced Peter Lombard. Written after Hugh’s De sacramentis, the Summa sententiarum was ascribed to Otto in some manuscript copies and was declared in one rubric to have been produced ‘in the manner of Masters Anselm and Hugh’.39 It was this constellation of factors that lead Southern, as we have seen, to insist that Otto of Lucca must have been the mentor that recommended the young Peter Lombard to Bernard of Clairvaux. This combination of geographical and theological synchronicity was, Southern thought, strongly suggestive of this link. Although Doyle has shown that it was very unlikely that Otto was Lombard’s original patron, the synchronicities are nonetheless still revealing. If Otto was indeed the author of the Summa sententiarum, this implies that there were more solid relationships between Lucca and the schools of northern France than previously supposed. That the authors of two of the most important sentence collections of the period were both heavily influenced by Anselm of Laon and Hugh of St-Victor, and both had strong foundations in Lucca, suggests that the journey taken by Peter Lombard might not have been an entirely idiosyncratic one. Otto’s Summa sententiarum was a crucial text as a foundational sentence collection. In this format, the author was an innovator; moving away from the sacramental schema of Hugh, he attempted to produce a coherent theological system instead. However, as Southern and Colish have noted, it was not entirely successful. The Summa sententiarum was patchy in its citation of authorities, which made it difficult to comprehend the relative status of the opinions offered. In addition, its organizational frame was somewhat confusing. For example, Otto covered the incarnation prior to creation and the fall of man. This would have been very baffling for the student, who would have needed to understand the nature of humanity in order to understand God’s saving work in becoming man. These types of organizational infelicities, we can 39  ‘Ex tractatu magistri Othonis iuxta magistrum Anselmum et Hugonem’, quoted in Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, p. 138. On the issues of ascription to Otto of Lucca, see Weisweiler, ‘La Summa Sententiarum, source de Pierre Lombard’; Baron, ‘Note sur l’enigmatique Summa sententiarum’; Lottin, ‘A propos des sources de la Summa sententiarum’.

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only assume, would have limited the popularity of the Summa sententiarum. Its existence, nevertheless, testifies to the creativity of efforts in systematic theology occurring at that time. As we have seen, after his experience with the Victorines, the Lombard then became an esteemed magister. He spent almost the entire remainder of his life in this capacity in Paris. In 1159 he became bishop of Paris, dying a year later in 1160. Together with Reims and St-Victor, his time in Paris provided a crucial context for the production of the Sentences. This was a highly competitive environment, with a number of masters plying their trade. Peter Lombard was able to test his ideas in the classroom, as well as learn from the innovations of his colleagues. With the departure of Gilbert to Poitiers, and the death of Abelard, in 1142, there was a new generation of scholars seeking to set the agenda. These men were able to draw upon the innovations of their controversial predecessors while attempting to avoid their tumultuous receptions. This perhaps explains the presence of Peter Lombard and Robert of Melun at Gilbert’s trial in 1148. It was not just that Peter Lombard was embedded in Bernard of Clairvaux’s patronage networks, although that surely had something to do with it. Rather, both men were jostling for preferment and intellectual prestige. Consequently, they were keen to distance themselves from Gilbert’s alleged error. That both men were in competition during this period is evinced by the fact that over the following years they both produced influential sentence collections. As we know now, Peter Lombard’s text would emerge the victor, but this outcome was certainly not apparent in 1148. Robert of Melun was also a scholar of prestige at that time. Originally from England, Robert had taught in Melun before teaching in Paris. He saw out his career as bishop of Hereford, dying in 1167.40 That Robert of Melun saw himself in this light, as doing something new and promising, can be seen in his words on the efficacy of the sentence collection generally. He wrote in the preface to his Sentences: Among those treatises which deal with sacred Scripture I find particularly useful those which are given the name of sentences, since in them there is a clear sparseness of words and a rich wealth of sentences, expressed not obscurely but clearly. There are two in particular who have made rational enquiry about the sacraments of faith as about faith itself and charity, who in everything outshine all subsequent commentators of scripture in the judgement of all; it happened that they did not keep the same paths in everything; in fact it rarely or never happened, even though

40 

For Robert of Melun’s works, see Robert of Melun, Œuvres, ed. by Martin. More recently, on Robert’s life and work, see Mews, ‘Between the Schools of Abelard and Saint-Victor’.

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they dealt with and taught the same matters. For what is dealt with by one more briefly than it ought to be or said more diffusely than necessary is dealt with in a different order by the other.41

The two authors mentioned by Robert, ‘who in everything outshine all subsequent commentators of scripture’, were Abelard and Hugh of St-Victor. Robert of Melun was making a determined point about the genealogy of the sentence collection, presenting those men as the founders and himself as their heir. Notable by his absence was his major competitor, Peter Lombard. This speaks loudly: Robert was attempting to write his opponent out of the competition. We can only assume, as with his experiences at Reims and at St-Victor, that the competition and creativity of the Parisian milieu was formative for the production of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Robert of Melun’s fighting words testified to this intellectual struggle to produce the definitive text. Lombard’s victory over Robert of Melun in the production of a definitive Sentences collection has mostly been understood as a consequence of his methodology; his innovations in citation, the organization of materials, and the comprehensiveness of his sources are usually given as the explanation for the success of the Sentences. That is, it has been argued that Peter Lombard’s Sentences became more popular than that of Robert of Melun because it was a better piece of pedagogical technology; it best suited the needs of students. 42 Although Robert and Peter shared similar synthetic ambitions, and both jettisoned a biblical framing in favour of their own organizational structure, it would seem that Lombard’s Sentences had the edge in content and utility. As we have seen, Robert of Melun aimed to synthesize the thematic structure offered by Hugh of St-Victor in his De sacramentis with the logical insights of Abelard. 41  Robert of Melun, Œuvres, ed. by Martin, iii. 1: Sententie (1947), pp. 45–46: ‘His vero omnibus illis sacre scripture tractatibus precipue consultum invenio, qui sententie nomine inscribuntur, quoniam in eis est parcitas verborum aperta et sententiarum compendiosa fecunditas, non obscure sed evidenter expressa. Horum autem tractatuum auctores pauci inveniuntur, sed ex illis tamen duo precipui, qui tam de sacramentis fidei quam de ipsa fide ac caritate ratione inquirenda ac reddenda, omnibus qui post illos sacre scripture expositores extiterunt, omnibus omnium iudicio prepollent; quos tamen non per omnia eadem tenuisse itinera contigit; quod raro vel nunquam contingere solet, licet res eadem tractetur et doceatur. Nam que aput istum brevius quam oporteret, vel diffusius quam necesse esset dicta sunt, ordine conversa tractata ab illo inveniuntur.’ Translated from Mews, ‘Orality, Literacy and Authority in the TwelfthCentury Schools’, pp. 487–88 (repr. in Mews, ‘Between the Schools of Abelard and SaintVictor’, pp. 128–29). 42  Colish, Peter Lombard, pp. 78–90.

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He combined a Victorine orientation towards sacramental restoration with the rigorous use of dialectic, perhaps absorbed from Abelard. That he was keen for his Sentences to be deployed in the classroom was clear, as he organized the material very carefully into titles, chapters, and distinctions. He was also more precise than many predecessors in the schools in his careful use of citation. In light of these qualities, Robert of Melun’s Sentences was a genuine contender in the battle for intellectual supremacy in the schools at that time. He made strong gestures towards being user-friendly, comprehensive, and coherent. His Sentences, however, lacked pith. There were, according to Colish, many lapses into redundancy and repetition. Robert focused heavily on some obscure issues while treating controversial themes lightly. Commentators on Robert’s Sentences have agreed that while it was a work of ambition, it ultimately lacked the cogency and accessibility of Peter Lombard’s Sentences.43 Peter Lombard shared some of these innovations in organizational with Robert. Building on his success with the Magna Glosatura and Collectanea, he deployed systematic citation practices that made it easier for the student to identify the source of authorities under analysis. His work was also clearly defined into books, titles, chapters, and distinctions. Unlike Robert, who had borrowed his schema from that of Hugh of St-Victor, Peter Lombard organized his material more idiosyncratically and perhaps more suitably for the student of theology: in Book i he is concerned with the nature of God in the form of the Trinity; in Book ii he treats creation; in Book iiii he treats Christology; in Book iv he covers sacramental theology. The architecture of his Sentences was designed to proceed logically through Christian revelation. The student needed to grasp issues pertaining to God if he was to understand God’s creation. The student needed to understand God’s creation if he was to comprehend the necessity of the Incarnation. The student then needed to absorb the redemptive possibilities offered by the resurrection if he was to appreciate the potential saving work of the sacraments. This organizational structure enabled a scholarly pathway through the vast and overgrown detritus of Christian doctrine. It enabled a paring back to first principles. The importance of this structure cannot be overestimated when following the influence of Lombard’s Sentences. It offered a bold pedagogical and logical vision of the best way to proceed through the deep data of Christian thought.

43 

See Colish, ‘Systematic Theology and Theological Renewal’, p. 151; Rosemann, Peter Lombard, pp. 29–33.

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In the light of the contested scholarly environment I have described here, the confidence and prepossession of the manner in which Peter Lombard begins his Sentences is breathtaking. From the outset, this is a text that declared its bold ambitions. In his prologue, the Lombard wrote, citing the Song of Songs and Augustine’s De Trinitate: ‘Burning with that zeal, we have striven to protect with the bucklers of David’s tower “our faith against the errors of carnal and brutish men”. Or rather, we wish to show that it is already so protected’.44 The Sentences constructed itself as a work of fortification, not building from scratch but rather adding to an already strong firmament. The erotic language of the Canticles, so beloved of Bernard of Clairvaux, was transformed into a metaphor for intellectual strength and construction. The lover in the Song of Songs says: ‘Thy neck, is as the tower of David, which is built with bulwarks: a thousand bucklers hang upon it, all the armour of valiant men’. In the prose of Lombard it is his logic that fortifies the tower of orthodoxy. 45 The metaphor was striking. In evoking a text that had been beloved by the fiercest critic of the schools, Peter Lombard was inaugurating a new era. He was carrying on Bernard’s fiery torch of orthodoxy but making something new at the same time. He was perhaps honouring his patron yet also taking a step away from him. He wrote: ‘We have, with God’s aid, put together with much labour and sweat a volume from the witnesses of truth established for all eternity, and divided it into four books’.46 The contrast here, between eternal testimony and Peter Lombard’s all-too human sweaty efforts, offered another striking moment. He declared himself to have wrangled order out of the sublimity of eternity. He was aware of the boldness of his task and the inherent risks. As he wrote of his endeavour in his prologue, ‘the immensity of the work terrifies us; the desire to make progress spurs us on, but the weakness of failure discourages us, and only the zeal for the house of God overcomes it’.47 44  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, Prologue, p. 3: ‘Quo inardescentes, “fidem nostram adversus errores carnalium atque animalium hominum” Davidicae turris clypeis munire vel potius munitam ostendere.’ Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 3. 45  Song of Songs 4. 4: ‘Sicut turris David collum tuum quae aedificata est cum propugnaculis mille clypei pendent ex ea omnis armatura fortium’; the English is the Douay-Rheims translation. 46  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, p. 4: ‘In labore multo ac sudore volumen Deo praestante compegimus ex testimoniis veritatis in aeternum fundatis, in quatuor libris distinctum’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 4. 47  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, Prologue, p. 3: ‘Delectat nos veritas pollicentis, sed terret immensitas laboris; desiderium hortatur proficiendi, sed dehortatur infirmitas

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Out of eternity, then, came temporal systematicity. The Sentences was a work of synthesis, a catalogue of important theological opinions organized into four books. The Sentences was a work of extraction, so that, ‘one who seeks them [authorities] shall find it unnecessary to rifle through numerous books’.48 Instead, the textbook codified and summarized, and in so doing it constituted the basis for a nascent scholastic curriculum. It was custom-constructed and written; in form and content the work was produced with the specific needs of pedagogy in mind. It was unlike the Bible, or Augustine’s Confessions, both of which offered foundational Christian accounts of knowledge and its acquisition, for the Bible and the Confessions each told and tell the fundamental Christian story. That story is, of course, the move from the torpor and fragmentation of sin towards the satisfaction and unity of revelation. It is ultimately a comedic narrative,49 one of farcical chaos transformed into harmony and order. The Sentences of Peter Lombard, however, did not contain itself within such narrative economy. Rather, it offered the manual for how to proceed practically post-conversion, how to bring the diverse strands of Christian doctrine into a workable and educative compendium. The aim of the text was radically conservative in the sense that it was not to proselytize but to fortify. Peter Lombard began the Sentences proper with his first book titled ‘The Mystery of the Trinity’. He started by following Augustine in his definition of things and signs, quoting his De Trinitate: ‘“Things” here properly designates whatever is not used to designate something; but “signs” designates whatever deficiendi, quam vincit zelus domus Dei’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 3. 48  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, Prologue, p. 4: ‘Ut non sit necesse quaerenti librorum numerositatem evolvere’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 4. 49  This point has been made most explicitly in Rosemann, Peter Lombard, especially in the chapter entitled ‘From Story to System’. He argues that the Sentences makes a fundamental break into theological systematization, in opposition to an understanding of Christian theology experienced through narrative. He writes, regarding many of the key foundational texts of the western tradition, that ‘many of these foundational texts, especially religious ones, seem to share a significant characteristic. They possess a narrative structure, as opposed to presenting a rational argument. Thus, Homer tells us the story of Ulysses; the Old Testament offers us four versions of the life of Jesus Christ. To be sure, the Bible’s narrative form does not exclude that it it also comprises elements of teaching, or doctrine. The Old Testament contains the Ten Commandments, while the Gospels, in particular the Gospel according to John, are not a transcript of Jesus’ sayings, but already represent a first stage of reflection on the Saviour. Nonetheless, neither Testament constitutes anything like a theological “system” or synthesis. The Bible is not a catechism, summa, or sentence collection’, p. 8.

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is used in signifying’.50 That Peter Lombard chose to open his discussion of the Trinity in the Sentences by referring not to pagan authors in the fashion of Abelard in his Theologia or to Boethius like Gilbert of Poitiers in his commentaries on the Opuscula sacra, but to Augustine — in particular the De doctrina Christiana —, reveals the explicit traditionalism of Peter Lombard’s approach. He was positioning himself within the most orthodox of frames, particularly considering Abelard’s earlier interventions into Trinitarian theology with his distinction between a vox/res.51 The work of doctrine, that is, the work of Christian teaching, is to understand the things and signs that constitute knowledge of God. But signs, however, are not merely conduits of meaning. Quoting Augustine again, Lombard writes: ‘It follows that everything is also a thing, because […] whatever is not a thing is nothing at all’.52 The temporal world, then, is littered with things and signs, and it is the job of the Christian scholar to find cohesion in the multiplicity. If all that one ultimately desires to know about is God, as Augustine famously prayed, his preferred mode was not the via negativa but the treacherous confusing world of things and signs that bear God through that dark glass. Augustine’s confidence, more than seven centuries before Peter Lombard, that things and signs ought to form the basis of Christian doctrine was one of the foundational statements of Christian theology. With this statement he argued that the seeming randomness of things in the world was not merely a catalogue of fallen-ness that ought to be decried and lamented. Rather, the things of the world, including those signs that bear divine presence however obliquely, demanded consideration as potential ways to God. Doctrine was this consideration, this coming to know the world in its variation as a means to coming to know God in all of his creation. Peter Lombard’s quotation of Augustine that ‘all teaching concerns things or signs’ was no mere commonplace.53 Read in the context of the whole work, his work of systematic theological opinion, it signals his determination to push Augustine’s injunction as far as he can to find 50 

Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk i, d. 1. c. 1. 1, p. 55: ‘Proprie autem hic res appellantur, quae non ad significandum aliquid adhibentur; signa vero, quorum usus est in significando’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 5. 51  On the distinction between vox and res see Mews, Abelard and Heloise, pp. 81–100. 52  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk i, d. 1. c. 1. 1, p. 55: ‘Omne igitur signum etiam res aliqua est: quod enim nulla res est, ut in eodem Augustinus ait, omnino nihil est’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 5. 53  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk i, d. 1. c. 1. 1, p. 55: ‘Omnis doctrina de rebus vel de signis’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 5.

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out what coherence can be wrought out of the diversity of things and signs in the temporal world. Since they are all we have, they can only be the first point of departure. Philipp Rosemann argues that ‘although Peter Lombard himself never articulates the matter, the four books of the Sentences reflect the dialectical relationship between thing and sign, enjoyment and use’.54 This is not to say, however, that there is no hierarchy of things. For there are divine things. Again, following Augustine, Peter Lombard makes the distinction between those things that exist for the sake of enjoyment (frui), and those that ought to be used (uti). To enjoy something, in this parlance, is to love the thing for its own sake. These are things that make the believer blessed, the things that engender grace. As the Lombard quotes Augustine, ‘The things which are to be enjoyed are the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’.55 The things that should be used, on the other hand, ‘are the world and the things created in it’.56 But the things that should be enjoyed — that is cleaved to, adhered to, and worshipped — are only accessible through the useful things, hence their usefulness, as Lombard writes ‘we enjoy both here and in the future, but there we will do so properly, perfectly, and fully, because there we shall see clearly that which we enjoy’.57 After all Paul wrote to the Romans, as Peter Lombard reminds us, that we use the world so that ‘the invisible things of God may be clearly seen, having been understood through the things which are made’.58 It is this distinction between enjoyment and use that underlies Peter Lombard’s attempt to produce a compendium of applied knowledge, with extensive quotations from the morass of biblical, patristic, and canonical arguments that constituted the history of Christian doctrine. He aimed to nuance 54 

Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book, p. 25. Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk i, d. 1. c. 2. 4, p. 56: ‘Res igitur quibus fruendum est, sunt Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 6. 56  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk i, d. 1. c. 2. 5, p. 56: ‘De rebus quibus utendum est. Res autem quibus utendum est, mundus est et in eo creata’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 6. 57  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk i, d. 1. c. 3. 2, p. 57: ‘Haec ergo, quae sibi contradicere videntur, sic determinamus, dicentes nos et hic et in futuro frui; sed ibi proprie, perfecte est plane, ubi per speciem videbimus quo fruemur’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 7. 58  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk i, d. 1. c. 2. 5, p. 56: ‘Utendum est hoc mundo, non fruendum, ut invisibilia Dei per ea quae facta sunt intellecta conspiciantur’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 6. 55 

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the use of these arguments, to survey them as things to be utilized, and to systematize the path by which they might lead to the enjoyment of the divine. Contradictions and problems in this doctrinal tradition, therefore, should be canvassed and solved, if possible, lest they impair the efficacy of their use. On the one hand, this was a reverent and cautious activity, to iron out the wrinkles of doctrine so that one can be lead to true enjoyment of the divine. On the other, I would argue, it was radically optimistic. Peter Lombard was expressing the hope that his human endeavour might transport mankind a little bit further in a movement from use to enjoyment, from diversity to unity. Lombard’s extensive use of Augustine proposes that his intent is not far removed from that of the saint; he couches his authorial intent in the revered words of the archbishop of Hippo. Yet his project is a novel one, his ambitions bold. He wanted to make the move, as Rosemann has it, from ‘story to system’.59 Lombard is governed not by the story of scripture, but by the ‘order of reason’/rationis ordo.60 This combination of tradition and innovation can be seen in the way that Peter Lombard recast Augustine in the Sentences. As we have seen, he begins the Sentences with a faithful rendition of Augustine, mapping out the ways in which Augustinian semantic theory and Augustine’s distinction between use and enjoyment undergird the work conceptually. Moreover, he continued this when he applied that same distinction to the Trinity. In the first instance he quoted Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana directly: The things therefore which are to be enjoyed, the Father, and Son and Holy Spirit, and the same Trinity, are one certain supreme thing, common to all who enjoy it, if indeed it is a thing, and not the cause of all things, if indeed it is the cause.61

Augustine here had asserted that all three of the Trinitarian persons were ‘one certain supreme thing’ (una quaedam summa res). The three persons of the trinity, which were to be enjoyed, were understood to be a collective, yet singular, res of the highest order. Yet when Peter Lombard turned to the vexed question of the relationship between this exalted res and the persons of the Trinity, he made a distinction that would have been foreign to Augustine. He insisted that 59 

Rosemann, Peter Lombard, p. 8. Lombard refers to the order of reason in his prologue to Book iii. Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, Prologue, p. 23. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 3. 61  Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, ed. by Martin, i. 5: ‘Res igitur, quibus fruendum est, pater et filius et spiritus sanctus eademque trinitas, una quaedam summa res communisque omnibus fruentibus ea, si tamen res et non rerum omnium causa, si tamen et causa’. 60 

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in the same way it is not to be asserted that the divine essence generated the Son because, since the Son is the divine essence, the Son would already be the thing from which he is generated; and so the same thing would generate itself. And so also we say that the divine essence did not generate an essence. Since the divine essence is a one and supreme certain thing [reality], if the divine essence generated an essence, then the same thing generated itself, which is not at all possible. But the Father alone begot the Son, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.62

Here Peter Lombard, emphasized the importance of maintaining a conceptual separation between the persons and the una quaedam summa res. While the persons were in identity with the una quaedam summa res spiritually, he maintained that they ought to be kept separate conceptually in order to avoid error, in this case relating to issues of generation. This was a faint, but nonetheless distinct, departure from Augustine. As such, Peter Lombard signalled his ambition towards the production of higher level of notional clarity in theology than that of his patristic forebears. Much more than a faithful compiler, he was tweaking and adjusting standard designations in theology, with the aim of avoiding error and confusion. As we shall see at Lateran IV in 1215, when Peter Lombard’s Trinitarian theology was under discussion, it was precisely this shift in Augustinian language that was a source of controversy. As we have seen, Peter Lombard’s Sentences was innovative in method and in content. The Sentences was not just old information recast in a new frame. The Sentences was also conceptually novel, proposing new ways of thinking about theology that would be dominant for centuries. In spite of this, the Sentences has often been understood as ushering in a period of conservatism and quiet within the schools. Southern, in particular, has argued that the publication of the Sentences marks something of a death knell for what he calls the ‘heroic age’ of the schools. He writes of the impact of the Sentences that following publication ‘scholastic theology entered a placid phase in its development in which it put on weight and grew in importance in the world without making any spec62 

Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk i, d. 5. c. 1. 6, p. 56: ‘Hic etiam non est dicendum quod divina essentia genuit Filium : quia cum Filius sit divina essentia, iam esset Filius res a qua generatur ; et ita eadem res se ipsam generaret. — Ita etiam dicimus quod essentia diuina non genuit essentiam: Cum enim una et summa quaedam res sit diuina essentia, si diuina essentia essentiam genuit, eadem res se ipsam genuit, quod omnino esse non potest; sed Pater solus genuit Filium, et a Patre et Filio procedit Spiritus Sanctus.’ Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 31. I have modified Silano’s translation here. I have replaced the phrase ‘one and the highest thing’ with ‘one and supreme certain thing [reality]’.

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tactular advance or asking any fundamental new questions’.63 Tellingly, and in a similar vein, C. Stephen Jaeger counts Peter Lombard as one of the twelfth century’s ‘bores who bore us on a grand scale’.64 Both Southern and Jaeger create an impression of Peter Lombard and his masterwork as the product of a bloated and stolid middle age. One of the reasons for this, I would argue, is the presentation of the schools found in John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon.65 Written in about 1156, around the same time as Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the Metalogicon was a work of indeterminate genre.66 For the most part it is a treatise on education, a defence of the liberal arts. In this work John of Salisbury goes to some length to endorse training in the liberal arts as the basis of a civilized society. As part of this argument, he describes his own training in the schools. In a famous account, he describes his own movements as a scholar. Beginning around 1136 when he was about sixteen, he studied with a number of the important teachers of his day. He recalls, most notably, the classrooms of Bernard of Chartres, Abelard, Alberic of Reims, Robert of Melun, William of Conches, and Gilbert of Poitiers. He describes his time as a student with great vivacity and energy, conveying in spirited prose a sense of the excitement and possibility that the schools generated for this young scholar. This account has been crucial to the historiography of the schools pre-Sentences. John of Salisbury’s chronology has been used as a key device in dating the careers and works of teachers. There is no source as rich as the Metalogicon for information about the careers of many of the leading scholars in the period between 1136 and 1156.67 As an indication of his importance to our understanding of the 63 

Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, pp. 144–45. Jaeger, ‘Pessimism in the Twelfth-Century “Renaissance”’, p. 1152. 65  John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. by Hall, p. 84, translated in John of Salisbury, The ‘Metalogicon’, trans. by McGarry. Nederman, John of Salisbury, is the most recent comprehensive survey of John’s life and works. Nederman has also published a number of influential articles, examining hitherto unexamined philosophical strains within the Metalogicon. See Nederman, ‘Knowledge, Virtue and the Path to Wisdom’, Nederman, ‘Nature, Sin, and the Origins of Society’. See also, for a collection of articles pertaining to the life, career, and works of John of Salisbury, The World of John of Salisbury, ed. by Wilks. 66  Godman, The Silent Masters, considers the nature of the format and tone of the Metalogicon. Godman writes (p. 172): ‘Having marked, with the scepticism of the academicus, his alienation from the academy, John set himself in an academic avant-garde — the form of his Metalogicon recalling the logical tracts of the first half of the twelfth century, while its unsystematic presentation set it apart from the products of the schoolroom’. 67  See Weijers, ‘The Chronology of John of Salisbury’s Studies in France’; Keats-Rohan, ‘John of Salisbury and Education in Twelfth-Century Paris’; and Keats-Rohan, ‘The Chronology 64 

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schools of this period, Joseph de Ghellinck was once moved to say of John of Salisbury that ‘he was one of the most representative figures of the world connected to the schools in the first half of the twelfth century’.68 John’s Metalogicon depicted a vibrant world of masters and students. He writes proudly of the achievements of the schoolmen of his day, convinced that ‘posterity will honor our contemporaries, for I have profound admiration for the extraordinary talents, diligent studies, marvellous memories, fertile minds, remarkable eloquence, and linguistic proficiency of many of those of our own day’.69 It was he who wrote that his master Bernard of Chartres ‘used to record us as dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature’.70 John described a generation of cutting-edge thinkers, whose eloquence and acuity would actually enable the creation of a better civilization. He wrote: Indeed it is this delightful and fruitful copulation of reason and speech which has given birth to so many outstanding cities, has made friends and allies of so many kingdoms, and has unified and knit together in bonds of love so many peoples. Whoever tries to ‘thrust asunder what God has joined together’ for the common good, should rightly be judged a public enemy.71

In John’s Metalogicon the scholars of his generation were heroic figures, proudly educating young men in the liberal arts so that they too might contribute to the fruitful possibilities of logic and language in harmony. John does not count of John of Salisbury’s Studies in France’. On the sources for the work, see Ward, ‘The Date of the Commentary on Cicero’s De inventione by Thierry of Chartres’. 68  de Ghellinck, Essor de la littérature latine au xiie siècle, p. 61. 69  John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. by Hall, p. 11: ‘Spero equidem quod gloriam eorum qui nunc sunt posteritas celebrabit, eo quod multorum nobilia mirer ingenia, investigandi subtilitatem, diligentiam studii, felicitatem memoriae, fecunditatem mentis, et oris facultatem, et copiam verbi’. John of Salisbury, The ‘Metalogicon’, trans. by McGarry, p. 6. 70  John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. by Hall, p. 116: ‘Dicebat Bernadus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantum umeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora uidere, non utique proprii uisus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subuehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea’. John of Salisbury, The ‘Metalogicon’, trans. by McGarry, p. 167. 71  John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. by Hall, p. 13: ‘Haec autem est illa dulcis et fructuosa coniugatio rationis et verbi, quae tot egregias genuit urbes, tot conciliauit et foederauit regna, tot uniuit populos et caritate deuinxit, ut hostis omnium publicus merito censeatur quisquis hoc quod ad utilitatem omnium Deus coniunxit, nititur separare’. John of Salisbury, The ‘Metalogicon’, trans. by McGarry, p. 11.

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himself among the scholarly elite, he writes that ‘I had neither the leisure nor energy to enter into a subtle analysis of opinions, much less polish my style […]. Administrative concerns and the trifles of court life have precluded study’.72 But, as a courtier, he is emphatic about the essential work of education in the liberal arts in inculcation of virtue. As such, the Metalogicon produces a dynamic picture of the world of the schools in John’s time, a compelling picture of innovation coupled with virtuous respect for authority. For John, communicative language was the foundation of society; he de­ clared: Deprived of their gift of speech men would degenerate to the condition of brute animals, and cities would seem like corrals for livestock, rather than communities composed of human beings united by a common bond for the purpose of living in society, serving one another, and cooperating as friends.73

He believed that the schools, in his day, nurtured this foundation. It is this articulation of the crucial relationship between God, language, and virtue that informs the scholars for whom John of Salisbury is the archetypal twelfth-century humanist. John represents a certain strain in twelfth-century thought, one that insists upon the liberal arts as a source of cultivation and civility in the person. Willemien Otten describes twelfth-century humanist writings as aiming to bring out and bring about the archetypal relatedness of all kinds of knowledge with respect to human nature. Rather than giving us a better sense of the factual make-up of the universe, the created status of humanity or the nature of the transcendence of divine, [they] seem above all keen on engaging the divine and the universe in the joint conversation.74

John sees this type of integrated learning as being in serious decline at the time of writing. After having presented the flourishing of the schools in their early years, he is damning of their situation at the time of the production of 72 

John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. by Hall, p. 10: ‘Placuit itaque sociis ut hoc ipsum tumultuario sermone dictarem, cum nec ad sententias subtiliter examinandas, nec ad uerba expolienda studium superesset aut otium […]. Ad haec sollicitudo rei familiaris et curiales nugae, studium excludebant’. John of Salisbury, The ‘Metalogicon’, trans. by McGarry, p. 5. 73  John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. by Hall, pp. 13–14: ‘Brutescent homines si concessi dote priuentur eloquii, ipsaeque urbes uidebuntur potius pecorum quasi saepta quam coetus hominum nexu quodam societatus feoderatus, ut participatione officiorum et amica inuicem uicissitudine eodem iure uiuat’. John of Salisbury, The ‘Metalogicon’, trans. by McGarry, p. 11. 74  Otten, From Paradise to Paradigm, p. 3.

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the Metalogicon. John’s story is one of academic declension, and I would argue that this narrative has been a persuasive one when historians have come to tell the stories of the schools. After recounting his years of study, John of Salisbury recalls that he had gone to back to visit some scholars with whom he had worked. He said: I felt that it would be pleasant to revisit my old associates, whom I had previously left behind, and whom dialectic still detained at the Mont. I wanted to confer with them concerning matters that had previously appeared ambiguous to us, and to estimate our progress by mutual comparison. I found them just as, and where, they were when I had left them. They did not seem to have progressed as much as a hand’s span. Not a single tiny [new] proposition had they added toward the solution of the old problems. They themselves remained involved in and occupied with the same questions whereby they used to stir their students. They had changed in but one regard: they had unlearned moderation: they no longer knew restraint. And this to such an extent that their recovery was a matter of despair. I was accordingly convinced by experience of something which can easily be inferred [by reason]: that just as dialectic expedites other studies, so, if left alone by itself, it lies powerless and sterile. For it is to fecundate the soul to bear the fruits of philosophy, logic must conceive from an external source.75

John sees sterile logic where once was rigour and reverence. His indictment of the succeeding generation of scholars is savage and abrupt; he describes them as repetitive and lacking in restraint. As Peter Godman writes of John of Salisbury: ‘Feigning limited competence and lowly aims, this antidialectical dialectician on the model of Abelard in fact stakes out comprehensive claims’.76 In addition to decrying the aridity of current practices in dialectic, John describes a dangerous group that he calls the Cornificians. According to him, they are roaming around Paris without adequate fortification in the liberal arts 75 

John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. by Hall, pp. 72–73: ‘Sic fere duodennium mihi elapsum est, diuersis studiis occupato. Iucundum itaque uisum est, ueteres quos reliqueram et quos adhuc dialectica detinebat in monte reuisere socios, conferre cum eis super ambiguitatibus pristinis, ut nostrum inuiem ex collatione mutua commetiremur profectum. Inuenti sunt qui fuerant et ubi. Neque enim ad palmum uisi sunt processisse. Ad quaestiones pristinas dirmendas, nec propositiunculam unam adierant. Quibus urgebant stimuis, eisdem et ipsi urgebantur. Profecerant in uno dumtaxat, dedicerant modum, modestiam nesciebant. Adeo quidem, ut de reparatione eorum posset desperari. Expertus itaque sum quod liquido colligi potest, quia sicut dialectica alias expedit disciplinas, sic si sola fuerit iacet exanguis et sterilis, nex ad fructum philosophiae fecundat animam, si aliunde non concipit.’ John of Salisbury, The ‘Metalogicon’, trans. by McGarry, p. 100. 76  Godman, The Silent Masters, p. 155.

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but nonetheless claiming to offer instruction in eloquence. They are the disciples of a certain Cornificius, who is verbose, rather than eloquent; he is continutally tossing to the winds verbal leaves that lack the fruit of meaning. On the one hand, he assails with bitter sarcasm the statements of everyone else, without any concern as to who they may be, in the effort to establish his own views and overthrow the opinions of others. On the other hand, he carefully shuns engaging in hand-to-hand combat, and avoids basing his arguments on reason or consenting to walk together in the field of the scriptures.77

The Cornificians, always unidentified, bear the weight of John’s criticisms of the contemporary schools, providing straw men against which he can cultivate his tone of measure, competency and practicality. At stake seems to be John’s fear that grounded and reverent instruction in the liberal arts was no longer a priority in the schools. Rather, he was concerned by the determination of students towards a specialization of skills that would have professional applications. John’s humanistic ideals of the interrelationship between classical literature and virtue were being jeopardized by a new focus on more particular educational programs such as those in theology or medicine or law. In the Metalogicon, John of Salisbury described a world of education in decline, accusing scholars of falling into redundancy, formalism, and vainglory. He said nothing whatsoever about Peter Lombard, whose reputation would have been well known to him. This is striking, given that the period of composition of the Metalogicon coincided with that of the Sentences. Since that John of Salisbury wrote an account of Gilbert of Poitiers’s trial that was favourable to Gilbert, perhaps we might read his silence as a result of his disappointment with Lombard’s support of Bernard’s case at Reims.78 Perhaps the fact that John of Salisbury had seen a scholar such as Gilbert under attack, for whom he had much respect, perhaps plays a part in his jaundiced and disappointed view of the schools. Whatever the case, it is important that John of Salisbury’s grim reading of the state of education in the schools after the age of Abelard should not stand for the whole story. For even if, as he suggested, quality of educa77 

John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. by Hall, p. 15: ‘Siquidem non facundus est sed uerbosus, et sine fructu sensuum, uerborum folia in uentum continue profert. Ea tamen est cautela hominis cum aeque omnium dicta uituperet, ut in astruenda sua aut aliena sententia destruenda nunquam manum conserat, nunquam ratione nitatur, nunquam sustineat congredi in campo scripturarum.’ John of Salisbury, The ‘Metalogicon’, trans. by McGarry, p. 13. 78  Monagle, ‘The Trial of Ideas’.

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tion in the liberal arts was in decline, tremendous innovations in theology were occurring at the same time. While John of Salisbury was composing the Metalogicon, Peter Lombard was testing out ideas in lectures, and refining those same ideas in the text that would eventually go into the Sentences. Quoting the Roman playwright Terence, John of Salisbury said of the schools of Paris: ‘The saying of the comic poet that “there are as many opinions as heads,” has almost come to hold true’.79 He intended this comment as an indictment, as a statement of the excessive verbosity that he saw among the scholars of Paris. What he failed to mention was that one scholar, Peter Lombard, was working to corral and organize a multitude of opinions into a coherent frame. John of Salisbury’s serious achievement in the Metalogicon should not blind us to the contemporaneous innovations of Peter Lombard.

79 

John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. by Hall, p. 84: ‘Longum erit et a proposito penitus alienum, si singulorum opiniones posuero uel errores, cum et uerbo comici utar, fere quot homines, tot sententiae’. John of Salisbury, The ‘Metalogicon’, trans. by McGarry, p. 116.

Chapter 3

Lombard’s Christology and its Critics

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eter Lombard’s treatment of Christology takes place in Book iii of the Sentences, a volume devoted to the Incarnation of the Word. Lombard begins this book: ‘Let us now readily attend, with the whole consideration of our mind, to understanding and treating those things which pertain to the mystery of the Word made flesh, so that with God revealing, we may be able to utter some little thing on these ineffable matters’.1 Again we see the combination of humility and confidence that seems to underpin the Sentences. Lombard says that he is going to speak a modicum about the ineffable. He is going to give us a few words about the unspeakable. This paradox inaugurated Book iii. In many ways it also suffused it, underpinning the author’s attempt to explicate the constitution of Christ’s two natures, human and divine. This section would become the most controversial part of the Sentences. One of the major tasks Lombard set himself in Book iii was to build upon the statements of Christological orthodoxy propounded at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. After centuries of virulent arguments about Christ’s nature, that council had declared: The Son is complete in his deity and complete — the very same — in his humanity, truly God and truly a human being, this very same one being composed of a rational soul and a body, coessential with the Father as to his deity and coessential 1 

Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, Prologue, p. 23: ‘Iam nunc his intelligendis atque pertractandis quae ad Verbi incarnati maysterium pertinent, integra mentis consideratione intendamus, ut de ineffabilibus vel modicum aliquid fari Deo revelante valeamus’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 3.

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with us — the very same one — as to his humanity, being like us in every respect apart from Sin.2

Christ, then, was one person with two natures. Understandably, explaining how these two natures could integrate into Christ’s divine person had presented many problems for theologians in the years subsequent to the Council, with a number of theories being suggested. In Book iii, Lombard attempted to bring together these diverse ways in which scholars had explained the relationship between Christ’s humanity, so that the more recent innovations in theological reasoning could be brought into line with conciliar orthodoxy. As with the Trinity, Christology posed an impossible challenge to the theologian. These Christian mysteries were defined by their impossibility within the terms of human language. They were precisely, as they claimed, mysteries. They defied logical explanation; their ultimate apprehension seemed to require faith rather than reason. But explanation, however tortuous, remained necessary. Without a systematic set of terms in which to frame sacred mystery, the faith was too open to misleading heresies. Medieval theologians were well aware that the strong conciliar statements of the early Church emerged at the end of long and schismatic quarrels that had threatened the unity of Ecclesia, and therefore her saving work. The Docetist heresies of the early Church, for example, had held Christ’s flesh to be a work of magic, a mirage that he had utilized in order to achieve his work on earth. For the Docetists, the material world was so depraved that it seemed impossible that God should have genuinely participated in it. Rather, they believed, he used human form as his material base, though he never actually joined the spatial and temporal order of the world. It was partly in response to this heresy, which denied a genuinely human Christ, that a statement such as that of Chalcedon emerged. It was necessary that Christ be understood to be fully human, as his soteriological achievement was dependent on the remission of sins that his suffering engendered. The Docetist argument threatened not only a particular vision of divinity but the work of a saving Church invested by a human Christ on earth. In spite of the paradoxical nature of the Incarnation, Chalcedon spelled out that Christ was ‘unconfusedly, unalterably, undividedly, inseparably in two natures’.3 In response to challenges deemed heretical, the early Church was forced into linguistic explanation of the most confronting of mysteries, that of the relationship between the humanity and the divinity of Christ’s person. 2  3 

Quoted from Norris, The Christological Controversies, p. 159. Norris, The Christological Controversies, p. 159.

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Writing eight hundred years after the Council of Chalcedon, Peter Lombard’s task in Book iii of the Sentences was to bring together the various strains of Christological reasoning extant within his tradition and attempt to ensure that they all held to the standard of orthodoxy propounded at Chalcedon. He cites, at the beginning of the book, Galatians 4. 4–5: ‘When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, so as to redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive adoption as sons of God’.4 This quotation asserts the stakes of the discussion at the onset: Christ’s salvationary work occurs because of his interjection into human history, his fulfilment of the Law, and his inauguration of the period of grace. As Marcia Colish writes, if the Word had never taken on human flesh, then the redemptive suffering and death of Christ on the cross was an illusion as well. Hence, theologians had a mandate to explain the reality of the incarnation and the principle that Christ was truly God and truly man.5

Lombard’s quotation of the apostle declared his ambition to reiterate this most crucial point of Christian doctrine: the absolute reality of Christ’s participation in humanity. The problem for theologians of the twelfth century was that the revival of the liberal arts had produced a more technical set of terms that could be applied to notions of persons and personhood than had previously been available. For example, as we saw in a previous chapter, Gilbert of Poitiers used terms derived from grammar to think about the word Deus. Following Priscian, who said that a noun signified substance and quality, Gilbert asked by which quality might the noun God be understood. This begged the question: if we are to say that God might be understood in terms of a quality, does this mean that he is defined by something outside of himself ? This process of thought, investigated at Reims in 1148, demonstrated a difficult transference of insights gained from the liberal arts to the realm of problems connected with the identity of the divine. This was the sort of problem similarly bedevilling discussions of Christology in this period. The key issue of Christology is that of the constitution of Christ’s personhood. This is, of course, problematized when definitions of personhood become increasingly technical. 4 

Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 1, p. 23: ‘Cum venit igitur plenitudo temporis, ut ait Apostolus, misit deus Filium suum, factum de muliere, factum sub Lege, ut eos qui sub Lege erant redimeret, in adoptionem filiorum Dei’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 3. 5  Colish, Peter Lombard, p. 398.

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Lombard defined one of his key Christological concerns as the discussion of ‘the meaning of these expressions: God was made man, God is man; whether or not by these expressions God is said to be made something [else] or to be something [else]’.6 He concedes that ‘from the foregoing emerges a question which contains much usefulness, but also a great deal of difficulty and confusion’. 7 The problem is one of change. The process of the Incarnation, of God becoming man, involves a transformation. Does this mean that, somehow, God becomes other to himself ? For to be God is to be unchanging, entire, and eternal. Yet the historical reality of Christ’s person implies an alteration, an experience of mutability and temporality which is contrary to God’s fundamental nature. Given that God’s immutable and eternal being is beyond reproach, Peter Lombard wanted to understand the status of these statements that implied otherwise. He wrote: ‘And if by these expressions God is not said to be made anything or to be anything [else], what is the meaning of these expressions and of others like them?’8 The issue of the Incarnation, as Lombard pointed out here, exposed the problem of theological language. If the speaker is forced, under the possibilities of human explanation, into untruths, what is ‘the meaning of these expressions?’ Peter Lombard noted that there was no consensus upon this issue: ‘The learned are found to differ very much in their plumbing of this depth and their expression of this thorny question’.9 This confusion is not surprising, as Philipp Rosemann writes: ‘These questions stand at the center of the Christian faith, and perhaps of religion as such, if religion is the effort to make sense of the finitude and brokenness of human existence in relation to the perfection of the infinite’.10 The section on Christology in the Sentences consti6  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d.  6. c.  1.  1, p.  49: ‘De intelligentia harum locutionem: Deus factus est homo, Deus est homo, an his locutionibus dicatur Deus factus esse aliquid vel esse aliqid vel non’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 24. 7  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 6. c. 1. 1, p. 49: ‘Ex praemissis autem emergit quaestio plurimum continens utilitatis, sed nimium difficultatis atque perplexitatis’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 24. 8  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 6. c. 1. 1, p. 50: ‘Et si his locutionibus non dicitur Deus factus esse aliquid vel esse aliquid, quae sit intelligentia harum locutionum et similium’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 24. 9  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 6. c. 1. 2, p. 50: ‘Quod in huius quaestionis expositione differunt sapientes’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 24. 10  Rosemann, Peter Lombard, p. 124.

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tuted the longest and most thorough investigation within the work. At stake here, because of its difficulty, was the status and meaning of theological statements in themselves. If words could not be found that were able to bear the paradox of sacred mystery, how ought statements in the breach be considered? And what if those statements came from Augustine and his ilk? Peter Lombard then moved on to describe the three prevailing explanations of the Incarnation.11 The first opinion, often called the assumptus homo theory, was summarized thus: For some say that in the very incarnation of the Word, some man was formed from a rational soul and human flesh: from these two, any true man is formed. And that man began to be God, not indeed by the nature of God, but by the person of the Word; and God began to be that man.12

This theory was problematic because it assumed that specific properties of a human nature were taken up by Christ. Therefore, Christ’s person did not constitute an inextricable blending of human and divine natures. Instead, the divine person merely took on certain aspects of humanity. Lombard wrote about this theory that And although they say that man subsists from a rational soul and human flesh, yet they do not profess that he was composed from two natures, namely the divine and the human, nor that his parts are two natures, but only that they are soul and flesh.13

The assumptus homo theory, in other words, was in contravention of Chalcedon, in as much as it accorded Christ’s human nature a secondary status, that it was merely overlaid upon the divine nature. As an explanation, this undermined the necessary reality of Christ’s humanity, the humanity that engendered salvation. 11  Colish, Peter Lombard, pp. 398–417, explicates Lombard’s discussion of the three theories. This is the most exhaustive recent account of Lombard’s rendition of the issue. See also Santiago-Otero, ‘El “nihilianismo christologico” y las tres opiniones’. 12  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 6. c. 2. 1, p. 50: ‘Alii enim dicunt in ipsa Verbi incarnatione hominem quendam ex anima rationali et humana carne constitutum: ex quibus duobus omnis verus homo constituitur. Et ille homo coepit esse Deus, non quidem natura Dei, sed persona Verbi; et Deus coepit esse homo ille.’ Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 24. 13  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 6. c. 2 .1, p. 50: ‘Cumque dicant illum hominem ex anima rationali et humana carne subsistere, non tamen fatentur ex duabus naturis esse compositum, divina scilicet et humana; nec illius partes esse duas naturas, sed animam tantum et carnem’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 24.

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Lombard marshalled a number of patristic warrants for the homo assumptus theory, as he would do for the subsequent theories. He showed that a solid case could be made for the assumptus homo theory, drawing particularly on the church fathers Augustine and Hilary. Among many other quotations, he cited Augustine’s Enchiridion, where the Bishop of Hippo had written of Christ’s dual natured personhood: ‘Both are one, but one on account of the Word, the other on account of the man; not two sons, God and man, but one Son of God: God without beginning, man from a certain beginning’. 14 Here, as Lombard pointed out, Augustine had suggested that the humanity of the Son was subsequent to his divinity. This notion of divinity preceding humanity, according to Lombard, also led to a problematic definition of human personhood. As we have seen, he said: ‘For some say that, in the very incarnation of the Word, some man was formed from a rational soul and human flesh: from these two any true man is formed’.15 Since the divine Christ was thought to have been prior to the human Christ in the assumptus homo theory, this suggested that they could be regarded as separate entities. Only then was it possible to argue that Christ could be understood as human in that he had a ‘rational soul and human flesh’. But this was in profound contradiction with the statement of Chalcedon. That many authorities, such as Augustine, could be read as having supported the assumptus homo has a destabilizing effect in the Sentences, it showed that there was genuine disagreement within the tradition. Consequently, the section on Christology does not merely rehearse old arguments. The juxtaposition of contradictory opinions in such a systematic frame also invited the bigger questions signalled by Lombard when he asked about the ‘meaning of these expressions’. What ought to be done with authoritative opinions when they are found to be in error, or at least not strictly consistent with each other? The next theory which was canvassed, and challenged, by Peter Lombard, has been called the ‘subsistence theory’. Peter Lombard wrote that: they say that man was not composed only of a rational soul and flesh, but also of a divine and human nature, that is, of three substances: divinity, flesh and soul. They 14  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 1. c. 2. 1, p. 50: ‘Utrumque unus, sed aliud propter Verbum, et aliud propter hominem; non duo filii, Deus et homo, sed unus Dei filius: Deus sine initio, homo a certo initio’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 25. 15  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 1. c. 2. 1, p. 50: ‘Alii enim dicunt in ipsa Verbi incarnatione hominem quendam ex anima rationali et humana carne constitutum: ex quibus duobus omnis verus homo constituitur’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 24.

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profess this Christ to be only one person: however, that person was simple only before the incarnation, but in the incarnation he was made into a person composed of divinity and humanity.16

In this telling, Christ is a simple person as God, but when he joins with humanity this divine person subsists ‘in and from two natures’.17 As with the assumptus homo theory, Peter Lombard recited the authorities that could be understood to be in favour of the subsistence theory. Again, Augustine figured prominently, with Lombard drawing upon Hilary, Augustine, and John of Damascus. After the recitation of key auctoritates, Lombard provided a cogent summary of the theory, writing that ‘the person of Christ is composite, or made, consisting of either two natures or three substances’.18 Having provided this comparably pithy summary, Peter Lombard did not enter into criticism of the subsistence theory. Instead, he moved straight into the next theory. He says of the third view that ‘there are even some others who not only deny [the existence of ] a person composed of natures in the incarnation of the Word, but also say that there was not any man at all, or even any substance, there composed or made from soul and flesh’.19 This is the habitus theory, which takes its name from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which says of Christ that he ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man’.20 This theory of the Incarnation reduces Christ’s humanity to the status of clothing. His humanity is a mere overlay upon his 16 

Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 6. c. 3. 1, p. 52: ‘Sed dicunt hominem illum non ex anima rationali et carne tantum, sed ex humana et divina natura, id est ex tribus substantiis: divinitate, carne et anima, constare; hunch Christum fatentur, et unam personam tantum esse, ante incarnationem vero solummodo simplicem, sed in incarnatione factam compositam ex divinitate et humanitate’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 26. 17  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 6. c. 3. 1, p. 53: ‘Persona ergo quae prius erat simplex et in una tantum natura exsistens, in duabus et ex duabus subsistit naturis’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 26. 18  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 6. c. 3. 6, p. 54: ‘Qui dicunt personam Christi compositam esse, vel factam sive constantem ex duabus naturis sive ex tribus substantiis’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 28. 19  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 6. c. 4. 1, p. 55: ‘Sunt etiam et alii, qui in incarnatione Verbi non solum personam ex naturis compositam negant, verum etiam hominem aliquem, sive etiam aliquam substantiam, ibi ex anima et carne compositam vel factam diffitentur’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 28. 20  Phil. 2. 7: ‘sed semet ipsum exinanivit formam servi accipiens in similitudinem hominum factus et habitu inventus ut homo’.

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divine persona. As with the previous theories, following his exposition of the rudiments of the given theory, Lombard then went onto to discuss those who could be argued to be supporters of this theory. Once again, Augustine was the predominantly cited author here. As was the case with the subsistence theory, Peter Lombard was not particularly critical of this theory in this section, holding his criticisms back for the next section. In an earlier work, a commentary on Philippians, Peter Lombard had seemed to endorse the habitus theory. He had said that ‘it is not fitting to understand the Word to have been changed by the taking on of a man, just as a cloaked limb is not altered’.21 By the time of the Sentences, however, this theory no longer provided an adequate explanation for him as to the constitution of Christ’s person. This section of the Sentences, that which pertained to the three theories, contained some of most involved argumentation in the entire work. And Lombard was not finished yet. He then announced, having summarized the theories, that he would pursue ‘the meanings of the proposed expressions according to each view’.22 He wanted to find the intelligentias propositarum locutionum (the implications of the phrases put forward). In this section he followed the arguments for each opinion, assessing more completely whether or not they were in error. He noted, for example, that the followers of the assumptus homo theory might ultimately imply that ‘if that substance began to be God, and God to be that substance, then some substance is God which was not always God; and some substance is God which is not the divine substance; and God is something which he not always was’.23 This implication of God’s mutability was counter to his status as immutable and eternal. Lombard then proceeded to show how those who supported the assumptus homo theory marshalled a certain statement of Origen in this defence. This was problematic, he argued, because it relied on reading Origen out of context. When the full quotation was restored, as Peter Lombard did in the text, it became clear that Origen ought not to be 21 

Peter Lombard, In Epistolam ad Philippenses, col 235D: ‘Non ergo oportet intelligi Verbum mutatum esse susceptione hominis, sicut nec membra veste induta mutantur’. 22  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 1. 1, p. 59: ‘Intelligentias propositarum locutionum exsequitur secundum singulas sententias’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 31. 23  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 1. 2, p. 59: ‘Huic autem sententiae opponitur: Si illa substantia coepit esse Deus et Deus illa, quaedam igitur substantia est Deus, quae non semper fuit Deus; et quaedam aubstantia est Deus, quae non est divina substantia; et Deus est aliquid quod non semper fuit’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 32.

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marshalled in this way. He concluded his interrogation of the assumptus homo theory by noting that it remained unfinished; he wrote that ‘objection to their view also can be made in a variety of further ways, but we pass over them, leaving this studious exercise to the reader’.24 Lombard, this is to say, attacked the error with dialectical reasoning and literary criticism. That is, he pulled the argument apart in terms of its logical properties, noting that it could not be made to accord with Christological orthodoxy. He also reread the evidence on which such an erroneous opinion might be constructed, showing it to be based in flawed interpretation. He encouraged his students to do the same, reminding them that this type of analysis is an ongoing process, rather than a static formulation of doctrine. In the remainder of the analysis of the other two opinions, which follows this section on the assumptus homo theory, he continued setting out argumentative layers. When speaking about the subsistence theory, he mapped the authorities which might be marshalled in support, again trying to find the ‘senses of those same expressions’, the earundem locutionum sensus.25 These are the statements that isolate the synthetic ambitions of the text. The quest for the meanings, or the senses, of the opinions of the auctoritates is the forensic search for the coherence within the tradition. Lombard’s task, as he presented it here, was to distil these essential meanings from the words so that solutions to seeming inconsistencies could be gathered. This forensic approach came to the fore when he treated the subsistence theory for the second time. This theory holds that ‘Christ would be understood to have begun to be subsistent from two natures’.26 This was the theory treated with the most deliberation and care in this section of the Sentences. Lombard goes back and forth between opinions, attempting to carve out the meaning and application of the theory. In his treatment of the assumptus homo and habitus theories, he seemed to reject them outright. In this section, how24 

Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 1. 3, p. 59: ‘Aliis quoque pluribus modis illi sententiae potest opponi: quibus supersedemus, exercitationis studium lectori relinquentes et ad aliam properantes’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 32. 25  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 1. 4, p. 60. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 32. 26  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 1. 4, p. 60: ‘In secunda vero sententia, huius dictionis talis videtur ratio: ut cum dicitur ‘Deus factus est homo’, intelligatur coepisse esse subsistens ex duabus naturis vel tribus substantiis’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 32.

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ever, Lombard was not so swift to condemn. Rather, he devoted much time to explaining challenges to the theory and producing his own ‘determinations’ in response. His approach to the subsistence theory emerges in this quotation of John of Damascus: And this name, namely Christ, we say of the person; it is not said monotropically (that is, the one way), but as signifying the two natures, namely divinity and humanity. For we confess that from divinity and humanity, he is and is to be called perfect God and perfect man, from two natures and in two natures.27

As Lombard dealt with this theory he insisted on the difference between what Christ is and what may be signified by his name. That is, he argues that it is possible to explain things about the meanings of Christ’s name which do not contradict his essential unity as God. Following this, to say that Christ’s humanity and divinity subsist within him was not to make a metaphysical point about his composition. Rather, it was to specify what is meant by the name Christ. Lombard quotes John of Damascus again: ‘the two natures are mutually united without conversion or alteration: the divine nature does not depart from its proper simplicity, nor is the human one either changed into the nature of the divinity or reduced to non-existence’.28 Peter Lombard did not outrightly support the subsistence theory, but he certainly allowed it the most space among the three theories. He also echoed, in his closing statement, those that he had quoted from John of Damascus. Lombard writes: For the parts of some whole come together in such a way that what was not before is composed of them. But it is not in such a way that the human and divine nature are united in Christ: for the order of this union, which is not a union of parts, is inexplicable.29

27  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 1. 9, p. 62: ‘Et hoc nomen, scilicet Christus, personae dicimus, non monotropos (id est uno modo) dictum, sed duarum naturarum esse significativum, scilicet deitatis et humanitatis. Ex deitate autem et humanitate Deum perfectum et hominem perfectum eundum et esse et dici, ex duabus et in duabus naturis confitemur’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 34. 28  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 1. 9, pp. 61–62: ‘Inconverse et inalterabiliter unitae sunt ad invicem naturae, neque divina distante a propria simplicitate, neque humana aur conversa in deitatis naturam, aut in non exsistentiam divisa, neque ex duabus una facta composita natura’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 33. 29  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 1. 14, p. 64: ‘Ita enim partes alicuius totius conveniunt, ut ex illis quod non erat constituatur. Non autem sic humana et divina

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Following Palémon Glorieux and Philipp W. Rosemann, I would argue that Lombard’s account of the subsistence theory does indeed ‘hint greatly at the privileged status of the second account’.30 The subsistence theory, at least in its exposition in the Sentences, allowed Lombard to distinguish between what may be signified by a thing’s name and what the thing itself might be. In his telling of the Trinity, as we saw earlier, Lombard was keen to separate the una quaedam summa res, his designation of that which united the three persons of the Trinity, from the Trinitarian persons themselves. He insisted there on a distinction between an explanatory notional designation and the absolute indivisible unity of the Trinity. I would argue that he made similar gestures in his long rendition of the subsistence theory. These were gestures towards enunciating a crucial distinction between analysis of divine names, and analysis of divine things. The length of his treatment of the subsistence theory, as well as the content of his exposition, do suggest a preference for that view. As he himself wrote at the end of his account of the theory: ‘We have diligently set out the second view and the explanation for it. No objection, or almost none, arises to the second view from the authorities which are brought forward in the third view, to which we must now turn’.31 The third view, the habitus theory, received very short shrift in comparison. In a few lines, Lombard outlined the problem with the habitus theory, namely that it implied that a ‘humanised person is what is being predicated’ onto God.32 This was problematic as it placed a grammatical construct, that of predication, onto the real person of Christ. Lombard argued that if this were natura in Christo uniuntur: inexplicabilis enim est istius unionis, quae non est partium, ratio’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 35. 30  Rosemann, Peter Lombard, p. 130. In this Rosemann differs slightly from Colish. In Peter Lombard, she writes on pp. 426–27, that ‘and so notwithstanding the detailed support of the authorities which, as Peter shows, can be brought forward to bolster each of these positions, he recommends none of them […]. The vast majority of modern commentators have been able to take Peter at his word here, accepting the fact that he was not a Christological nihilianist and that he was not a proponent of the habitus theory or, indeed, of any of the three opinions which he outlines and criticises.’ 31  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 1. 15, p. 64: ‘Posita est diligenter sententia secunda et eius explanatio. Cui in nullo, vel in modico, obviant auctoritates in tertia sententia inductae, quae iam consideranda est’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 35. 32  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 1. 17, p. 64: ‘Cum ergo dicitur ‘Deus est homo’, vel habitus praedicatur, vel persona, sed humanata. Et quod persona humanata praedicatur’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 36.

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to occur, it would be to say that God was modified by taking on the habit of a man, rendering Christ’s humanity less significant than his divinity. This led to the erroneous implication that ‘when Christ is said to be less than the Father according to his being a man, they understood this to be said according to habit, that is, insofar as he has a man united to himself ’.33 The habitus theory reduced Christ’s humanity to that of an overlay, rather than an essential part of his hypostatic person. After the citing the problems of the habitus theory, Lombard signalled the end of his inquiries into the three opinions. He declared that with sufficient diligence, I have treated the question posed above according to the views of different people, without prejudice or assertion of my own. And yet, in such a great matter and one so difficult to understand, I do not wish the reader to believe that our disputation should suffice.34

In spite of his generous work towards the subsistence theory, and his trenchant criticism of the assumptus homo and habitus theories, Lombard was wary about suggesting a final synthesis of the issues. However, this final disclaimer notwithstanding, Peter Lombard had indeed made a significant intellectual intervention with his discussion of the three opinions. In showing the labyrinthine difficulty of speaking about the hypostasis, of finding terms worthy to it, he was making a much larger point about the limitations of theology, which is to say, about the limitations of speaking humanly about God. He was also demonstrating the imperfections of the patristic tradition. Yes, Augustine and others were authoritative. But their words alone no longer sufficed for the very modern definitional problems with which the schoolmen found themselves challenged. When writing about the problems of Lombard’s Christology, Marie-Dominique Chenu made the same point: From the level of patristic tradition, where different expressions were employed and more often complemented than opposed one another because they generally 33  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 2. 3, p. 65: ‘Hi etiam cum dicitur Christus minor Patre secundum quod homo, secundum habitum hoc intelligunt dictum, id est in quantum habet sibi hominem unitum’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 36. 34  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 3. 3, p. 66: ‘Satis diligenter, iuxta diversorum sententias, supra positam absque assertione et praeiudicio tractavi quaestionem. Verumtamen nolo, in tanta re tamque ad agnoscendum difficili, putare lectorem istam sibi nostram debere sufficere disputionem.’ Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 37.

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involved spontaneous instead of philosophical notions, men passed to the mature level of reasoned theology where traditional expressions took on an intellectualised character, a particular metaphysical significance, newly precise and defined, and varying with the systems which scrutinised and made use of them.35

Lombard may have modestly suggested that his discussion was not enough to solve the problem of the lack of adequate Christological vocabulary, but he certainly opened up a volatile and problematic seam of inquiry. Lombard followed up one of these inquiries in the Sentences. In the light of his previous discussion of the Christological opinions, he pondered ‘whether Christ, according to his being a man, is a person or anything’. 36 Lombard was reprising here some of the earlier questions posed by his discussion of the three opinions. That question was about the precise name that could be given to the part of Christ that constituted his humanity. In the Latin, he was asking the question as to whether or not Christ’s humanity might be understood to be an aliquid. This word poses many problems for the translator: it can mean ‘anything’ or it can mean ‘something else’. But in either translation, the essence of the question is to ask whether Christ’s manhood is substantial and crucial to his personhood, or, rather, whether it is anything at all. That is, is Christ’s humanity a thing? Does it have quiddity? Christ’s humanity is an essential notion, but can it be understood to be a thing in itself ? Clearly, Christ as a man cannot be understood to be a person in himself. This would be to separate Christ’s human person out from his divinity, in clear contradiction of Chalcedon. But since Christ’s humanity must be inseparable from his total person, can his humanity be said to be anything at all? As we have seen, when it came to the Trinity, Lombard emphasized the importance of maintaining a conceptual separation between the persons and the una quaedam summa res. He had made clear that it was necessary to distinguish between the unity and the particularity of the Trinitarian persons. The una quaedam summa res (one certain highest thing) was the name for that which could be imagined to unite the multiplicity of the Trinity. Likewise, in his Christology, Lombard wanted to ask similar questions about the reality of Christ’s humanity. What Lombard was exposing, with this apparently paradoxical consideration, was the failure of theological terminology to manage adequately the 35 

Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, p. 286. Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 10. c. 1. 1, p. 72: ‘An Christus secundum quod homo est sit persona vel aliquid’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 41. 36 

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hypostasis. In pondering the exact status of Christ’s humanity, he was attempting to refine Christological formulas to a most rigorous statement. As we will see in the next chapter, these questions about the quiddity of Christ’s humanity aroused feverish debate and controversy over the next fifty years or so. In spite of the enormous success of the Sentences as a textbook in the schools, Lombard’s orthodoxy was highly contested in the second half of the twelfth century. The story of the reception of his Sentences is less one of pure magisterial triumph, than a complicated tale of the way in which ideas are transformed through use and context. In the coming pages we will consider what subsequent readers made of questions posed by Lombard. How did individuals, both his opponents and his supporters, understand the boundaries of knowledge and language articulated by Lombard? Much more than a mere compiler, or a simple synthesizer, Peter Lombard’s Sentences contained a number of important novelties and provocations. These would be the basis of a number of crucial quarrels in the coming fifty years.

The Christological Criticisms In the period beginning in the 1150s and terminating in approximately 1180, Peter Lombard’s Sentences was the subject of sustained criticism. In spite of, or perhaps because of, his death around 1160, there was feverish and ongoing speculation about the orthodoxy of his masterwork. In particular, debate centred around the question that Lombard had posed in the Book iii of the Sentences. As was discussed above, Lombard had asked ‘whether Christ, according to his being a man, is a person or anything’. It was a question that expressed the profound problems that theologians had experienced in their attempts to define the constitution of Christ’s humanity in clear terms. Lombard’s own logic, in which he attempted to make sense of how Christ could be one person with two natures, ultimately led him to the question of the quiddity of Christ’s human person. Although he had framed the question modestly, it remained highly provocative in the eyes of his critics. In their eyes, as we shall see, posing such a question set the inquirer on a dangerous path. Christ’s initial redemptive work, as well as the Church that fulfilled his soteriological promise through the sacraments, was premised upon the mutual imbrications of his human and divine selves. As God he could save; as human he could make adequate reparations for man’s lapsarian error. Any question, then, that challenged the reality of Christ’s human person ran the risk of denying his reality as redeemer, and the saving work of his church.

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Peter Lombard’s critics took very seriously the risks posed by his line of Christo­logical questioning. Gerhoh of Reichersberg, John of Cornwall, and Walter of St-Victor, his three major critics, took their criticisms to the pope. They each argued, although in different rhetorical and emotional registers, that Lombard’s Christological formulation was potentially heretical in itself and might lead others into danger. When petitioning the pope, each of these complainants attempted to compel the pope to act on the basis that questions like those posed by Peter Lombard not only opened up intellectual conundrums but actually ultimately challenged faith in Christ and in his Church. In this way, these very precise theological concerns become interwoven with pleas for papal oversight and thus were a test of papal authority. In particular, these writers implored the pope to intervene at the conciliar level. Bernard of Clairvaux, when attacking Abelard and Gilbert, had constructed a panoramic vision of the potential evils of theological inquiry. Bernard had used papal councils to great theatrical effect. Following in this tradition, Gerhoh, John, and Walter depicted Lombard’s Christological questions as challenging the fabric of Christian orthodoxy and ecclesiology itself. And, like Bernard, they saw the papal council as the appropriate mechanisms for disciplining the issue. In the light of the dominance of the Sentences as a textbook throughout the Middle Ages, the complaints made against the work have often been dismissed as frivolous by intellectual historians. The triumph of the Sentences seems so assured in retrospect that it is easy to dismiss its problems in reception. And since the complainants against Lombard never succeeded in having their Christological criticisms heard at a papal council, there are no records of dramatic adversarial conflict to enliven reports of the debates around his orthodoxy. Consequently, the concerns of these critics have often been written as a pallid and anachronistic sequel to the enmities expressed by Bernard of Clairvaux. It is very tempting, in the light of the triumph of the Sentences, to read the critics of the Lombard as yesterday’s men, unable to come to terms with the ascendancy of theological reasoning. Such an approach, however, results in a missed opportunity. In retracing the debates around the orthodoxy of Peter Lombard in the second half of the twelfth century, when divested of the notion of the inevitability of the victory of the Sentences, we become privy to the very complex path by which his ideas moved from being merely speculative towards being considered doctrinal. That is, if we retrace the steps of Lombard’s critics and supporters, as they navigated the implications of his ideas and his method, we will be able to begin to gauge better the reasons for the ultimate success of the work in the schools and its eventual endorsement by the papacy. Although we might not judge the critics

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of Lombard as successful in their petitions against the scholar, their writings evince a range of concerns about the potential meanings of his approach to theology. They propose a range of dire implications that could arise from Peter Lombard’s Christology. They see the stakes as high, as challenging to the firmament of faith itself. The registers in which they couched their quarrel with the Lombard were emotional and provocative. They sought to set off a peal of warning bells about the harm posed by theological speculation in particular, and the ideas of Lombard in particular. Although they were not winners, from our perspective, their emotional and intellectual vigour offers a revealing window on the fears that circled around theological questioning in this period. The First Wave: Robert of Cricklade and Gerhoh of Reichersberg Sometime between 1140 and 1159 — probably in 1158 — Robert of Cricklade, an Augustinian canon from Oxford took a trip to Paris, about which he recounted: I remember that Roger, who is now Bishop of Worcester, came to our inn. I asked him with whom he was studying theology, and he replied, ‘With Master Robert of Melun,’ ‘I am very pleased,’ I said, ‘as I feared that you had been ensnared by that heretic’.37

‘That heretic’ as we will find out later on in the text was Peter Lombard. Upon hearing this charge against Lombard’s reputation, Robert tells us that they were joined by one of Lombard’s ‘better disciples’, whose purpose in joining the conversation was to ask Robert to explain the ways in which Peter Lombard could be said to be a heretic.38 Robert replies that he could be said to be a heretic in ‘many ways’, but, when pushed, supplies that Lombard ‘separates man from God, so that he is not one human person with God in the Trinity, who is really the Son of God’.39 Lombard’s student retorts, ‘I don’t understand how this can be said’, implying that he does not understand how these claims could be 37  Robert of Cricklade, Symbolum fidei, ed. by Hunt, p. 37: ‘Meminit enim me domnum Rogerum, qui nunc est Wigornensis episcopus, venisse ad hospicium nostrum. Quem cum interrogassem apud quem in divina pagina studeret, et respondisset, “Apud magistrum Robertum Meldunensem.” “Perplacet,” inquam ‘timebam enim, ne te teneret inviscatum hereticus ille”.’ 38  Robert of Cricklade, Symbolum fidei, ed. by Hunt, p. 37 39  Robert of Cricklade, Symbolum fidei, ed. by Hunt, pp. 37–38: ‘“Separat” inquam “hominem a Deo, ut non sit una persona homo Deo in trinitate, qui revera filius Dei est.”’.

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made about Lombard’s theology. Robert, in replying, twists this around and says, ‘Nor do I understand, because this heresy is detestable and the worst in my lifetime’. Lombard’s student apparently expresses concern, Robert has misunderstood the master’s theology. Robert’s response, however, implied that he believed Peter Lombard to be in error, and that his error was a dire one. The student says to Robert, ‘Listen to me patiently, and I will unravel the truth for you’. Robert replies, somewhat bombastically, ‘The truth ought to be heard and ought always to be loved’. The student then attempts a technical explanation for the confusion over the Lombard’s theology, beginning with a preliminary discussion of the definition of the relationship between quality and substance. The student says, according to Robert, ‘You know that whiteness is embodied, and not conferred on the body, as a substance might be’. Robert, however, cannot allow this lecture to proceed. Instead, he begins a lecture of his own: I know what you are doing […]. You will not explain this with examples in this way. I speak about the two natures, clearly divine and human, and you introduce examples from nature, and from accidence, which is not even reckoned among nature. If you want to explain this to me with examples, bring in the example of the two natures, just as I speak of the two natures. And if you don’t understand, I’ll explain. Just as a man has a rational soul and flesh, so Christ is one man and God.

Robert’s point was that the terms within which human categories might be analysed have no valency when it comes to divine persons. Christ cannot be explained through examples derived from nature. Rather, all discussions should begin with the unassailable first principle of Christ’s two natures, human and divine. Lombard’s student replies to Robert’s lecture ‘Therefore, it is thus in no manner’. There is no manner, the student implies, in which one can explore the category of divine personhood without recourse to the exemplifying possibility of human examples. Robert replies vigorously, and sarcastically: ‘If thus it is in no manner that God and one man is Christ, as a rational soul and one flesh is Man, then it is not therefore [in any manner]. But each thus contradicts each other, because they are not both able to be possible.’40 Lombard’s stu40 

I have taken all the selections from Robert of Cricklade above from the following text, which I quote in full, Robert of Cricklade, Symbolum fidei, ed. by Hunt, p. 38: ‘“Non intelligis” inquit “qumodo hoc dictum sit.” “Nec intelligam” inquam “in vita mea quia hoc heresis est pessima et detestabilis.” “Audi” inquit “me patienter, et ego reserabo tibi veritatem.” “Veritas” inquam “audienda est et semper amanda.” “Nosti” inquit “albedinem esse in corpore, et non conferre corpori ut substancia sit.” Et ego “Scio” inquam “quo tendas. Non hoc modo michi exemplifacibis. Loquimur enim de duabus naturis, divina scilicet et humana, et tu inducis de natura exemplum, et de accidente, quod nec inter naturas computatur. Si vis michi exempificare,

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dent had accused Robert of permitting no space, no manner, for inquiry into Christ’s personhood, as Robert refused the possibility of predicating human concepts onto the divine person. Robert replies that indeed there is ‘no manner’ for this type of inquiry, but states firmly that there is ample matter found in the Chalcedonian formula. Robert concludes his lecture to the student by saying: ‘And so the holy Catholic Church of God sings with full faith through the whole circle of the world that Christ is one God and one Man. Heretics, on the other hand, shout in their small meetings that it is not so.’41 Robert records that at the end of his speech: ‘Thus this confused man was silenced with the conclusion of the speech. Certainly, those wise men who had been present congratulated me.’ Made mute by the resounding simplicity of orthodoxy, Peter Lombard’s student cannot respond. Meanwhile, the crowd surges to pat Robert on the back for his declarative efforts. Robert of Cricklade was prior of St Frideswide’s in Oxford between 1141 and 1174. Prior to that period he had been educated in the schools of Paris, although little is known about his time there. He was a prolific author, composing works of history, hagiography and biblical commentary. He wrote to bolster the reputation of St Frideswide’s as well as to satisfy aristocratic patrons. He was familiar with the work of William of Malmesbury, and was mentioned in a work by Gerald of Wales.42 We do not know when Robert was born, but he died in 1174. He may well have been a student in the schools of Paris around the same time as John of Salisbury and Peter Lombard. These biographical details are important as they testify to the mobility of the literate elites of northern Europe at this time, as well as to their propensity for academic gossip. The schools were sending their graduates throughout Europe to take up leadership positions in both secular and ecclesiastical contexts. However, these men were not merely bringing their new skills to bear in their adult appointinduc exemplum de duabus naturis. Quod si nescis, ego inducam. Sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo, ita Deus et homo unus est Christus.” “Ita” inquit ipse “quod nullo modo ita.” Et ego “Si nullo modo” inquam “it Deus et homo unus est Christus, ut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo, tunc non ita. Sed ita et non ita sibi contradicunt, quod simul esse non possunt”.’ 41  Robert of Cricklade, Symbolum fidei, ed. by Hunt, p.  38: ‘Itaque sancta Dei ecclesia catholica canit cum plena fide per universum orbem terrarum, ita Deus et homo unus et Christus. Heretici vero in conventiculis suis perstrepunt, dicentes non ita’. 42  Very little is known about Robert of Cricklade, and there has been consequently little scholarly work performed that studies his career and impact. Recently, Simon Yarrow has considered Robert as part of his work on the hagiographical tradition that emerged out of St Frideswide’s. See Yarrow, Saints and their Communities, pp. 173–74.

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ments, they were also spreading stories, anecdotes, and gossip about the schools and their operations. In the vignette Robert was taking a trip back to Paris, the place of his schooldays, after having taken up his position at St Frideswide’s. It attests that as an alumnus he still had strong opinions about the quality of teaching and content emanating from the schools. When he meets a young English student, he is fascinated to find out about the trajectory of the student and eager to comment upon the adequacy of his educational path. In so doing, Robert testifies fascinatingly to the suspicions, enmities, and polemics that circled around the figure of Peter Lombard well before the serious Christological debates are thought to have begun. Although Robert’s account of his discussion with Lombard’s student has been little remarked upon when it has come to discussion of debates around Lombard’s Christology, it is a potentially rich source for the language, ideas, and emotions of the debates. Robert warns young Roger about Lombard, and expresses his relief that Roger was not studying with ille hereticus Peter Lombard. These were very strong words indeed, particularly when combined with inviscatum/ensnared. Inviscatum literally means ‘trapped with birdlime’, birdlime being a sticky substance placed on trees in order to trap birds.43 The heretic Lombard, according to Robert of Cricklade, was ensnaring innocent young scholars with his duplicitous tricks. Robert’s words echo those of Bernard of Clairvaux who, as we saw in Chapter 1, rhetorically cast Abelard as an aggressor imperilling the liberty of Christ’s Church. In Bernard’s telling, Abelard’s dialectical reasoning was sneaky and deceitful, and was contrasted with the pure virginal simplicity of the trapped Church. Robert reprised this juxtaposition between orthodox simplicity and heretical complexity in his rendering of Peter Lombard’s Christological error. He tells us, as we have seen, that Peter Lombard separates man from God, so that Christ is ‘not one human person with God in the Trinity’. In response, Lombard’s student tries to introduce a discussion of the Lombard’s ideas, offering to educate Robert through examples. Robert tells us that that student’s approach is one that begins with the analysis of human categories. Robert’s rendering of the student’s method has the student beginning with earthly things, and proceeding to divine things. Robert, in contrast, proceeds to lecture the student that one ought to begin with the truth of Christ’s two natures. Robert, thus, has constructed a profound methodological fissure between himself and his opponent. Lombard’s student moves from human examples and proceeds to 43 

I have not found any other usage of inviscatum. The verb visco, however, means to become sticky or trapped in birdlime. I can only guess that the addition of in adds prepositional emphasis.

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apply them to divine truth. Robert, however, always makes his point of departure, and first principle, the absolute truth of orthodoxy. The student is represented as crafty and intellectual, while Robert presents himself as simple and faithful. This is a contrast perpetuated further, when Robert says that ‘and so the holy Catholic Church of God sings with full faith through the whole circle of the world that Christ is one God and one Man. Heretics, on the other hand, shout in their small meetings that it is not so.’ The contrast produced was between transparency and privacy, openness and enclosure. The story, as I have said, resulted in the juxtaposition between confused and silenced student, and a victorious and congratulated Robert of Cricklade. His telling, in which he emerged as a heroic defender of the faith, illuminates the ways in which these debates about heresy in this period aroused strong emotions, and produce strong identifications on both sides. The debate, as Robert tells it, was about method, about the best mode in which one might attempt to come to grips with divine truth. But it was also about contestation, humiliation, and victory. Robert of Cricklade’s account suggests that prior to his election as bishop of Paris in 1160, Peter Lombard’s reputation had already been damaged by significant allegations of error. John of Cornwall, whom we shall encounter in more depth later in this chapter, recorded that he became anxious about Lombard’s Christology after hearing the lectures of Maurice of Sully, prior to his election as bishop of Paris following the death of Lombard, as well as those of Robert of Melun.44 John’s testimony, combined with that of Robert of Cricklade, suggests that in the competitive educational environment of the schools of Paris in the period between 1155 and 1160, Lombard’s error had been the subject of much consideration, both in public forums and private conversations. Importantly, however, by 1164, the conversation had evidently spread beyond the confines of Parisian academia. In that year, the Augustinian canon Gerhoh of Reichersberg wrote to Pope Alexander  III ‘denouncing Peter Lombard and commending the reform of the church’, employing many of the same adversarial tropes that we saw in Robert of Cricklade’s account.45 In his letter, Gerhoh made an explicit link between the alleged error of Lombard and the strength of the Church. The message was that the denunciation of heresy and the reform of the Church were two sides of the same coin. The Pope’s task was to do both in tandem. He needed to crush error, and thereby safeguard 44 

John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 268. Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Epistola xvii ad Alexandrum III papa, col. 564B: ‘Denuntiat Petrum Lombardum, et reformationem Ecclesiae commendat’. 45 

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the integrity of ecclesia. The intellectual speculations of a scholar like Lombard were, according to Gerhoh, tantamount to an attack on the Church itself.46 Gerhoh had demonstrated strong concern about Christological error well before the advent of Lombard’s Sentences. He had been writing about clerical reform and intellectual error since 1128, beginning with his Opusculum de aedificio Dei.47 In 1141 he wrote to Pope Innocent II regarding his anxieties about the Christological opinions of Lutolph, a disciple of Anselm of Laon. Lutolph, as was discussed in a previous chapter, had been one of Lombard’s teachers at Reims. And, as we have seen, in a treatise originally written in 1142, Gerhoh castigated the lack of Christological orthodoxy of ‘great teachers who have inserted falsehood in their glosses on the Apostle, in particular master Anselm and master Gilbert and most recently Peter Lombard’. Brady has suggested that Gerhoh may have added the phrase ‘and most recently Peter Lombard’ to his original treatise only after Lombard’s death in 1160.48 Whenever he did this, we can see that Gerhoh certainly placed Lombard in the error-ridden tradition, as he saw it, of Anselm of Laon and Gilbert of Poitiers. Called ‘an indefatigable polemicist’ by Jean Châtillon, Gerhoh devoted much energy to the criticism of problematic intellectual novelty throughout his career, and had focused on Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers prior to his attacks on Lombard. As evinced throughout the writings of his career, Gerhoh was particularly anxious about efforts made in the schools to understand the constitution of Christ. More than speculation upon the Trinity or the sacraments, Gerhoh feared the implications of applying dialectic to Christology. And this concern about Christology was often yoked, in his writings, to his concerns about the purity of the Church and the ever-present risk of schism and corruption. It was as if, as it seems to have been for Robert of Cricklade, the error of schoolmen and a corrupted church were mutually interwoven in his eyes as threats to salvation. For example, in his Liber de duabus haeresibus of 1146, Gerhoh warned the pope about two problems he saw afflicting ecclesia in tandem. One was the problem of clerics who had been ordained by authorities later judged to be schismatic. Gerhoh was referring, in this case, to the aftermath of the schism 46  On Gerhoh’s life and writings, see Classen, Gerhoch von Reichersberg; see also Morrison, ‘The Church as Play’. On Gerhoh’s attitudes to scholars, Mews, ‘Accusations of Heresy and Error in the Twelfth-Century Schools’. 47  Gerhoh of Reichersberg, De aedificio Dei. 48  Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Libellus de ordine donorum spiritus sancti, ed. by Sackur, p. 275: ‘Magnos magistros qui in suis glossis in Apostolum falsitatem inseruerunt […] quorum praecipui sunt magistri Anshelmus et magistri Gillibertus et novissime Petrus Longobardus’.

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between Anacletus II and Innocent II. The second of the duabus haeresibus referred to in the title was the Christology of Gilbert of Poitiers.49 Gerhoh was anxious about ideas being spread by a pupil of Gilbert’s. This pupil was claiming that distinctions ought to be made between the divinity and the humanity of Christ. In this account, Gerhoh evinced strong concern not only about the efforts of ‘dogmatizing French masters’ as he called them, but also the chatter of their students.50 Gerhoh’s concern about the opinions of an unnamed student of Gilbert of Poitiers reflects the issue, as did Robert of Cricklade’s anecdote, of the transmission of ideas from the schools. In both Robert and Gerhoh’s case, their concerns reveal how often the speculations of theologians were reported across Europe as rumor and gossip. Left, as we are, with treatises and letters, it is easy to forget the power of the spoken gossipy word when it comes to stirring anxieties about error and heresy. The explicit link made by Gerhoh between schismatic activity and intellectual heresy had its roots in the reform agenda promulgated in the twelfth century by figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Gerhoh himself. Both men, following in the tradition of the Gregorian reforms, espoused a renewed Christological spirituality that was coupled with an ecclesiology of reform and purification. In this reform agenda, the mystical union of God and man in the Incarnation became a homologue for the mystical union of temporal and divine authority that constituted the Church.51 In his famous De consideratione Bernard wrote to Eugenius, in relation to the sins of avarice and ambition bedevilling the Church, ‘how worthy and laudable an occupation for the meditation of your heart to discover some antidote for the deadly sort of folly, which you contemplate in possession of this very body of Christ, which is the blessed company of all faithful people’. 52 In this passage, Bernard conflated Christ’s physical body with people of the Church in a relationship of striking identity. And the pope in possession of this body, as steward of the Church, must also mind and protect Christ’s humanity itself. Following that logic, any attack upon the purity of ecclesia was also a threat to Christ’s body, a re-Crucifixion of a sort. 49 

Gerhoh of Reichersberg, De duabus haeresibus, col. 1167D. Gerhoh of Reichersberg, De duabus haeresibus, col. 1167D. 51  For the seminal exposition of the relationship between Christology, ecclesiology and sacramental theology in argument, see Wang, ‘Sacramentum unitatis ecclesiasticae’. On the ecclesiology of reform see Chodorow, Christian Political Theory and Church Politics. 52  Bernard of Clairvaux, On Consideration, trans. by Lewis, p. 74. 50 

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In 1156 Gerhoh wrote to Pope Hadrian IV to warn him about the ‘Novelties of the Day’.53 In this work he made the first recorded citation of Bernard of Clairvaux’s De consideratione, indicating his debt to the previous reformer.54 In this work, Gerhoh turned the Pope’s attention to a litany of problems, suggesting that such differing phenomena as rebellion in Rome, the excessively luxurious lifestyles of certain clerics, schismatic priests in Germany, and Christological error coming out of Paris were all equivalent. Gerhoh saw all of these problems as bedevilling the Church. They were all part of the apocalyptic vision promoted by Gerhoh, in which the struggle for the souls of believers, and concomitantly the body of Christ, was always ongoing and vigorous. He cautioned: ‘For the locusts, clearly the many disciples of Peter Abelard, have now emerged, as John predicted in his Apocalypse, from the fumes of the infernal well’.55 The purveyors of novelties were, to Gerhoh, emerging from a dark abyss to spread disease, as anticipated in Scripture. Abelard may have been long gone, but Gerhoh was keen to remind the Pope that the challenge posed by his legacy remained. And it was not only the students of Abelard who were disease carriers. Gerhoh implicated Gilbert of Poitiers in his criticisms. Gerhoh wrote to the Pope: In order that they should know him [the Pope] to be among the wise who profess nothing but Jesus Christ and his Crucifixion, rather than the crowd of teachers whose doctrine does not illuminate the Church but smokes up several scholars in France and other lands, mainly through two trails of smoking embers; namely Peter Abelard and the bishop Gilbert.56

Gerhoh follows Bernard, and Robert of Cricklade, in juxtaposing simple doctrinal purity with potentially toxic error. Although both were well and truly deceased at the time of writing, Gerhoh charges Bernard’s two opponents with 53 

Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Letter to Pope Hadrian, ed. by Häring. This citation is discussed in Morrison, ‘The Church as Play’, p. 115. 55  Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Letter to Pope Hadrian, ed. by Häring, 4.11, p. 32: ‘Sed quia residuum bruci parata est comedere locusta, succedunt malis mala. Nam de fumo putei abyssi, ut Iohannes in Apocalypsi previdit, nunc exierunt locuste, videlicet plures discipuli Petri Abaiolardi.’ 56  Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Letter to Pope Hadrian, ed. by Häring, 42.2, p. 106: ‘Ut noverint illum sapientorum qui nichil se scire fatebatur nisi Christum Iesum et hunc cruxifixum quam coacervatos illos magistros de quorum doctrina non fulget ecclesia sed fumant scole plures in Francia et aliis terris, permaxime a duabus caudis ticionum fumigantium: videlicet Petri Abaiolardi et episcopi Gilliberti’. 54 

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leaving a trail (cauda) of smoking error, which still inflames young scholars. The word cauda here conveys a number of meanings, as potentially innocent as ‘trail’, but it can also mean any extremity, including parts of the male anatomy. It is difficult to miss the association of the heresy of these men with the guttural and the earthy, contrasted with the wise men such as Gerhoh and the Pope, who ‘profess nothing but Jesus Christ’. Gerhoh continued: ‘Their disciples, soaked in their [Abelard’s and Gilbert’s] words and writing, deny that the human Christ is united with the Word of God, unless — so they say — the son of God is called God in a connection of accidence’.57 Just as Robert of Cricklade had charged Peter Lombard’s student with excessive reliance on notions of ‘accidence’ to describe Christ’s person, so too did Gerhoh use ‘accidence’ as a type of dirty word to function as a shorthand for dangerous scholarly argot. Thus, well before Gerhoh latched onto Peter Lombard’s alleged error, he had articulated a rhetorical and ideological frame within which he discussed and fulminated against the schools. Gerhoh consistently saw intellectual heresy as challenging the firmament of orthodoxy and ecclesiastical authority. Always attached to his articulations of Christological error were calls for the broader reform of the Church and stronger assertions of papal authority. By 1164, Gerhoh had shifted his attention to Peter Lombard with his aforementioned letter to Pope Alexander, which he wrote ‘denouncing Peter Lombard and commending the reform of the church’. It seems that Gerhoh wrote in response to the Council of Tours, which had taken place the previous year, in 1163.58 At this council, according to John of Cornwall, a number of theological precepts derived from Peter Lombard’s Sentences were placed under discussion. Unfortunately, there are no official conciliar records for this conversation. John notes, however, that there was a pugna verborum among the luminaries of the Church assembled, a fight that was ultimately left unresolved.59 Under debate, according to John, was the proposition that Christus secundum quod est homo, non est aliquid (Christ, insofar as He is a man, is not something).60 As we saw in the previous chapter, in his Sentences Lombard had 57 

Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Letter to Pope Hadrian, ed. by Häring, 42.2, p. 106: ‘Quorum discipuli eorum dictis et scriptis inbuti hominem Verbo dei unitum negant esse filium dei unitum negant esse filium dei deum dicendum nisi accidentali, ut aiunt, connexione’. 58  On the Council of Tours, see Somerville, Pope Alexander III and the Council of Tours (1163). 59  John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 257. 60  John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 257.

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asked ‘whether Christ, according to his being a man, is a person or anything’.61 By the time of the council it seemed that his question had been reformulated into a strong statement that actively declared that Christ’s humanity was not a thing, that it lacked quiddity. It seems from John’s account that the orthodoxy of Lombard’s person was not under attack, but rather that the proposition itself was being considered. In any case, that the statement Christus secundum quod est homo, non est aliquid should have been the subject of a conciliar gaze demonstrates that the Christological issues broached by Lombard were the subject of sustained speculation and anxiety in the period following the publication of the Sentences.62 Robert of Cricklade’s account of international scholarly gossip provides one small piece of evidence for the spread of these notions across Europe. Gerhoh was much affronted by the discussion at Tours. He raged to the pope: It is not good enough that this thing be under dispute in dissolute schools, or by proffering such opinions to say such things, or that even in an ecclesiastical gathering in front of an assembly of the clergy before bishops, that such things are spoken openly and with impunity, that Christ, Son of God the Father, in so far as he is man, is not different from us, with the consequence that he should now not be glorified equally with the glory of the Father, but rather as some inferior and lesser being.63

For Gerhoh such a conversation, however speculative, was potentially very dangerous. It was especially inappropriate that it should take place in an ecclesiastical context. Gerhoh’s understanding of the Christological issues under discussion were very different to Lombard’s, as the above statement testifies. Gerhoh was generally anxious that the analysis of the categories of Christ’s composition might lead to a dimunition of Christ’s divinity and result in him being inadequately worshipped. He worried that an overstatement of Christ’s humanity might construe him as a lesser being than God, affording him only dulia, the 61 

Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 10. c. 1. 1, p. 72: ‘An Christus secundum quod homo est sit persona vel aliquid’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 41. 62  John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 257. 63  Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Epistola xvii ad Alexandrum III papa, cols 565D–66A: ‘Et non quidem jam sufficit eis in scholis discolis inter disputandum, vel sententias proferendo talia dicere, quin etiam in conventibus ecclesiasticis, in multitudine cleri coram episcopis talia clamitantur impune, Christum videlicet in eo, quod homo est, Dei Patris Filium non esse aliter quam unum ex nobis, ac proinde nunc quoque glorificatum in gloria non aequali gloriae paternae, sed in quadam inferiori et minori esse’.

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veneration given to semi-divine composite beings such as angels rather than the latria properly owed God. This debate, about latria and dulia, had its genealogy in an entirely different quarrel to that surrounding Lombard’s legacy at Tours and need not be rehearsed here.64 What is interesting, however, is that debating the issue of Christ’s divine person set off a chain of associations and potential problems in Gerhoh’s mind. Clearly, for a polemicist such as Gerhoh, the scholarly debate aroused by Peter Lombard could not, and should not, be quarantined to scholarly circles. The implications were, for Gerhoh, broader than that. These reached as far as the successful governance of the Church and to the appropriate veneration of Christ. In his letter to Pope Alexander, Gerhoh declared his support for the assumptus homo theory. He stated: ‘We believe, correctly, simply and truly, that he [Christ] should be declared and pronounced to be God, according to God, with that man being assumed and born according to the applied phrase, as the evangelists, the apostles and the prophets taught’.65 Later in the letter he reminded the pope of his steadfast dedication to the cause of the Church and the support that had been provided to him by previous popes, such as ‘Popes Honorius, Innocent, Celestine and Lucius who, themselves, previously assisted me manfully’.66 Gerhoh asked Pope Alexander for the same support in disciplining the Church’s abuses, asking him to be manful in his opposition to a divided Church. For Gerhoh, as in his earlier writings about Christology, the issue of Christ’s constitution became a lightning rod for a raft of other concerns. Most importantly, it enabled him to call the pope to account, to test his leadership. The theoretical sundering of Christ’s two natures in dialectical discourse reverberated textually as a metaphor for a Church divided and an ineffective pope. The Christological controversies of Tours emboldened Gerhoh to issue a provocation and a challenge to the pope. Gerhoh was rehearsing the strategies and the rhetorical flourishings employed by Bernard earlier; he was using the intellectual novelties of the schools as signs of the omnipresent threat posed by division and speculation to Christ’s body, that is, the Church. 64 

On dulia and latria see Häring, ‘Liber de dulia et latria of Master Michael’. Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Epistola xvii ad Alexandrum III papa, col 565A: ‘At nos homine illo in Deum assumpto et nato in locutione supposito credimus eum simpliciter proprie ac vere Deum praedicandum ac pronuntiandum esse, sicut evangelistae, apostoli simul et prophetae docuerunt’. 66  Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Epistola xvii ad Alexandrum III papa, col 567D: ‘Ante hunc Romani pontifices Honorius, Innocentius, Coelestinus, Lucius etiam ipsi mihi viriliter astiterunt’. 65 

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Pope Alexander’s reply to Gerhoh’s provocation was swift and brusque. In two letters expedited together from Sens in March 1164 — one addressed to Gerhoh and the other to Eberhard, Archbishop of Salzburg, and delivered by the same courier — the Pope wrote ‘to persuade and put upon Provost Gerhoh of Reichersberg to be silent about the certain aspects of faith under disputation’.67 Gerhoh had accused the Pope of tolerating controversy that undermined his papacy; the Pope, in turn, charged Gerhoh with propagating error. Alexander replied firmly to Gerhoh: We have sent the command [of Gerhoh’s silence] to our venerable brother the Arch­ bishop of Salzburg so that you and others can consider yourself to have been warned and restricted repeatedly from any disputation of this kind, especially in public gatherings, so that the hearts of the simple and unrefined should not be seduced by novel words, and be compelled to fall into the path of error, God Forbid!68

In the letter to Eberhard, Pope Alexander entrusted him with the enforcement of the prohibition and authorized him ‘to impose the order with all severity’.69 This was a stern rejoinder, one that placed the accusation of the spread of novelties onto Gerhoh himself. The Pope made clear, with these letters, that the error lay not only in the complicated ideas under disputation but also in the intemperate and scurrilous polemics which resulted from the propagation of those ideas. Finally, Alexander wrote in the letter to Eberhard that we decided to say nothing firm about these headings, since not having heard from him [Gerhoh] and others in person, it did not seem easy to us to profess a sentence and to condemn a person unheard and defenseless for alleged reasons, on the most part, and by precipitious judgment.70 67 

Alexander  III, Epistola ccxlii ad Eberhardum; Alexander  III, Epistola ccxliii ad Gerhohum. 68  Alexander III, Epistola ccxliii ad Gerhohum, col. 289D: ‘Nos enim venerabili fratri nostro Salzburgensi archiepiscopo dedimus in mandatis, ut te et illos ab hujusmodi ulterius disputationibus, praesertim in publicis conventibus, abstinere moneat multipliciter et compescat, ne hujusmodi verborum novitate corda rudium et simplicium seducantur, et in errors (quod absit!) semitam incidere compellantur’. 69  Alexander III, Epistola ccxlii ad Eberhardum, col. 289A: ‘Et omni cum districtione compellas’. 70  Alexander III, Epistola ccxlii ad Eberhardum, cols 288C–D: ‘Eo et aliis decertantibus, in quaestionis scrupulum devenerunt, nil certi super eisdem capitulis duximus respondendum, quia nisi eum et alios coram positos audiremus, non fuit visum nobis super eis tam facile proferre sententiam, et cuiusvis partis tantum rationibus allegatis aliam inauditam et indefensam praecipiti judicio condemnare’.

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Alexander’s description of what would constitute a fair procedure in following up the issue was a counter to the fervent and urgent tone of Gerhoh. The Pope, here, was claiming his own moral authority with an assertion of his capacity to administer justice in a scrupulous and correct way. Finally, the Annales Reicherspergenses recorded that in December 1164, at a meeting convened at Sens with several lettered men, Alexander extended the interdict he imposed upon Gerhoh. He expressly ‘condemned and prohibited all tropes and undisciplined questions in theology’ and requested that the bishop of Paris, Maurice of Sully, enforce the interdict throughout France. 71 He did not name the doctrine, nor did he mention Lombard specifically. At this stage, the Pope seemed reluctant to address the Christological issues directly, preferring, as in the case of Gerhoh, a general assertion of his papal oversight. What is important here is that a triangulated relationship between Peter Lombard, the Pope, and Lombard’s critics was evidently emerging. Gerhoh had laid down a challenge to the Pope, situating the issue of Christology as a test of the Pope’s authority. Gerhoh had made a bold gambit, asserting his own reforming authority and using alleged Christological error to draw a line between good and bad papal governance. The Pope, however, had refused the binaries proposed by Gerhoh. He implied a different set of oppositions, between those who speak with prudence and caution, and those who speak without discipline and employ empty rhetoric. His edict against ‘undisciplined questions in theology’, which he ordered to be commanded throughout France, did not merely catch the schoolmen. It was expansive enough to discipline the intemperate concerns of Gerhoh and his ilk. In this triangle then — that between scholars, their critics, and the Pope — Alexander was concerned to raise the office of pope above the fray. The Second Wave: John of Cornwall and Walter of St-Victor Robert of Cricklade and Gerhoh of Reichersberg both evinced anguished concern that any attempt to understand Christ’s being through the category of ‘accidence’ invited heresy. In each case, ‘accidence’ was a shorthand for the grammatical method. It was a human concept used to taxonomize differentiated things in the earthly world. As far as they were concerned, Christ’s person 71 

Annales Reicherspergenses, ed. by Wattenbach, p. 471: ‘Ipso anno […] Alexander papa convocatis in unum scholasticis et quibusque litteratis in ipsa vigilia nativitatis Domini […] condemnavit et omnino interdixit omnes tropos et indisciplinatas questiones in theologia’.

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transcended such differentiation, even if he was declared to have two natures. Their use of ‘accidence’ as a byword for the excessive speculations of scholars indicated the lack of purchase that the actual method held for them. They were not concerned to understand, explicate, or nuance the ideas emanating out of the schools. Rather, their criticism were much larger than that. They aimed to assert that the Trinitarian persons were by definition above and beyond investigation, and that they should serve as a focus of worship and devotion rather than be exposed to the divisive implications of human, logical questioning. In this, they were following in the tradition of anti-scholastic polemic pioneered by Bernard of Clairvaux in his attacks upon Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers. By contrast, the criticisms of the 1170s take on a somewhat different tone. The major critic of this period, John of Cornwall, presented a work Eulogium ad Alexandrum Papam tertium, in which he dealt with issues of Christological error in a relatively sober manner. The other author who composed a broadside against Lombard during the 1170s was Walter of St-Victor. His work, entitled Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae, was more polemical than that of John of Cornwall. He utilized vituperative prose against those scholars with whom he associated dangerous heresy. Unlike Gerhoh, however, Walter did attempt an engagement with the ideas pertinent to the Christological problems of the era. Walter’s work had vast sections, much of it taken from John of Cornwall, in which he attempted to expound and evaluate the ideas of the four labyrinths against whom he directed the piece. These labyrinths were Peter Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Peter Lombard, and Peter of Poitiers. What John and Walter did have in common with their predecessor Gerhoh was that their works were written in order to attempt to influence papal policy on Christological pronouncements. Both men firmly located their endeavours in the context of Lateran III, which took place in 1179. In John’s case he was petioning Pope Alexander to place Christological error on the official agenda at Lateran III. For his part Walter of St-Victor wrote after the council had taken place. He wanted to bemoan the results of the council and to remind the pope that the issue ought not be forgotten in the aftermath of that event. Both John and Walter call upon the pope to enforce further strictures on the issue, and thereby manage excessive Christological speculation. The pope had given them reason to hope that sanctions might be forthcoming. In 1170 Pope Alexander had written to William, Bishop of Sens, to remind him: When you were once in our presence, We enjoined you orally [viva voce] that you explicitly urge and effectively summon your suffragans, when you are present at

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Paris, to the abolition of the vicious doctrine of Peter, erstwhile bishop of Paris, in which it is said that Christ, insofar as he is man is not something [non est aliquid].72

Later in the letter, he reinforced this message, demanding: We command you as a brother through Apostolic writings [per apostolica scripta] that […] you convoke your suffragans at Paris and, together, with them and other religious and prudent men, take pains to abolish completely the aforementioned doctrine, as well as causing the schoolmasters and scholars who study theology there to teach Christ to be perfect and true man, man consisting of body and soul, just as He is perfect God.73

This was a severe letter which moved the debate further from the edict of 1164, in which the Pope had merely condemned ‘undisciplined questions in theology’. By 1170, the Pope was naming a ‘vicious doctrine of Peter’, that ‘insofar as he is man he is not something’. This was a precise epistolary formulation of both error and its source, and one that reprised the discussions that had taken place in 1163 at the Council of Tours, as John of Cornwall recorded. Just as at Tours, Lombard’s question about Christ’s person had been reframed as a statement. His speculation had been transformed into a problematic doctrine, one that required sanction and abolition. It is difficult to discover whether or not there was a rise in heterodox Christological speculation in the period between 1164 and 1170, the dates of the two papal statements. Certainly, as will be discussed in the next chapter, Lombard’s Sentences became increasingly popular and well used in the schools during the 1160s. The work was incorporated swiftly into the theological curriculum, as evinced by the rise of abbreviators such as Gandulf of Bologna and Bandinus. These men produced truncated versions of the Sentences, presumably to aid students by offering them a cheaper, abridged version. The popularity of the Sentences, and of abbreviated versions, 72 

This letter can be found in Enchiridion, ed. by Denzinger and Schönmetzer, no. 749: ‘Cum in nostra olim esses praesentia constitutus, tibi viva voce injunximus ut, suffraganeis tuis Parisiis tibi ascitis, abrogationem pravae doctrinae Petri quondam Parisiensis episcopi, qua dicitur quod Christus, secundum quod est homo, non est aliquid’. While I have not transcribed the translation offered by Rosemann, Peter Lombard, p. 118, I would like to acknowledge my reliance on it as I began work on this passage. The translation is mine. 73  Enchiridion, ed. by Denzinger and Schönmetzer, no. 749: ‘Inde Siquidem est quod fraternitati tuae per apostolica scripta mandamus, quatenus, quod tibi, cum praesens esses, praecepimus, suffraganeos tuos Parisos convoces, et una cum illis et aliis viris religiosis et prudentibus, praescriptam doctrinam studeas penitus abrogare; et a magistris et scholaribus ibidem in theologia studentibus, Christum, sicut perfectum Deum, sic et perfectum hominem, ac verum hominem ex anima et corpore consistentem, praecipias edoceri’.

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would have led to much Christological speculation as teachers and students attempted to come to grips with Lombard’s highly technical discussion of the hypostatic union. Peter Lombard had couched, as we have seen, his inquiries within a conservative frame. His actual theoretical novelty would not have eluded his educated readers and would have certainly provoked further discussion. Lombard wrote at the end of his section on Christology: ‘And yet, in such a great matter and one so difficult to understand, I do not wish the reader to believe that our disputation should suffice’.74 He effectively invited ongoing discussion on the part of his readers. It hard to imagine that this challenge would have been unmet in those querulous schools. Certainly, the issue does not seem to have been stifled by the papal letter of 1170. As well as issuing his prohibition in 1170 against the teaching that Christus secundum quod est homo, non est aliquid, Alexander had also warned William that he was ‘imposing this firmly and distinctly on all, that anyone who should presume to teach this doctrine among others to no purpose, shall be solemnly detested (detestentur)’.75 It has been argued that this statement hinted that Alexander was planning to put the issue on the agenda at Lateran III, which was anticipated to take place in 1177.76 The implication was clear, that further penalties would occur should the problematic doctrine continue to be taught. The Pope spoke out again in early 1177. He wrote to William, who was now at Reims, strengthening the earlier injunction, anathematizing anyone who promulgated the formula Christus secundum quod est homo, non est aliquid but without naming the statement as that of Lombard.77 This perhaps 74  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 7. c. 3. 3, p. 66: ‘Satis diligenter, iuxta diversorum sententias, supra positam absque assertione et praeiudicio tractavi quaestionem. Verumtamen nolo, in tanta re tamque ad agnoscendum difficili, putare lectorem istam sibi nostram debere sufficere disputionem.’ Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 37. 75  Enchiridion, ed. by Denzinger and Schönmetzer, no. 749: ‘Universis firmiter et distincte injungens, quod doctrinam illam de caetero nequaquam docere praesumant, sed ipsam penitus detestentur’. 76  Colish, Peter Lombard, p. 429. 77  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. by Denifle, i, 8–9: ‘Cum Christus perfectus Deus sit homo, mirum est, qua temeritate quisdam audet dicere, quod Christus non sit aliquid secundum quod homo. Ne autem tanta possit in ecclesia Dei abusio suboriri vel error induci, fraternitati tue per apostolica scripta mandamus, quatinus convocatis magistris scolarum Parisiensium et Remensium et aliarum circumpositarum civitatum auctoritate nostra sub anathemate interdicas, ne quis de cetero dicere audeat Christum non esse aliquid secundum quod homo, quia sicut verus Deus ita verus est homo ex anima racionali et humana carne subsistens.’

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added to expectations that the issue would be placed on the table at Lateran III. Certainly, this is the hope that galvanized John of Cornwall’s Eulogium. He wrote the text just prior to the proclamation of Lateran III ‘with excessive brevity and quickness of pen’.78 Little is known about John of Cornwall and nothing at all about the situation of patronage that might have produced the Eulogium. In his work he recounted his education in the Parisian schools, where Peter Lombard was one of his masters. Aside from that period in France, according to his only biographer Eleanor Rathbone, John of Cornwall spent his life in the retinues of royal officials and prelates in England. His only other extant work, Propheti Ambrosii Merlini de septem regibus, was undertaken at the command of Robert, Bishop of Exeter, and written around 1155.79 In 1173 he witnessed a charter issued by Richard of Ilchester, Bishop-Elect of Winchester. Later he joined the entourage of Walter of Coutances, Bishop of Lincoln, and witnessed at least four of his charters. Walter’s replacement, Hugh, appointed John judge-delegate. He spent the last of his days as archdeacon of Worcestor, dying between 1198 and 1200.80 John, like his more famous contemporary John of Salisbury, was an exemplary schoolman. Trained in the Parisian schools, he had returned to England to carve out a career in administration among the growing systems of governance, episcopal and aristocratic. Unfortunately, his Eulogium is the only extant text from the period of his mature clerical career, the Propheti Ambrosii Merlini de septem regibus having been composed before he went to Paris. John began his Eulogium by recounting the recent history of papal involvement in these Christological concerns. He began with recollection of the Council of Tours, noting the pugna verborum that took place, and recording that he did not know whether the argument was resolved at the time. He explained why Pope Alexander might not have forced a resolution on the issue: ‘he was reluctant to strike an immediate canonical censure on the authorities and defenders of this [doctrine], who were not so much obdurate as ignorant, in case the condemnation of such a depraved doctrine would trap them in infamy forever’.81 John’s reading of both the Pope and the supporters of the 78 

John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 256: ‘Brevi nimis et celeri stilo’. 79  Rathbone, ‘John of Cornwall’. 80  Rathbone, ‘John of Cornwall’. 81  John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 257: ‘Noluit tamen tam diues et copiosa mansuetudinis vestre clementia assertionem illam statim canonica ferire censura, ne eius auctores et defensores, qui forte non pertinacia sed ignoran-

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doctrine was sympathetic. The worst that could be said of the supporters was that they were ignorant, and he praised the Pope for a proportional response to them. The problem remained, however, so John recorded the complete text of the aforementioned letter sent by the Pope in 1170, in which he had asked William of Sens to enforce a prohibition against the teaching Christus secundum quod est homo, non est aliquid, and in which he hinted at further sanctions to follow. Following his citation of the letter, John of Cornwall reminded the Pope that the problem was ongoing and required further effort. He said that many scholars, inebriated from this chalice [of error], turn around, up until this day, and stubbornly abuse your patience with this madness, those who by no means praise the pious dispensation of your mercy, but preach an irreverent dogma as if it were catholic.82

John made clear his conviction that the problem was not diminishing, and was instead a type of madness that threatened the body of the Church: ‘I beg, lest the shepherd desert the lamb or the father desert the sons, that if the error of the contradictors is not able to be corrected […] it should not be allowed to fade away’.83 It was the Pope’s pastoral duty to maintain the health of his congregation and to protect the ignorant from themselves. John beseeched: ‘I, who am dust and ashes, feel properly that your authority should heal my illness, so that it restores my simplicity when I wander’.84 The issue of Christological error, once again, was being constructed as a challenge to Pope’s capacity to tend his flock. John proceeded to take pains to explain the content of Lombard’s Chris­ tology. He cited Lombard’s Sentences at length and attempted to explain the three explanations of Christ’s person that had been presented in that work. tia delinquerant, uel ipsa condempnatio tante pravitatis inuolueret uel perpetuam eis infamie notam impingeret’. 82  John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 258: ‘Quoniam itaque infiniti scolares hoc calice debriati et in furorem uersi usque in hodiernum patientia vestra contumaciter abutuntur, qui nequaquam misericordie vestre piam dispensationem laudant sed impium dogma uelud catholicum predicant’. 83  John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 258: ‘Ne deserat, queso, Pastor agnos, Pater filios, et si contradicentium error corrigi non potest uel sane fidei professionem in me et similibus indefessam perire non sinat’. 84  John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 258: ‘Quod si et Ego, cum sim cinis et puluis, recte sentio, auctoritas vestra roboret infirmitatem meam, sic ubi erro ad so revocet simplicitatem meam’.

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He passed quickly over the assumptus homo theory, tacitly suggesting his support for the orthodoxy of this position, before devoting much attention to the habitus and subsistence theories, both of which he held to be in error. John of Cornwall charged Lombard with propagating two problematic positions. He located the origins of Lombard’s exploration of these theories in his intellectual predecessors. For example, he argued that the origins of the habitus theory lay in Lombard’s reading of Peter Abelard, and he saw the subsistence theory as being grounded in the ideas of Gilbert of Poitiers. John ultimately accused Lombard of holding the habitus theory, of believing that God took on the mantle of divinity in a relationship of mere accidence. John said that: ‘Peter Lombard took this opinion from his Master Peter Abelard […] having frequently his book to hand’.85 John recorded that Peter Lombard had resented the implication that he was a supporter of the habitus theory: A little before he was elected Bishop of Paris I heard Peter Lombard protest to me and to his other hearers, that this was not his own assertion, but only an opinion that he had received from the masters […]. Since then certain men more chatty than wise who ought not even have been heard in a bedroom, have preached [Christological error] from the rooftops, right up until today.86

The picture that emerged from John’s account is less that of Lombard as a strident heretic than that of a thinker grappling with a complicated intellectual genealogy. This genealogy ensnared the schoolman in a web of error, resulting in Lombard’s problematic Sentences. And this led to further error, as students preach these ideas ‘from the rooftops’. Marcia Colish, the foremost historian of Peter Lombard, is disparaging of John’s Eulogium. She complains: ‘This is a spectacularly poor performance for someone who had actually studied with Peter Lombard, reminding us that even the best of instruction occasionally falls on stony ground’.87 She notes, correctly, that Lombard never wrote in the Sentences that Christus secundum quod est homo, non est aliquid and sees John of Cornwall’s use of the formula as evidence of his ignorance. This is somewhat unfair, as this was the formula that 85 

John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 265. John of Cornwall, ‘The Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam tertium’, ed. by Häring, p. 265: ‘Preterea paulo ante quam electus esset in episcopum Parisiensem, michi et omnibus auditoribus suis qui tunc aderant protestatus est, quod hoc non esset assertio sua sed opinio sola, quam a magistris acceperat… Postea vero per quosdam homines loquaces magis, quam perspicaces, quae nec in cubiculis essent audienda, usque hodie praedicantur super tecta.’ 87  Colish, Peter Lombard, p. 431. 86 

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Pope Alexander had condemned in his letters in 1170. It stands to reason that in petitioning the Pope, John would begin with the position already forbidden by the pontiff. Rather than focus on the question of John’s competency, it might be more useful to think about the reading of intellectual genealogies offered in his account. John testified to a serious anxiety that the problematic theology of the early schools was still circulating through lecture theatres. Rather than seeing the commodious and synthetic Sentences of Lombard as presenting an orthodox curriculum, John interpreted Lombard’s legacy as continuing the problematic inquiries of his predecessors. John argued, as had previous critics, that it was imperative for the Pope to manage this error. He wanted the Pope to ‘heal my illness’, and the illness was the Church exposed to the scandalous questions of the erroneous schoolmen. John’s theological reliability notwithstanding, the Eulogium attested to the continuity of a tradition in anti-scholastic critique. This tradition construes inappropriate theological speculation as a danger to the heart of the ecclesia, and a profound challenge to papal authority. Garbled theology or not, the language of John’s critique shows us that perceptions of Peter Lombard’s problematic Christology were actively circulating, and warranting significant appeals to the Pope. Further witness was supplied by Walter of St-Victor in his treatise Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae.88 Written a year or so after John’s Eulogium, it was a work of scathing invective that described the ‘four labyrinths’ — Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Peter of Poitiers, and Peter Lombard — as being ‘putrid frogs […] breathed upon by the spirit of Aristotle’.89 Walter was concerned to chastise those who ‘have vomited many heresies and have now sprouted error’.90 His purpose in writing such a work, as far as can be detected in the text, was to keep the issue of Peter Lombard’s Christology alive since, in spite of John of Cornwall’s efforts, Alexander had decided against including the issue for consideration at Lateran III. Walter recounted that when Pope Alexander was recently preparing to condemn by name his [Peter Lombard] Sententiae at the Roman Council for the diabolical error erupting again by means of the arguments of Arius and Sabellius, that in as much as Christ is a man, he is nothing (nichil).91 88 

Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux. Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 201: ‘putride ranarum garrulitates’, ‘uno aristotilico spiritu afflatos’. 90  Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 201: ‘Multas hereses olim uomisse et adhuc errores pullulare’. 91  Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 201: 89 

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The ‘diabolical error’ had evidently infected the cardinals with whom Alexander was meeting, as, ‘responding improperly’, they defended the Sentences and influenced the Pope’s decision.92 Walter’s narration of this story reflected an escalation of the issues in two ways. Obviously, his imputation that the cardinals had been ensnared in Peter Lombard’s labyrinth of heresy was provocative. More provocative still was Walter’s recasting of the controversial formula from Christus secundum quod est homo, non est aliquid to quod Christus nichil sit secundum quod homo. As we know, the former statement was not actually in the Sentences word for word, but as a derivation from Peter Lombard’s exposition it still reflected some of the subtlety of his position. As we have seen, in the Sentences, Lombard had asked ‘whether Christ, according to his being a man, is a person or anything’.93 In 1170, the Pope had condemned the proposition that ‘Christ, insofar as he is man is not something’.94 By 1179, Walter claimed that the Christological heresy of Peter Lombard could be summarized by the maxim that ‘Christ, insofar as he is a man, is nothing’. In the twenty-five years or so since Peter Lombard had composed his Sentences, his speculative question about Christ’s composition had been transformed into a statement of the nothingness of Christ’s humanity. This was a radical recasting, which gave rise to the term nichilianistae, to describe the supporters of Peter Lombard. Walter’s work has been derogated as a work of childish invective and sloppy plagiarism. Much of the content was lifted, word for word, from John of Cornwall’s Eulogium. This was intermingled with Walter’s pejorative words about the four labyrinths. The work betrayed such a bald contempt for the schools, and casts its criticisms in such crude terms, that even Walter’s editor, Glorieux, called it a ‘bad action and bad work’.95 Joseph de Ghellinck has ‘Hoc etiam sciendum quod Alexander papa nuper in concilio romano paraverat nominatim illius sententias damnare quarum argumentis etiam Arii et Sabellii et novorum hereticorum error diabolicus recrudescit, scilicet quod Christus nichil sit secundum quod homo’. 92  Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 201: ‘Mon recte respondentes’. 93  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 10. c. 1. 1, p. 72: ‘An Christus secundum quod homo est sit persona vel aliquid’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 41. 94  Enchiridion, ed. by Denzinger and Schönmetzer, no. 749 ‘Cum in nostra olim esses praesentia constitutus, tibi viva voce injunximus ut, suffraganeis tuis Parisiis tibi ascitis, abrogationem pravae doctrinae Petri quondam Parisiensis episcopi, qua dicitur quod Christus, secundum quod est homo, non est aliquid’. 95  Glorieux, ‘Mauvaise action et mauvais travail’.

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argued that the paucity of manuscript copies of Walter’s work suggests that it had little readership or influence. He argued that its value lies in its expression of the animosity inherent in the conflict.96 Walter himself did not have a particularly eminent career, which has also led to his marginalization in contemporary tellings of Christological heresy. He was writing as a member of a vastly different St-Victor than that of Hugh and Richard. 97 The abbey had fallen into moral and intellectual disregard during the 1160s, being overseen by the Abbot Ernis who abandoned the rule in 1163 and failed repeatedly to consult with the brethren. The same William of Sens (and then Reims) to whom Pope Alexander directed his correspondence concerning Christology was also commissioned by the Pope to reform the Abbey. Eventually Ernis was banished for good and order was returned to St-Victor, but not before Ernis robbed its treasury in 1173, causing a depletion of resources as well as shame and scandal. 98 Walter’s work has been seen as a product of this shambolic abbey, proffering an equally shambolic treatise. As with John of Cornwall’s Eulogium, however, our judgements as to the intellectual quality of Walter’s work ought not blind us to the insights it might offer into these evidently tempestuous debates. In particular, Walter’s somewhat scurrilous prose reveals some interesting and telling anxieties about the schools. It is impossible to say how representative these fears were, but that they have been recorded at all alerts us to their possibility in Walter’s period. As has been mentioned already, Walter’s understanding of Lombard’s Christology posited that Lombard reduced Christ’s humanity to a nichil. This recasting, however erroneous it may have seemed to a disciple of Lombard, demonstrated how easily the precise linguistic formulations of the schoolmen could be extrapolated into problematic statements. As we saw with Robert of Cricklade and Gerhoh, Walter was not concerned with a contextual reading of Lombard’s theories of the Incarnation. The critics of the schools were not concerned to get it right, as such. Rather, they were concerned to expose the methods and conclusions of the schoolmen to the light, casting them as the product of hubris and folly that threatened the faith. Another important implication of Walter’s Quatuor labyrinthos was his allegation that the cardinalate convinced the Pope to take Christology off the agenda for Lateran III. There is no way of assessing the truth of this claim. True or not, however, it implied that the cardinalate 96 

de Ghellinck, Le Mouvement théologique du xiie siècle, p. 263. Colish, Peter Lombard, p. 431. 98  On the history of St-Victor in this period see Colish, Peter Lombard, p. 432. 97 

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were caught up in the dreadful errors of the labyrinth, and evinced fear of the broader influence of the schools within corridors of power. Also of interest, and to be explored further in the next chapter, was Walter’s designation of Peter of Poitiers as being among the Quatuor labyrinthos. Unlike Abelard, Gilbert, and Lombard, Peter of Poitiers was still very much alive and working in the schools of Paris. In the same year as Walter wrote the Quatuor labyrinthos, Peter of Poitiers published his own sentence collection. In designating a living scholar as party to the pernicious heresies of the schools past, Walter proposed a reading of the schools present, as still being lively hotbeds of problematic questioning. Finally, as with the other critics canvassed in this chapter, Walter judges the Pope and calls him to act. The errors of the schools were constructed, in Walter’s text, as being a direct affront to the Pope’s qualities of leadership.

Conclusion Taken together, the Christological criticisms that emerged in the period after the publication of Peter Lombard’s Sentences demonstrated an ongoing seam of criticism of the schools in the period between 1160 and 1180. These men feared that the application of categories such as ‘accidence’ to the analysis of Christ’s person would undermine the veneration of the mystical perfection of Christ’s person. They were all agreed that these very technical theological conversations, however carefully framed, challenged papal authority and were potentially divisive to the sacred union of human and divine authority that characterized ecclesia. Consistently, the critics of Lombard’s Christology saw his error as being grounded in a longer genealogy of ideas that went back to Peter Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers. Yet there has been very little written about the Christological controversies that recognize the continuity of the attacks on Lombard with those of his predecessors. Rather, the scholarly tendency has been to see the criticisms as the result of polemical thinkers who practised poor scholarship. Colish writes that it would seem that Christological nibilianism, as a teaching of the Lombard, was to some extent, a product of the overheated imaginations of men such as John of Cornwall and Walter of St-Victor, and a product of the tendency, even on the part of such members of the literate elite as these men, to rely on word-of-mouth reports rather than textual evidence.99

99 

Colish, Peter Lombard, p. 435.

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I would argue that the imaginations of men such as John of Cornwall and Walter of St-Victor, overheated or not, are actually striking evidence for the confusion and fear aroused by the schools and their method. What they tell us is that there was still profound ambivalence about the schools in the period after the Sentences. The application of principles derived from dialectic to sacred mysteries such as the Trinity and the Incarnation was seen to strike at the heart of Christian unity itself, both in terms of faith and institutions. And that these men relied on word-of-mouth accounts ought not require us to discredit their witness. They might not be providing adequate testimony to Lombard’s writings, but they are most probably sufficient for providing fascinating testimony to webs of conversations taking place throughout Europe at this time. These conversations, we can only surmise, might have been about the latest doctrinal innovations emerging out of Paris and their implications for thinking through issues of devotion, ecclesiology, and education. The Christological criticisms are enlightening precisely in their very lack of textual fidelity to the Sentences. They reveal the sorts of readings that were being performed of the Lombard’s ideas in contexts well beyond the schools. And this takes us closer towards unpacking the stakes of theological debate in the twelfth century.

Chapter 4

Christology in the Schools after Lombard

I

n the previous chapter we considered a long and continuous seam of criticism of Peter Lombard’s Christology, which emerged in the light of the success of his Sentences and which continued until after Lateran III in 1179. The words of the critics, as well as papal statements from Pope Alexander III forbidding the discussion of certain aspects of Peter Lombard’s Christology, all testified that controversy and anxiety were attached to the reception of Lombard’s Sentences during this period. Why would this have been so? As we have seen, in the Sentences, Peter Lombard had taken pains to couch his findings in cautious prose. The books were full of disclaimers as to the reverence and humility of the author, and in the case of his Christology Peter Lombard declined to make a definitive statement. Yet this did not prevent intense speculation upon the doctrines held by him, as well as his disciples, that pertained to the Incarnation. This speculation revealed, as we saw, not only an argument with Lombard’s reasoning. His critics perceived the problem as much broader than problematic logic. They saw his analysis of Christ’s persona as fundamentally irreverent and disrespectful. That Christ was one person with two natures, human divine, ought to be received as a gift of sacred mystery. Christ’s being, they felt, was not an invitation to human, logical play. Rather, Christ ought to be contemplated and revered in his full mystery. The task of this chapter is to ask what drove these critics in their assertion of Lombard’s essential error. Certainly his theology, as manifest in the Sentences, did contain profound novelties that, if considered sensitively, might have been understood to be potentially heretical. But his critics rarely focused on the text

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of the Sentences. In fact, most of the time their characterizations of Lombard’s theology were at odds with the contents of the Sentences. They relied on hearsay, rumour, and paraphrasing. As we saw in the previous chapter, this has lead to much head-scratching on the part of historians, confounded at the disparity between the Peter Lombard of the Sentences and the heretic presented by someone like Walter of St-Victor. The reason for this disparity is, however, that Peter Lombard’s ongoing reputation after his death was the result of much more than the written text of the Sentences. It was grounded in the memories of his students, the truncations of those who abbreviated the Sentences, and the framing words of those who wrote prologues for the Sentences. We have inherited the composed and formal Sentences as one of our major sources of knowledge of learning in the twelfth century. We are able to comprehend it as a finite and closed document. However, it would rarely have been encountered in this way in the second half of the twelfth century. Rather, almost instantaneously as we shall see, the text became interwoven in the interpretative webs of prologues, commentaries, glosses, and lecture notes that characterized textual reception in the schools. Much of this is lost to us, of course. The conversational world of gossip and defamatory rumour can only be glimpsed in accounts such as that of Robert of Cricklade. That it is lost in any detail, however, ought not to preclude an acknowledgement that it existed and influenced perceptions of Peter Lombard. The Sentences, in other words, is probably not the best guide to the Peter Lombard of the Christological controversies. Rather, our focus needs to expand the consideration of the ways and means of his reception after 1160. As even one of Lombard’s disciples reminded us, Lombard the person cannot be conflated with his text. Peter Comestor wrote that when asked whether Christ, insofar as He is a man, is something [aliquid], the Master […] did not always deny this; in fact he sometimes conceded it to external people. When he denied it, however, he spoke to safe ears, that is to say, to those whom he instructed.1

In this statement, Peter Comestor described Lombard as making sharp distinctions between his public opinions and private speech acts. We can not say 1  Brady, ‘Peter Manducator and the Oral Teachings of Peter Lombard’, p. 473, quoted in Rosemann, Peter Lombard, p. 41: ‘Quod queritur, utrum ille homo ab eterno fuerit non-homo, satis potest recipe. Quod queritur, utrum Christus inquantum est homo est aliquid, Magister, inquit, non semper negabat, immo quandoque concedebat extraneis. Cum autem negabat, tutis auribus loquebatur, id est illis quos instruxerat.’

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whether Peter Comestor’s claim can be held to be truthful, nor can we say for certain that Peter Lombard held that Christ’s humanity was not an aliquid or that he was perceived by his disciples as denying privately that Christ’s humanity was an aliquid. We can say, however, that the opinions held personally by Peter Lombard were not assumed to be identical to the text of his Sentences. Furthermore, we must remember that Peter Lombard bequeathed a textual legacy that contained other works beside the Sentences. As we saw in the second chapter, prior to writing the Sentences, his commentary on Philippians had actually espoused the habitus theory, in contradiction to his later ideas. So, if we are to understand the reasons for the virulence of the Christological criticisms, we must look beyond the Sentences itself. Instead, we need to understand the work to which the figure of Lombard, and his masterwork the Sentences, was put both within and outside the academy.2 We have seen in the previous chapter how allegations of error functioned for the critics of Lombard. They enabled a call to arms to the papacy. The evocation of Christological error created a vision of the Church under threat in the most profound way. This danger of intellectual hubris challenged the reverence for the mystery of the Incarnation which was a fundamental part of Christian belief, devotion, and institutional life. The attempt to understand Christ’s being through the prism of human logic constituted, according to the critics, an attack upon faith itself. After all, in the Gospel according to John, John the Baptist had declared of himself in relation to Christ that ‘I am not worthy to loosen the strap of his sandal’.3 Gregory the Great had taught an interpretation of this passage, which later became standard throughout the Middle Ages, 4 that the strap on Christ’s sandal signified the ‘ligature of mystery’.5 This mystery was the nature of Christ’s Incarnation, his constitution as both man and 2 

The most exhaustive summary of the issue is provided by Colish, ‘Christological Nihilism’. In this article Colish argues that while the Lombard always remained cautious in his Christology, a number of his supporters did not. She assumes that this is because they misunderstood the orthodoxy of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. She wrote the article primarily in response to Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century, pp. 264–361. In this work Nielsen argued that Peter Lombard had a coherent school who consistently proposed the habitus theory after the death of their master. 3  John 1. 27: ‘Ipse est qui post me venturus est qui ante me factus est cuius ego non sum dignus ut solvam eius corrigiam calciamenti’. 4  See Principe, William of Auxerre’s Theology of the Hypostatic Union, p. 9. 5  Gregory I, Homilarium in evangelia, cols 1101B–1102A: ‘Corrigia ergo calceamenti est ligature mysterii’.

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God completely and indivisibly. Gregory wrote that ‘John was not worthy to loose the strap of Christ’s sandal because the mystery of his Incarnation, which he knew through the spirit of prophecy, does not need to be investigated’. 6 Gregory went on to say that it is even problematic to declare one’s awareness of the extent of the mystery of the hypostasis ‘unless [for the purpose of ] professing ignorance humbly and openly’.7 Peter Lombard was well aware of this injunction against Christological speculation. He wrote, in Book iii, of Christ’s human and divine natures, that that union was so inexplicable that even John [the Baptist], who had been sanctified from the womb, confessed that he was not worthy to untie the straps of Jesus’ shoe, because he was not sufficient to investigate and explain to others the manner of that union.8

Thus, it should not be surprising that Peter Lombard’s attempt to loosen the straps, to engage in Christological analysis, aroused enmity. There was a strong tradition of wariness around these questions, as they sat at the centre of Christian revelation. At the end of his section on Christology Lombard declared: ‘Let those things about the bindings of the Lord’s shoe suffice’. 9 The earthy metaphor of the straps on Christ’s sandal figured the profound gulf between God and man, structuring the limitations of human access to divine truths. Lombard’s comment showed that he was well aware of the distance between human concepts and apprehension of divinity. And yet he hoped that his inquiries would in some way be sufficient. That Peter Lombard suggested that he could suffice, where John the Baptist had not, would have been a stark claim for his readers and auditors. It was a claim that suggested an improve6 

Gregory I, Homilarium in evangelia, cols 1101B–1102A: ‘Joannes itaque solvere corrigiam calceamenti ejus non valet, quia incarnationis ejus mysterium nec ipse investigare sufficit, qui hanc per prophetiae spiritum agnovit’. 7  Gregory I, Homilarium in evangelia, cols 1101B–1102A: ‘Quid est ergo dicere: Non sum dignus solvere corrigiam calceamenti ejus, nisi aperte et humiliter suam ignorantiam profiteri?’ 8  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 2. c. 2. 2, pp. 29–30: ‘Illa autem unio inexplicabilis est, adeo ut etiam Ioannes, ab utero sanctificatus, se non esse dignum fateatur solvere corrigiam calceamenti Iesu, quia illius unionis modum investigare aliisque explicare non erat sufficiens’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 8. 9  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 22. c. 4. 3, p. 140: ‘Haec de corrigia calceamenti dominici sufficient’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 97.

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ment upon the knowledge of the past and conveyed a confidence in the intellectual progress of Peter Lombard’s present. While ostensibly highly faithful to the auctoritates on which he relied, he was signalling their obsolescence in the light of his new work. The possibility of intellectual progress, of the inauguration of a new period in knowledge, was a theme taken up by some of Lombard’s disciples in the years after the Sentences. It was also a notion that raised the concern of schoolmen and critics alike.

Peter Comestor and Peter of Poitiers: 1165–79 Between 1165 and 1170 Peter Comestor produced one of the first accessus to the Sentences. Peter Comestor was chancellor at Notre Dame and would become the author of the Historia scholastica, which would wield tremendous influence over the following century and beyond.10 He had been a student of Peter Lombard and had consequently heard the master speak on several occasions. At this time prologues were produced for the classroom, to introduce students to an important text. Such prologues were written in the twelfth century for auctores only — those accorded the status of authority — who were typically classical and patristic writers.11 In his prologue to the Sentences, Peter Comestor made bold claims for the necessity of the Sentences as a propaedeutic, one that was appropriate to its time. He did this with an involved metaphor drawn from Exodus 19–24. I will reproduce the text at length as it reveals much about the ways in which Peter Lombard’s intellectual novelty was understood within the schools: Moses set boundaries around the mountain of the Lord lest the people ascend to see Him and the greater part of them die. Nevertheless, Moses, it is read, crossed over the boundaries when the Lord called him. Now, the elders, who had once received the spirit of Moses, approached the boundaries but while Moses was delayed with the Lord they grew tired of waiting and returned to the settlement. But the people did not even leave the camp. 10 

For information on Peter Comestor’s life and career see Daly, ‘Peter Comestor: Master of Histories’; Brady, ‘Peter Manducator and the Oral Teachings of Peter Lombard’; Luscombe, ‘Peter Comestor’. On his subsequent influence in the schools of Paris, see Clark, ‘The Commentaries on Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica’, and Clark, ‘Peter Comestor and Peter Lombard’. 11  A magisterial treatment of medieval prologue literature can be found in Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship. See also Quain, ‘The Medieval Accessus ad Auctores’.

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By this mountain is signified the truth of Sacred Scripture, that is, the canon of both Testaments. Now the Old and New Testaments are called truth, because they subsist in such a solidity of faith and truth, that it is necessary to believe them without contradiction. The boundaries placed around the mountain are the hagiographers, that is, the writings of the holy fathers, disclosing to us an understanding of both Testaments. However, certain ones, like Moses, who were called by the Lord, crossed these boundaries, such as the fathers of old who receive an understanding of Scriptures by the revelation of God alone; thus it is read to the apostles themselves that the Lord ‘opened sense so that they could understand the Scriptures’ [Lk 24. 45]. But this is not true of us. Now, certain ones who, not called by the Lord, transgress these boundaries; therefore they are pronounced, with merit, blasphemers and heretics. However, by the elders, those who approach the boundaries but retreat, are signified the learned who begin studying the volumes of the fathers, but terrified by the magnitude and great number of books, and almost despairing, transfer themselves to briefer studies such as natural science, laws, and things of this kind. The people who do not leave the camp stand for the lazy and indolent who do not even wish to attempt the study of books. On account of these three types of people, the Master [Peter Lombard], seeing that the boundaries had now grown up into huge trees, in order to prepare an easier ingress for us, as if brushing aside some little branches on the way, collected this brief work from many sources.12 12 

The surviving extracts of Peter Comestor’s gloss on the Sentences were collected and edited in Martin, ‘Notes sur l’oeuvre littéraire de Pierre le Mangeur’: ‘Statuit Moyses terminus iuxta montem domini ne ascenderet populos ad videndum dominum, et ex eis plurima multitudo periret. Legitur tamen Moyses domino vocante terminus transcendisse: seniors vero, qui de spiritu moysis acceperant, ad terminus pervenisse, sed, Moyse moram faciente cum domino, exspectacionis tedio affectos ad castra rediisse: populum vero nec castra eciam exivisse.   Per montem istum sacre scripture veritas, id est utriusque testamenti canon significatur. Vetus autem testamentum et novum ideo vera dicuntur, quia tanta fidei et veritatis solididate subsistunt, ut absque contradictione eis credi sit necesse. Termini circa montem positi sunt agiographi, id est, sanctorum partum scripta, utriusque testamenti intellectum nobis aperiencia. Hos autem terminus quidam sicut moyses domino vocante transierunt, uti primitivi patres qui solius dei revelatione intelligenciam scripture perceperunt: sicut legitur quod dominus apostolis sensum aperuit ut intelligerent scripturas. Sed de his nichil ad nos. Quidam autem hos terminus domino non vocante transgrediuntur. Unde merito blasphemi vel heretici dicuntur. Per seniores quidem ad terminus pervenientes, sed postea regredientes, designantur docti accedentes ad legenda patrum volumina, sed tam magnitudine quam numerositate librorum exterriti, quasi desperantes, ad breviores artes se transferunt, ut ad phisicam, leges et huiusmodi. Per populum castra non exeuntem intelliguntur pigri et desides, qui nec eciam ad legendos libros accedere volunt.   Propter hec tria genera hominum. Magister videns terminos illos iam in magnas arbores excrevisse, ut faciliorem ac […] incessum nobis preparet, quasi quosdam ramusculos in via prosternens, hoc breve opus de multis collegit’ (p. 61); trans. by Spatz, ‘Approaches and Attitudes to a New Theology Textbook’, p. 35.

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Peter Comestor’s argument was that the accretion of time had dulled the initial acuity and accessibility of the intellectual boundaries prescribed by the church fathers. The fathers had mapped the parameters within which humans could contemplate the divine, but these boundaries had become blurred. Heretics had transgressed the limits prescribed by the fathers, with their own speculations and blasphemies; lazy men did not even bother to try to find out about God; and worthy men were intimidated by the multitude of books by the fathers, and so retreated from the study of theology entirely. The clear boundaries articulated by the fathers looked now, in Peter Comestor’s eyes, to constitute magnas arbores which obscured the way to truth by casting it in dark shade. Lombard, the magister, was the efficacious gardener who was able to prune the trees and clear the way for the light of theology. The fathers were not wrong, but their legacy had been obscured through the course of history. That inheritance needed to be cultivated in order to be preserved and employed. The degree to which this task should be an act of creation in itself was left somewhat ambiguous. The verb prosterno that Peter Comestor used to describe the work performed by Lombard in the Sentences ran a gamut of interpretative possibilities, from spring-cleaning to overturning, or striking down. This definitional ambiguity notwithstanding, however, Peter Comestor was clear that the passing of time and the changes to men’s circumstances necessitated Peter Lombard’s systematic innovation. Peter Comestor’s prologue provides some insight into the esteem and reverence with which Lombard was accorded by some members of the schools, particularly that of Notre Dame. While the schools of St-Victor and Ste-Geneviève had dominated the intellectual landscape of Paris in the first half of the twelth century, the school of Notre Dame became increasingly important during the course of the second. A number of famous Peters characterized the Notre Dame legacy in that period, Lombard, Comestor, Poitiers, and the Chanter in particular. As such, Peter Comestor’s active advocacy of Peter Lombard’s Sentences would have fallen upon the ears of many of the brightest and best young scholars. Walter of St-Victor, in his Quatuor labyrinthos, had blamed Peter Comestor for the proliferation of error in the schools, accusing him of ‘languishing around the questions and battles of words’. These ‘battles of words’ were the ‘Sentences of Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Peter Lombard and Peter of Poitiers, which are placed before the students of Peter Comestor’.13 Walter’s testimony attests to 13 

Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, pp. 274–75: ‘Languentes circa questiones et pugnas verborum. Ex his sunt sententie Abailardi et Porete, Lumbardi et Pictavini, prepositi scolarum Petri Comestoris’.

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a concern that the schools were hotbeds of querulous conversations, conversations which rehashed problematic thinkers of the past such as Abelard and Gilbert. Walter was very concerned that Peter Comestor was transmitting these ideas to a new generation of students. Certainly, Peter Comestor’s prologue to the Sentences indicated his strong support for the project of the Sentences, and his conviction that interpretation and culling was now necessary if one was to attempt to come to terms with the legacy of the fathers. In his day, he perceived that the magnitude of the patrum volumina was such that the editorial intervention of a Master such as Lombard was necessary. Peter Comestor ascribed nothing but good intentions to Lombard, saying that his intention is to confute blasphemers, encourage the learned and stir up the lazy. He does this, teaching three things about the faith: namely, what ought to be asserted, what ought to be said to the contrary, and what ought to be piously doubted rather than rashly asserted.14

Walter, however, did not ascribe good intentions to Peter Comestor. Rather, he accused him of transmitting the same nihilism of which he had accused Peter Lombard. Walter charged him with disseminating, in his prologue and commentary on the Sentences, the statement that ‘God can be said to be from God because nothing [nichil] should be predicated of God according to essence or relation’.15 Walter, here was, charging that Peter Comestor had overstated the unity of the Trinity, and so rejected the teaching that the Father begot the Son and the Holy Spirit. In Chapter 2 we saw that Lombard had made the controversial statement in his Sentences that in the same way it is not to be asserted that the divine essence generated the Son because, since the Son is the divine essence, the Son would already be the thing from which he is generated; and so the same thing would generate itself. And so also we say that the divine essence did not generate an essence. Since the divine essence is a one and supreme certain thing [reality], if the divine essence generated an essence, 14  Peter Comestor, ‘Prologue’, ed. by Martin: p. 62: ‘Intencio sua est confutare blasfemos, confirmare doctos, excitare pigros. Quod facit, docens tria circa fidem, scilicet, quid de ea sit asserendum, quid est contra dicendum, quid pie dubitandum pocius quam temere sit asserendum.’ Spatz, ‘Approaches and Attitudes to a New Theology Textbook’, p. 32. 15  Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 320: ‘Vnde et discipulus eius: de hoc termino, inquit, Deus de Deo dici potest quod nichil secundum essentiam nec secundum relationem predicatur de Deo’. Ignatius Brady identified Peter Comestor as the ‘discipulus eius’ mentioned by Walter in his ‘Prolegomena’ to Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, ii, 40–42.

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then the same thing generated itself, which is not at all possible. But the Father alone begot the Son, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.16

Here, Peter Lombard had emphasized the importance of maintaining a conceptual separation between the persons and the una quaedam summa res. While the persons were in identity with the una quaedam summa res spiritually, Lombard maintained that they ought to be kept separate conceptually in order to avoid error, in this case relating to issues of generation. Walter was essentially charging Peter Comestor with propagating the same opinion as Lombard in relation to generation within the Trinity. Walter indubitably had read Lombard on the Trinity and would have read Peter Comestor’s opinions as emerging from those of Lombard. Walter’s reading of Comestor’s opinion contained a theological escalation. He was accusing Peter Comestor of performing a type of nichilianistic reading of the Trinity, reducing its categories of differentiation between the persons to the status of nothing, as impossible and meaningless predications. We cannot say whether or not Peter Comestor actually taught this. We can say, however, that he was perceived as broadcasting this opinion to his students. In the same way that Walter had rendered Peter Lombard into a nichilianista, he made the same charge against Lombard’s disciple Peter Comestor. Walter continued this reading of Comestor’s Lombardianism, arguing that this nihilism infected his Christology as well: ‘The son is from nothing, because negation bears more than affirmation asserts: indeed, he removes the essence with the person’.17 Walter’s difficult point was that, once predicated, nichil carries a stronger weight of meaning than a positive affirmation would do. Never mind that the use of nichil in this context seems to have been Walter’s invention. Walter of St-Victor’s understanding of Comestor’s Lombardian theology demonstrated a conflation, in the mind of one critic, of Lombard’s Trinitarian and Christological theology. They were of a piece, according to Walter, because they relied on ultimately reductive categories. What Peter Comester might have 16 

Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk i, d. 5. c. 1. 6, pp. 82: ‘Hic etiam non est dicendum quod divina essentia genuit Filium: quia cum Filius sit divina essentia, iam esset Filius res a qua generatur; et ita eadem res se ipsam generaret. — Ita etiam dicimus quod essentia diuina non genuit essentiam: Cum enim una et summa quaedam res sit diuina essentia, si diuina essentia essentiam genuit, eadem res se ipsam genuit, quod omnino esse non potest; sed Pater solus genuit Filium, et a Patre et Filio procedit Spiritus Sanctus.’ Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 31. 17  Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 321: ‘Filius est de nichilo, quia negatio plus tollit quam affirmatio ponat; removet enim essentiam cum persona’.

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called ‘pious doubt’, Walter saw as nichilianist. He thought that the attempts of theologians to understand God in terms of what could be said positively, and what could not, reduced God to a human scale and thereby contracted his ineffable magnitude. What is important for our purposes is that Walter was not only decrying heresies as he saw it; he was also suggesting a set of intellectual transmissions. His telling of Peter Lombard was not dependent on fidelity to Lombard’s written sources. Rather, Walter’s monstrous and heretical Lombard had his legacy continued through his equally monstrous disciples. Walter’s fourth monster was Peter of Poitiers, a teacher in Paris from 1167, and chancellor of Paris from 1193 to1205.18 Peter of Poitiers might seem a less obvious target for Walter, since he was not subject to conciliar scrutiny or allegations of heresy during his career. Yet, Walter was moved to call him an ‘alium Lombardum’,19 arguing that he was similarly ‘treating the ineffability of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation with scholastic levity’. 20 Walter said that Peter provided a ‘Christ of the dialecticians and not of the Christians’. 21 Walter’s attack seems less odd, however, in the light of the pre-eminence of Peter of Poitiers in Walter’s own time. The Quatuor labyrinthos and Peter of Poitiers’s commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, his Sententiae libri quinque, both emerge around 1179. Peter of Poitiers’s work would go on to be highly influential, surviving in around thirty manuscripts. Artur Michael Landgraf remarked that ‘undoubtedly the Sentences of Peter of Poitiers represent one of the most important source-works of the twelfth century’.22 Peter of Poitiers was clearly, 18 

See Peter of Poitiers, The Works, ed. by Moore. Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 201. 20  Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 201: ‘ineffabilia sancta Trinitatis et incarnationis scolastica leuitate tractarent’. 21  Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 274: ‘Christus dialecticorum et non christianorum’. 22  Quotation is taken from Landgraf, ‘Petrus von Poitiers und die Quästionenliteratur’, p. 357. The most recent treatment of Peter of Poitiers’s relationship to the people and institutions of the schools of Paris can be found in Lemoine, ‘L’Abbaye de Saint-Victor, reflet du renouveau spirituel’. On Peter of Poitiers’s support for the teaching of Peter Lombard see the introduction to the first book of Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae Petri Pictaviensis, ed. by Moore, Garvin, and Dulong. Grabmann and de Ghellinck both argued that Peter of Poitiers’s Sentences was extremely influential in transmitting Peter Lombard’s thought in the schools. See Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, pp. 404–47; and de Ghellinck, Le Mouvement théologique du xiie siècle, p. 246. In addition, see Principe, William of Auxerre’s Theology of the Hypostatic Union; and Wipfler, Die Trinitätsspekulation des Petrus von Poitiers und die Trinitätsspekulation des Richard von St Viktor, p. 8. 19 

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at the time of Walter’s writing, a star in the intellectual firmament. And he was engaged in lecturing upon and writing about Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Thus for proof of Walter’s claim that Christological error was alive in Paris and circling with serpentine stealth, Walter needed to look no further than the eminent and very much alive Peter of Poitiers. Walter wrote of the continuity of error propounded by him that ‘nobody — unless insane — doubts [the existence of ] such impiety, such inversion, such novelty, such horror, whether the devil vomits it out by himself or through a delirious man’.23 The possession metaphor seems apt, albeit hyperbolic, when we consider that Peter of Poitiers had presumably been lecturing on the Sentences for many years prior to the publication of his commentary in 1179. His persona and scholarly performance would have been intimately linked with the words of Peter Lombard in the eyes and ears of his viewers and auditors. In that sense, Peter of Poitiers was, if not possessed, surrounded by the spectral presence of Lombard. In the written version of his commentary upon the Sentences, Peter of Poitiers often wrote phrases such as ‘as the Master responded sufficiently to this in his book of Sentences […] we do not need to respond to this’. 24 Peter of Poitiers clearly saw his work as a continuation of the efforts of the Sentences. Peter of Poitiers’s role was to intervene where he thought further work was required but entirely within the terms suggested by his master. He was most interested in what he called disputationi accommodate, questions from the Sentences that he thought to be still pressing and appropriate for disputation. Peter of Poitiers wrote at the beginning of his work: ‘Concerning the debatable things of holy scripture, so that we may advise those starting with the basics, pulling them into a sequence; we reduce things disordered to order; we renew things by a modest inquiry’.25 This statement strongly echoed the inaugurating statement at the beginning of the Sentences; as we saw Peter Lombard had said that he produced the Sentences ‘so that one who seeks them shall find it unnecessary to rifle

23 

Walter of St-Victor, ‘Le Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 235: ‘Tam impia, tam contraria, tam inaudita, tam horribilia, utrum ipse diabolus per se an per arreptitium euomat, nemo nisi insanus dubitat’. 24  Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae Petri Pictaviensis, ed. by Moore, Garvin, and Dulong, bk i, 276: ‘Quibus quia sufficienter respondet magister in libro sententiarum […] necessarium non duximus hic respondere’. 25  Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae libri quinque, col. 958B: ‘Disputabilia igitur sacre pagine, ut rudimentis ad eam accedentium consulamus, in seriem redigentes, inordinate in ordinem redigimus, inveterate per modestam inquisitionem renovamus’.

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through numerous books’.26 Both Peter Lombard and Peter of Poitiers framed their masterworks with an eye to pedagogy. Their rationales, as they expressed them at the start of their books, were to impose order upon the vastness of prevailing auctoritates. In doing so, I argue, they were both making a case for the temporal necessity of their task. That is, they were responding to the problem of the accretion of texts over time and the difficulties this posed to the student. Peter Comestor had construed Lombard as a gardener who was pruning the ways of access to scripture for his students. Peter of Poitiers depicted himself as similarly reactivating access to auctoritates in an act of organizational renewal. Peter of Poitiers was an avowed Lombardian. His career had been based upon his interpretation of Peter Lombard. He was seen as being in direct continuity with the author of the Sentences, in both location and in ideas. Yet, in his Christology, he took some decisive turns away from his master. Eschewing the judicious approach to the three theories, he declared himself, from the outset, to be a supporter of the habitus theory. As he wrote at the start of his section on Christology: ‘He [Christ] was made in the likeness of man, and came dressed as a man: enveloped [in humanity] and from his sandal he accessed our feet, so we will treat those things with His help which are fitting for disputation’.27 We see here again the reference to Christ’s sandal, the ‘ligature of mystery’, which had functioned as a limit of human knowledge of Christ. Peter declared in his introduction that he would discuss aspects of the ligature that were ‘fitting’ and appropriate for conversation. Less cautious than Lombard in his approach to the ligature, Peter of Poitiers deviated from Lombard in beginning with a clear statement of the habitus theory as writ. Peter of Poitiers did concede that there were attached controversies. He said that ‘around these two propositions — whether the Divine Person assumed human nature and whether the Divine Nature assumed human nature — many things have been disputed’.28 In answer to the vexed question of whether or not Christ’s humanity could be said to be an aliquid, Peter of Poitiers argued: 26 

Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, Prologue, p. 4: ‘Ut non sit necesse quaerenti lib­ rorum numerositatem evolvere’. Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 4. 27  Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae Petri Pictaviensis, ed. by Moore, Garvin, and Dulong, 4, Praefatio, col. 1162B: ‘In similitudine hominum factus, et habitu inventus ut homo, de cujus calceamento quo ad nos pedes velatus accessit, quae disputationi sunt accommodata, ipso juvante, tractabimus’. 28  Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae Petri Pictaviensis, ed. by Moore, Garvin, and Dulong, 4, col. 1170B: ‘Circa has duas propositiones, Divina persona assumpsit humanam naturam, Divina natura assumpsit humanam naturam, plurimum disputatum est’.

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If the unity of the Person is noted, it is true that Christ in as much as he is a man is something, that is, he himself being a human is something. If, however, the cause or the condition for [this humanity] is noted, it is false; humanity does not make Him a thing.29

Peter of Poitiers was keen to make the conceptual separation between humanity as a quality that can be understood to be something in the context of the ‘unity of the person’, and humanity as a singular thing in itself. He was referring here to a statement made by Peter Lombard in the Sentences. Lombard had written that ‘Christ, according to his being man, is not a person or anything else, unless perhaps “according” is expressive of the unity of the person’.30 Both Peters had separated the notional quiddity of Christ’s humanity from their understanding that this quiddity could never in fact be isolated from the very specific union of divine and human natures cohering in the person of Christ. Where the Peters differed from each other was in their final conclusions as to the best theoretical explanation for Christ’s personhood. Peter Lombard had, as I have argued, taken refuge in the technical precision enabled by the subsistence theory. Peter of Poitiers, by contrast, argued that the habitus theory was the best mode of explaining that Christ’s humanity was sui generis, and could be understand to exist only in the composite of human and divine natures that constituted the second person of the Trinity. Peter of Poitiers wrote eventually that Christus secundum quod est homo est aliud: ‘In as much as Christ is a man he is something else’. Peter of Poitiers, then, in spite of his use of Peter Lombard’s Sentences as his foundational source, made certain crucial deviations from his master. He agreed with Peter Lombard’s method and vocabulary in charting the Christological problem. He similarly agreed that it was appropriate to attempt some loosening of the ligature of mystery in order to resist the earlier theological prohibition upon the technical analysis of Christ’s person. He deviated from Lombard, however, in his ultimate choice of fidelity to a theory, declaring himself to support the habitus theory even though he knew the risk he ran in derogating Christ’s humanity. Peter of Poitiers never actually said that Christ’s humanity 29 

Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae Petri Pictaviensis, ed. by Moore, Garvin, and Dulong, 4, col. 1176B: ‘Si ergo notetur unitas personae, verum est quod Christus secundum quod est homo est aliquid, id est ipse ens homo est aliquid. Si vero notet causam vel conditionem, falsum est; non enim humanitas facit eum quid.’ 30  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, Prologue, p. 4: ‘Christum secundum hominem non esse personam nec aliquid, nisi forte “secundum” sit expressivum unitatis personae’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 41.

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was nichil, but neither did he say it was an aliquid. Instead, he proposed his own middle term, that of aliud, which meant ‘something else’ or ‘other’. In as much as Christ was a man, he was also something else entirely. In summary, by considering the Lombardian disciples Peter of Comestor and Peter of Poitiers, we can grasp some sources for the ongoing Christological controversies of the 1160s and the 1170s. We had already seen the passionate responses of Robert of Cricklade, Gerhoh of Reichersberg, John of Cornwall, and Walter of St-Victor, and their convictions that the Lombard was in genuine and pernicious error. In Peter Comestor, as well as the rousing endorsement of his prologue, we find the conviction that what Lombard wrote and what Lombard said were not always the same. The school of Notre Dame, at which Peter Lombard, Peter Comestor, and Peter of Poitiers all taught, carried on the speculative theological work of Lombard. This was not to say, however, that the scholars that followed him remained statically faithful to his legacy. Rather, we have seen in the works of both Peter Comestor and Peter of Poitiers attempts to come to terms with his legacy and make it meaningful to the next generations of scholars under their tutelage. Peter Lombard’s legacy was strong, but his contribution was not ossified. Peter of Poitiers’s endorsement of the habitus theory demonstrated this. Since Peter Comestor and Peter of Poitiers were both engaged in interpreting Peter Lombard for new audiences, it ought not be surprising that they read his work and interrogated his ideas in ways that produced novelties and deviations. These provide some explanation for the ongoing vigour of the Christological controversies in the 1160s and 70s.

Abbreviators and their Interlocutors Another source for Christological conversations ought to be considered when mapping Christological debates in the early period after the publication of the Sentences.31 These are the earliest abbreviations of the Sentences, which emerged in the years following the completion of the work. As Marcia Colish has demonstrated, these retellings of the Sentences often took considerable liberties with the formulations of Peter Lombard, either by changing emphases or by 31  I have not discussed, in this chapter, one of the earliest commentaries on the Sentences, the Pseudo-Peter of Poitiers gloss. This commentary was produced between 1160 and 70. I have not discussed it here as it has little to say about Books ii and iii. As Colish writes, ‘The gloss ignores the debate provoked by the erroneous attribution of Christological nihilianism to the Lombard’; Colish, ‘The Pseudo-Peter of Poitiers Gloss’, p. 32.

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actively excluding certain passages from coverage.32 And, as we shall see, these abbreviated texts themselves aroused further debate and conflict on the part of those who read them. That these abbreviators set to work after the publication of the Sentences gives us further insight into the popularity of Lombard’s work. The same can be said of the prologues and commentaries that we discussed in the previous section. This proliferation of materials might provide a further explanation for the criticisms and papal pronouncements that occurred in the same period. The prohibitions of 1170 and 1177, as we saw, were couched in extremely strong language. Although we cannot say this for sure, such vigour of opposition implies a concomitant vigour of Christological speculation. Bandinus and Gandulf of Bologna both produced abbreviations of the Sentences, and both presented Peter Lombard as endorsing the habitus theory. Little is known about either men except for their authorship of these significant abbreviations of the Sentences. Philipp W. Rosemann says of Bandinus’s work that it was mostly a ‘no-nonsense manual’ that faithfully reproduced the opinions of the master.33 As Rosemann and others have noted, however, Bandinus’s rendition of Lombard’s Christology was less than a meticulous representation of the views expressed in the Sentences. We can only surmise the reason for Bandinus’s lack of fidelity in this section, where he clearly privileges the habitus theory. Perhaps he firmly believed that the habitus theory had been endorsed by Peter Lombard. Or, perhaps, he was confused by the complexity of the issue and lacked the necessary competence to conduct a sensitive exploration of the issues at hand. Excluding the assumptus homo and the subsistence theories, Bandinus launched straight into an explanation of the habitus theory as if it was the theory espoused by Lombard. In this account of Christology, Lombard’s actual hesitancy has been removed, as have his many equivocations. Instead, the habitus theory was stated as the definitive opinion in the Sentences. Bandinus declared, highly problematically, that ‘Christ, in as much as he is a man, is not something’.34 He also wrote that ‘So the soul and the flesh were attached to the Son of God, just like the cloaking of limbs’.35 Bandinus’s approximation of Peter Lombard’s Christology was to naturalize the habitus theory by taking it out of 32 

Colish, ‘Christological Nihilism’, p. 149. Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book, p. 29. 34  Bandinus, Sententiarum libri quatuor, col. 1075C: ‘Quod Christus non est aliquid secundum quod homo’. 35  Bandinus, Sententiarum libri quatuor, col. 1074C: ‘Sic igitur anima et caro adhibita sunt Filio Dei, velut indumentum membris’. 33 

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its dialectical setting, and stating that Christ ‘was essentially and truly made man according to the habitus’.36 Whether or not Bandinus’s representation of the Sentences was the result of intellectual conviction or intellectual incompetence when it came to Christology, the existence of his abbreviation provides further evidence of confusion circling around the issue of what Peter Lombard had really suggested in regard to Christ’s human and divine natures. Gandulf of Bologna similarly presented a truncation of Lombard’s Sentences that occasionally may have moved far away from the source in content. Colish has observed that Gandulf dispensed with much of the analysis of auctoritates in the Sentences that Peter Lombard had offered. He preferred to focus upon what he saw as key conclusions that would be useful to students.37 As did Bandinus, Gandulf failed to present the three Christological opinions as Peter Lombard had done, as examples of problematic approaches to the problem. Rather, he set forth the Habitus theory on its own by posing the question: ‘According to the fact that Christ was made man, was he made something?’ His answer was that Christ was made something, but only accidentally: ‘Therefore, in so far as Christ was made Man, he was made something. But, in so far as Christ was made man, he was not made something since He actually was and is’.38 For Gandulf, Christ was past, present, and future; his nature was to be unchanged. Christ’s unchangingness as God militated against the idea of a substantial change to the divinity of Christ in the incarnation. There is a change, of course, but it can only be accidental, for to alter Christ substantially would be to make him other to himself: When someone is made white, he is thus made something other than white. Therefore, through this that he is made white, he is not made white; it does not follow. Similarly, through this, that Christ is made man he is thus made something other than Christ or man. Therefore, Christ is not made man through this, that he himself is made man; it does not follow.39 36  Bandinus, Sententiarum libri quatuor, col. 1074C: ‘Sed essentialiter et vere factus est homo secundum habitum’. 37  Colish, ‘From the Sentence Collection to the Sentence Commentary and the summa’, p. 19. 38  Gandulf of Bologna, Sententiarum libri quatuor, ed. by de Walter, bk iii. 21, p. 289: ‘An secundum quod Christus factus est homo, sit factum aliquid […]. Ergo secundum quod Christus factus est homo, factum est aliquid. Sed secundum quod Christus factus est homo, non est factum aliquid, quod sit vel fuerit Christus.’ 39  Gandulf of Bologna, Sententiarum libri quatuor, ed. by de Walter, bk iii. 21, p. 289: ‘Quod iste factus est albus, tantum aliud est factum, quam album. Ergo per hoc, quod iste est factus albus, ipse non est factus albus; non sequitur. Similiter per hoc, quod Christus factus est

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In this exposition, while something can be added to Christ, nothing can be taken away. Therefore, for Christ to become created and to enter time can only occur accidentally. And in this accidental acquisition of the Habitus of man, Christ’s manliness was not made into something, but rather into something else. Hence there were at least two abbreviators of the Sentences, and they both presented Lombard as an expositor of the habitus theory. Unfortunately, a precise dating is not known for either abbreviation. Colish has dated Gandulf as between 1170 and 1185.40 Bandinus’s abbreviation has not been dated with any precision, to my knowledge, although other circumstantial factors might suggest a slightly earlier date than that of Gandulf of Bologna’s, as we shall see. In any case, both texts can be roughly placed during the period of debates around Lombard that saw the papal pronouncements against his name. These abbreviations would have added much fuel to the fire of those who sought to tarnish the name of Lombard and his Sentences. In the first case, as we have seen, they have Lombard in support of the habitus theory. Of the three theories canvassed by Lombard, this was the theory that most led itself to accusations of nihilism, in that it most clearly refused the quiddity of Christ’s humanity. In addition, these abbreviators removed much of the apparatus of textual criticism and analysis of auctoritates that constituted the bulk of the Sentences. They focused upon conclusions that could be given to students; their abbreviations produced theological sound bites which were not couched in formulas of humility and reticence. When taken with the criticisms of the previous chapter, as well as the teachings of the Peters Comestor and Poitiers, a dynamic range of positions and opinions in relation to Lombard can be witnessed. I use the word ‘dynamic’ because, taken as a collective, these interventions in Christology all express the varied and energetic ways that Peter Lombard’s legacy was understood. Each response to Peter Lombard, I would argue, produced another Peter Lombard who was positioned slightly differently from the last. In one of these iterations Peter Lombard becomes a monstrous member of the Quatuor labyrinthos. In another, he is the conscientious gardener, pruning the overgrown trees which represent patristic sources, so that we can all see more clearly now. In yet another iteration he becomes a level-headed proponent of the habitus theory. The Christological debates, then, resulted in a number of emerging positions about the orthodoxy, or otherwise of Peter Lombard, mostly emerging from a homo, tantum aliud factum est quam Christus vel homo. Ergo Christus non per hoc, quod factus est homo, ipse factus est homo; non sequitur.’ 40  Colish, ‘From the Sentence Collection to the Sentence Commentary and the summa’, p. 19.

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Parisian context. Interestingly, however, there is an example of an intervention that seems to have come from beyond the Parisian milieu. Sometime between 1164 and 1170, Master Vacarius produced his Tractatus de assumpto homine, a work that displayed some knowledge of these debates that concerned Peter Lombard, without naming the author of the Sentences explicitly.41 Vacarius was born and educated in Italy, and had a long and prestigous career in England, becoming apostolic legate to Canterbury in 1144. He worked at the highest levels of ecclesiastical administration in the Anglo-Norman realm, as well as composing a number of works that treated canon law. That someone with such a biography would be moved to write on the issue of Christology at this time gives us some indication of the reach of the quarrel. Like those we have already met in this book, such as John of Salisbury and Robert of Cricklade, it would seem that the educated elites of England cast a very keen eye on the affairs of Paris. And, fascinatingly, it seems very probable that Vacarius’s Tractatus de assumpto homine was addressed to a certain ‘B.’, whom many scholars have identified as Bandinus.42 B., according to Vacarius, was a proponent of the habitus theory. Vacarius’s expressed intent was to challenge B.’s error and propose anew the assumptus homo position. Vacarius began his treatise: To his B., his Vacarius sends greetings. After the accustomed discussion between us on homo assumptus [i.e. the man assumed by the Word of God] I often had a discussion with several others following the paths of your opinion, and they expounded the particular reasoning to me of that opinion. The essence of that opinion indeed is that it is not any man who intervened for us [and] whom God the-Word absorbed: but rather He [God the-Word, i.e. the second person of the Trinity] assumed [in this person] a soul and a body.43

41 

The most comprehensive survey of Vacarius’s life and career is Taliadoros, Law and Theology in Twelfth-Century England. The date of 1164–70 for the Tractatus de assumpto homine is an estimate made by Taliadoros. His reasons for this dating can be found on pp. 153–55. See also Southern, ‘Master Vacarius and the Beginning of an English Academic Tradition’. 42  The evidence for B. as Bandinus is discussed in Taliadoros, ‘The Lombard, Bandinus, and Vacarius’, p. 154. 43  Vacarius, ‘The “Tractatus De assumpto homine”’, ed. by Häring, p. 147: ‘Suo B. suus V(acarius) salutem. Post collationem de homine assumpto inter nos habitam saepe cum plerisque aliis vestigial opinionis vestrae sectantibus de re eadem tractatum habui, qui etiam rationem ipsius opinionis mihi exposuerunt praecipuam’; trans. by Taliadoros, Law and Theology in Twelfth-Century England, p. 159.

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Vacarius here situated his work within the context of ongoing discussions with B., as well as with others who were able to explain B.’s point of view. As Vacarius had it, the essence of B.’s opinion was that the second person of the Trinity assumed a soul and a body in the Incarnation but remained always unchanged by that process, thereby reducing the soul and body to accidental characteristics. Vacarius challenged this opinion with his own restatement of the assumptus homo position. He said: Concerning the assumptus homo. He is a substance subsisting from soul and flesh and a substrate to the properties of human and animal nature, but not a divine [substance]. And this [i.e. the assumptus homo] is a person, but is not properly called person when absorbed [in the incarnation] […]. And therefore God is truly and properly aliquid because He is a man.44

Vacarius’s theological terms show some technical knowledge of the debates emerging out of Paris, even if his support of the assumptus homo situated him outside of the cutting edge. Others have spent more time on the minutiae of his Christological treatise, placing it within broader traditions of canon law.45 For our purposes, however, Vacarius’s treatise offers another line of transmission of Christological argument in the period after the Sentences. Vacarius’s efforts at producing a treatise in theology demonstrated, once again, the energies and anxieties aroused by these Christological debates. From Vacarius’s vantage point, it was clear that the very dangerous habitus theory was gaining ground and needed to be confronted. Jason Taliadoros tells us that Vacarius was ‘confidant and friend’ to John of Salisbury, Thomas Becket, Roger of York, Gilbert of Foliot, Gerard Pucelle, and Theobald of Canterbury.46 That a treatise on Christology, one that clearly referred to the tendentious debates on the continent, would be produced by a man in such a circle suggests the importance of these questions far beyond the reveals of academe. 44 

Vacarius, ‘The “Tractatus De assumpto homine”’, ed. by Häring, p. 163: ‘De assumpto homine quod substantia sit ex anima et carne subsistens tam animalis quam hominis naturae proprietatibus subiecta, non autem divina, et quod homo sit persona, ipse tamen assumptus dicitur et non sipsa persona; et quod homo “Christus” et “Dominus gloriae” et “gigas geminate substantiae” duarum sint substantiarum nomina, et non “Deus”, et ideo ex duplici substantia Christus esse una persona dicitur, et non Deus, non homo ita dicitur; et quod Deus vere proprie inde est aliquid quia est homo’; Taliadoros, Law and Theology in Twelfth-Century England, p. 164. 45  This is discussed in Taliadoros, Law and Theology in Twelfth-Century England, p. 167. See also Stein, ‘The Vacarian School’, pp. 26–30. 46  Taliadoros, Law and Theology in Twelfth-Century England, p. 9.

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Christological Argumentation in the Schools after Lateran III Walter of St-Victor’s post-Lateran III work, the Quatuor labyrinthos, seems to have been the last shot in the broader debates about Lombard’s Christology. This suggests that while Christological questions remained important in the schools after 1179, they did not have the wider currency that the work of Walter or Vacarius indicated for the previous years. This is not to say that the issue of Peter Lombard’s orthodoxy was entirely laid to rest. But, the focus of criticism against him moved to his Trinitarian theology. Joachim of Fiore emerged as a strong critic of Lombard’s understanding of Trinitarian unity. He claimed that Peter Lombard’s analysis of the Trinitarian persons resulted in Lombard’s positing of a quaternity rather than a Trinity. At Lateran IV, in 1215, Joachim’s criticisms were canvassed and sternly rebuked by the council. This is the subject of the next chapter of this book, which interprets the endorsement at Lateran IV in the context of the previous fifty years or so of criticisms of Lombard. For now, however, it is enough to say that between 1180 and 1200 there seems to have been a marked decline in the type of virulent criticisms of Peter Lombard’s Christology that we had seen previously. Of course, as the cliché goes, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. There is no reason to suppose that the whispers and rumours about the Lombard’s orthodoxy went away entirely. We have glimpsed already, in a number of sources, hints at how quickly academic gossip spread around the reaches of Christendom. But it does seem that anxiety about Lombard’s orthodoxy, as expressed on the page, died down for some time. One reason for this change might be found by charting some of the internal changes in the schools in this period. As John W. Baldwin has famously shown, the schools of the final quarter of the twelfth century were dominated by Peter the Chanter and his circle.47 According to Baldwin, these schoolmen, such as Robert de Courson and Stephen Langton, as well as the Chanter himself, oriented themselves somewhat differently to scholastic inquiry than had their predecessors. They were concerned not only with the cutting edge doctrinal questions that had consumed Abelard, Gilbert and Peter Lombard but also with the implications of scholastic reasoning for a broader range of questions that pertained to moral life, sacramental theology, and canon law. These scholars were sensitive to the doctrinal pitfalls 47 

John W. Baldwin has published extensively on Peter the Chanter, his influence upon his disciples, and their impact both within the schools, and outside. See Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants; Baldwin, ‘Paris et Rome en 1215’; Baldwin, ‘The Intellectual Preparation for the Canon of 1215’; and Baldwin, ‘Master Stephen Langton’.

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that had bedevilled their predecessors, as well as being concerned with the implications and applications of the practice of academic theology. They wanted to work out what it might mean to apply principles of dialectical reasoning to other spheres of Christian life, such as moral decisions and sacramental practices. As we have seen, scholars such as Peter Comestor and Peter of Poitiers declared themselves proud Lombardians and understood their duty to be the transmission of his ideas. And, as they understood Lombard to be a proponent of the habitus theory, this is what they propounded. This was, of course, grist to the mill of critics of the schools. The charges of Christological nihilism that emerged implied an emptiness at the heart of the theological enterprise. The idea that Peter Lombard adhered to the notion of the essential nothingness of Christ’s humanity, however erroneous, functioned as a profound indictment of the failure of academic theology in the minds of the critics of the schools. But those that followed Peter Comestor and Peter of Poitiers provided no such reading of Peter Lombard, and thus added little fuel to that particular fire. Rather, Peter the Chanter and his circle respected the foundational achievements of Lombard and used his Sentences with respect and erudition. But they did not advocate for it, as such. They used it as the basis of theological endeavours that extended the reach of academic theology into the pastoral, moral and political realms. As a measure of the different approach to theology heralded by Peter the Chanter, his gloss on Exodus 19. 24 ought to be compared with that of Peter Comestor, which we saw earlier. In that section of Exodus, God had commanded Moses to draw strict boundaries around Mount Sinai, forbidding access to the sacred site. God had warned Moses that transgressors of the boundaries would be severely punished. Peter Comestor had understood the boundaries to constitute the ends of human knowledges. He understood that they ought not be transgressed but thought that scholars should try to apprehend and understand the scale and scope of those boundaries, so that they could understand as much as was humanly possible. Consequently, he understood the role of Peter Lombard as the thinker who produced easier ingress towards those boundaries. Comestor said: ‘Master [Peter Lombard], seeing that the boundaries had now grown up into huge trees, in order to prepare an easier ingress for us, as if brushing aside some little branches on the way, collected this brief work from many sources’.48 Peter Comestor drew a sharp line in the sand between trans48 

Peter Comestor, ‘Prologue’, ed. by Martin, p. 61: ‘Propter hec tria genera hominum. Magister videns terminos illos iam in magnas arbores excrevisse, ut faciliorem ac […] incessum nobis preparet, quasi quosdam ramusculos in via prosternens, hoc breve opus de multis collegit.’ Spatz, ‘Approaches and Attitudes to a New Theology Textbook’, p. 35.

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gressors of the boundaries and those who respectfully approached them. The transgressors were heretics and blasphemers and deserved the consequences of their transgress. Those who humbly encountered the boundaries, however, were scholars who were aided in their efforts by Peter Lombard. Peter the Chanter, however, writing in the 1190s, understood the biblical text slightly differently.49 He wrote that Moses placed the boundaries around the mountain, in case a beast should penetrate the mountain and be stoned. ‘Moses’ is God; the ‘Mountain’ is sacred scripture and, the ‘beast’ is whoever crudely questions scripture and touches its hidden depths through useless, superfluous and arrogant inquiry into it.50

The Chanter was less keen to distinguish between scholarly and heretical endeavours than Peter Comestor. He, rather, characterized all those who penetrate the boundaries as beasts, who engage in inutilem et superfluam et temerariam inquisitionem. Peter the Chanter weighed in against excessively querulous theologians, since ‘there are indeed futile and useless questions in theological dispute, that are concerned neither with faith nor morals; they should be thoroughly banished from the holy consistory’.51 The line that Peter the Chanter wanted to draw was between those questions which pertained to faith and morals, and those which were not useful for the lives of the faithful. When Peter the Chanter turned to Christology, he was interested predominantly in the soteriological implications of the debate. That is, he approached the issue of Christ’s humanity within the frame of Christ’s saving work. He understood that, within the frame of Christian orthodoxy, Christ needed to be understood to be fully human and fully divine in order to be able to make adequate reparations for human sinfulness. To question, therefore, the integrity of Christ’s humanity was to question the possibility of Christ as saviour. As he said in his Verbum abbreviatum: ‘The heretics contradict his sacraments by 49 

The issues around dating the Verbum abbreviatum are discussed in Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, p. 15. 50  Peter the Chanter, Verbum abbreviatum, ed. by Boutry, 1. 4, p. 29: ‘Item, Moyses posuit terminus circa montem, ne bestia tangeret montem et lapidaretur. “Moyses”, Deus; “mons”, sacra Scriptura; “bestia”, qui libet bestialiter illam intelligens et per inutilem et superfluam et temerariam inquisitionem illius celandam profunditatem tangens.’ For John W. Baldwin’s review of this edition, see Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 57 (2006), 78–86. 51  Peter the Chanter, Verbum abbreviatum, ed. by Boutry, 1. 3, p. 15: ‘In disputatione uero theologica quedam sunt questiones futiles et inutiles, que scilicet nec de fide nec de moribus sunt, et ille penitus a consistorio sacro sunt eliminande’.

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denigrating and blaspheming him. The worst disputers contradict Christ when they think about his humanity and other sacraments in different and adverse ways, by asserting that he is not something, or denying that he is something.’52 Here, Peter the Chanter put the heretics and the disputers in the same category as contradicting Christ. The heretics, who blaspheme against Christ, challenge the saving work of the sacraments. The querulous scholars undermine Christ when they construe him and his sacraments in contradictory ways, particularly when they assert the terms of Christological debates inspired by Lombard. Peter the Chanter was clearly alluding to the long history of Christological arguments in his statement ‘by asserting that he is not something’, which referred to arguments about whether or not Christ’s humanity could be said to be an aliquid. The Chanter’s point was that such conversations result in meaninglessness, and undermine crucial faith in the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation. Of the Chanter’s circle, Stephen Langton’s commentary, dated as emerging between 1196 and 1206/7, 53 offers the best insight into the shift in Christological opinions that occurred within their increasingly pastoral framework.54 Riccardo Quinto has characterized the theological project of this commentary thus: It presents itself as a technique of clarifying and elaborating upon a complex of truths already given, expressed in the Bible and in the dogmatic propositions accepted by the tradition. The task of the theologian is to show that this traditional corpus of texts, although originating in different periods and linguistic contexts, transmits a coherent message; in other words, that they do not contain irresolvable contradictions.55

As Quinto freely admits, this was not a particularly innovative approach in that Abelard prefaced his own Sic et non with a similar statement of ambition. Where Langton departed from his predecessors, however, was in his efforts to formalize theological discourse in a manner that prioritized the guarantee52 

Peter the Chanter, Verbum abbreviatum, ed. by Boutry, 1. 4, pp. 23–24: ‘Contradicunt heretici sacramenta ipsius depravando et ipsum etiam blasphemando. Contradicunt Christo pessimi disputores, cum de humanitate eius et de aliis sacramentis diversi diversa et adversa sentiant, asserendo eum aliquid quod non est, uel negando eum aliquid quod est.’ 53  Quinto, ‘Stephen Langton’, p. 49. 54  On Stephen Langton and Peter Lombard, see Quinto, ‘Stephen Langton’. See also Quinto, Doctor Nominatissimus, and Quinto, ‘Stefano Langton e la teologia dei maestri scolari di Parigi’. 55  Quinto, ‘Stephen Langton’, p. 52.

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ing of a coherent Trinitarian theology. 56 Abelard, Lombard, and others had attempted to apply methods of dialectical analysis to doctrinal issues in an often open-ended way, and sometimes, as we have seen, this resulted in problematic doctrinal error. Langton, by contrast, produced a notion of theological method which aimed primarily at explaining already comprehended doctrinal certainties. In so doing, he was interested less in the production of novelty for its own sake and more concerned with the creation of a set of workable theological rules deduced from the firmament of orthodoxy. When it came to Christology, then, Stephen Langton was not keen to provoke controversy and reprise problematic arguments. In his estimation, however, Lombard’s formulation was problematic, ‘because the Master did not say that Christ, in as much as he was a man, was something’.57 Langton has comparatively little to say about Lombard’s actual argumentation as expressed in the Sentences. Instead, he criticized Lombard on the basis of Pope Alexander III’s decretal of 1170, which had condemned ‘that vicious doctrine of Peter, erstwhile bishop of Paris, in which it is said that Christ, insofar as he is man is not something [non est aliquid]’.58 Langton’s priority in discussing Christology was to support the statement of orthodoxy that emerged from Alexander’s letter. As Stephen understood it, ‘this opinion was relegated through the decretal of Alexander, which he taught, that Christ, insofar as he is man, is said to be something’.59 Thus, his exposition upon Lombard’s Christology, then, was not concerned with the minutiae of the text of the Sentences. Rather, Langton was content to receive the condemnation offered by the Pope in 1170 as proof of Lombard’s position. It was this that Langton went on to refute. Langton’s quarrel was not with the Lombard of the Sentences but with the Lombard of the decretal. This was consistent with his overall theological approach, his attempt to formalize a set of theological principles that would validate and confirm existing doctrine. His starting point was not the knotty argumentation of the Sentences itself. It was, rather, the alleged error that had been extracted from its pages. As Lauge Olaf Nielsen writes: ‘Christ’s human nature 56 

See Valente, ‘Iustus et misericors’. See also Valente, Logique et théologie. Langton, Der Sentenzenkommentar, ed. by Landgraf, p. 127: ‘Magister aliter dicit, quia non dicit, quod fuit aliquid secundum quod homo’, quoted in Quinto, ‘Stephen Langton’, p. 70. 58  Alexander III, Epistola dccxliv Willelmo, col. 685B: ‘Pravae doctrinae Petri quondam Parisiensis episcopi, qua dicitur quod Christus, secundum quod est homo, non est aliquid’. 59  Nielsen and Ebbesen, ‘Texts Illustrating the Debate about Christology’, p. 229: ‘Haec opinion relegata est per decretalem Alexandri, quae praecipit, quod Christus dicatur aliquid secundum quod homo’. See also Nielsen, ‘Logic and the Hypostatic Union’. 57 

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as a formal principle is given no part to play in Langton’s exposition’. Langton was not concerned with formal principles if they resulted in the violation of doctrinal truths.60 Lombard’s Christology in the Sentences had depended upon the utilization of certain formal principles that could not be held to be actual things, to have an aliquid. In that sense it was speculative, and necessarily openended, as Lombard admitted. Langton, however, was concerned to produce orthodox theological formula that would then leave the theologian free to respond to the emerging pastoral problems of a growing church.

Conclusion The reduction in Christological tensions in the period after 1179 can be ascribed, at least partially, to a change in the type of theology gaining a foothold in the schools of Paris at this time. The concern of the Chanter and Langton, for example, to build theological systems premised on sacramental and moral principles moved the intellectual focus of the schools away from avant garde theological questions, to questions that related to the pastoral lives of Christians. As we have seen, Peter the Chanter cautioned against the discussion of what he called ‘vain and useless questions’. Theology as bravura intellectual performance, as an experience of the limits of human logic, does not seem to have interested this generation of schoolmen. The prohibition on untying the ‘ligature of mystery’, it would seem, ought still to be enforced. This contrasts sharply with the wide-eyed optimism expressed in Peter Comestor’s prologue. Peter the Devourer, so named due to his love of devouring texts, suggested a new era of scholarship as a result of Lombard’s work. He spoke of Lombard as the great landscaper, clearing access to the auctoritates of the past. Comestor’s prologue suggested a buoyant orientation to his historical present. Glossing Exodus 19. 24, Comestor argued that Lombard’s streamlining efforts, his clearing of ingress to termini that marked the limitations of human knowledge, would enable more men to approach the boundaries. The innovations of Peter Lombard opened a way to knowledge by reducing the overgrown tradition. The implication was that superfluity had been reduced, that Lombard had made an appropriate and modern way for the men of his generation to encounter the boundaries set down by the Lord.

60 

Nielsen, ‘Logic and the Hypostatic Union’, p. 271, this quotation was pointed out in Quinto, ‘Stephen Langton’, p. 70 n. 138.

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The Chanter responded to the same biblical reference by emphasizing the reality of the boundaries, the severe sanctions that would result in their penetration. Peter Comestor’s prologue was energized by the possibility of access, by the sense of a clearway to the boundaries. He expressed belief that contemplation of the boundaries would aid and fortify the pilgrim making the journey; the Chanter’s explanation does something quite different with the termini placed around the mountain by Moses. They are an absolute line, a point of no return, and can only be apprehended with caution and at a safe distance. The comparison between these two interpretations enables a grasp of a shift that had occurred in Parisian theology between 1160 and 1190. For some of the earlier generation, the innovations of Lombard promised a bold and promising future, engendered by clearer access to the boundaries of human knowledge of the divine. The later generation, that of the Chanter and his circle, receded from the boundaries, evidently anxious about the threat of sanction that would accompany a trespass upon them. The reasons for this strategic retreat are inevitably multifaceted. It seems likely, nonetheless, that the volatilities of the Christological conversations described in this chapter may have produced some caution. As we have seen, a number of Lombardian scholars produced increasingly truncated readings of his Christology between 1160 and 1180. The various accounts of schoolmen and critics alike often point to fervent and international conversations about Christological issues. Vacarius wrote from England about the radical opinions of which he had heard. Gerhoh of Reichersberg petitioned Pope Alexander all the way from Germany. The abbreviators published shortened versions of the Sentences that omitted large, and relevant, sections on Christology. Peter Comestor and Peter of Poitiers were both accused by Walter of St-Victor, not without cause, of teaching the habitus theory. And since both men were declared disciples of Lombard, it was all too easy for the polemicist Walter to link all three Peters in a web of Christological nihilism. It is no wonder that the next generation of schoolmen expressed caution in their questioning and evinced a desire to put some limitation on the theological enterprise. The Christological speculation that preceded them invited unwanted surveillance upon the schools and gave rise to venomous and scathing criticism of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. But, as we shall see, in the next chapter, it is partly the work of the Chanter’s circle that enables a profound rehabilitation of Peter Lombard’s reputation in the early thirteenth century.

Chapter 5

Lateran IV and Peter Lombard

A

t the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which may be reckoned one of the most important councils of the Middle Ages, the theology of Peter Lombard received its strongest endorsement to date from the most important of quarters. After refuting allegations made against Lombard’s theology by Joachim of Fiore, the council made a declaration: We, however, with the approval of this sacred and universal council, believe and confess with Peter Lombard that there exists a certain one supreme reality (res), incomprehensible and ineffable, which truly is the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit, the three persons together and each one of them separately. 1

In a remarkable pun, the council confessed its Trinitarian theology cum petro. The cum petro conflated Peter Lombard with the first apostle Peter. We know that the council was referring to Peter Lombard because they were refuting Joachim’s accusations against him and used a Trinitarian formula that quoted the Sentences. Yet the council could have confessed cum petro lombardo or cum petro magistro. Instead it confessed cum petro, provocatively linking the two Peters in the minds of those who heard or read the canons of Lateran IV.2 1 

Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. by Alberigo and others, pp. 230–71, especially, pp. 231–32: ‘Nos autem sacro et universali concilio approbante credimus et confitemur cum Petro quod una quaedam summa res est incomprehensibilis quidem et ineffabilis quae veraciter est pater et filius et spiritus sanctus tres simul personae ac sigillatim quaelibet earundem’; reprinted with an English translation in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 232. 2  On the organization and content of Lateran IV see Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg.

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The endorsement of Lombard was striking and emphatic. This occurred in spite of the preceding fifty years or so of controversy about the orthodoxy of his ideas, papal script from Alexander III in 1170 that had referred to the Christology of Peter Lombard as a vicious doctrine, a prava doctrina, and a sustained attack on his Trinitarian theology by the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore. Peter Lombard emerged as the voice of orthodoxy. The papacy of Innocent III, who presided over Lateran IV, implied that this Peter might be a rock on which a new version of the Church could be built. This endorsement of Lombard was part of an event that was large in stature and prestige. This Council was a watershed event for the Church. Con­ temporary chroniclers record a raft of grand processions, powerful liturgies, and crowds so heaving that bishops were left crushed and battered.3 Scores of ecclesiastical and royal luminaries attended this meeting from across Christendom. Led by the activist pope Innocent, the council propagated a strident statement of papal sovereignty. Previous councils of the twelfth century had been timorous by comparison. The previous three Lateran councils, which had all taken place in the twelfth century, had issued defensive pronouncements that pertained to very particular issues. These councils functioned as courts of arbitration, responding to certain problems as they arose. Lateran IV, by contrast, had pretensions to the production of bold and universal legislation. The papacy declared itself to have sovereign authority over all Christendom. As the organ of salvation, the Church declared, it ought to have the final, necessary word on the boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy. A measure of the shift from defence to offence is evident in a comparison between the opening statements of Lateran II and that of Lateran IV. The canons of Lateran II in 1139 began with a very specific claim: ‘We establish that if anyone has been ordained by simony, he shall lose the office he obtained illicitly’.4 Lateran II was concerned to address at the onset this very particular controversy bedevilling the Church at the time, that of the corruption of simony. Lateran IV begins quite otherwise: ‘We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only one true God, eternal and immeasurable, almighty, For a general summary of the proceedings in English, see Moore, Pope Innocent III, particularly pp. 228–52. Tillmann, Papst Innocenz III, has vivid detail about the Council, and Innocent’s role within it. 3  Baldwin, ‘Paris et Rome en 1215’. Also Kuttner and Garcia, ‘A New Eyewitness Account of the Fourth Lateran Council’. 4  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 197: ‘Statuimus ut, si quis simoniace ordinatus, fuerit, ab officio omnino cadat quod illicite usurpavit’.

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unchangeable, incomprehensible and ineffable. Father, Son and holy Spirit, three persons but one absolutely simple essence, substance or nature’.5 This was a credo, a positive statement of the Church as the speaker of orthodoxy in the grandest of terms. The canons of the later council were ambitious in their regulatory scope. A new crusade was ordered, the necessity of confession once a year was mandated, the technical term ‘transubstantiation’ was invoked for the first time, the practice of ordeals was regulated, and Jews and Muslims were ordered to wear garments that defined their religious otherness so that intermixing might be avoided. Read together, these canons evinced a desire for Christian purity as demarcated by the papacy. Strict borders were drawn, in precise language, as to the boundaries of orthodox practice and belief. As the first canon stated, ‘there is indeed one universal church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved’.6 These canons promulgated the reaches of ecclesia, from earthly minutiae to eternal life in heaven. The Church was universal and rigidly stratified in the same instance. It offered the liberation of eternal salvation but within the strictest of temporal, geographical, and procedural borders. The Church declared itself utterly sovereign in these canons in that it had the ultimate power over life and death, good and evil. All other temporal powers must be, by inference, subordinate to this extraordinary authority, guaranteed by the divine. As such, how are we to explain Peter Lombard’s place in this grand legislation of papal sovereignty? How do his ideas, and the endorsement of his person as orthodox, fit into the vision expressed at Lateran IV? Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Walter of St-Victor, and Peter Comestor, among others, had put the figure of Peter Lombard to many different sorts of work in their writings during the preceding century. To what sort of work was Peter Lombard being put at Lateran IV? And how does the Peter Lombard of Lateran IV relate to the Peter Lombard that we have encountered in the rest of this book? What, if any, bearing does the preceding fifty years of controversy and utilization have upon this endorsement? And what finally, does the use of Peter Lombard tell us about the relationship between emerging scholasticism and the papacy in the early thirteenth century? What is the relationship between academic theology 5 

Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 230: ‘Firmiter credimus et simpliciter confitemur, quod unus solus est verus Deus, aeternus et immensus, omnipotens, incommutabilis, incomprehensibilis et ineffabilis, Pater et Filius et Spiritus sanctus, tres quidem personae sed una esentia, substantia seu natura simplex omnino’. 6  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 230: ‘Una uero est fidelium universalis ecclesia, extra quam nullus omnino salvatur’.

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and papal governance under Innocent III? In order to answer these questions, a number of historical contexts need to be explored. It will be necessary to consider the accusations of heresy made against Lombard by Joachim of Fiore in order to understand one of the reasons that the papacy may have wanted to support Lombard. Crucial will be further explanation of the theological language of Lateran IV in order to explore exactly what aspects of Lombardian theology were being utilized and how, in particular, Lombardian theology at Lateran IV seemed to work with the internal logic of the remaining canons of the council. Further, we need to look behind the canons of Lateran IV to discover how they were formulated, and by whom. This contextual unpacking of the events in Rome in 1215 will enable a better explanation of the meaning of the endorsement of Peter Lombard at Lateran IV, and uncovering this meaning will open further vistas on the relationship between the ideas of the schools and the enaction of real authority in this period.

Joachim of Fiore’s Argument with Peter Lombard As we have seen, the first canon of Lateran IV began: ‘We firmly believe and simply confess, that there is one only true God, eternal, without measure, omnipotent, unchangeable, incomprehensible and ineffable, the Father, and the Son and Holy Spirit’.7 It went on to define ‘this holy Trinity, which is undivided according to its common essence but distinct according to the properties of its persons’.8 Christ’s hypostasis was ‘composed of a rational soul and human flesh, one person in two natures’ whose ‘body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in substance, by God’s power, into his body and blood’.9 All this in the first canon: statements of Trinitarian, Christological, and Eucharistic orthodoxy. This credo constituted, as I have said, a strong begin7 

Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 230: ‘Firmiter credimus et simpliciter confitemur, quod unus solus est verus Deus, aeternus et immensus, omnipotens, incommutabilis, incomprehensibilis et ineffabilis, Pater et Filius et Spiritus sanctus, tres quidem personae sed una esentia, substantia seu natura simplex omnino’. 8  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 230: ‘Haec sancta Trinitas secundum commune essentiam individua et sucundum personale proprietates discreta’. 9  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 230: ‘Verus homo factus, ex anima rationali et humana carne composites, una in duabus naturis persona […] cuius corpus et sanguis in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini, veraciter continentur, transubstantiates pane in corpus et vino in sanguine potestate divina’.

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ning to a bold piece of papal legislation. This canon was issued in a confident voice, appropriate to the inauguration of the pieces of legislation to follow. Canon 2 moved straight into the denunciation of Joachim of Fiore and the support of Lombard. It read: We therefore condemn and reprove that small book or treatise which abbot Joachim published against master Peter Lombard concerning the unity or essence of the Trinity, in which he calls Peter Lombard a heretic and a madman because he said in his Sentences: ‘For there is one certain supreme reality (res) which is the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit, and it neither begets nor is begotten, nor does it proceed’. He asserts from this that Peter Lombard ascribes to God not so much a Trinity as a quaternity, that is to say three persons and a common essence, as if this were a fourth. Abbot Joachim clearly protests that there does not exist any reality (res) which is the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit — neither an essence nor a substance nor a nature — although he concedes that the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit are one essence, one substance, and one nature.10

Canon 2 went on to quote further from Joachim’s little book on Peter Lombard, which is unfortunately no longer extant, before confessing, in opposition to Joachim: We, however, with the approval of this sacred and universal Council, believe and confess with Peter that there exists a certain supreme reality (res), incomprehensible and ineffable, which truly is the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit, the three persons together and each one of them separately. Therefore in God there is only a Trinity, not a quaternity, since each of the three persons is that reality — that is to say substance, essence or divine nature — which alone is the principle of all things, besides which no other principle can be found.11 10  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 231–32. I have slightly modified Tanner’s translation, replacing ‘a certain supreme reality’ with ‘one certain supreme reality’: ‘Damnamus ergo et reprobamus libellum sive tractatum quem abbas Ioachim edidit contra magistrum Petrum Lombardum de unitate seu essentia trinitatis appellans ipsum haereticum et insanum pro eo quod in suis dixit sententiis quoniam quaedam summa res est pater et filius et spiritus sanctus et illa non est generans neque genita nec procedens unde asserit quod ille non tam trinitatem quam quaternitatem adstruebat in deo videlicet tres personas et illam communem essentiam quasi quartam manifeste protestans quod nulla res est quae sit pater et filius et spiritus sanctus nec est essentia nec substantia nec natura quamvis concedat quod pater et filius et spiritus sanctus sunt una essentia una substantia una que natura’. 11  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 232, in the Tanner translation, cum Petro is rendered as ‘with Peter Lombard’: ‘Nos autem sacro et universali concilio approbante credimus et confitemur cum Petro quod una quaedam summa res est incomprehensibilis quidem et ineffabilis quae veraciter est pater et filius et spiritus sanctus tres simul personae ac sigil-

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Joachim’s opposition to Lombard, according to the records of the Council at least, rested in his disquiet about Peter Lombard’s treatment of the Trinity in the first book of the Sentences. As we saw in Chapter 2 of this book, Peter Lombard’s Trinitarian theology made a crucial departure from Augustine, in spite of his avowed Augustinianism. Joachim’s criticism of Lombard referred to that point of theology in particular. In the Sentences, Lombard had quoted Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana directly: The things therefore which are to be enjoyed, the Father, and Son and Holy Spirit, and the same Trinity, are one certain supreme reality, common to all who enjoy it, if indeed it is a thing, and not the cause of all things, if indeed it is the cause.12

Augustine here had asserted that each of the Trinitarian persons was ‘a certain supreme reality’ (una quaedam summa res). The three persons of the Trinity, which were to be enjoyed, were understood to be a collective, yet singular, res of the highest order. Yet when Peter Lombard turned to the vexed question of the relationship between this exalted res and the persons of the Trinity, he made a distinction that would have been foreign to Augustine. He said that in the same way it is not to be asserted that the divine essence generated the Son because, since the Son is the divine essence, the Son would already be the thing from which he is generated; and so the same thing would generate itself. And so also we say that the divine essence did not generate an essence. Since the divine essence is a one and supreme certain reality, if the divine essence generated an essence, then the same thing generated itself, which is not at all possible. But the Father alone begot the Son, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.13

latim quaelibet earundem et ideo in deo trinitas est solummodo non quaternitas quia quaelibet trium personarum est illa res videlicet substantia essentia sive natura divina quae sola est universorum principium praeter quod aliud inveniri non potest’. 12  Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, ed. by Martin, i. 5: ‘Res igitur, quibus fruendum est, pater et filius et spiritus sanctus eademque trinitas, una quaedam summa res communisque omnibus fruentibus ea, si tamen res et non rerum omnium causa, si tamen et causa’. 13  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, p. 82: ‘Hic etiam non est dicendum quod divina essentia genuit Filium : quia cum Filius sit divina essentia, iam esset Filius res a qua generatur ; et ita eadem res se ipsam generaret. — Ita etiam dicimus quod essentia diuina non genuit essentiam: Cum enim una et summa quaedam res sit diuina essentia, si diuina essentia essentiam genuit, eadem res se ipsam genuit, quod omnino esse non potest; sed Pater solus genuit Filium, et a Patre et Filio procedit Spiritus Sanctus.’ Peter Lombard, The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. by Silano, p. 31.

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Here, Peter Lombard had emphasized the importance of maintaining a conceptual separation between the persons and the una quaedam summa res. While the persons were in identity with the una quaedam summa res spiritually, he maintained that they ought to be kept separate conceptually in order to avoid error, in this case relating to issues of generation.14 In confessing cum petro, then, Lateran  IV was endorsing a piece of Lombardian theological novelty which had fallen foul of Joachim. Joachim’s reading of Peter Lombard had obviously been informed and perceptive. Joachim had highlighted one of Lombard’s most significant, and yet most subtle, departures from Augustinian orthodoxy. What had perturbed Joachim was that the naming of the una quaedam summa res threatened to propose a quaternity and reduced the absolute individuation of the Trinitarian persons. Importantly, Joachim was not the first critic to call attention to the controversial implications of Peter Lombard’s understanding of the Trinity. In his De trinitate, written in the 1160s, Richard of St-Victor had criticized contemporary strains in Trinitarian theology, identifying the same problems as those that would be pointed out by Joachim in subsequent years. 15 In particular, he launched a polemic against those who argued that divine substance could not generate the Son. Although he did not name Lombard personally, given that he had begun his section on the Trinity by making this distinction, we can only assume that Richard had Lombard in his sights. Richard wrote: Without a doubt, the person of the Father is nothing other than the Unbegotten substance, and the person of the Son is nothing other than the begotten substance. But many rise up nowadays who do not dare say this, or rather, what is even more dangerous, who, contrary to the authority of the holy fathers and so many witnesses of the tradition of the fathers, have the audacity to deny and attempt to refute on all accounts those formulations. In no way do they concede that substance begets substance, or wisdom begets wisdom … “I do not comprehend this,” you say, “I do not understand!” But what you cannot understand through rational comprehension you can believe through the devotion of the faith.16 14 

For an extended discussion of this section of Lateran IV, see Robb, ‘The Fourth Lateran Council’s Definition of Trinitarian Orthodoxy’. 15  On Richard of St-Victor, see Coulter, Per visibilia ad invisibilia. 16  Richard of St-Victor, De trinitate, ed. by Ribaillier, bk vi, chap. 22, pp. 259–60: ‘Procul dubio nichil aliud est Patris persona quam substantia ingenita, nichil aliud Filii persona quam substantia genita. Sed multi temporibus nostris surrexere qui non audent hoc dicere, quin potius, quod multo periculosius est, contra sanctorum Patrum auctoritatem et tot attestationes paternarum traditionum audent negare et modis omnibus conantur refellere. Nullo modo concedunt quod sustantia gignat substantiam, vel sapientia sapientiam […]. “Non capio”, inquis,

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Richard’s strong words, written in the 1160s, demonstrate that the tradition of criticizing Lombard’s Trinitarian theology did not begin with Joachim. In fact, given that a number of allusions to Richard’s writing have been identified in the first part of Joachim’s Psalterium, it is appropriate to assume that Joachim’s criticism of Peter Lombard’s theology may have been influenced by the ideas of Richard.17 Richard’s eminence made the endorsement of Lombard in 1215 all the more remarkable. The council was confessing Catholic faith not merely against Joachim but within a longer standing tradition of orthodoxy. There is only one passage in Joachim’s extant writings where he directly confronted Lombard’s legacy. In his De vita sancti Benedicti, written in 1186, Joachim contrasted the proper reading of scripture in monastic liturgy with the teachings offered in the ‘impiety’ of Sabellius, the ‘depravity’ of Arius, and ‘the blasphemy of Peter, who by dividing the unity from the Trinity introduced quaternity’.18 This statement, made only seven or so years after Lateran III, clearly registered Peter Lombard as working within a tradition of heresy. This indicates that to some degree, and in some quarters, the allegations flung at Lombard had stuck. What is telling, however, was that Joachim was not concerned with issues of Christology, as previous critics had been. Rather, following in the tradition of Richard of St-Victor, it was the problem of the Trinity that worried Joachim. According to the confession at Lateran IV, Joachim argued that the multiplicity of the Trinity was like that of any collectivity. The three persons were multiple and yet one in the same way as many people were said to be one people: Christ’s faithful are not one in the sense of a single reality which is common to all. They are one only in this sense, that they form one church through the unity of the catholic faith, and finally one kingdom through a union of indissoluble charity.19 “non intelligo!” Sed quod per intelligentiam capere non potes, per fidei devotionem credere potes’; translated from Richard of St-Victor, De trinitate, trans. by Evans, pp. 345–46. 17  Mews and Monagle, ‘Peter Lombard, Joachim of Fiore and the Fourth Lateran Council’, pp. 116–17. 18  Joachim of Fiore, Tractatus in expositionem vite et regule beati Benedicti, ed. by Patschovsky, 3. 2, p. 208: ‘Abolita primo impietate Sabelli, qui personas negavit, secundo pravitate Arrii, qui unitatem scidit, tertio blasphemia Petri, qui unitatem a Trinitate dividens quaternitatem inducit’. 19  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 231: ‘Non enim, ut ait, fideles Christi sunt unum, id est una quaedam res quae communis sit omnibus, hic modo sunt unum, id est una ecclesia propter catholicae fidei unitatem et tandem unum regnum propter unionem indissolubilis caritatis’.

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Joachim’s position, as reported by the council, was entirely consistent with other pronouncements he had made on Trinitarian orthodoxy. The abbot of Fiore had made sustained criticism of any attempt to separate the divine essence from the three persons throughout his career.20 At the outset of his Psalterium decem chordarum, Joachim asserted that the three divine persons shared fully in the divine substance and rejected the ‘perfidy’ of those who introduced a quaternity into God.21 Marjorie Reeves said of his Trinitarian arguments that he would not, however, establish the Unity by any method which suggested an en­ tity separate from the action of the Three persons, and so he sought to walk a different knife-edge, setting forth through a variety of symbols and figurae his concept, not so much of a Three-in-One, as of a Three-are-One’.22

Joachim’s historical vision was dependent on the drawing of very clear lines between the Trinitarian persons, as each were active agents in human history. Monk and exegete, he proposed a vision of history that stressed the literal reliability of the Old and New Testaments. According to Joachim, the Old and New Testaments provided together a series of exacting concordances that, when analysed properly, would yield information about the present third age. That is, the figural relations between the Old and the New Testaments would be manifest again in the present. The age of the Hebrew Bible was that of the Father. The age of the Gospels was that of the Son. The present age, therefore, was that of the Spirit. The patterns common to the ages of the Father and the Son would, surely, emerge in the age of the Spirit. The task of the exegete was to chart the concordances between the Old and New Testaments in order to be 20 

Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 30–31. Since the pioneering work of Marjorie Reeves, the idiosyncracies of Joachim’s exegesis have been given fuller coherence and explication by a number of scholars. Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages, remains a seminal text in Joachimism. See also Daniel, ‘Joachim of Fiore’, McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot. There are a number of interesting articles in Storia e messagio in Gioacchino da Fiore, ed. by Crocco. 21  Joachim of Fiore, Psalterium decem chordarum, ed. by Selge, bk i, dist. 1, p. 20: ‘Sed nec ut tres oliuas que unius sunt nature, sed tamen corporum proprietate disiuncte, neque ut tres ramos uni radici infixos; ut substantiam radicem et tres ramos ipostases arbitreris iuxta aliquorum perfidiam’. 22  Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages, p. 32. In this work Reeves has a chapter dedicated to the events of Lateran IV, called ‘The Condemnation of 1215’, pp. 28–36. There are a few other treatments of Joachim’s doctrine of the Trinity. See, in particular, Di Napoli, ‘La teologia trinitaria di Gioacchino da Fiore’. See also Di Napoli, ‘Gioacchino da Fiore e Pietro Lombardo’.

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prepared for their inevitable manifestation in the age of the Spirit. Joachim’s theology posited the Trinitarian persons as historical actors, overseeing and guiding their respective ages and coming to full expression of their individuality in the unfolding of temporality. Joachim usually explained his notion of the literal concordance in human history between events in each dispensation through diagrams that he called his figurae.23 In these diagrams he mapped discrete events from biblical history to demonstrable patterns, all overseen by and united vertically with God. In that way, he construed the relationship between multiplicity and oneness, between diversity and unity. God was the overarching unity through which all historical diversity came into being; He was the guiding force that structured the correlations that took place in the unfolding of time. He revealed himself this way through the historical work of the Trinity. Each Trinitarian person constructed His age to the needs of that particular dispensation. God was the master planner in this scheme, the sum of all the difference in the world. Joachim continuously expressed this visually through timelines depicting lateral progress through history, with the different events all connected to each other in concordance through the shared oversight of God. His view of the Trinity was that it could best be understood as a historical operation of revelation in stages, guaranteed by the totality and indivisibility of God’s being. This is to say that an utter differentiation between Trinitarian persons, then, was crucial to Joachim’s understanding of their salvific work in human history. In very many ways, the conflict presented at Lateran IV was a reprise of those that we have seen before in relation to the schools. In one corner, there was Lombard. In the language of Lateran IV, his approach was characterized as a conceptual one. That is, the council endorsed his Trinitarian theology in as much as it posited a linguistic formula for understanding the Trinitarian mystery in human terms. The council says of the una quaedam summa res that it constutes a name for that ‘which alone is the principle of all things, besides which no other principle can be found’. The una quaedam summa res was something of a limit concept, in that it enabled the boundaries of human knowledge to be acknowledged and respected. At the same time, it insisted on the possibility that the principle ‘beside which no other principle can be found’ could be named and defined. That is, Lombard’s approach was held, at Lateran IV, to be notional. His method was understood to be productive of theological 23 

See Reeves and Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore. This is the most complete introduction to the visual mode of Joachim’s thought.

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categories that were capacious enough to accommodate doctrinal mystery yet pragmatic enough to constitute ‘real’ knowledge of the divine. If we are thinking about the work to which the figure Peter Lombard was put at Lateran IV, then this was it. He was constructed as a thinker who enabled the possibility of orthodoxy expressed notionally, who produced useful and categorical names for the limit concepts in the Christian Theology. In the other corner was the figure of Joachim, whose ideas would become increasingly influential over the course of the thirteenth century. Joachim was less interested in the Trinity as a concept that could be interrogated than as an active historical force that generated the shape of human history. His approach to Trinitarian theology was less forensic than worshipful and inspired. He did not see the paradox of the three-in-one as an intellectual problem to be solved. Rather, he approached it through the imagination. He used figurae, metaphor, and historical chronology to engage with the multiple members of the Trinity. To do otherwise would be to compromise the awe and faith owed to God. In this, he might be understood to echo the approach of those critics of the schools who went before him, such as Bernard and Gerhoh. Both of them, as we have seen, maintained that the approach of the schools to doctrine resulted in irreverence. They feared that logical inquiry into the Trinity or Christology ran the risk of profaning the sacred, that the application of human categories upon the Divine would contaminate its remote and awesome otherness in the eyes of the faithful. Just like Bernard and Gerhoh, Joachim was a powerful and popular figure able to generate passionate responses to his preaching and visionary activities. The counterpoint of Lombard and Joachim at Lateran IV did indeed reprise a number of the dynamics that had characterized the schools and their critics for the past century. We have then, to push the metaphor further: two heavyweights being juxtaposed at Lateran IV. Lombard was constructed as the emblem of an approach to theology that privileged the notional over the analogical, the conceptual over the figurative. Joachim was presented as a metaphorical thinker, primarily interested in the mystical apprehension of divine truths. Yet, as we have seen, Joachim’s criticisms of Lombard resided in a subtle understanding of Lombardian theology. His criticism of Peter Lombard’s Trinitarian theology was focused on a part of the Sentences where Peter Lombard had made a small but significant move away from Augustine. And it is that move, Lombard’s assertion of the una quaedam summa res, which was endorsed at Lateran IV. On first reading, the second canon of Lateran IV might seem like a hackneyed juxtaposition between the monastery and the school, between mysticism and reason. And, in the broadest of brushstrokes, that could be said to be true.

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Looking closer, as we have done, however, reveals the negotiation of a very nuanced argument about theology in the records of the council. And the outcome was indisputably in favour of Peter Lombard’s position. What we have seen at Lateran IV was a profound discussion about the viability of the theological project that had been developed by the schools over the preceding century, and what we see as a result was a ringing support for that project. The question remains as to why this might have occurred. What lay behind Canon 2? How can it be understood in the broader context of the Council?

Lateran IV After charting the allegations made by Joachim against Peter Lombard, the second canon finished, in an intriguing postscript, with a vigorous indictment of Amaury of Bene and his followers.24 These were the Amalricians, who were a pantheistic Paris-based sect that had been investigated and condemned in 1210. Ten of its members had been burnt at the stake in that same year.25 The Amalricians believed that the Holy Spirit had subsumed the Father and the Son, and it was the force that infused everything. For them, the Trinity was three in name only. It was not three in fact or even in an analogous sense. Rather God was utterly inseparable from anything; his being flowed through everything that was, including sin. The canon was emphatic in its refutation of the sect: ‘We also reject and condemn that most perverse doctrine of the impious Amalric, whose mind the father of lies blinded to such an extent that his teaching is to be regarded as more than heretical’.26 This final statement was a stark reminder to the listeners and readers of this canon that heresy was no mere academic issue, limited solely to the discussion of abstracts. Rather, as the pointed example of the Amalricians demonstrated, heresy was a life and death issue. The record of their condemnation charged that they said that ‘the Holy Spirit was incarnate in them […] it revealed everything to them’. 27 For them, this meant 24 

For a discussion of the protocols and procedures that led to the condemnation of the Amalricians in 2010, see Thijssen, ‘Master Almalric and the Amalricians’. 25  For a general introduction to the Amalricians, see Dickson, ‘The Burning of the Amalricians’. For an introduction to the theology of the Amalricians, as well as an edited collection of pertinent documents, see Capelle, Amaury de Bène. 26  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 233: ‘Reprobamus etiam et damnamus perverssimum impii Amalrici, cuius mentem sic pater mendacii excaecavit, ut eius doctrina non tam heretica censenda sit, quam insana’. 27  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. by Denifle, i, 71: ‘Spiritus sanctus in eis incar-

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that the Holy Spirit infused the world with undifferentiated divinity. In the age of the Holy Spirit, God’s being could be experienced in time and space without mediation. They believed that ‘God is everywhere. There is no one who should presume to deny it. Therefore he is in every place.’28 They were said to have asked, ‘Is God in time?’, and to have answered ‘God is always: therefore he is in time’.29 Consequently, the Amalricians argued that they lived in a postsacramental age. The law had belonged to the age of the Father, and the sacraments had belonged to the age of the Son. But in the age of the Spirit none of these interventions were necessary; they were alleged to have said that ‘if a Jew has understanding of the truth, which he has, then he need not be baptised’.30 Their position was inevitably perceived as an antinomian one. In rejecting the sacramental intercession of priests, they were refusing to participate in or acknowledge the salvationary economy of their fellow Christians. The concept of sin was redundant for the Amalricians; if God was everywhere in space and time, how could sin be separable from him? In the Age of the Spirit, evidently, sin was impossible. This was the subject of a sermon preached against the Amalricians by John the Teuton, who railed: Indeed these are the most profane novelties that they introduce, disciples of Epicurus rather than Christ. By the most dangerous deceptions, they seek — in secret — to demonstrate the impunity of sin, waging that nothing is a sin since no one ought to be punished by God for sinning.31

Their understanding of historical time was far more radical than that of Joachim. Joachim had understood history to be unfolding through a series of figural concordances. Each dispensation was separate but vertically integrated with God. The age of the Spirit could only be recognized as such; it was through manifesting the patterns of the two earlier stages of history that God’s natus, ut dixerunt, eis omnia revelabat’. 28  Contra Amaurianos, in Capelle, Amaury de Bène, p. 90: ‘Deus est ubique. Nemo est qui hoc negare audeat. Ergo est in omni loco.’ 29  Contra Amaurianos, in Capelle, Amaury de Bène, p. 91: ‘Utrum Deus Sit in tempore? Deus est semper: ergo est in tempore.’ 30  Contra Amaurianos, in Capelle, Amaury de Bène, p. 91: ‘Si Judeus habet cognitionem veritatis, quam habemus, non oportet ut baptizetur.’ 31  Sermon de Jean le Teutonique, in Capelle, Amaury de Bène, p. 90: ‘Sunt profanae novitates quas introducant quidam, Epicuri potius quam Christi discipuli. Qui periculossima fraudulentia persuadere nituntur in occulto peccatorum impunitatem, asserentes peccatum ita nihil esse ut etiam pro peccato nemo debeat a Deo puniri.’

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work could be recognized in the present. The Amalricians, however, felt the age of the Spirit to supersede the previous dispensations. They believed that their cognitio through the spirit had cancelled the efficacy of the sacraments, just as Christ had fulfilled and retired the efficacy of the law. Consequently, even Christ’s resurrection need not be understood to have occurred literally. The Amalricians, it was alleged, ‘say that every master of Paris spreads a fairytale when he speaks of the resurrection, because the cognitio is resurrection enough; nothing else is necessary. — Christ did not rise in the flesh’.32 The idea of bodily resurrection was an illusory fabula that was productive during the age of the Son but unmasked as superfluous in the age of the Spirit. Their age of the Spirit was transformed into a gnostic paradise which was not only similar to God but makes God himself immanent in everything. The pronouncement of Lateran IV that ‘between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them’, became increasingly sensible in the knowledge of the theology of the Amalricians, 33 who had taken the principle of similarity to the absurd conclusion of an absolute confluence between man and God. The ecclesiological consequences of this position were problematic: the Amalricians were believed to have held that all sacraments should cease, because sacraments are a sign of the Church, just like the rites of the old law; and just as they ceased with coming of Christ, so too ought this sign [the Church] to cease with the coming of the Holy Spirit’.34

The Church was made redundant in this formulation. In the new dispensation of the Spirit the sacramental and penitential apparatus of the Church, which bore grace to the faithful, could be bypassed in favour of God’s direct presence in the World. Taken further, the implication was that just as the Jews had been obdurate in their refusal to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of the law, so too was the current Church obdurate in its refusal to concede its salvific monopoly. The Amalricians were not only antinomian but anti-ecclesi32 

Contra Amaurianos, in Capelle, Amaury de Bène, p. 92: ‘Fabulosum (dicunt) quicquid magistri parisiensis de resurrectione asseverant, quia cognitio hec plena est resurrectio, nec alia est expectanda. — Christus in carne non resurrexit.’ 33  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 232: ‘Quia inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo notanda’. 34  Contra Amaurianos, in Capelle, Amaury de Bène, p. 93: ‘Cessarent omnia sacramenta, quia sacramenta ecclesie signa sunt, sicut ceremonialia in veteri lege; et sicut adveniente Christo cessaverunt, ita nunc per spiritum sanctum advenientem in in eis hec signa debent cessare’.

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ological and gnostic in their orientation. In their hands, the heterodox overassertion of resemblance as a theological principle, with which Joachim was charged, became a highly heretical and confrontational vision of revelation in real time, in the nunc of medieval revival. John the Teuton weighed in against the Amalricians in his sermon, writing that they say ‘certainly, it is foolish to say in one’s heart “I am not God”. But it is more foolish to say in one’s heart that “I am God”’.35 John’s point was that if it was a choice between an overidentification with God, or, alienation from Him, it was better to err on the side of caution. In this statement, he echoed the aforementioned fundamental distinction made in the second constitution: ‘Between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them’.36 John the Teuton preached: ‘God forbid that the fountain of knowledge, this city [Paris], of perfect beauty in wisdom, be fouled by this pestilence’.37 The Amalricians were heretics proper; hence the application of obvious tropes of contamination and disease. They threatened the right order of things. In particular, they undermined the scholastic life of Paris. The purity of the fountain was being soiled. Taken together, Peter Lombard, Joachim of Fiore, and the Amalricians constituted a telling tableau in Canon 2. Lombard was endorsed as orthodox. Joachim’s little book was condemned, but not Joachim himself. In fact, the council declared: By this, however, we do not intend anything to the detriment of the monastery of Fiore, which Joachim founded, because there both the instruction is according to rule, and observance is healthy; especially since Joachim ordered all his writings to be handed over to us, to be approved or corrected according to the judgment of the apostolic see.38

35  Sermon de Jean le Teutonique, in Capelle, Amaury de Bène, p. 90: ‘Certe dixit insipiens in corde suo: Non est Deus. Dixit insipientior in corde suo: Ego Sum Deus.’ 36  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 232: ‘Quia inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo notanda’. 37  Sermon de Jean le Teutonique, in Capelle, Amaury de Bène, p. 90: ‘Absit autem quod fons scientiarum, urbs ista, perfecti decoris in sapientia, hac peste foedetur!’ 38  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 232–33: ‘In nullo tamen per hoc Florensi monasterio, cuius ipse Ioachim exstitit institutor, volumus derogari, quoniam ibi et regularis institutio est et observantis salutaris, maxime cum idem Ioachim omnia scripta sua nobis assignari mandaverit, apostolicae sedis iudicio approbanda seu etiam corrigenda’.

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Joachim’s opinions on Lombard may have been erroneous, but the papacy was keen to maintain the overall dignity of his legacy. Finally, there were the Amalricians. Tellingly, the word insana was used twice in the second canon. In the first utilization, the council reminded the audience that Joachim had called Peter Lombard both a heretic and insane as a result of his Trinitarian theology. Then, the council levelled the charge of insanity against the ‘impious Aymer’, whose ideas are ‘utterly perverse’. But the charge against Lombard was dismissed roundly. Instead, the Council declared that real insanity lay in the beliefs and deeds of heretics, who merited the severest of punishments. This theme of the reality of heresy was continued in Canon 3, which began: We excommunicate and anathematize every heresy raising itself up against this holy, orthodox, catholic faith which we have expounded above. We condemn all heretics, whatever names they go under. They have different faces indeed but their tails are tied together inasmuch as they are alike in their pride.39

The remainder of it detailed protocols and procedures for the imposition of sanctions against heretics. It also declared, famously: ‘Catholics who take the cross and gird themselves up for the expulsion of heretics shall enjoy the same indulgence, and strengthened by the same holy privilege, as is granted to those who go to the aid of the Holy Land’.40 This enshrined the equivalence between previous crusades and the ongoing Albigensian Crusade. Crusades were holy wars against the enemies of Christendom, the canon made clear, be they internal or external. Any person or institution that sets itself against the orthodox faith of the Roman Church was thereby considered to have attracted and warranted sanction. The first three canons at Lateran IV, then, proposed a bold statement of papal sovereignty. Canon 1 made clear that the Church was the guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy, and that faith in its sacraments was the only mode to salvation. Canon 2 authorized Peter Lombard as an emblem of this orthodoxy. Canon 3 made clear that the Church was prepared to act upon its sovereign claims 39  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 233: ‘Excommunicamus et anathematizamus omnem haeresim extollentem se adversus hanc sanctam, orthodoxam, catholicam fidem, quam superius exposuimus, condemnantes universos haereticos quibuscumque nominibus censeantur, facies quidem habentes diversas, sed caudas adinvicem colligatas, quia de vanitate conveniunt in idipsum’. 40  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 234: ‘Catholici vero qui, crucis assumpto charactere, ad haereticorum exterminium se accinxerunt, illa gaudeant indulgentia, illoque sancto privilegio sint muniti, quod accedentibus in Terrae sanctae subsidium conceditur’.

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through the tools of excommunication and anathematization. Writ large, these three canons asserted the papacy’s self-proclaimed monopoly on salvation. As an institution, ecclesia stood between heaven and earth and declared itself able to mediate effectively between the two spheres. Following the famous formulary of Carl Schmitt that the ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception’, the first three canons at Lateran IV emphatically claimed that the papacy alone policed the salvific borders of Christendom.41 The papacy alone was able to declare those that were inside and outside of its economy of redemption.

Who Made Lateran IV? The question remains, however, as to why Peter Lombard was made the theologian du jour in this energetic and dogmatic piece of papal legislation. The condemnation of the Amalricians and the support of the Albigensian crusade make some sense. Both the Amalricians and the Albigensians allegedly refused the salvific monopoly of the Church, producing anti-ecclesiologies that made the Church redundant in the eyes of their followers. But why endorse the previously controversial Lombard at the expense of the popular Joachim? How does Peter Lombard’s notional orthodoxy become embedded in the sovereign claims of Lateran IV? In order to answer this question, I am going to look more broadly at the individuals who performed the intellectual work of Lateran IV and their relationship to the papacy. Tracking the structural relationship between schoolmen and Ecclesia may provide some insight into the intentions behind the endorsement of Lombard. It begins with the pope. As John Baldwin, among others, has shown, Pope Innocent III was thoroughly embedded in the key theological networks of his time. He was, as with so many other young clerics of ambition, trained in the liberal arts in the schools of Paris prior to becoming pope. He later spent many years in the curia, becoming pope in 1198.42 As Lothar de Segni, he had spent a number of years, in the 1170s or 1180s, studying with eminent scholars such as Peter of Poitiers and Peter of Corbeil. There, he studied the foundational disciplines of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. He was also exposed to the emerging field of moral theology lead by the school of Peter the Chanter. This school, as 41 

Schmitt, Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. by Schwab, p. 5. Moore’s Pope Innocent III has an excellent bibliography of works concerning Innocent’s life and times. For a general introduction, see Pope Innocent III and his World, ed. by Moore and others. On his relationship with the schools, see Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants. 42 

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we saw in the previous chapter, focused on the use of dialectical reasoning to answer moral problems, providing modes of argumentation and case-studies that would be useful examples for the preacher. The theologians of this school were primarily concerned with issues of sacramental and moral integrity, which is to say the question of how the church and individual could combine to produce a saved soul.43 This does not mean, however, that they were not au fait with the theological questions that had galvanized Abelard, Gilbert, and Peter Lombard. As we saw earlier, men such as the Chanter and Stephen Langton displayed sensitive knowledge of key issues such as Christology and their attendant controversies. But they were not interested in such questions for their own ends, preferring to focus on their broader pastoral implications. One of the reasons that this move was possible was that the advent of Lombard’s Sentences had produced a more stable theological curriculum, which functioned as a pedagogical foundation in the schools after 1160. The exact nature of the future pope’s pedagogical program in Paris is not known, so it is necessary to be careful about ascribing direct influence of particular preachers upon the young student. Nonetheless, we can say with certainty, however, that much of his later legislative activity as pope reflected a number of concerns current in his time at Paris. We can also say that upon becoming pope, Innocent III surrounded himself with school-trained advisors who had been disciples of Peter the Chanter, the foremost expert in moral and sacramental theology in the time that the young Lothar attended the schools. As Baldwin has shown, one example of the sort of procedural, pastoral, and moral problem that was of interest to the school of Peter the Chanter was that of the practice of ordeals. And this was an issue that would be dealt with explicitly at Lateran IV. Ordeals were a common custom across western Europe throughout the Middle Ages, usually deployed in cases that fell under secular jurisdiction, although such a designation as secular in this period is invariably problematic.44 They were a legacy of the practices of Germanic tribes who settled across western Europe after the end of the Roman Empire. They functioned as a source of proof in legal disputes, calling upon supernatural intervention in order to prove guilt or innocence. Until the prohibition of this clerical behaviour at Lateran IV in 1215, priests were customarily involved in their 43  The most important work on the Chanter remains Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Mer­ chants, cited above. In addition, the aforementioned Baldwin, ‘Paris et Rome en 1215’, concentrates closely on the role of the schoolmen as advisors to the Pope. 44  On ordeals, generally, see Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water.

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practice, blessing and consecrating the elements of the procedure. The practice of ordeals, then, lay in the interstices of sacred and secular, of temporal and eternal. The clergy, through their consecration of the instruments of ordeal, were asked to invoke divine intervention that would subvert laws of nature so that guilt or innocence would become apparent. The performance of ordeals assumed that God’s intervention in human affairs could be conjured with appropriate incantation. For the schoolmen, as well as for canon lawyers, of the twelfth century, clerical participation in ordeals raised a number of questions. Firstly, there was the implication that priests were complicit in the shedding of blood that often attended them, particularly when they took the form of duels between warring parties. More serious, however, was the issue of whether or not an ordeal was a testing of God, unlawful by the standards of both the Old and the New Testament. Both Deuteronomy 6. 16 and Matthew 4. 7 state: ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God’. This was, for many schoolmen, reason enough to argue that clerics ought not endorse or contribute in any way to ordeals. The practice of ordeals was customary, given gravitas by the weight of tradition, location in place, and the participation of the clergy. Custom, however, had no authority in itself when it was perceived to contravene holy writ and to imperil the souls of those involved. The fact that custom was found to be in contradiction with the increasingly codified precepts emerging from the schools. This shift towards codifying practice and theory was part of a larger movement, well detailed — as we have seen — by R. I. Moore, Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, and R. W. Southern among others, which increasingly saw the taxonomic and synthetic procedures of the schoolmen applied to administration in both secular and episcopal contexts.45 As the schoolmen of Paris and the canon lawyers of Paris began to try to create a body of written theological doctrine and codified canon law, customary practices such as ordeals which seemed to contravene the laws of scripture and the rational administration of justice were cause for concern. Consequently, there was much discussion within the circle of Peter the Chanter as to how the problem ought to be solved.46 Peter the Chanter believed that clerical souls were in danger due to their participation in ordeals, and that this was an issue of pressing moral concern that transcended protocol and custom. He declared: ‘Even 45  For example see Bedos-Rezak, ‘Medieval Identity’; See also Moore, The First European Revolution; and Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe. 46  See Baldwin, ‘The Intellectual Preparation for the Canon of 1215’.

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if the universal church, under penalty of anathema, commanded me as a priest to bewitch the iron or bless the water, I would quicker undergo the perpetual penalty than perform such a thing’.47 Two members of that circle went on to become key advisors to Innocent III and were entrusted with much of the intellectual preparation of Lateran IV. Innocent III had appointed Robert de Courson and Stephen Langton to cardinalates over the course of his reign. Customarily, most cardinals were usually of Italian origin. Innocent held to this practice, with the exception of the foreigners whom he plucked from the schools of Paris to serve with him. In addition to the cardinalate, he also made Stephen Langton archbishop of Canterbury (in 1207) and Robert de Courson was entrusted with the task of preparing the anticipated general council, spending much time convening preparatory councils throughout France and Flanders. These men, as Innocent’s trusted emissaries to Christendom, took the responsibility setting the terms of reference and building preliminary support for Lateran IV. The canons of Lateran IV legislated firmly against clerical participation in ordeals. It did so by invoking the canonical prohibition about clerics shedding blood. Canon 18 read: No cleric may decree or pronounce a sentence involving the shedding of blood, or carry out a punishment involving the same, or be present when such punishment is carried out. If anyone, however, under cover of this statute, dares to inflict injury on churches or ecclesiastical persons, let him be restrained by ecclesiastical censure.48

Within this prohibition, the text went on to specify clerical participation in ordeals, stating ‘nor may anyone confer a rite of blessing or consecration on a purgation by ordeal of boiling or cold water or of the red-hot iron’. 49 This was the precise statutory language of Lateran IV, produced by these schoolmen cardinals and the schoolman pope. This canon, as did the others of Lateran IV, combined legalese with theological concerns.

47 

Translated by Baldwin, ‘The Intellectual Preparation for the Canon of 1215’, p. 632. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 244: ‘Sententiam sanguinis nullus clericus dictet aut proferat, sed nec sanguinis vindictam exerceat aut ubi exercetur intersit. Si quis autem huiusmodi occasione statuti eclesiis vel personis ecclesiasticis aliquod praesumpserit inferre dispendium, per censuram ecclesisticam compescetur.’ 49  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 244: ‘Nec quisquam purgationi acquae ferventis vel frigidae seu ferri candentis ritum cuiuslibet benedictionis aut consecrationis impendat, salvis nihilominus prohibitionibus de monomachiis sive duellis antea promulgatis’. 48 

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Another striking example of the influence of the schoolmen upon papal policy during the pontificate of Innocent III can be seen in his regularization of the interdict as penalty, as has been shown by Peter D. Clarke. 50 The interdict was the sanction that restricted an entire community from receiving the sacraments. It was a means to punish a secular ruler by penalizing all who lived within his realm. It thereby served to remind the king, and his subjects, that ultimate authority resided with the papacy, which had the monopoly over the salvific work of the sacraments. It was one of the fiercest weapons that the pope had at his disposal to enforce policy and protect the operations of the Church throughout Christendom. But it was risky because it forced the hand of a secular leader, enjoining their acquiescence in an extremely public manner. It was a highly authoritative sanction, one that risked the rebellion of the secular leader and an ensuing escalation which would help neither side. At this stage, the divide between episcopal and secular administration was often murky and confused throughout western Europe. Kings and bishops were often interdependent and overlapping in jurisdiction. As the example of the consecration of the ordeal by the cleric showed, the practice of secular justice invariably invoked representations of divine authority. The interdict, as something of an end-game, exposed this intricate interrelationship between sacred and secular and forced a show of obeisance on the part of kings, queens, or emperors, whatever the case may be. It was also problematic for the papacy in a theological sense, as it exposed a significant seam of doctrinal confusion. Exodus 2. 5 had God warning Moses that he would visit the sins of the parents upon their offspring. 51 Ezekiel 18. 19, however, said that ‘the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, and the father shall not bear the iniquity of the son’.52 The interdict seemed to be in contradiction with the latter statement, with the innocent subjects being punished for the sins of their rulers. More generally, the interdict seemed to contradict the overall tenor of the gospel message that promised equality of salvation for all who believe in the Christ. As Paul wrote to the Galatians in 3. 28, ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is 50 

For the following section concerning the interdict I am indebted to Clarke, ‘Peter the Chanter, Innocent III and Theological Views’. 51  ‘Non adorabis ea neque coles ego sum Dominus Deus tuus fortis zelotes visitans iniquitatem patrum in filiis in tertiam et quartam generationem eorum qui oderunt me’. 52  ‘Et dicitis quare non portavit filius iniquitatem patris videlicet quia filius iudicium et iustitiam operatus est omnia praecepta mea custodivit et fecit illa vita vivet’.

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neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.’53 If the interdict jeopardized the salvation of those who, through no fault of their own, were deprived of the sacraments as punishment for the failures of their rulers, was not the Church contravening the sacred injunctions of scripture? In imposing the interdict, was the Church caught up in the worldly concerns of politics and betraying its sacred mission? As with ordeals, we see another junction where theory met practice in the second half of the twelfth century. While the interdict was theologically problematic, it remained one of the few effective tools the papacy had at its disposal in the negotiation of political disputes. A pope could excommunicate a ruler, which would prohibit his own participation in the sacraments. This action, however, did not necessarily disable the ruler from the successful governance of his region and bring significant pressure to bear upon him by his subjects. The interdict was much stronger, literally subjecting the king to the anxieties of those under his protection. The papacy of Innocent III had a reforming and centralizing agenda, as we have already seen. In order to have any effect of implementation, the papacy needed a weapon to demonstrate the spiritual might behind policy. The interdict was that weapon, and consequently much of the intellectual work of the schoolmen was deployed in order to justify its usage in theological terms. A justification for the interdict emerged from the thought of the schoolmen and was applied by Innocent III in his own rationales, which concerned the notion of collective guilt and punishment. Humans all shared guilt, since they were implicated in the sin of Adam. Yet, if they had been baptised and remained in a state of grace, a human would be saved after death. Original sin visited the sins of the fathers in perpetuity upon the offspring. Christ’s saving work, manifest in baptism, provided the individual remedy for each sinner. For the schoolmen, this distinction between universal sin and individual salvation justified the imposition of the interdict upon communities. The community might suffer temporally, but individual souls were not penalized eternally. Peter the Chanter wrote that the Church, even still, punishes one for the sins of another, since the Church ex­ communicates the prince’s servants and his whole territory on account of his fault. In such a way one is justly temporally punished for the sins of another, but not eternally.54 53  ‘Non est Iudaeus neque Graecus non est servus neque liber non est masculus neque femina omnes enim vos unum estis in Christo Iesu’. 54  Quoted in Clarke, ‘Peter the Chanter, Innocent III and Theological Views’, p. 3: ‘Ecclesia

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By extrapolating historical principles from scripture, the schoolmen were able to make the case for the just imposition of punishment upon the subjects of a sinning prince. This logic was echoed in Innocent III’s decretal De Vergentis of 1199, in which he stated that ‘in many instances, even according to divine judgment, sons may suffer a temporal punishment because of their fathers’. 55 Innocent III was to deploy the interdict regularly throughout his pontificate with tenacity and confidence. Most famously, he placed the entire kingdom of England under interdict between 1208 and 1214 because King John failed to accept Innocent’s appointment to the archbishopric of Canterbury. Showing the interrelationship of scholastic ideas and political action during Innocent’s reign, the Pope’s candidate was Stephen Langton, one of Innocent’s cardinals who he had plucked from the schools and who had been a member of Peter the Chanter’s circle. Regarding both the case of the ordeals and that of the interdict, the original scholarly work was the extraction and systematization of moral principles from the density, contradiction, and repetition of scriptures. These principles were then transformed into effective policy statements in the writings of the papacy. Innocent III’s papacy was highly dependent on the corpus of theological argumentation to which he was exposed in the schools and which was consolidated by his continual contact with schoolmen. In both cases, this reasoning was used to explain the relationship of Ecclesia to secular authority. With ordeals, Lateran IV asserted that the prevailing authority of customary law and practice would be overturned if it was found to be in conflict with moral precepts extracted from scripture. The systematization of the interdict, by contrast, made the case that the normal sacramental role of the papacy could be suspended for whole communities if necessary. Scholastic reasoning that defined the distinction between temporal and eternal penalty enabled the papacy to justify the strategic withdrawal of its pastoral obligations for the sake of conflict with secular authorities. In both cases, the arguments of the schoolmen were put to work in order to articulate the boundaries of papal authority. The work of Baldwin and Clarke which has been deployed to tell this story, when put together in this frame, combines to give us a much stronger sense of the minutiae of this process. quoque adhuc pro peccatis aliorum alios punit, quia pro delicto principis excommunicat seruos eius et universam terram eius. Sic pro peccato unius punitur iuste alius temporaliter sed non eternaliter’. 55  Quoted in Clarke, ‘Peter the Chanter, Innocent III and Theological Views’, p. 3.

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It also gives us a larger frame, albeit circumstantial, for understanding the high theology of the first two canons of Lateran, the credo and the endorsement of Lombard. They are not merely mission statements or pieces of political fantasy. Canons 1 and 2 actually inaugurated a detailed and ambitious program for the reform of the Church, which was evidently to be coordinated and enforced centrally. The canons started out bold and broad and then devolved into a series of smaller pronouncements regulating pastoral life, clerical behaviour, and ecclesiastical administration. Canons 1 and 2 provided the theory, while the later canons provided the practice. Canon 6 declared: As is known to have been ordained of old by the Holy fathers, metropolitans should not fail to hold provincial councils each year with their suffragans in which they consider diligently and in fear of God the correction of excesses and the reform of morals, especially among the clergy. Let them recite the canonical rules, especially those which have been laid down by this general council, so as to secure their observance, inflicting on transgressors the punishment due.56

It is here mandated that the central governance provided to bishops must be dispersed through synods. At these synods, issues of clerical morality should be combated through familiarity with canonical rules, particularly those issued at Lateran IV. Canon 10 stipulated that: Among the various things that are conducive to the salvation of the Christian people, the nourishment of God’s word is recognised to be especially necessary, since just as the body is fed with material food so the soul is fed with spiritual food, according to the words, man lives not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. It often happens that bishops by themselves are not sufficient to minister the word of God to the people, especially in large and scattered dioceses, whether this is because of their many occupations or bodily infirmities or because of incursions of the enemy or for other reasons — let us not say for lack of knowledge, which in bishops is to be altogether condemned and not to be tolerated in the future. We therefore decree by this general constitution that bishops are to appoint suitable men to carry out with profit this duty of sacred preaching, men who are powerful in word and deed.57 56 

Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 236: ‘Sicut olim a sanctis patribus noscitur institutum, metropolitan singulis annis cum suis suffraganeis provincialia non omittant concilia celebrare, in quibus de corrigendis excessibus et moribus reformandia, praesertim in clero, dilegentam habeant cum Dei timore tractatum, canonicas regulas et maxime quae statute sunt in hoc generali concilio relegentes, ut eas faciant observari, debitam, poenam transgressoribus infligendo’. 57  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 239: ‘Inter caetera quae ad salute

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Here, the council mandated that when bishops were unable to minister the word of God, they ought to provide replacements at all times. This was crucial, because the nourishment of the Word of God was key to the salvation of individuals. It provides support, inspiration and kept the believer on the right path. For its part, Canon 21 enforced yearly confession and partaking of the Eucharist for all Christians: All the faithful of either sex, after they have reached the age of discernment, should individually confess all their sins in a faithful manner to their own priest at least once a year, and let them take care to do what they can to perform the penance imposed on them. Let them reverently receive the sacrament of the eucharist at least at Easter unless they think, for a good reason and on the advice of their own priest, that they should abstain from receiving it for a time. Otherwise they shall be barred from entering a church during their lifetime and they shall be denied a Christian burial at death. Let this salutary decree be frequently published in churches, so that nobody may find the pretence of an excuse in the blindness of ignorance. If any persons wish, for good reasons, to confess their sins to another priest let them first ask and obtain the permission of their own priest; for otherwise the other priest will not have the power to absolve or to bind them.58

This canon proposed strict behaviours on the part of Christian, making clear that the failure to perform these sacraments adequately and annually would result in excommunication. The canon also set out the mechanism by which this canon should be publicized, so as to obviate the excuse of ignorance. spectant populi christiani, pabulum verbi Dei permaxime sibi noscitur esse necessarium, quia sicut corpus materiali sic anima spirituali cibo nutritur, eo quod non in solo pane vivit homo, sed in omni verbo quod procedit de ore Dei, Unde cum saepe contingat, quod episcopi propter occupations multiplices vel invaletudines corporales aut hostiles incursus seu occasiones alias — ne dicamus defectum scientiae, quod in eis est reprobandum omnino nec de caetero tolerandum — per se ipsos non sufficient ministrare populo verbum Dei, maxime per amplas dioeceses et diffusas, generali constitutione sancimus, ut epscopi viros idoneos ad sanctae praedicationis officium salubriter exequendum assumant, potentes in opera et sermon’. 58  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 245: ‘Omnis utriusque sexus fidelis, postquam ad annos, discretionis pervenerit, omnia sua solus peccata confiteatur fideliter, saltem semel in anno proprio sacerdoti, en iniunctam sibi poenitentiam studeat pro viribus adimplere, suscipiens reverenter ad minus in pascha eucharistiae sacramentum, nisi forte de consilio proprii sacerdotis ob aliquam rationabilem causam ad tempus ab eius perception duxerit abstinendum; alioquin et vivens ab ingress ecclesiae arceatur et moriens christiana careat sepulture. Unde hoc salutare statutam frequenter in ecclesia publicetur, ne quisquam ignorantiae caecitate velamen excusationis assumat. Si quis autem alieno sacerdoti voluerit iusta de causa sua confiteri peccata, licentiam prius postulet et obtineat a proprio sacerdote, cum aliter ille ipsum non posit solvere vel ligare.’

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I could cite many more of the latter canons of Lateran IV, most of which share the administrative certitude, the confidence in the necessity of the canons for salvation, and the descriptions of appropriate punishments in the breach. Like the aforementioned canon forbidding clerical participation in ordeals, these canons were clearly part of a broader agenda of regularizing and systematizing pastoral life across Christendom. All of them were concerned with the procurement of salvation and the policing of Christendom’s borders against those that threaten them. In their detail, they corresponded faithfully to the bold statement of institutional integrity and salvationary monopoly that was the credo that ushered in the proceedings of Lateran IV.

Conclusion What, then, of the endorsement of Peter Lombard? I would argue that the version of Lombardian theology propagated in the statutes of Lateran IV provided a theological foundation and justification for the soteriological ambitions of the papacy and its concomitant claims to spiritual sovereignty. I would also argue, following other scholars, that the fingerprints of the schoolmen, who were attached to the pontificate of Innocent III, were all over a great number of the canons of Lateran IV. Clearly, the methods of the schoolmen provided the intellectual apparatus with which these reforms were devised and broadcast throughout Christendom.59 It might not be possible to know exactly what was in the minds of those who drafted these conciliar documents. It is possible, however, to make a case as to the intellectual relationship between the endorsement of Peter Lombard and the remaining proceedings of Lateran IV. The Trinitarian theology of Lombard, especially as presented by the council, insisted on the application of notional categories upon the Trinity. That is, Peter Lombard asserted that one could speak of an una quaedam summa res when it came to the Trinity. This was the word for the divine essence that united the three persons of the Trinity and which somehow lay beyond the multiplicity of 59 

Moore, The First European Revolution: ‘The decrees of Lateran IV set forth a sweeping programme which drew upon and synthesised the intellectual, administrative and pastoral developments of the tumultuous century and a half since the Gregorian reforms. They provide yet another example, and one of the most successful, of the systematization which was the central characteristic of this age and culture, laying down with lucid precision the foundations and framework for the government of the church and much and much of European life for the rest of the Middle Ages and beyond’ (p. 174).

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the Trinity. As Joachim pointed out, this had troubling potential. He alleged that within this formulation a quaternity was created, with the una quaedam summa res somewhat differentiated from the Trinitarian persons themselves. The Council was decisive in rejecting Joachim’s criticisms. As we have seen, Canon 2 insisted on the appropriateness of naming the una quaedam summa res, ‘which alone is the principle of all things, besides which no other principle can be found’.60 The council essentially endorsed a formulation that went as far as human principles could go in the apprehension of the divine. The great magnitude of the proclamations of Lateran IV were concerned with demarcating the boundaries of Christendom and highlighting the papacy’s intercessory role within those boundaries, so too when they endorsed the Lombard’s theology, policing the ends of human aptitude for direct access to sacred mystery. Hence the confession cum petro; the papacy was confessing with Peter Lombard and Simon Peter in the same breath. They were confessing with Peter Lombard as to his mindful notional categories. They were also confessing with St Peter as holders of the keys, as the institution sanctioned to police the boundaries and protect the saving work of the Church. The endorsement of 1215, then, has a compelling logic within the overall frame of the ambitions and scope of Lateran IV.

60 

Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 232: ‘Quae sola est universorum principium, praeter quod aliud inveniri non potest’.

Conclusion

T

he theologian Jean-Luc Marion has described Canon 2 of Lateran IV as offering a ‘pragmatic theology of absence’.1 He reads the conciliar statement that ‘between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them’ as offering a distancing from the divine, which thereby creates a space within which theology can be performed.2 This is because of the privilege it gives to the radical separation between man and God over attempts to broker that difference through chains of similarity. As we saw in the previous chapter, the council harshly judged Joachim’s attempts to apprehend the Trinity through metaphor. He was criticized for his attempt to overcome the difference between man and God through metaphor and figuration. The council declared it better to err on the side of dissimilarity, to remain wary of the impassable gulf between the human and the divine. Why should this create a space for theology? How can awareness of God’s otherness enable talk about God? Surely the end result of such an approach would be negation? How could such God talk be authorized as legitimate, if its defining principle was the unknowability of God? The answer can be seen in the statement supporting Peter Lombard at Lateran IV. Lombard’s Trinitarian theology was endorsed as marking the una quaedam summa res ‘which alone is the principle of all things, besides which no other principle can be found’.3 1 

Marion, In Excess, trans. by Horner, p. 155. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 232: ‘Quia inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo notanda’. 3  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 232: ‘Quae sola est universorum principium, praeter quod aliud inveniri non potest’. 2 

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Lombard is celebrated for the articulation of a principle that defines the limits of theological knowledge and which stays firmly linguistic. This structuring of theological boundaries resists the lure of mystical union, while also refusing the apophatic way of negative theology, thus walking a middle path between identity and abnegation. Lateran IV constitutes theology as the space between the nothing and the thing, the space of notions, principles, and concepts.4 Marion’s formulation might seem an abstruse one in relation to the very political reading I have been suggesting for the endorsement of Peter Lombard at Lateran IV. My point has been, however, to demonstrate the ways in which the making of theology in the twelfth century was embedded within larger ideas about the nature of reality itself and the consequent responsibilities of the Church. Peter Lombard’s innovations in theology in both method and content, I have argued, was highly productive in this regard. In Chapters 2 and 3 of this book, I argued that Lombard’s Trinitarian and Christological theories both embodied this approach to the apprehension of divine things. Drawing on the innovations of Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers, Lombard carved out two small, but crucial, points in relation to those areas of doctrine. When it came to the Trinity, and in departure from Augustine, he emphasized the importance of maintaining a conceptual separation between the Trinitarian persons and the una quaedam summa res that united them. And when it came to Christology, he insisted on posing the question as to ‘whether Christ, according to his being a man, is a person or anything’.5 In his Christology and Trinitarian theology, Peter Lombard maintained the necessity of interrogating the ways in which language failed in relation to describing divine mystery. And he was prepared, when necessary, to utilize conceptual categories of understanding to lay out the contours of doctrine, even when these categories might seem to contradict certain orthodoxies. This was necessity born out of method; the desire to reconcile sometimes irreconcilable auctoritates forced Peter Lombard into inevitable questions about the limitations of human apprehension, and the consequent need for helpful human categories of understanding. In Chapter 3, I canvassed the opposition to Peter Lombard’s Christology as it emerged. In one very telling story, Robert of Cricklade attempted to set one 4 

For a more theoretical discussion of these distinctions, see Monagle, ‘A Sovereign Act of Negation’. 5  Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ed. by Brady, bk iii, d. 10. c. 1.1, p. 72: ‘An Christus secundum quod homo est sit persona vel aliquid’. Peter Lombard, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Silano, p. 41.

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of Peter Lombard’s students right on Christology. The student had attempted to explain Lombard’s theology with the use of examples. Robert, in response, was scornful. The young schoolman evidently wanted to explain Lombard’s distinctions but could not do so without recourse to examples generated from his studies in grammar. Robert of Cricklade was offended that such examples should be spoken of in the same breath as the two natures of Christ. Faith for Robert of Cricklade, as we have seen, was simple and unyielding and ought not necessitate the work of theological reasoning. For Lombard’s student, divine things could only be approached through the mediating principles of human cognition; thus the necessity of productive categories of understanding. This line is continued in other criticisms of Lombard that occurred. Gerhoh, John of Cornwall, and Walter accused Lombard, and his followers, of overreaching in their explanatory work. In assigning priority to explanations of doctrine, so the criticisms go, these certain schoolmen undermine the simple faith that enables true apprehension of God. Certainly, when we look over the words of some of Lombard’s disciples, there do seem to have been some radical moves made in his name in the period after 1160. As we saw in Chapter 4, for Peter Comestor and Peter of Poitiers, Lombard’s Sentences seemed to inaugurate a new era of theological experimentation. They transformed his Christology into a support of the habitus theory. In their interpretations, Lombardian Christology did in fact refuse the quiddity of Christ’s humanity and crossed over to a problematic contradiction of Chalcedon. Consequently, the papacy intervened in 1170 and 1177. Alexander III named the problematic doctrine as being that of Peter Lombard and prohibited all discussion that pertained to the question as to whether or not Christ’s humanity was something. Thus, the figure of Peter Lombard was made to stand, during these years, for radical investigation into doctrine. His disciples boldly took on the more problematic questions from the Sentences, with the resultant controversy and admonitions. In spite of the conservatism within which the Sentences were framed, his supporters between 1160 and 1180 energetically isolated the more speculative aspects of his thought. The scholars that followed after 1180, particularly Peter the Chanter and his circle, seem to have retreated from the radical Lombardianism of the preceding years. As we saw in Chapters 4 and 5, they inaugurated a new era in theology. This was concerned less with doctrinal questions as a type of cognitive frontier and was more invested in the deduction of principles that would enable new reasoned approaches to the more practical aspects of Christian teaching. That is, theology became a tool for reform. Men like Stephen Langton and Robert de Courson used their theological training to marshal arguments that enabled

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greater regulation and oversight on the part of the papacy at the turn of the thirteenth century. What we see at Lateran IV is the result of this practical theology. For example, attitudes to heresy, the policing of clerical probity, and reform of sacramental practice were all mandated through the arguments of these school-trained clerics. This was the space for theology carved out by the statement of Lateran IV that ‘between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them’.6 It was an approach to theology that kept God at a distance, a distance that enabled reasoned and reverent discussion of life in the world, and the practicalities of the ethical, moral and sacramental life of the Christian. What was licensed by this statement of dissimilarity at Lateran IV was an approach to theology that was notional, contingent, and grounded in the practical and political life of Christendom. With this formulation the role of the papacy became crucial, for it became the institution that had the responsibility for the enaction of sacramental and clerical reform. If the object of theology was the articulation of sound principles (extracted from auctoritates) for pastoral and moral life in Christendom, then the implementation of those principles necessitated an active and vigilant papacy. This is a powerful example of the increasing influence of clerici in this period. We started this book with the emerging power of a clerical elite over the course of the twelfth century, as described by R. I. Moore. I asked how this story of an ascendant literate elite might relate to the concomitant story of the contested reception of Peter Lombard’s Sentences over that same period. My hesitant answer is that Lombard’s technical innovations towards systematicity in theology, having been taken up by the Chanter and his circle, provided this generation of schoolmen with the tools to articulate and mandate a coherent and practical reform program. In their hands, theology became a technology of reform. Hence with Peter Lombard’s endorsement at Lateran IV, his ideas became the foundation of the ‘pragmatic theology of absence’ that underpinned the agenda of that council.

6 

Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. by Tanner, i, 232: ‘Quia inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo notanda’.

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Index

Abelard see Peter Abelard Adam, biblical figure: 160 Alan of Lille: 2 Alberic of Monte Cassino: 8 n. 8 Alberic of Reims: xvi, 30, 48, 55, 66 Albigensian Crusade: 154–55 Alcuin: 8 Alexander III, Pope: xvii as critic of Peter Lombard: 7, 92, 96–105, 107–08, 110, 113, 136, 138, 140, 169 Amalricians: 150–55 Amaury of Bene: 150; see also Amalricians Anacletus II, Pope: 46, 94 Angers: 14 Annales Reichespergenses: 100 Anselm of Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury: xvi, 23 as abbot of Bec: 18 as archbishop of Canterbury: 18 as critic of Roscelin of Compiègne: 17–22, 36 De incarnatione verbi: 18, 21 Monologion: 18 Prosologion: 18 Anselm of Laon: 23, 30, 48, 51–52, 55–56, 93 Aristotle: 11, 107 Arius: 107, 146 Arnold of Brescia: 31 assumptus homo theory see under Peter Lombard Athanasian Creed: 30 auctoritates, use of: xviii, 24, 53–54, 79, 81, 117, 124, 128–20, 137, 168, 170

Augustine of Hippo, Saint: 63, 79–80 Confessions: 61 De doctrina Christiana: 10, 24, 62, 64, 144 De Trinitate: 60–61 Enchiridion: 78 influence on Peter Lombard: xvi, 60–65, 77–80, 84, 144, 149, 168 rule of: 50 semiotics of: 10, 26, 64 tradition of: xvi, 77 Avranches, cathedral school of: 13 Baldwin, John W.: 132, 155–56, 161 Bandinus: 102, 127–31 Bec, abbey: 14; see also Anselm of Bec; Lanfranc of Bec Becket see Thomas Becket Bedos-Rezak, Brigitte: 9, 157 Berengar of Tours Eucharistic theology of: xi–xv, 4–17, 26, 29, 31–33, 35, 39–41 as master of school at Tours: 8–9 Rescriptum: 24 as secretary of Geoffrey of Anjou: 9, 14 trial of: 5–7, 11, 15, 19 Bernard of Chartres: 66–67 Bernard of Clairvaux: xiv, xvi, 98, 149 as critic of Gilbert of Poitiers: xvii, 32–40, 43–44, 48, 51, 70, 87, 101 as critic of Peter Abelard: xvii, 3, 5, 23–25, 31–34, 87, 91, 101 De consideratione: 94–95 Historia pontificalis: 32

188

as patron of Peter Lombard: xvi, 45–48, 56–57 reforms by: 94–95 and Song of Songs: 60 Boethius: 10, 26, 28 Opuscula sacra: 62 Brady, Ignatius: 51 Candidus: 12 Canterbury: 130, 161 Celestine II, Pope: 98 Chalcedon, Council of (451): 73–75, 78, 85, 90, 169 Châlons: 48 Chartres: 32 Châtillon, Jean: 93 Chenu, Marie-Dominique: 84 Christology see under Gilbert of Poitiers; Peter Lombard; Peter the Chanter Clanchy, Michael: 30 Clarke, Peter D.: 159, 161 clerici: xi–xiv, 170 Colish, Marcia: xix, 44–45, 52, 54–56, 59, 73, 106, 110, 126, 129 Cono of Preneste, cardinal: 30 Coolman, Boyd: 50 Cornificians: 69–70 Docetists: 74 Doyle, M. A.: 47, 56 Eberhard, Archbishop of Salzbury: 99 ecclesia: 5, 15, 23, 107, 141, 155, 161 unity of: xvii, 37, 74, 93–94, 110 Ernis, Abbot of St-Victor: 109 Eugenius III, Pope: 33, 36–37, 94 Evans, Gillian: xiv Fulco, bishop of Beauvais: 19 Gandulf of Bologna: 102, 127–29 Gastadelli, Ferruccio: 47 Geoffrey of Anjou: 9, 14, 18 Geoffrey of Auxerre: 5, 34, 38 Gerald of Wales: 90 Gerard Pucelle: 131 Gerhoh of Reichersberg: xiv, xvi, 149 as critic of Lombard: 7, 51, 87–88, 92–101, 109, 126, 138, 141, 169

INDEX Liber de duabus haeresibus: 93–94 Opusculum de aedificio Dei: 93 Gervase, Bishop of Le Mans: 14 de Ghellinck, Joseph: 67, 108–09 Gilbert of Foliot: 131 Gilbert of Poitiers: xiv–xv, 52, 57, 132, 156 as bishop of Poitiers: 32, 51 Christology of: 93–96 commentary on Opuscula sacra: 62 and conflict with Bernard of Clairvaux: xvii, 32–40, 43–44, 48, 51, 70, 87, 101 and ‘four labyrinths’: 101, 107, 110, 119–20 and Glossa Ordinaria: 48 as teacher: 66 trial of: 5–7, 33–39, 43–44, 53, 57, 70 Trinitarian theology of: 4–7, 32–41, 75, 106, 168 Gilduin, Abbot of St-Victor: 45–47 Glorieux, Palémon: 83, 108 Glossa Ordinaria: 25, 48–49 Godman, Peter: xv, 69 Gratian, Decretum: 6 Gregorian reforms: 13 Gregory I the Great, Pope: 115–16 Gregory VIII, Pope: 50, 115 habitus theory see under Peter Abelard; Peter Lombard; Peter of Poitiers Hadrian IV, Pope: 94–95 Häring, Nikolaus: 35 Heloise: 4 Herbert of Bosham: 52 heresy: xii, xiv, xviii, 14–15, 19, 21, 34, 37, 40–41, 94, 96, 100–01, 109, 140, 170 see also Albigensian Crusade; Amalricians; Arius; Docetists; and see under Peter Abelard; Peter Lombard Hilary of Poitiers, 78–79 Homer: 61 n. 49 Honorius II, Pope: 98 Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln: 104 Hugh of St-Victor: 49–50, 59, 109 De sacramentis: 50, 55–56, 58 death of: 50 Innocent II, Pope: 46–47, 93–94, 98 Innocent III, Pope: xviii, 140, 142, 155–56, 158–61, 164

INDEX Jaeger, C. Stephen: 2, 66 James, Henry: 35 Joachim of Fiore: xiv as critic of Peter Lombard: 132, 139–40, 142–50, 153–55, 165, 167 De vita sancti Benedicti: 146 Psalterium: 146–47 John, King of England: 161 John, saint: 95 John of Cornwall as critic of Peter Lombard: 7, 87, 92, 101–02, 104–11, 126, 169 Eulogium: 101, 104, 106–09 life of: 104 Propheti Ambrosii Merlini de septem regibus: 104 John of Damascus: 79, 82 John of Salisbury: 43–44, 90, 104, 130–32 on Gilbert of Poitiers: 32–41, 70 Metalogicon: 32, 66–71 Policraticus: 32 John the Baptist, saint: 115–16 John the Teuton: 151, 153 King, Peter: 28 Landgraf, Artur Michael: 122 Lanfranc of Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury: xvi, 5 as abbot of Bec: 13, 18 as critic of Berengar of Tours: 13–15, 31, 40 Laon, school of: 30, 48 Lateran Councils Lateran II: 140 Lateran III: 6, 101, 103–04, 107, 109, 113, 132, 146 Lateran IV: xi–xv, xviii, 6, 65, 132, 139–65, 167–68, 170 Leo IX, Pope: 14 Loches: 17 Lombard see Peter Lombard Lothar de Segni: 155–56 Lotulph the Lombard: 30, 48, 55 de Lubac, Henri: 12 Lucca: 46–47, 56 Lucius II, Pope: 90 Lutolph, disciple of Anselm of Laon: 93

189

Magna Carta: xi, xiii Maine: 14 Marion, Jean-Luc: 167–68 Maurice of Sully, Bishop of Paris: 92, 100 Melun: 57 Metamorphosis Goliae: 50 Mews, Constant: 17, 28, 32 Moore, R. I.: xi–xii, xiv, 157, 170 Moses, biblical figure: 117–18, 133–34, 138, 159 Newton, Francis: 8 Nicholas II, Pope: 14 Nielsen, Lauge Olaf: 37, 136 nominalism: 18, 26, 28 Norbert of Xanten: 46–47 Normandy: 14 Origen: 80 Orléans: 14 Otten, Willemien: 68 Otto of Friesing: 43–44 Gesta Friderici: 33 on Gilbert of Poitiers: 32–36, 38–41 Otto, Bishop of Lucca: 47 Summa sententiarum: 56 Oxford: 88, 40 St Frideswide’s: 90–91 Paris: 95 canon lawyers of: 157 Notre-Dame cathedral school: 50–51, 55, 119, 126 St-Victor: xvi, 7, 45–50, 55–59, 119; see also Gilduin, Abbot of St-Victor; Hugh of St-Victor; Richard of St-Victor; Walter of St-Victor Ste-Geneviève: 119 schools of: 2, 32, 44, 46–47, 90, 92, 104, 111, 130–31, 137–38, 150, 153, 155, 157–58 University of: xi, 45 Paul, saint: 63, 79, 159–60 Pavia: 13 Peter, saint: 139 Peter Abelard: xiv–xvii, 58–59, 69–70, 93, 132, 156 and conflict with Bernard of Clairvaux: xvii, 3, 5, 23–25, 31–34, 87, 91, 101

190

death of: 50, 57 and ‘four labyrinths’: 101, 107, 110, 119–20 and habitus theory: 106 as heretic: 23, 30–31 Logica ingredientibus: 26 and Metamorphosis Goliae: 50 as monk: 2 and nominalism: 26, 28 Sic et non: 24–25, 40, 52, 135–36 as student of Roscelin: 17, 22 as teacher: 66, 95–96 Theologia summi boni: 22, 24, 30, 62 trial of: 5–7, 19, 30–33, 48 Trinitarian theology of: 3–7, 22–35, 37, 39–40, 62, 168 Universal, concept of: 27–28 Peter Comestor: as chancellor at Notre-Dame: 117 as disciple of Peter Lombard: 114–15, 117–22, 126, 129, 133–34, 137–38, 141, 169 Historia scholastica: 117 Peter Lombard accessus, use of: 52–53 and Alexander III: 7, 92, 96–105, 107–08, 110, 113, 136, 138, 140, 169 assumptus homo theory of: 77–81, 84, 98, 105, 127, 130–31 Augustine, influence of: xvi, 60–65, 77–80, 84, 144, 149, 168 and Bernard of Clairvaux, patronage of: xvi, 45–48, 56–57 as bishop of Paris: 57, 92 career, early: xvi, 45–54 Christology of: xvi–xvii, 59, 73–111, 113–38, 139–40, 48, 168–69 Christology, criticism of his: xvii–xviii, 40, 51, 86–111, 114–15, 119–23, 126, 132, 136, 140 Collectanea: 53–55, 59 commentary on Philippians by: 80, 115 as critic of Gilbert of Poitiers: 5, 36, 39–40, 43–44, 57, 70 death of: 52, 93, 114 and ‘four labyrinths’: 101, 107–08, 110, 119, 129 and Gerhoh of Reichersberg: 7, 51, 87–88, 92–101, 109, 126, 138, 141, 169

INDEX and Glossa Ordinaria: 48, 52 habitus theory of: 79–81, 83–84, 105, 115, 124–29, 133, 138, 169 as heretic, potential: 87–92, 106, 108, 113–14, 122, 142–43, 146, 154 and hypostasis of Christ: 6–7, 84, 103 and Joachim of Fiore: 132, 139–40, 142–50, 153–55, 165, 167 and John of Cornwall: 7, 87, 92, 101–02, 104–11, 126, 169 and Lateran IV endorsement: xiii–xv, xviii, 132, 139–50, 153–56, 162, 164–65, 167–68, 170 Magna Glosatura: 52–55, 59 and Notre-Dame: 50–51, 55 and Peter Comestor: 114–15, 117–22, 126, 129, 133–34, 137–38, 141, 169 at Reims: 46–49, 55, 57, 75, 93 and Robert of Cricklade: 88–94, 96–97, 100, 114, 109, 126, 168–69 and sacramental theology: 59 at St-Victor: xvi, 45–50, 55–57 Sentences: xv, 40, 54–71 abbreviators of: 102, 126–31, 138 accessus to: 117 Christology in: xvi date of: 54 influences on: xvi, 47, 55–65, 144 as textbook: xiii–xiv, xvii, 6–7, 44–45, 54–55, 61, 86–87, 102, 156 see also Peter Lombard, Christology of; Peter Lombard, Trinitarian theory of subsistence theory of: 78–83, 105 Trinitarian theology of: xiii, xviii–xix, 6, 59, 61–65, 74, 83, 85, 111, 132, 139–40, 144–46, 148–49, 154, 164–65, 167–68 and Walter of St-Victor: 7, 87, 101, 107–11, 114, 119–23, 126, 138, 141, 169 Peter of Corbeil: 155 Peter of Poitiers: 129, 133, 155 commentary on Sentences: 122–26 and ‘four labyrinths’: 101, 107, 110, 119 habitus theory of: 124–26, 138, 169 Peter the Chanter: xvii, 119, 132–33, 155, 157, 160–61, 169–70 and Christology: 134–35, 137, 156 gloss on Exodus 19. 24: 133–34, 138 Verbum abbreviatum: 134–35

INDEX Peter the Venerable: 46 Philip, dean of Notre-Dame: 51 Plato: 26 Porphyry: 26 Priscian: 10–11, 35, 75 Pseudo-Peter of Poitiers: 126 n. 31 Quinto, Riccardo: 135 Radding, Charles M.: 8 Ralph of Laon: 55 Rathbone, Eleanor: 104 Reeves, Marjorie: 147 Reims: 103, 109 Council of (1148): 33, 43–44, 70, 75 schools of: 36, 46–49, 55, 57–58, 93 Richard of Ilchester, Bishop-elect of Winchester: 104 Richard of St-Victor: 109, 1146 De trinitate: 145–46 Robert, Bishop of Exeter: 104 Robert de Courson: 132, 158, 169 Robert of Cricklade: 130 as critic of Lombard: 88–94, 96–97, 100, 114, 109, 126, 168–69 early life of: 90–91 Robert of Melun: 45, 58, 66 as bishop of Hereford: 57 as critic of Gilbert of Poitiers: 36, 39–40, 43–44, 57 rivalry with Lombard: 58, 92 Sentences: 59 Robert of Torigny: 51 Roger, Bishop of Worcester: 88 Roger of York: 131 Rome: 31, 95, 142 Roscelin of Compiègne: xv and nominalism: 18 trial of: 5–6 Trinitarian theology of: 4–6, 17–23, 32, 35–36 Rosemann, Philipp W.: xix, 53, 63–64, 76, 83, 127 Rupert of Deutz: 5 Sabellius: 107, 146 St-Médard, monastery: 30 St-Victor see Paris, St-Victor Schmitt, Carl: 155

191

Sens: 31–32, 99–100 Smith, Lesley: 49 Socrates: 26–27 Soissons, councils of: 19, 30, 48 Southern, Richard W.: 6, 35, 47, 56, 65–66, 157 Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury: 132, 135–36, 156, 158, 161, 169 Stock, Brian: 12 subsistence theory see under Peter Lombard Suger of St-Denis: 36, 40, 43 Summa sententiarum: 47 Taliadorus, Jason: 131 Terence, Roman playwright: 71 Theobald of Canterbury: 131 Thierry of Chartres: 2 Thomas Becket: 131 Tours: 14, 17 abbey of: 8–9 Council of (1163): 96–98, 102, 104 Trinitarian theory see under Peter Abelard; Peter Lombard; Roscelin of Compiègne Trivium: 3 Uberto, Bishop of Lucca: 46–48 Ulysses: 61 n. 49 Vacarius, Master: 138 Tractatus de assumpto homine: 130–32 Van den Eynde, Damien: 47 Victorines see Paris, St-Victor Walter of Coutances, Bishop of Lincoln: 104 Walter of St-Victor Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae: 101, 107, 109–10, 119, 122, 129 ,132 as critic of Peter Lombard: 7, 87, 101, 107–11, 114, 119–23, 126, 138, 141, 169 Ward, John O.: xii William of Champeaux: 49 as critic of Peter Abelard: 5, 23, 26–28, 40 death of: 48 William of Conches: 66 William of Malmesbury: 90 William of St-Thierry: 23 William of Sens: 101–02, 104, 109 William of Tyre: 51

Europa Sacra All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series Religious and Laity in Western Europe, 1000–1400: Interaction, Negotiation, and Power, ed. by Emilia Jamroziak and Janet E. Burton (2007) Anna Ysabel D’Abrera, The Tribunal of Zaragoza and Crypto-Judaism: 1484–1515 (2008) Cecilia Hewlett, Rural Communities in Renaissance Tuscany: Religious Identities and Local Loyalties (2009) Charisma and Religious Authority: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Preaching, 1200-1500, ed. by Katherine L. Jansen and Miri Rubin (2010) Communities of Learning: Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100-1500, ed. by Constant Mews, John N. Crossley (2011) Alison Brown, Medicean and Savonarolan Florence: The Interplay of Politics, Humanism, and Religion (2012) Faith’s Boundaries: Laity and Clergy in Early Modern Confraternities, ed. by Nicholas Terpstra, Adriano Prosperi, and Stefania Pastore (2013) Late Medieval and Early Modern Ritual: Studies in Italian Urban Culture, ed. by Samuel Cohn Jr., Marcello Fantoni, Franco Franceschi, and Fabrizio Ricciardelli (2013)

In Preparation Thomas A. Fudge, The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr Adriano Prosperi, The Giving of the Soul: The History of an Infanticide